The dark interior of the Peaveys’ home was another story. In the few hours that the house had lain on the seafloor, small creatures had found their way inside. Now crabs scuttled underfoot, illuminated by the strips of emergency lights embedded in the floor. Small fish darted in the boot-deep water while Zoe splashed around, trying to catch a blue stingray.
“Why didn’t everything get crushed when the house came down?” Gemma asked me. “Like the lockers.”
“When a house deflates, it sinks. But it never collapses all the way,” I explained, hanging a battery-operated lantern on a wall hook. “There’s a skeleton of support girders to keep that from happening. And on the inside, everything—the walls, those lockers, the cabinets upstairs — they’re all made from flexible materials. So even if something gets squashed, it bounces back into shape.”
“Your father must be very smart.”
“He didn’t work alone. When they built the first homestead, he and my ma lived on a big research sub for over two years with lots of other engineers and scientists. That’s how my parents met.”
“Can’t we turn on the lights?” Hewitt asked loudly.
“No, let all the water drain out,” Doc advised, hooking a lantern on the dangling vehicle clamp. “I know the lights are sealed, but why take a chance on someone getting a nasty shock?”
I was glad that Doc had volunteered to come and that Ma had stayed home with Lars. Despite his scarred hands, Doc proved helpful in getting the house reinflated. But more important, Ma wouldn’t have reacted well to the dripping ceilings and general wreckage. Equipment jutted out of the shallow water like the toppled buildings at the seashore that hadn’t gotten swept into Coldsleep Canyon.
“Let’s get the fans going,” Pa said, hooking up another lantern. “We’ll do the real cleanup tomorrow, when things are dry. Tonight, just take care of whatever can’t wait.”
As I led the other kids upstairs and into the kitchen, a chill settled into my bones. Hot water from a seafloor geyser was flowing through the pipes in the floor again; I could hear the faint gurgle. But the pumped-in water had yet to warm up the air inside the house. The walls of the usually cheery kitchen were dark and moist and water dripped from the ceiling. In grim silence, Gemma and Hewitt wiped down the counters and floor, which were slimed with algae and dying sea creatures from the cracked aquariums. Zoe frantically filled bowls and buckets with seawater. “Hold this,” she said, thrusting a pot into Gemma’s hands. When Zoe scooped a red speckled octopus off the floor and dumped it into the pot, Gemma made a face.
“He won’t hurt you,” Zoe scolded.
Gemma looked around for a place to put the pot, but the kitchen counter was lined with other makeshift aquariums. Just as I was about to offer to take it, the octopus poked a tentacle out of the water and coiled it around Gemma’s wrist. With a shriek, she sent the pot flying but the octopus didn’t go along for the ride. It clung to her wrist, despite her frantic efforts to shake it off.
“Hold still.” I scrambled to help her. “I’ll get it.”
Panicking, Gemma whipped her arm back and forth until the octopus sailed across the room and splatted against the wall. With a cry, Zoe ran to it. Tenderly she gathered up the mollusk and then scowled at Gemma. “You could have hurt him.”
“Hurt him?” Gemma sputtered. “That snot-rag with eyeballs grabbed me!”
In unison, Hewitt and I sucked in air. Slowly, furiously, Zoe got to her feet, still cradling the octopus.
“No!” I yelled, stowing Gemma behind me.
Hewitt scrambled on top of the kitchen table. “Get out of the water!”
“Zoe, calm down,” I said, trying to sound reasonable in the face of my sister’s rage. “Gemma can’t help it. She’s a Topsider.”
Gemma poked me in the back.
“She doesn’t know how cool sea creatures are,” I went on. “It’s not her fault.”
Zoe considered my words and then, after shooting Gemma a withering look, she stalked out of the kitchen with the octopus clinging to her like a baby. I relaxed a fraction.
Still standing on the table, Hewitt glared at Gemma. “Are you crazy? Never make Zoe mad. Ever.”
“What is with you two?” Gemma asked.
“Zoe doesn’t fight fair,” I muttered.
“Please,” she said with a snort. “Last year, I lived in a dorm with over a hundred teenage girls. The tears alone rivaled the Rising. Never mind the fights. I think I can handle one nine-year-old.”
“You’re tough. I know.” I exchanged a look with Hewitt, who clearly had the same thought in his mind:
In a tangle with Zoe, tough didn’t matter.
We retreated to the damp living room, where we pulled chairs around a portable heater, trying to stay warm while ignoring the constant dripping. “I don’t know why she’s bothering to save the plants in the greenhouse,” Hewitt muttered. “We should just move Topside.”
Zoe joined us, still holding the octopus, though she’d transferred it to a water-filled vase. She scowled at Gemma, who was rubbing her hands together over the squat heater. Hewitt cast another disgruntled look at the stairs that Shurl had just descended, carrying rods for propping up plants in the greenhouse.
“Your parents aren’t going to move over a little house sinking,” I said, dropping into the chair next to Gemma.
“The Seablite Gang attacked us!”
“Are they called the Seablite Gang because they’re a blight on the sea?” Gemma asked.
“Yes,” Hewitt said vehemently and then paused. “What’s a blight?”
“Actually”—Doc set down a bucket of rags as he entered the living room—“they escaped from a prison named Seablite.”
I looked up with surprise. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I was working for the Department of New Solutions at the time. We were trying to solve the housing problem. This was before my professional reputation got put through a meat grinder.” He’d said it lightly, but his smile was strained. “My job was to monitor the health of anyone living in experimental housing. This happened in Seablite.” He held up his palms, each marred with a slash of a scar. “By way of an inmate’s knife.”
Zoe hopped up for a closer look. I stayed put. Years ago, Doc had told me how he’d gotten his scars and that he couldn’t perform surgery anymore because all the tendons had been severed—but he’d never mentioned the prison’s name.
“Representative Tupper is pressuring us to catch escaped convicts?” I asked. Disbelief and disgust churned in my stomach.
“And not just any convicts.” Doc pulled up a chair. “These men are so dangerous and damaged, they were locked up in an experimental prison.”
“Experimental?” Gemma asked.
“Seablite was the first and only subsea prison ever built,” Doc said, then turned to me. “You’ve probably piloted over it a thousand times.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. “Where is it?”
“Between here and the Trade Station. It’s the building that used to house a science lab. At least, that’s what the public was told.”
“The one marked ‘structurally unsound’?” I asked. The squat two-story building was so nondescript, I’d never paid it much attention.
“That’s the one,” Doc confirmed.
My indignation flared. “Why’d the ‘wealth call it a science lab?”
Doc raised an eyebrow. “What do you think the settlers would’ve done if they’d known the government had built a maximum-security prison within territory boundaries?”
His question was ironic but I answered anyway. “They would have protested.” Why did government deception still surprise me?
“Time to go,” Pa called from the doorway.
“Wait,” Zoe cried. “I want to hear about the breakout.”
“What breakout?” Shurl asked, coming up beside Pa, carrying a potted tomato plant.
“The Seablite Gang isn’t just a bunch of outlaws,” Hewitt told her. “Doc says they??
?re escaped psychos and that we’re not safe down —”
“How’d they do it, Doc?” I asked, interrupting Hewitt. “Escape?”
Pa and Shurl joined our circle—clearly curious as well.
“Well, that’s the eerie part.” Doc leaned back in his chair, with his eyes on the flickering light inside the heater. “No one knows. The power in the whole prison just shut down one night—like what happened here. But also, the guards fell into a deep sleep. They weren’t drugged; I checked them later.”
“I bet the outlaws bashed them all over the head,” Zoe said.
“I don’t think so,” Doc said, remaining serious. “The guards didn’t have a mark on them. Not a bump, not a bruise. And every one said he felt fine when he woke — exactly twenty minutes later. Their eyes opened in unison. They didn’t even realize the prisoners were gone at first. The door to the main holding cell was still sealed. And there were two more locked doors after that. Not scuffed in any way.”
Everyone leaned forward, listening intently, our faces glowing with the orange light.
“And the surveillance cameras … that was strange,” Doc said softly. “The cameras recorded static for exactly twenty minutes, then resumed filming again as if nothing had happened.”
Shurl looked shaken. “This is just a spooky story, right, Doc? To scare the kids.”
“It’s all true.” He held up a scarred palm as if taking an oath. “Five years ago, the Seablite Gang vanished from behind bars and no one has ever figured out how they did it.”
Gemma’s eyes lit up. “Maybe one of them has a Dark Gift. Or they all do. They were living underwater, right?”
“I’ve considered it,” Doc told Gemma. “Maybe during their time subsea they developed unknown abilities.”
Pa stood, annoyed. “Stories like that start rumors.”
“If they were in prison, they were adults,” I said. “That stupid theory only applies to kids.”
“What if it isn’t just a theory?” Doc asked. “No one has ever come up with a better explanation for how the outlaws escaped.” He focused on Zoe. “How about you, angel? Got a special trick to show us?”
To my horror, Zoe slid her gaze to me as if asking for my permission. Of course, everyone followed her look.
“Forget what I’ve been saying, shrimp.” I kept my tone light, though I wanted to strangle her. “You have a real special gift. No reason to keep it a secret.”
Hewitt’s mouth fell open.
“Really?” Zoe asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not? Show them what you can do. But don’t blame me when everyone starts screaming.”
For once in her life, Zoe squirmed as all the attention was directed at her.
“What can she do?” Doc sat forward.
I shrugged. “Not many people know that she can … pick her nose with her tongue.”
Hewitt and Gemma yowled while Pa laughed outright.
“See? I told you no one wanted to know about it.” I pinned my sister with a hard look. “Some abilities you keep to yourself.”
Doc was the only one who hadn’t recoiled. He was studying Zoe thoughtfully. Too thoughtfully. I caught her attention and tipped my head fractionally toward Doc. She pasted on a smile, oozing innocence as she stuck out her unusually long tongue and touched it to the tip of her nose. A chorus of “Don’t,” “Stop,” and “No” rang out from around the circle. Doc settled back with a forced smile.
Twenty minutes later, suited in my diveskin and helmet, I swam to a feeding station under one of the Peaveys’ outerbuildings. Everyone else sat in the cruiser, which hovered over the kelp. I dumped the bag of unusable food we’d pulled from the kitchen into the mesh-topped bin. Sadly, the Peaveys had no fish left to feed, but the crabs would eat it. They’d eat anything.
As I stroked back toward the cruiser, I saw Gemma peering out the rear viewport. Spotting me, she started to wave but then paused. Her lips parted with surprise as she pointed at something beyond me. When she shouted over her shoulder to the others in the cruiser, I whirled to see what had alarmed her.
By the boundary lamps at the far end of the Peaveys’ homestead, a bulky dark shape floated over the kelp. A chill skipped down my spine. Were the outlaws back?
The mysterious shape drifted closer. It was a sub all right, but not nearly big enough to be the Specter. Like a shadow, the sub slipped sideways over the field. Caught in a current. Gliding haphazardly … derelict.
If I’d wondered where the outlaws had hauled the abandoned, bloody sub … I now had my answer.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
“I was going to tell you about the rig this afternoon,” I explained to Pa over the sound of the shower, “but you’d just gotten bad news from Representative Tupper….” My words rolled away.
It wasn’t an accident that Pa decided to have our “talk” now. The med-shower, with its health sensors built into the interior walls, was like a walk-in lie detector. No doubt Pa had stationed himself right by the computer screen outside of the stall to check how fast my heart was beating with each answer I gave.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pa said through the frosted glass door. “You still should have told us. That sub needs to be towed to the Trade Station. And Doc has to run tests to find out if all that blood came from a human.”
Ignoring the tiny dancing red lights of the sensors, I turned off the water, took my towel from a hook inside the stall, and wrapped it around my waist. When I stepped out, Pa was right where I’d figured—next to the computer screen — watching my blood pressure rise.
“I don’t want you keeping things from us. Not for any reason. Now, do you have anything else to tell me?”
“The sub wasn’t by the Peaveys’ this morning,” I admitted, knowing that sooner or later he’d think to ask where we’d found the rig originally. “It was down by Coldsleep Canyon.”
The muscle in Pa’s jaw ticked. “You went off the shelf alone?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point, Pa.” Seeing that my father was about to argue that indeed that was the point, I said hurriedly, “A derelict sub wouldn’t drift up the continental slope. It couldn’t. The outlaws must have towed it up the slope to the Peaveys’.”
“And why would they do that?”
“They wanted us to find it.” Conviction had me feeling bold. “If they didn’t, why not leave the rig by the canyon? No one goes down there.”
“Except you, clearly.”
“I can take care of myself. Better than you give me credit for.” I strode across the changing room and grabbed another towel to dry my hair. I braced myself for the chewing out that was sure to come.
“If you’re right,” Pa said softly, “and the Specter brought this rig up to the continental shelf—well, there had to have been a reason. We just don’t know what it is. Some say the outlaws are crazy. But I don’t think so. Something’s going on, and it can’t be good.”
“Maybe it’ll come clear when Doc figures out whose blood it is.”
Pa gave me a hard look. “There’s nothing else I should know, is there?”
There was, of course. But I shook my head. I’d dropped enough bombs for one night.
Having changed into drawstring pants and a T-shirt, I opened the door to my bedroom and was surprised to find the lights on and Hewitt sitting up in his sleeping bag even though he’d gone to bed over an hour ago. The reason became clear when I noticed Gemma on my bed, swinging her feet.
“Zoe snores,” she explained.
She was wearing one of Zoe’s nightgowns, which was too short on her. I averted my gaze, only to notice that Hewitt had strapped the golden chest plate over his pajamas. “You can’t sleep in that,” I said.
Reluctantly, he handed it over. As I reshelved it, I stole another glance at Gemma. Did girls really walk around with their legs showing long ago? I’d seen pictures taken before the Rising, but I still found it hard to believe. Forget what the New Puritans said about the morality of it; any girl li
ving Topside now would land herself in the hospital with third-degree burns if she exposed that much skin to the sun.
“So, have you heard of him?” she asked Hewitt, continuing a conversation that my arrival had interrupted.
“That’s the kid the Topsiders wrote about, right?” Hewitt asked, plucking at his pillow. No doubt to avoid meeting my eyes. “The one with biosonar?”
“I thought you were tired,” I said to him.
“What’s biosonar?” Gemma asked.
“Same thing as sonar” — Hewitt shimmied into his sleeping bag — “only it’s an animal sending out the signal, not a machine.”
She frowned. “What signal?”
I dimmed the room light. “It’s getting late.”
After a loud yawn, Hewitt mumbled his reply. “The clicking noise dolphins and whales make.”
“Yes, that’s what Akai does. Then he listens for the echoes and his brain somehow turns them into pictures.” She slid off the bed. “So, do you know him?”
“No.” He lay back in his sleeping bag.
“You know,” I said gruffly, “the doctor who wrote that article admitted that he never actually examined or even met a kid named Akai. He based his whole Dark Gift theory on old case notes.”
“He studied other kids,” she countered.
“An outright lie. He said he did research on teenage boys down here. But four years ago, when that stupid article came out, there weren’t any teenagers in Benthic Territory.”
“Can we talk somewhere else?” Gemma strolled over to me. “Alone,” she added softly.
Uncomfortable, I ran a hand over the back of my neck the way Pa did when he wanted to think about his answer. How many more questions could she have about Akai and Dark Gifts? “Sure,” I said finally.
Her expression turned indignant, though I couldn’t begin to guess what I’d done wrong this time.
“It sure took you long enough to decide,” Hewitt piped in.
Was that it? “Not because of you,” I told Gemma. “I don’t mind being alone with you.”
“Never mind. Forget I asked.” She turned to leave.