Maya was certain that Frank Gardes would never be reckless enough to run an organ-trafficking operation this close to downtown. It wasn't that she had any illusions about the moral fiber of those so-called Wall Street "elites." It was simpler than that: if an organ-trafficking ring were discovered anywhere near Wall Street, the fallout would dwarf the profits. Those "elites" could at least do basic arithmetic.
That fabled three a.m. sun over Manhattan? Maya never did get to see that impossible three-a.m. Manhattan sun. What she got instead was a bone-cutting predawn wind that had her shivering from head to toe as she sprinted across the icy surface of the Hudson River. She ran hard upstream, pushing her senses outward, sweeping the vessels moored along both banks one by one.
This was her plan — crude as it was. She just had to scan for any ship packed with a large number of people, then check its registration number. Find that, and she had her target.
Manhattan Island was only about two-and-a-half miles (4 km) wide, but stretched more than twelve miles (20 km) from end to end. From where Maya had started running upstream to the northernmost tip of the island near the Bronx, the distance along the river was easily six to nine miles (10–15 km) — even longer from the midpoint, since the island narrowed to a sharp wedge as it approached the north.
To avoid being spotted by the streetlights lining the banks, Maya ran straight down the center of the Hudson.
There was nothing graceful about Maya in that moment — nothing ethereal about the way she ran across the water. She was just a girl charging through the cold spring predawn air, her face flushed with sweat, her injured left foot going steadily numb beneath her.
She kept her senses trained on the moored vessels as she ran, letting her mind work through what had gone wrong. I got here the hard way because I was inexperienced. She should have slipped straight to the roof of Frank's building from the start, then scaled the wall and slipped into the office of the man in gold-rimmed glasses and gotten hold of Jimmy first — quietly, without a scene. From there she could have wrung the location out of him, or had him call the ship's crew to stall for time. Either option would have been a hundred times better than this desperate sprint through the dark.
The moment she saw what was being done to her own people, with their lives hanging by a thread, rage crashed over her and washed every bit of calm from her mind. When it came down to it, Maya was no true ninja. She was just an ordinary person who happened to have chakra. Her control over her own state of mind, her judgment in a crisis — both had failed her tonight.
At this hour, the center of the Hudson was a strip of pure darkness. Now and then a wave rolled past and caught the light bleeding in from shore. The only sound in Maya's ears was the steady slap-slap of her feet against the water.
The fevered rush that had gripped her when she first read those files had completely faded. She was thinking ahead now — how to handle the enemy when she found them, and what to do with the aftermath.
Twenty minutes in, she had already covered more than six miles (10 km) — roughly thirty feet per second (10 m/s). On paper, she didn't even match Usain Bolt's top speed, which felt almost embarrassing for a ninja. But it wasn't a fair comparison. Bolt ran a 100-meter sprint on a dry track. He couldn't hold that pace through three hundred meters, let alone this marathon across open water — and Maya was doing it on an injured foot, throttled back from her true limit. She'd already learned that lesson earlier, pushing the chakra too hard while vaulting across rooftops, nearly running herself straight off the edge. More haste, less speed. She wasn't making that mistake twice.
Another ten minutes passed. Maya could now make out the confluence of the Harlem River and the Hudson — she was nearly past Manhattan and into the Bronx.
She stopped, doubled over with her hands on her knees, body rising and falling with the swell. She gulped at the cold air, and the despair she'd been keeping at bay finally crept in.
Did I get it wrong? Was the ship downstream after all? The scheduled departure time was long past. Going back downstream now would be too late. I'm an idiot. I should have grabbed Jimmy from the start. I'm the reason they're going to die. A broken sound escaped her — quiet, involuntary. She stood in the middle of the river and cried.
After a few minutes of that, her chakra control began to slip. She felt her head growing heavy.
Maya forced herself to stop. She steadied her breathing, turned around, and started back.
Even jogging back, her expression was flat, her eyes still puffy. Her foot sank slightly beneath the water's surface with every step. She checked her chakra reserve — barely ten percent left, and golden at that. She pushed herself to keep converting new chakra as she ran.
Less than five minutes into the return trip, a vessel appeared ahead. To avoid being seen, Maya angled toward the Jersey City side of the river. One bank was Manhattan, the other Jersey City. The Manhattan side was more commercially developed and bristled with streetlights; over on the Jersey side, the lights were further apart, the shadows deeper. Maya kept to the dark.
She was still moving when she suddenly froze.
Wait. When she'd swept the Hudson shoreline earlier, she hadn't seen this ship.
Her memory was sharp enough to be certain: this vessel hadn't been here.
Did it come up from downstream? Then her gaze shifted. On the Jersey City side, there were more ships moored. The thought struck her like a bolt of lightning: What if Pier 9 is on the Jersey side of the Hudson?
On instinct, she pushed her senses into the hull of the ship in front of her.
Human presences. A mass of them. Packed together.
Her whole body went tight. She sharpened her focus.
"Ha! Found you — Pier 9!" All the despair of the past hour vanished in an instant.
Then her senses found the people inside, and the rage came back white-hot.
Dozens of Chinese captives — her own people — crammed like livestock into narrow iron cages in the ship's hold. Cargo had been piled on top of the cages to conceal them from inspection. Every face inside was sallow with exhaustion. The voices calling out were cracked and barely audible.
What made Maya's hands clench was the sight of two men hauling a girl's body toward the railing, moving to throw her into the Hudson. The girl's upper body was covered in bruises. Her lower half was a ruin.
Maya sharpened her senses further.
The "body" was still moving.