CHAPTER 17: BRIG CONFESSIONS
Sleep wouldn't come.
The cell was too cold, the stone too hard, and my mind wouldn't stop spinning. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that golden thread stretching between me and Jack.
"You're not sleeping either."
Jack's voice emerged from the darkness. He'd stopped pacing at some point, settling into a corner of his own.
"Hard to sleep when you might die tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's for Will. Not for us. Not yet."
"If the curse breaks, Barbossa has no more use for hostages."
"If the curse breaks, Barbossa will be too busy celebrating to remember we exist." Jack shifted, chains rattling. "First hot meal in ten years. First drink that actually satisfies. First woman who—"
"I get the picture."
A soft laugh. "You're not afraid of them, are you? The cursed men."
I considered lying. Decided against it.
"No."
"Most people are. Even I find them... unsettling. And I've seen my share of supernatural horrors."
"Have you?"
"Mate, I made a deal with Davy Jones himself to raise a ship from the bottom of the sea." Jack's voice was casual, but something underneath it wasn't. "I've sailed waters that don't appear on any chart. I've seen things that would drive lesser men mad."
Davy Jones, I thought. The deal for the Black Pearl. Thirteen years as captain before your soul belongs to the Dutchman.
But I couldn't know that. Not officially.
"You've lived an interesting life," I said instead.
"That's one word for it." Jack was quiet for a moment. "What about you? What horrors have you seen?"
"I drowned." The words came out before I could stop them. "Weeks ago. Before I met you. I went into the water and I didn't come back up."
"And yet here you are."
"And yet here I am." I stared at the ceiling—stone, carved by water over centuries. "It didn't stick. The dying. I don't know why. I don't know how. But I woke up in the harbor, choking on salt water, and I've been alive ever since."
The silence stretched.
When Jack spoke again, his voice had changed. Sharper. More interested.
"You died. And you came back."
"Yes."
"How many times?"
"Just the once." So far.
"Do you know what brought you back? What deal was made, what price was paid?"
"No."
"Fascinating."
I could feel his gaze even in the darkness. That calculating look again—the one that said he was fitting puzzle pieces together.
"I've heard of such things," Jack continued. "Curses that bind men to life. Deals with sea gods that prevent drowning. Voodoo magic that ties souls to the mortal plane." A pause. "Which is it, for you?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know." Jack's voice was skeptical. "A man comes back from the dead and doesn't bother to find out why?"
"I've been busy surviving." I turned to face his direction, though I couldn't see him clearly. "I washed up on a beach with nothing. No money, no contacts, no understanding of what happened to me. I learned to survive first. The answers can wait."
"Can they?"
Another question I couldn't answer.
Jack moved—I heard his chains shift, his boots scrape stone. When he spoke again, he was closer.
"In my experience, supernatural gifts always come with supernatural prices. The Aztec gold made men immortal—but stole their ability to feel. Davy Jones can grant life beyond death—but claims souls in payment." His voice dropped. "What's the price for your resurrection? What will the sea demand in return?"
My life tied to yours, I thought. Your death means my death. That's the price.
But I didn't say it. Couldn't say it.
"I don't know yet."
"Yet." Jack seized on the word. "So you expect to find out."
"Everything has a cost. I'm not naive enough to think I escaped death for free."
Silence again. Then Jack laughed—genuinely, with something like appreciation.
"A man who cannot stay dead is a very useful man to have aboard. Very useful indeed."
"I'm glad my existential crisis amuses you."
"Everything amuses me, mate. It's how I stay sane in an insane world."
Something changed in the darkness. Jack's voice lost some of its theatrical edge.
"We need to escape," he said. "Not just survive—escape. Barbossa will kill us eventually, regardless of what Miss Swann negotiated."
"Agreed."
"I have a plan. Several plans, actually. But they all require assistance."
"What kind of assistance?"
"The kind where you tell me exactly what you can do. That danger sense of yours—the thing that saved Cotton, that pulled me from that crossbow bolt. How does it work?"
I hesitated. Then I decided that Jack knowing some of my abilities was better than Jack dying because I kept secrets.
"I sense threats before they happen. Not far—a second, maybe less. Enough to dodge or push someone out of the way."
"Precognition."
"If you want to call it that."
"And your 'intuition about curses'? The way you looked at Barbossa's crew like you were reading them?"
This is dangerous, I thought. He's too clever. He'll figure out too much.
"I see things," I admitted. "About curses specifically. Like a second layer over reality. I can see the chains binding Barbossa's crew to the gold, the debt each of them owes."
Jack was quiet for a long moment.
"That's why you weren't afraid. You were analyzing. Studying the curse like an enemy to be defeated."
"Something like that."
"Can you break curses?"
"No." That, at least, was true. "I can only see them. Understand them. But I can't make them go away."
"Still useful." Jack's voice had that scheming quality again. "If you can see the curse, you might see weaknesses. Gaps. Opportunities."
"What kind of opportunities?"
"The kind that get us out of here."
He moved closer still. In the dim light, I could finally see his face—the calculating eyes, the barely-hidden desperation beneath the bravado.
"Tomorrow they take Will to the treasure chamber. Barbossa will perform the ritual at sunset. If we're going to act, it has to be before then."
"The guards—"
"Are predictable. I've been watching them." Jack pulled something from his boot—a small flask, somehow missed in the search. "Rum?"
I almost laughed. "You still have rum?"
"I always have rum. It's a point of pride." He passed the flask through the bars. "To surviving another day."
The rum burned going down—cheap, harsh, probably older than I was. But it was warm, and the warmth spread through me like hope.
"Escape at dawn," Jack said, taking the flask back. "Before they're fully awake, before they expect it. I'll create a distraction. You use your... abilities... to guide us through."
"And if we're caught?"
"Then we improvise." His teeth flashed in the darkness. "I'm very good at improvising."
The alliance was formed. Not with words, not with oaths—with shared rum and shared desperation.
Jack's eyes had that calculating gleam that meant dangerous schemes were forming.
"A man who cannot stay dead," he murmured again. "Very useful indeed."
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