“Everything dies.” With that, I sucked in a cold blast of Liquigen and dropped into the water.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
“Look out!” Gemma yelled when a school of tuna enveloped the reaper.
Frenzied, the fish blocked my view out the window as they tried to stay in the light. I snapped off the reaper’s high beams and as fast as the fish had appeared, they darted off. I should have cut the lights sooner. Who knew if the Seablite Gang was still around? A pair of dolphins swam by, clicking warning. I checked the control panel. The seawater was warm — too warm for the ocean floor. We must have crossed over the Peaveys’ property line.
In the distance, pinpricks of red beckoned—the battery-powered emergency lights had kicked on. I sped toward the Peaveys’ house, which looked like a giant octopus tethered to the seafloor by its tentacles. Its sagging sides told me that the internal supply of pressurized air had dropped. If I didn’t get the power on soon, their house would deflate and then flood. The plummeting water temperature would kill their schools of warm-water fish, the mahimahi and snapper. The rest would escape without the bubble fence to keep them in. Hewitt’s family could lose everything.
With a nod toward the viewport, I said, “Keep an eye out for the Specter. The outlaws’ submarine. You saw it from below. Straight on, it looks like an oversized great white shark.”
“With its mouth open?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, surprised.
“And a big black bubble caught in its throat?” She pointed at a looming gray shape to our left.
The Specter! I reversed the throttle and shot the reaper backward, like a retreating squid. Hopefully, by cutting the lights, I’d kept the outlaws from noticing the tubby block of a sub. Shoving the throttle down, I put the reaper into a nosedive, burying her in the thirty-foot-tall kelp.
An instant later, the Specter glided over us as supple as a real shark and ten times as big. The bridge was set in the sub’s craw—a black bubble of flexiglass. And somewhere inside was Shade, an outlaw more ghost than man.
Gemma clasped a hand to her mouth. I followed her horrified gaze to the Specter’s caudal fin, where a rotting corpse was chained. “They say he was a member of the gang who betrayed Shade.”
“Why doesn’t someone arrest them?”
“The Commonwealth gave us that job.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. As if settlers—people like my parents — could round up the Seablite Gang. Representative Tupper was out of his mind. “The ranger has never found the gang’s hideout, which makes it kinda hard to arrest them. Some people think they live on the Specter all the time.”
“I’d go dinghy if I never got off it.”
“Her. A sub’s a ship and ships are always female. Anyway, cutting up a prospector isn’t dinghy?” I watched the Specter disappear into the blue.
“Let’s follow them!”
“I’ve got to help Shurl and Lars.” I maneuvered the reaper out of the kelp. “Now.”
“I can do that. You should tail the outlaws and find out where their hideout is.”
“I’m not tailing them.” I sped the reaper toward the sinking house.
“Why? Are you scared?”
“Yeah,” I replied, without a twinge of shame.
“I’m not.”
“That’s because you haven’t heard the stories.” I pointed at the house in front of us. “Besides, see how the top floor is slumping? Hewitt’s home is losing air by the second. Now look around, see all the drifting fish? They’re dying because the water is getting too cold for them. I don’t know how to turn the power back on, but there might be something else we can do.”
“You’re right,” she admitted, giving me a sidelong look.
“I don’t want to be right,” I muttered as I aimed the reaper toward the large hole on the underbelly of the house. “I want this not to be happening.” The moon pool itself was dark, but the red emergency lights outlined it. I cut the reaper’s motor just as we broke the water’s surface next to the Peaveys’ sub.
When I cracked the hatch, a fierce voice greeted me. “Don’t move. I’ve got a harpistol aimed right at you.” I peered through the shadows to see the handgun inches from my forehead, with its barrel of mini harpoons fully loaded. Round-faced and angry, Shurl looked like a ferocious version of the one doll Zoe owned but never played with.
“It’s me, Shurl.” I put my hands up so she wouldn’t shoot me.
“Ty!” She holstered the harpistol, much to my relief. “Did you see them?” she asked as I climbed out of the reaper. “The Seablite Gang?”
“They were leaving.” Balanced on the ledge of the moon pool, I looked uneasily at the buckling walls.
“Is your pa on his way?”
“He won’t get here in time.”
“You shouldn’t have come, Ty,” Shurl scolded. “It’s too —”
“We want to help,” Gemma said, popping up in the open hatch so suddenly that Shurl stumbled back.
“That’s Gemma,” I explained, while above me the ceiling puckered like a deflated balloon.
“I have to get the animals!” Shurl spun on her heel and ran off.
“Shurl, the house is coming down!”
She headed for the enormous window on the opposite end of the wet room. “I can’t leave them.”
I raced after her, wondering why she didn’t keep her goats and chickens in an outerbuilding like all the other settlers. When I stepped into the greenhouse, a chicken flew against my legs.
Distressed goats crowded around Shurl, bleating loudly. “It’s okay. Mama’s here.” Clucking, she scooped up a chicken. “We can’t afford to replace them.”
As if she’d leave them behind if she were loaded with money? Not a chance. “We can take some in the reaper.” I hefted a goat into my arms and backed out of the greenhouse. “Where’s Lars?”
With a hen under each arm, Shurl followed me. “I got him from the outerbuilding.” She scurried to the sub floating next to the reaper. “I had a heck of a time lifting him into the sub. Good thing he’s so skinny.” There was a catch in her voice.
Only Shurl would describe Lars as skinny. Through the sub’s viewport, I saw him slumped across the pilot bench. Hewitt’s parents were a study in opposites: Shurl tiny and dark-skinned, Lars plump and pale. Now blood matted Lars’s thinning blond hair. He was a proud man. It made me sick to see him brought so low by some chum-sucking outlaw.
“Is he unconscious?” I asked.
Shurl nodded. “He’s stopped bleeding but —” She was drowned out by squawking chickens, which flapped madly as she dropped them down the sub’s hatch. Through the viewport, I saw the birds land on Lars, who didn’t move.
“Ty,” Gemma called, “give me the” — squinting, she studied the goat in my arms — “whatever it is.”
She’d never seen a goat before? I jogged to the reaper, only to stumble and skid as the house dipped, sloshing water over the rim of the moon pool. Gemma lost her perch on the edge of the hatch but appeared again instantly. The girl did have guts. I leapt onto the bumper, swung the kicking, bleating goat into her arms, and then followed Shurl back into the greenhouse. We loaded most of the animals into the reaper within minutes. Not that we had any minutes left if Hewitt’s calculations were right. Too bad we couldn’t save the Peaveys’ fish by piling them into the reaper as well.
As I handed over the last of the chickens to Gemma, Shurl gazed around the wet room. “Up until the deflating, it was a good home.”
The far wall crumpled like a wad of aluminum foil in a giant fist. “Get Lars out of here,” I urged Shurl. “Take him to my homestead. Doc will meet you there.”
“There’s one more goat….”
“I’ll get the goat. You go.”
With a grateful nod, she dropped into the pilot seat beside Lars. I waited for her sub to disappear beneath the roiling water before running back into the greenhouse for the last goat. As I grabbed it by a horn, a loud ripping
noise stopped me cold. Something on the second floor was tearing. With my heart drumming in my ears, I dragged the goat across the wet room.
The reaper rocked as I clambered onto it, goat in arms. “Do you think you can drive this thing?” I asked Gemma as we forced the goat down the hatch.
“Sure,” she replied with what sounded like false confidence.
“The navigation system will take you back to my homestead. Just hit home once you get clear of the house. I’m going to see what the outlaws did to the generator.” I slammed the hatch shut. “Take her down.”
Across the room, the ceiling collapsed onto the floor. I leapt off the reaper and ran to snatch a mantaboard from the wall. The room tipped, sending dive equipment and scooters sliding across the wet room. Cabinets burst open, their contents flying out. Something sharp nicked my ear as I hopped and dodged the loose gear. Through the viewport I saw Gemma scanning the control panel while shooing chickens out of her lap. Colored lights played over her face as she studied the holographic controls floating in front of her.
Yelling wouldn’t help, but I wished she’d hurry. I flipped my helmet closed and sucked in Liquigen. Behind me, the acrylic glass wall of the greenhouse tore free of the ceiling, teetered, and crashed to the wet room floor. Finally, the reaper sank out of view. With the mantaboard over my shoulder, I jumped into the moon pool and dropped through the churning water.
Around me, tether chains plummeted in slack loops as the house came down. I saw Gemma piloting the reaper feverishly among the falling coils. She banked and twisted. A length of chain slammed onto the back of the reaper, but she managed to speed clear of the house.
I followed, fighting my way through the reaper’s wake of bubbles until I was out from under the house. Behind me, it collapsed like a dying beast, creating a swirl of water that dragged me to the seafloor.
When the silt finally settled, I turned on my helmet’s crown lights and faced the wreckage that had been the Peaveys’ home. Streams of escaping bubbles marked its descent into the ooze.
I hugged Hewitt’s mantaboard. Maybe the outlaws weren’t behind the bloodbath in the derelict sub, but they sure as heck did this. My temper boiled. As if the settlers weren’t already breaking their backs to keep their homesteads running, raising fish and shellfish for Topsider dinner plates and creating crops out of mud—a gang of lazy, no-good outlaws had to turn all this hard work into a dead harvest?
Confused fish knocked into me on all sides. Dolphins, which had stopped by for an easy meal, were now calling out to one another to get moving. Soon the big predators would arrive, attracted by the tremors of the dying fish. If I didn’t zip out of here pronto, I’d end up on the chewing end of a feeding frenzy. Still, I couldn’t leave without at least trying to get the power back on. Maybe the problem could be easily fixed. Or maybe a mermaid would swim by and offer me her assistance…. The odds were as good.
Using my crown lights, I found the power cable that led from the buckled house into the kelp field. The screen on my wrist displayed the outside water temperature, which had dropped lower than the tropical fish could tolerate. If they weren’t dead yet, they would be soon. I hopped aboard the manta and followed the cable into the field, heading for the main generator.
Ahead of me, the kelp shook. Something large was moving through the stalks, crossing the field. I cut the manta’s motor and slipped to the seafloor. Clipping the tether to my belt, I let the board hover and drew out my shockprod. I couldn’t see past all the kelp, but I could tell that whatever was plowing through it had picked up speed. In a panic, I kicked backward only to realize I’d gone beyond the edge of the field and was now out in the open. Exposed.
The kelp in front of me thrashed with life. But as the last green stalks were thrust aside, a shoal of dead fish swirled between me and the field, blocking my view. I swept at them, knowing that their scattered bodies weren’t dense enough to hide me. The lifeless fish bounced away and I glimpsed something large hovering before me. Before I could grasp what it was, the farm exploded with light.
The power was back on.
I shielded my eyes and blinked, trying to adjust to the sunlamps as fast as I could. I parted the fingers I held over my helmet, only to recoil in horror. A corpse towered over me, still in its diveskin. Blanched and bloated.
Revolted, I kicked back a few feet, then paused to look again. The swollen arms and oversized chest meant it had been dead for a while. Not it, I told myself. But thinking of it as human grew harder as the body floated closer to me. Inside the helmet, the dead man’s pallid, hairless head gleamed as if lamprey eels had sucked out every drop of his blood. His skin was whiter than white. Except for his eyes, which were entirely black. The pupils, irises, whites—all black. Like gaping holes in his skull.
Suddenly, an icy wave of understanding broke over me. That wasn’t bloat but muscle. And I wasn’t face-to-face with a corpse. I should be so lucky. No, the horrifying visage in front of me belonged to Shade, the leader of the Seablite Gang. And he was very much alive.
CHAPTER
NINE
I jerked backward, kicking fast. The outlaw didn’t follow. Head cocked, he seemed to be assessing whether I was worth troubling himself over. More dead fish swirled between us, blocking Shade from view. I yanked down the mantaboard and heaved myself onto it, driven by the image of his sightless eyes.
No, not sightless. Shade wasn’t blind. Those must’ve been dark lenses.
The current sent the drifting fish upward. I twisted to look back but saw only the kelp field. Gunning the manta, I headed for home. The power was back on; there was no reason to stay. Hopefully the crops would survive the drop in temperature. The lights illuminated a few half-eaten fish, swirling in the currents — all that remained of the Peaveys’ livestock. All gone, through escape or death.
Slowly, fear drained out of me and my rage returned. The Seablite Gang could have just taken the supplies they wanted. They didn’t have to destroy the Peaveys’ house and farm—everything Shurl and Lars had created out of nothing. I slowed the manta. Gemma was right. If I followed Shade and learned the location of the gang’s hideout, Ranger Grimes could arrest the whole lot of them. Then Representative Tupper would “reconsider the benefits of helping Benthic Territory to flourish.” It was us against them, simple as that. Settlers against outlaws. I looped back to the field.
The swaying stalks were easy enough to spot. I stayed low over the kelp and followed the movement. Shade plowed toward the edge of the field. The bubble fence, marking the end of the Peaveys’ property, lay beyond. The end of the continental shelf was another mile east and it was a heck of a drop off from there. In most places, the shelf sloped gently down to the abyssal plain. But not behind the Peavey property. Hewitt and I had cruised along the edge many times. It was a rocky sea cliff that plummeted into the darkness of the abyssal plain, which was nearly two miles below the ocean’s surface. Plenty of sea caves pockmarked the face of that cliff. Maybe one of them was where the outlaws moored the Specter.
Still hovering, I propped myself on my elbows to watch the outlaw exit the field. Inside the dome of flexiglass that was his helmet, the back of Shade’s bald head glowed an unearthly white. Then he stepped through the bubble fence, and I noticed the harpoon gun strapped to his back. Exactly the size I’d found too cumbersome to bring along. How I wished I had it now.
Ma and Pa would hate this plan, but they weren’t here. With the bitter taste of adrenaline rising in my throat, I revved the manta and shot through the wall of bubbles. On the other side, the sea was cobalt blue and featureless. In the distance, I made out a faint glow. Not the greenish bioluminescent light of a sea creature, but the warm glow from the crown lights of a helmet.
I tailed Shade until, without warning, the glow vanished like a snuffed matchstick. I veered to the right. Had he guessed that I was trailing in his wake? Slowing the manta, I circled around, but before I could even begin my search for him, light blasted me. There stood Shade, boots pla
nted wide on the seafloor, crown lights on bright, hefting the jumbo-sized harpoon launcher. Spotting me, he lifted his gun and took aim.
I reared the manta, but not high enough. A harpoon smashed into the bottom of the board, nearly jarring my teeth from my jaws with its impact. Wheeling about, I revved the manta to make my escape, but instead of leaping in response, the board sputtered. I jammed the handgrips to the highest speed, yet I jerked to a full stop. Cutting the motor, I tried restarting it, which seemed to work. The manta shimmied to life under my body, but then it plowed backward through the water.
As hard as I twisted the grips, I couldn’t get the board to respond, let alone stop. Wiggling forward, I tipped my head over the edge. A harpoon jutted from the manta’s underside, wobbling in the water’s drag—no surprise there. But I hadn’t realized the spear was attached to a chain. Flipping onto my back, I sat up and saw Shade putting one hand over the other, drawing in his catch like a reanimated corpse, bloodless and black-eyed.
I kicked myself free of the manta and swam upward, pausing only to flick the button that released my fins from my boots. Unless Shade dropped his harpoon launcher, he’d never catch up to me. His size worked against him, even without the weight of his gun pulling him down. Still, I leveled out and kept swimming. Now horizontal.
Eventually, my muscles ached from exertion. I slowed and dropped to the seafloor, checking around me as I went. There was no telltale glow of a helmet light anywhere—only endless midnight blue water.
CHAPTER
TEN
“Of all the reckless, dangerous things I’ve ever heard!” Ma cried, running across the wet room. “You should have waited for us!”
I rolled off the rim of the moon pool and onto the floor, exhausted from my long slog home. Hauling me to my feet, she went on, “The outlaws might have seen you!” She unfastened my helmet, nearly taking off my head along with it. “Shurl said the Specter was still on the property when you got there. What in the great ocean possessed you to go over there without me or Pa?”