The Back of the Turtle

Sonny walks past the co-op and stops to observe the unusual number of cars parked in the lot. As he watches, several people who have closed up shop and left Samaritan Bay emerge from their cars. Sneaking into a nearby alley, he collects supplies for his tower. As he gets to work on the beach, he notices a bird winging across the sky, the first bird he’s seen since That One Bad Day.

At Domidion, Winter has tracked Little and Rose’s last known location to Samaritan Bay. She updates Dorian on the Athabasca River kill count: countless fish and mammals, and eight humans, with thirty-five more ill in the hospital.

Crisp takes Gabriel out of Samaritan Bay and up into the mountains. He stops the car on the steep drop-off and points to a stream below, which is ringed with a border of destroyed landscape. He asks Gabriel, “[W]hat think we of your handiwork?” (388).

After moving into her grandmother’s old house, Mara visits Lilly’s home, where she is assailed by sorrowful memories. As she sits down to cry, she spots a black-haired young woman in the doorway.

Dorian calls Dr. Toshi’s office. Dr. Toshi has prepared a bed for him at Toronto General Hospital and asks him to stay overnight. He refuses, chalking his symptoms up to stress. Winter arrives with the folder Gabriel took from Domidion’s archives, which is full of information about GreenSweep and the Kali Creek incident. The title on the folder, “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky,” was Gabriel’s original name for GreenSweep. The word “Kousoulas” is written inside the folder.

Gabriel confronts Crisp, shocked to learn that Crisp has known his secret from the start. Crisp was the one who sent the photo of Lilly and Riel after The Ruin. Gabriel makes his way down the side of the cliff and begins following a small path along the creek, witnessing the devastation on all sides of the water.

Dorian walks through the history of GreenSweep. Gabriel and Dr. Thicke split the project between their two teams, originally designing GreenSweep as a commercial herbicide, but each team succeeded only partially at their assigned objectives. They accidentally created an extremely virulent bacterium with a long lifespan and the ability to transfer between plants, animals, and humans. Gabriel, worried that GreenSweep could become “an environmental black hole” (409), urged Domidion to cancel the project. After the Kali Creek disaster, Domidion dumped the rest of the GreenSweep. Dorian asks Winter to verify that the disposal was done under proper protocol.

As the path rises out of the canyon again, Gabriel emerges into a parking lot where Crisp is waiting for him with Soldier by his side. Crisp has loaded his truck with Mara’s grandmothers’ old belongings. Together, they refurnish her grandmother’s old home.

Stepping outside, Crisp and Gabriel see smoke rising from Lilly’s old house. They enter the house to find Mara sitting on the floor, surrounded by people. Gabriel recognizes one of them as the black-haired girl he saved from the water on the day of his suicide attempt. The girl begins to sing the song Gabriel sang on that day, and the other guests join her.

Dorian sits for a live interview at CBC with Manisha Khan. He’s prepared a list of talking points and deftly dodges her accusations of negligence, implying that the Zebras may have sabotaged the containment ponds at Athabasca. He’s bored with the interview until Manisha suddenly brings up Kali Creek. She confronts him with the truth he has obscured from the public: After the storm washed GreenSweep into the creek, it made its way into Samaritan Bay, where 137 people died. Manisha knows that Gabriel ran the project and that he is now missing.

Sonny finishes constructing his tower as the sun sets. He’s distracted by the sight of a sea turtle with a red marking on her head and watches her until she makes her way into the ocean. Then he lights a fire at the top of the tower.