Apparently this ship had been just sitting there at the dock since the Trigram kids had brought it, it was a motor boat with general amenities like a bathroom and a kitchen and a living area.

  Nothing special to report about that, partially because I didn't have time to explore and partially because I didn't really care.

  Over time a one-sided seafaring romance bloomed between Desirè and me, she was by no means a good person, but she seemed to have developed some super abusive strain of Florence Nightingale syndrome, which by itself is an odd mental condition where you fall for someone you've been taking care of, convinced they need you.

  An example being that she now took to feeding me with a spoon instead of letting me handle it by myself, violently reprimanding me if I tried to handle my own food. not the WORST treatment I'd had at the hands of a woman, but this was making me miss my squad.

  She took to sleeping in bed with me, not like having sex but actually cuddling and sleeping in bed together. Again all it really did was hurt my healing body and made me miss my squad.

  We were also having sex though, I'm not even going to skirt around that, and it wasn't something I had a choice in. She got violent when she wanted to have sex, even more so when I didn't want to, like, breaking fingers, punching my face violent, and it's not like I didn't put up a fight, but being that I was still repairing myself from the blast, I was very weak.

  Then, after she'd gotten her rocks off, she'd go right back to being my Friendly, sexy nurse, it was like that one book where the fan of a famous writer breaks his legs, can't remember the name off the top of my head..did she fuck the writer in that book? Not sure.

  While all this was happening, Markus became like our child, I didn't want to enable this delusion of hers, but like most people with these problems do, she used poor Markus as an emotional shield, so long as I didn't want to upset or sadden the poor little guy, this fragile fantasy would stay intact.

  It was not long after we fell into this routine that I realized we weren't anywhere near Galveston anymore, in fact, looking out the window, I saw Cuba, more specifically, Havana Harbor.

  I looked back in at Desirè, "Dez, you know I need to go back home, we can't keep this up."

  Desirè looked up at me from the dining table she was sitting at, all teary-eyed, "I knew you would say that eventually...I was beginning to hope you'd forgotten..."

  Without warning she leapt across the table and swung a pan at my head! I moved out of the way, such a sudden swing caused me to lurch rather than properly dodge, making me fall across a chair, shattering the piece of cheap wood, Desirè stood over me with the pan as Markus walked in, "mama whats wrong?"

  Her expression changed from one of manic anger to one of nurturing kindness, "nothing sweetie, daddy fell."

  I glared up at her angrily, "This whole family on a boat fantasy you cooked up in your head's a gigantic farse, Desirè! You're crazier than I am!"

  She pointed the pan down at me, murder in her eyes, trying to keep her tone level as Markus looked more and more distressed, "I won't let you go back...not when we have a family to take care of!"

  I snarled at her, "you can't keep me here! Break me and I'll just come back, you said it before, that's how it works!"

  She had tears welling up in her eyes as she raised the pan, "I'll kill you before I let you escape!" Finally letting herself scream.

  "Then do it, you bipolar hag!"

  With a pained wail, she brought the pan down on my head.

  I woke up in a state of delirium on my back facing the a burning sun, I sat up and saw Blasphemy was lying next to me with an oar beside it.

  My immediate reaction was to punch the side of the boat, "SON OF A BITCH!"

  That bitch had stolen the boat and left me to float about in this goddamn dinky dinghy!

  It was then that I saw a note inside a plastic bag under Blasphemy, I picked it up.

  It read as such.

  My Love

  Nothing saddens me more than letting you go back to that awful place.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  But because I know you, I also know that I would be unable to stop you.

  I've given you your sword and a paddle, if you ever want to find me, I'm going to be holing up in Havana for a while with our little Markus.

  Love

  Desirè

  I dropped the letter in the water, so ready to just drop this crap, I nearly dumped Blasphemy just because no fucks given, I was STRANDED, in the middle of the ocean!

  It was not long before I felt hungry, thirsty, and tired.

  I know it sounds whiny, but I had eaten nothing but rat for weeks, and I hadn't eaten before Desirè jumped on me.

  On top of that, my body still had lots of healing to do.

  Resolved to my fate, I picked up the oar, paddling north.

  My pain got worse and worse as the sun slowly vanished.

  Before you ask me about my timekeeping, every JAB Agent is taught to keep an internal clock, any of the others would tell you the same.

  6:30 PM: sun starts going down, we call this "eye stabbing time" getting hungry, my stomach has never talked to me before now.

  7:30 PM: the sun is now mostly down, is the simultaneous need to drink and piss normal? I need to piss.

  8:30 PM: the sun is setting, I've decided to drink the ocean water, it's salty and tastes like shit, but my mouth isn't dry anymore.

  9:30 PM: the sun is down, the moon isn't up yet, and the saltwater does not agree with my stomach, I puked up what felt like a gallon a few minutes ago

  8:00 AM the following morning: woke up from a stupor I was in and just remembered I fucking drank sea water, the fuck was I thinking?

  I puked up bile in my mouth, the taste causing me to throw up what little was in my stomach again, I horked it into the water next to the boat and I curled up into a ball once I was done, it was then that I realized JUST how lucky I'd been to grow up in a place like Trigram, relatively safe with food and water always close at hand, I know it sounds laughable, calling Trigram safe, but I'd never felt this way BECAUSE of the Agency, even days when we went hungry I could usually steal something to fix that and now I was certain I was going to starve in a fucking rowboat till I hit land or...god forbid...sank.

  "Green!"

  The ocean is the world's largest graveyard, with depths still unplumbed by man, what would stop this vomitous void from opening up and swallowing one more, a man who would die over and over again deep in the depths?

  "GREEN!"

  Funny, thinking of Trigram is already causing me to hallucinate about Love, shouting at me from the top of a boat across the way.

  "OH GOD HE LOOKS UNCONSCIOUS!"

  Now I saw Edge standing beside her, Wolf and Singleton too, holy shit why Singleton? Why couldn't my near-death hallucination have been Ripper?

  But as the boat touched my rowboat, I was thrust into reality, Wolf jumped in and seized me, pulling me upwards so Love and Singleton could pull me into the boat, "no, not unconscious, I think he's out of it though."

  Coming to, I blinked, "huh? Guys!? How the hell did you get here?"

  It was then that I looked beyond the boat, the first thing I noticed was the small group of military boats that were following the one that had picked me up, "how did you find me?"

  Love hugged me and kissed my cheek, "Just out of Galveston and floating in a rowboat! How could we not find you?"

  Edge and Wolf crowded around us and hugged me close.

  I couldn't help it, I cried, I had been SO close to Galveston and I'd been too fucked to notice.

  But I was safe now, I was in the hands of the people I loved, I was. But Then Green woke up for the first time in what I think now was a day, and ripped himself out of the gang hug to grab Singleton around the throat, "YOU LEFT ME IN THAT HOLE! IF I GET COURT MARSHALED FOR THE THINGS I'VE DONE, I'M TAKING YOU DOWN WITH ME, YOU BASTARD!"

  Singleton flipped us, pinning us to the metal floor of the boat, "Whatever you think I did to deserve that, I DON'T!" He pulled our arms taught, Green thrashed our legs, "says the motherfucker who left us to ROT in that PRISON to DIE!"

  Singleton slapped the ever-loving shit out of our left ear, after the ringing had subsided, Singleton growled, "You FUCKING numskull, I had to pull the team out or EVERYONE would have been dragged in!"

  Green took a few seconds to process, "I... hadn't thought of that."

  Singleton laughed, "Also I wanted to see how durable you were....holy shit."

  Green turned bright red with rage and Singleton let out another laugh, "fucking with you Green...I'm sorry we had to leave you all by yourself, seems you managed it though, even if you ended up destroying the place."

  Green looked confused as Singleton let us sit up, but then Edge made an explosion noise with his mouth, causing the entirety of Sigma to hug me again, murmuring general approval of my actions, in the midst of the cluster, Love pulled me into a deep kiss that once again made my hair stand on end, when it broke she looked kind of sad, "did you get him?"

  I shook my head, "he WAS there...I doubt he made it out before the explosion."

  Love didn't look as relieved as I wanted her to, but it was mainly due to the whole reason they were out here in force to begin with.

  Apparently after AI-742 got a hold of me, it refused to respond to Houska's requests to let me go free, partly because it couldn't get a hold of me and partly because I met the exact criteria of its objective.

  To contain the un-killable threats.

  On the day of our escape, Houska sent their armada to have the box disassembled, but just as they were getting in the water the box detonated, they'd been scouring the waters around with radiation scrubbers and re-capturing any escapees for a full week, while Desirè and I were out there flirting with the Cuban border, they were looking for me, this was actually the last sweep they had decided to perform before calling it quits and I was incredibly lucky to have been found.

  Back at the Love Field bunker, I learned they'd held the court marshal without us, meaning that we were not being killed or kicked out, rather we had another "punishment" mission with only a day of rest between the two, after the completion of said mission, we'd be back to normal Agent status again.

  Honestly, I was just glad to be with my crew again.

  Love slept in bed with me that night and was slightly bummed Green didn't want to have sex, but was understanding when she heard our collective ego had been irreparably bruised by an extremely violent possibly bipolar nymphomaniac.

  Edge in bed with Wolf next to us responded to this by laughing his bag off at the irony.

  The next morning we had a dragon to hunt.

  Seems like Green would get to slay this bastard after all.