Eoin tugged his jacket on, pulling the collar up to guard against the sun. ...Really needed a better idea than layers. Move more north, maybe. Find somewhere greyer.
... Swim deeper. The idea had crossed his mind more than a few times. Abandon the layers, air, the boat, and just swim. Regulators couldn't follow him forever, and the one they'd sent to check on him had been too nervous to swim deep, that much had been clear. He cast a glance over the side.
No. Not right now. Right now, he needed to find the fire. Much as he hated the boat, Lia, whatever she wanted to be called, was right. Too much trash, too much pollution, if it fell apart here.
The other, louder part, said that was too easy an out.
Didn't take much searching to tell him the burnt smell wasn't coming from the boat. Less because of the lack of any obvious issue—smoke, fire—and more because there was a steady screaming from above. (...The last time Eoin had looked up and been blinded came to mind.) He squinted through his fingers, and very quickly dropped his hand.
The screaming object was dark, huge, and coming right for him.
No time to think. Eoin dove from the rail, swimming out and away, putting as much distance as he could between himself and his (shitty and about to be in pieces) boat. A water-dulled boom ripped through the ocean, the force sending him tumbling head over fin. When he righted himself, all he could do was stare at the jagged metal fragment that had split the ship in two before sinking at pace down.
He bobbed with the waves, once, twice, before pushing down against them and after the object. The metal was dark, even to his eyes, with no discernable markings or shape apart from a small charred-over word. Satellite, or some junk. He left it. Humans covered the space above their planet with so much shit; eventually some of it'd fall.
Had to fall on his boat. That, he did chase, following the halves down to find anything salvageable at all. He wouldn't find anything, and that...
That was more like what he deserved.