The sea serpent’s jaws dropped toward my thigh and connected hard. I winced, expecting to feel searing pain as its teeth pierced my skin — but the pain never came. Instead of rising with its prize in its maw, the creature’s head lolled in my lap. Dead.
“Come on, pull him up!” a muffled voice yelled. I looked up to see a small figure in a green diveskin scramble over the edge of the moon pool. Of course it was Zoe. “Don’t be such a baby, Ty,” she said, unhinging her helmet. “He can’t hurt you.”
I shot her a dirty look, but she just sent her helmet skittering across the floor. “For light’s sake.” I pushed the red-finned head out of my lap and stood. “Warn me next time you shove some dead critter up at me.”
Ignoring me, Zoe shook out her messy curls and peeled off her dive gloves. Those, she threw across the room. Nowhere near her gear locker. When she unfastened the basket at her waist, I snapped, “Don’t dump it out here.” But it was too late: She sent dead fish sliding every which way, including one flounder, which skidded into the toe of Gemma’s boot. Zoe’s eyes followed the boot upward and she yelped in surprise.
“You drag home sea monsters and the sight of her” — I hooked my thumb at Gemma—“makes you jump?”
“Hi. I’m Gemma.” She waved, though she continued to gaze curiously at the sea serpent lying half out of the moon pool. Zoe had given us both a fright, yet Gemma seemed to have bounced back already. I had to give it to her — she was resilient.
“That’s Zoe.”
Thankfully, Gemma didn’t stare at her. My sister, however, blatantly gaped at Gemma with her lips forming a perfect O until I put a finger under her chin and closed her mouth. “She’s nine,” I said, as if that excused gawking. “So what is this thing anyway?” I asked Zoe as I nudged the silver-skinned snake thing with my foot. “And where’d you find it?” I was curious, but I also knew that when my sister started talking about some creature, everything else slipped from her mind.
Sure enough, she looked adoringly at the limp sea serpent. “He’s an oarfish, Ty. Really rare. Help me get the rest of him inside.”
It wasn’t exactly what I was itching to do — but I grasped the oarfish by the head and dragged it out of the moon pool. Its snakelike body coiled once around the wet room, yet it kept coming. I pulled out nearly fifty feet of it before reaching its tail. The entire time, Zoe danced around the oarfish, bending now and then to pet it.
“Your sister is so beautiful,” Gemma whispered to me. “She looks like an —”
“Angel?” I asked, tossing the oarfish’s tail aside.
She flushed. “You’ve heard it before.”
“Once or twice,” I admitted. Though I didn’t get why she was embarrassed. Even other settlers, who were used to kids with shimmering skin, got tricked into thinking that Zoe was angelic because of her wide eyes and blond curls. Then they got to know her.
“Hey, shrimp,” I called, “where’re you going to put this hunk of meat?”
“He’s not for eating,” she snapped. “I’m going to keep him.”
I groaned. “Zoe, it’s dead. Probably rotten. It’ll stink up the place.”
Gemma dropped to her knees and gave the oarfish a sniff. “It’s not rotten,” she called.
Across the room, something twitched. The flounder, which had been lying still, was now flopping around. “And that isn’t dead,” I said.
One by one, other fish quivered and then, like mousetraps set off in unison, they all thrashed to life. My eyes met Gemma’s. The alarming thought that dropped into my mind had obviously dropped into hers: Maybe the oarfish wasn’t dead, either.
Gemma scrambled to her feet just as the creature awoke, flailing and snapping its jaws.
CHAPTER
SIX
Gemma danced back from the thrashing oarfish while I bounded over its coils, running for the weapons rack. Harpooning the wriggling thing would be next to impossible, so I grabbed the shockprod. Whirling, I unsnapped the prod’s safety lock. But before I could touch the electrified tip to the oarfish, Zoe slammed into me. “Don’t you hurt him!”
I tried to dodge to the left, so she dodged left. When she threw herself between me and the oarfish a third time, nearly brushing the tip of the shockprod, I lost all patience. “Zoe, get out of the way.” I shoved her aside but instead of stumbling back, she dropped to the floor and wrapped herself around my leg.
Try as I might, I couldn’t shake her off. Like a dead weight, she anchored me to the spot, while hollering, “I caught him. He’s mine.”
Across the room, Gemma leapt from bench to bench, trying to stay ahead of the flailing oarfish and its snapping mouth.
“Gemma!” I threw her the prod, hoping she knew enough not to touch the electrified tip.
She caught it with both hands. “Which end?” Without waiting for the answer, she jabbed the prod at the oarfish as if trying to stab it to death, only she kept missing because the creature never stopped writhing. At least she’d chosen the correct end to point down.
Zoe scrambled to her feet. “Stop it!” As she started across the room, I caught her around the middle and hoisted her off the floor. She thrashed even harder than the oarfish, which had finally found its way to the moon pool.
“No!” Zoe cried as the creature slid into the water, uncoiling as it went. With a solid kick to my shin, she wiggled out of my hold and slid after the oarfish, but before she could close her fingers around its tail, the oarfish vanished, leaving only a ripple on the moon pool’s surface. With a wail of frustration, Zoe ran to the window to watch it snake over the kelp. Then she turned on me. “I’m going to tell Pa you pushed and grabbed me.”
“Go ahead,” I said as the tension drained out of me. “Just make sure you tell him why.”
I crossed to Gemma, who was now doubly armed as she brandished her green knife, along with the shockprod.
“Do you have moments like this every day?” She handed over the prod.
“Often enough,” I admitted, studying her knife.
She held it up. “My brother sent it to me.”
“He found it on the seafloor?”
“Yes,” she said excitedly, offering it to me. “It’s ancient. It’s Mayan.”
I nodded, not surprised. “The subsea landslides that dumped the old East Coast into the deep also uncovered a lot.” I handed the knife back to her. “It’s a keeper.”
“Richard wrote that it was carved from a single piece of jade and used for —”
“He knows,” Zoe interrupted.
Surprised, Gemma looked from her back to me.
“Human sacrifices,” I finished, then frowned at Zoe. “It’s rude to interrupt someone.”
As usual, she ignored me. “Wait till you see Ty’s room.”
“She doesn’t want to see —”
“Yes, I do!” Gemma cut in. “I know. It’s rude to interrupt someone. But I want to see everything!”
Zoe’s smile was triumphant. “Follow me.”
“Not till you pick up the fish,” I said, but she bounded up the stairs that curved along the outer wall. “You know I’m in charge when Ma and Pa aren’t here,” I shouted as she disappeared. Grinding my teeth, I grabbed a bucket. “Go ahead,” I told Gemma. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
She hesitated, staring at the fish flopping across the floor.
Maybe she thought that leaving them out of the water was cruel. “They’re going to die anyway.” I tossed a mackerel into the bucket. “Zoe feeds them to her pets.”
When Gemma lifted her gaze, her expression wasn’t disgusted but puzzled. “There’s not a mark on them. How did Zoe catch them? She didn’t have a net.”
I knelt to scoop up more fish, avoiding her eyes. “She sets traps.”
“She caught the oarfish in a trap?” Gemma looked skeptical. “Why was it stunned?”
I didn’t have a ready answer for that. Luckily, Zoe appeared on the stairs. “Gemma, don’t you want to see Ty’s room? He’s got three jade knives
just like yours.”
I frowned. Zoe could only know that if she’d invaded my room on some other occasion.
Gemma cast me a curious look, then followed Zoe upstairs.
It took me a while to pick up the fish, but when I finally got to the second floor, I saw that the girls had yet to make it into my room. Gemma must have asked about everything along the way. Now she was examining the kitchen sink, which had three spigots. “Hot, cold, and salt,” Zoe explained with impatience. “Come on.”
“But why do you need salt water inside?” Gemma asked.
“It keeps the food fresh,” I answered, coming up behind them. I pointed to the tanks of live fish and squid shelved along the wall.
Gemma nodded but didn’t say anything. However, when Zoe opened the door to my room (something I wouldn’t have allowed any other day), she responded with pure awe. “Hot tar,” she whispered. “Is it all yours?”
Now that she was in my room, I wished I could hustle her out of it. My walls were lined with shelves, crammed with treasure I’d dug out of the seafloor. There were daggers and rings, axes and chalices, nautical tools and even a polished brass dive helmet. Necklaces and amulets hung from the posts of my bed, while primitive stone deities flanked the large window. Suddenly my hobby seemed greedy and obsessive.
“Ty collected all of it himself.” Zoe twirled with her arms outstretched.
“It’s not mine,” I said in answer to Gemma’s question. “No one can own this stuff. I just restore it and then ship it to museums.”
“I wish the girls at the boarding home could see this.” Gemma stopped by the shelf that held a dozen crowns and looked back at me. “Can I touch one?”
“Take your pick,” I said. She selected a gold crown studded with rubies. Spanish, 1400s, my brain ticked off automatically.
Zoe stopped twirling. “What’s a boarding home?”
“It’s where parents send their kids once they turn six. That is, if the family can afford it. The ‘wealth pays my board.”
“People send their kids away?” Zoe asked. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen my sister look horrified.
“Parents come visit on weekends and holidays.” Glancing up from the crown, Gemma caught Zoe’s pitying expression. “Everyone does it.” She placed the crown on her head. “Really, boarding homes aren’t bad. The one I’m in now has a gymnasium and a library.” She turned to me. “Do you have a mirror?”
I touched the dimmer switch by my door and nodded toward the window. The glass darkened until it reflected the room.
“Glacial.” Her smile widened. “Amazing how that works.”
“The house computer controls it.”
“Not the window. The crown.” She beamed at her reflection. “It makes you look special.”
My stomach turned over. Why would anyone want to look special? It was just a polite way of saying different, which was only slightly better than being called a freak outright.
“Don’t you want to live with your family?” Zoe asked.
I shot her a silencing look.
“My brother is the only family I have,” Gemma replied. “And I do want to live with him.” She pulled a folded paper out of the pouch on her belt. “See this? It’s an emancipation form. Once Richard signs it, I’m in charge of my own life. No one can tell me what to do or where to go.”
“I need one of those,” I joked.
She ran her finger over the signature line. “That’s why I have to find him.”
“Just write in his name,” Zoe suggested. “No one would know.”
“Ms. Spinner would.” Gemma tucked the emancipation form back into her pouch. “She has his signature on file.”
“Was he a ward of the ‘wealth, too?” I asked.
“Until he was eighteen.” She took off the crown. “You can make it a window again.”
I reversed the dimmer switch. When the mirror brightened, Gemma gasped. Something large and dark hurtled toward us. It smashed into the flexiglass, jarring the house, and sent us tumbling to the floor.
As soon as I got to my feet, I pressed against the window and tried to see where the thing had gone. Zoe nudged me aside to look out, too. “What was that?”
“Hewitt.” I spun and offered Gemma a hand up.
She got up without my help. “What’s a Hewitt?”
“Our neighbor.”
“Why’d he hit the house?” Zoe yelled after me as I tore out of the bedroom. “That was dumb.”
Whatever his reason, I knew it wouldn’t be good.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
A dive helmet broke the surface of the moon pool as I slid across the wet room floor. “What’s up?” I asked as Hewitt Peavey crawled out of the water. Flopping onto the floor, he tried to talk before he’d cleared his lungs of Liquigen—not a good idea. “Breathe,” I advised, unsnapping his helmet.
Hewitt was twelve, but his panic made him look younger. His hazel eyes were wide with fear and his shine, which usually made his brown skin gleam like polished copper, was now ashen. “Outlaws,” he choked out.
Fear hit me like a one-two punch. “At your homestead?”
“They knocked out Pops.” Tears filled Hewitt’s eyes.
“The outlaws only attack supply ships,” Zoe argued as she crowded in beside me.
I knew better, but rather than admit it, I shoved the helmet at her, saying, “Stow it,” and helped Hewitt to his feet. “Go on.”
“Pops was in an outerbuilding, talking to me on-screen, when this white thing just appeared out of nowhere. A man.”
“Shade,” I whispered.
“I didn’t have time to warn Pops. He got hit so fast. Then the whole farm went black.” Hewitt sounded as if he still couldn’t believe it.
“But just for a second, right?” I said. “Then the backup generator kicked on.”
“No. It’s still dark. Ma sent me here to fetch your pa. She’s tending to Pops. She thinks he’s only unconscious, not …” He didn’t finish the sentence.
The whole farm was still dark? I couldn’t fathom it. Everything on the homesteads—from the air jets that created the wall of bubbles to the water heaters and blowers — ran off generators powered by scalding water from rock chimneys on the seafloor miles away. The black smokers didn’t just stop spouting hot water. But what were the chances of both of a homestead’s generators breaking down at the same time? It had to have been sabotage. Without power, the Peaveys’ livestock would escape. Worse, their house would collapse.
“Who’s Shade?” Gemma asked from behind me.
“The leader of the Seablite Gang,” I said. And the only gang member who didn’t darken the glass of his dive helmet during robberies. He would just appear out of nowhere, according to his victims.
“He’s albino,” Zoe added, clearly eager to share the frightful details. “An albino with a shine. Anyone who’s seen him says his skin is so bright your eyeballs get burnt just looking —”
“Zoe, call Pa and tell him to get over to the Peaveys’.” I dug into my locker for my helmet. Luckily, I hadn’t changed out of my diveskin. “Pa is coming from the Trade Station,” I told Hewitt. “It’ll take him over half an hour.”
“But we have only sixteen minutes and thirty-six seconds left!” His corkscrew hair stuck up every which way. “Mixed with frigid water, the water around the homestead, heated to seventy-one degrees, will chill down in thirty-two minutes….”
I didn’t know how fast a hundred acres would chill, but I wasn’t going to argue about math right now. I pried a fresh Liquigen pack from a slot in the wall.
“You’re going over there?” Zoe asked.
“Shurl will need help.” I snapped the pack into my diveskin, just over my heart, and inserted the tube that attached to the mouthpiece in my helmet.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she argued. “You’re not Pa.”
“Just call him.”
“He’ll tell you not to go.”
She was right. ?
??Call Doc first,” I amended. “Tell him Lars is hurt and that he should come here. We’re closer than the infirmary. And toss me a prod.”
Hewitt cast a longing look at Gemma. “You smell like the Topside.”
Flustered, she turned to me. “Calling someone a Topsider is an insult, isn’t it?”
“Not to Hewitt,” I replied, pushing the seams of my diveskin together. Instantly the material melded into an invisible closure.
Sinking to the floor, he rested his chin on his fists. “Buildings don’t deflate up there.”
“I’ll go with you.” Gemma scooped up her gloves and helmet.
“You can’t,” I said as Zoe threw me a shockprod. If it weren’t so cumbersome, I’d have taken our biggest harpoon gun. “The outlaws might be there.”
“They are there,” Hewitt said.
Ripping open her diveskin, Gemma snapped in a Liquigen pack. “I’m not scared of outlaws.”
“You should be,” Zoe said as she pressed the graphics on the viewphone. “They’ll skin you alive, pop out your eyeballs, and make you dance.”
“Where did you hear that?” I demanded.
“Nowhere. I made it up,” she admitted. “But it could be true.”
“Ty, maybe she’s got the bends,” Hewitt said, tipping his head at Gemma.
“I’m a Topsider. That doesn’t mean I’m totally useless.”
She stepped into my path. “You’ll need help.”
Yeah. Lots of it, I thought. I glanced at Hewitt huddled on the floor and dread winnowed through me. I had no idea what I was headed into. Maybe I could use her help.
“Okay, come,” I relented, stepping onto the lip of the moon pool. “We’ll take the reaper.”
“Doc says don’t go,” Zoe yelled from across the room.
On-screen, Doc shouted, “Ty, wait for your pa.”
I sealed my helmet to muffle his words.
“You only have fifteen minutes,” Hewitt warned.
Gemma joined me on the edge of the moon pool. “What happens after fifteen minutes?”