I splashed into the next room—the guards’ station. I checked in the half-submerged file cabinets.
“What are you doing?” Gemma asked. The beam of the flashlight did strange things to the stainless steel furniture in the room, made it gleam and glimmer.
“Looking around.” All the drawers were empty.
“Oh, no, you’re not.” She hopped onto a submerged metal desk. With her legs crossed, she looked like she was attending a tea party, except that she was up to her waist in seawater. She eyed me expectantly.
“What?”
“Your Dark Gift!”
I wondered if it was too late to say I lied just to get her to jump out of the sub. One glance at her face told me not to bother.
“Why do you keep it a secret?” she asked. I sloshed toward the open door at the back of the room, but she was faster. She jumped down and barricaded the doorway with her outstretched arms. “So what if people find out that you can do this cool thing?”
“All the pioneers will leave the ocean and no new families will ever come subsea, that’s why.” I ducked under her arm and waded into a dark corridor. “My parents work hard for what we have,” I said over my shoulder, “same as everyone down here. You think I want to be the reason the settlement fails?”
She fell into step beside me. “At least tell me how it happened. Did you just wake up one morning and realize you could talk to dolphins?”
“I can’t talk to them.” I caught her impatient look. “Okay. Dolphins and whales can hear my clicks. And when I hear theirs, I can tell what kind of call it is—happy, danger, food. But we’re not having a conversation.”
The corridor was lined with closed doors — a cellblock. I tried the first one on the right but it was locked. Gemma aimed the flashlight into my face like an interrogator.
“All right,” I relented, lifting a hand to shade my eyes. “It didn’t happen overnight. After I turned nine, the ocean got noisier and noisier. But nobody else thought so. I noticed more sounds out of water, too, so I just figured my hearing was getting better. After a while, I could tell the difference between an original sound and its echo, so I began to make noises and judge distances that way. Then, one day, it all came together and I realized that I could see what I heard.”
“Why? What were you doing?”
“Nothing. Lying in bed with my eyes closed,” I said, remembering every detail about that morning, “and Ma called me to breakfast. When I answered her, I heard my voice bounce around my room. And then I realized I could see my room, without opening my eyes.”
“Glacial!”
“No. It was weird.”
“Did you tell your parents right away?”
I hesitated. Did I want to dip into the rest of it? Not even a toe. “Yes,” I admitted finally. “I told them.” I focused on trying another door, but it was locked, too. When I turned back, she was standing in my path again.
“And?” she asked.
“And they hauled me Topside and took me to a slew of doctors.” My throat was so tight, soon I wouldn’t be able to swallow. “After weeks of blood tests and brain scans, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, but they wanted to keep poking at me.” That was putting it mildly. “The hospital wouldn’t release me and then child services got involved. My parents had to go to court to get me back, and even then it looked like the judge might rule against them and make me a ward of the ‘wealth. So I pretended I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“The doctors believed you?”
“I doubt it. But they couldn’t prove anything. When I use my sonar, they see activity in a part of my brain that most people don’t use. When I don’t use my gift, there’s no activity. They couldn’t justify keeping me any longer. I’m just lucky my real name wasn’t in the files. That doctor who wrote that article you’re always on about—Doctor Metzger — he never even met me. He heard about the court case and then got all his information from the hospital files. My parents were furious about it.”
“But they know the truth, right? That you can still do it.”
Turning away, I tried another door. The knob turned but the door stuck.
“You lied to your parents?”
I threw my weight against the door and it fell off of its corroded hinges, slamming to the floor. I barely kept my balance as water gushed past me, flooding into the room. Instead of shining the flashlight into the darkness ahead, Gemma continued to shine its beam on me. “I get it. You don’t want to be some medical experiment but —”
“There’s no but,” I snapped. “The doctors blamed the water pressure, said it was messing up my brain. They told my parents to move to the Topside permanently. Well, I got a good look at how you people live—like hagfish, piled on top of one another. No offense, but I’d rather risk brain damage.”
“They’re your parents!”
“Not mentioning something isn’t the same as lying.”
“What are you? Six? Of course it is.” She sloshed into the room.
“Good to know where you draw the line,” I scoffed. “Lying is bad but stealing, that’s just a neat trick your brother taught you.”
Turning her back on me, she explored the room with the flashlight. Clearly the conversation was over. Too bad it hadn’t ended sooner.
I followed her past the bunk beds that lined the room. Most of the mattresses were missing but blankets and sheets dangled from the bars, like laundry strung up in the darkness. The flashlight’s beam slid across the posters taped to the walls. A graphic of a parasailer. Comic book illustrations. A photo of a little girl with strawberry blond hair and a gap-toothed grin.
The weight of the ocean compressed the hard-shelled building, causing it to creak and groan. “Let’s get out of here. I’m not going to find out anything about the outlaws in here. Nothing that makes sense anyway.”
With her back to me, Gemma returned the flashlight’s beam to the photo taped to the wall by an upper bunk. She sloshed closer for a better look. “Probably some prisoner’s daughter,” I guessed, coming up behind her. Shoving the flashlight into my hands, she clambered onto the top bunk. Carefully, she picked at the tape that held the photo in place. Her movements were jerky, feverish. What was she doing? Her breath came out in short bursts as she peeled the last corner of the photo from the wall.
“That’s you!” I said, suddenly understanding. She cradled the picture in her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me your brother was in prison?”
“Don’t you get it?” Her voice cracked. “This wasn’t a prison.”
Shining the flashlight at the posters once again, I saw what she meant. Parasailers and comic illustrations. Those weren’t images that grown men taped by their beds. Especially not hardened criminals. “It was a reformatory,” I gasped. This was where Eel got his shine. Pretty, too. They were the ones who’d worn the handcuffs and panned for manganese nodules.
The walls emitted a metal-on-metal screech that stiffened my spine, and suddenly I remembered that Doc once had firsthand contact with the inmates of Seablite. He’d monitored their health. Last night, when he told the story of the outlaws’ escape, he’d known that they were underage boys at the time. Younger than me. Yet Doc had led us to believe they were grown men, had called Seablite a prison—even though no one put thirteen-year-olds in prison. Or did they?
“I don’t get it.” I struggled to find the reason behind Doc’s misrepresentation. “Why would the ‘wealth force kids to live down here?”
Gemma’s expression turned bitter. “Space is precious.” Drawing up her legs, she huddled on the top bunk with her long braid wrapped around her neck like a collar. “The ‘wealth isn’t going to waste an inch of it on juvenile delinquents.”
“Your brother spent four years in here?” Glancing around the dismal room, I felt a trickle of sympathy for the boys who’d formed the Seablite Gang. No wonder they kept robbing supply ships. If I’d been locked up in here, I’d be mad at the government, too.
Gemma pressed her forehead i
nto her knees as if to block out my question. Or maybe she was trying hard to deny the obvious conclusion: that Richard might be in the Seablite Gang. Shivering, she clasped her arms around her legs. Her diveskin was on the fritz because it was too loose on her. Unless it wasn’t the frigid air making her tremble.
I waded closer. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head.
Maybe a Topsider would know what to say to her. But I just stood there, stymied and feeling useless, wondering if I should touch her arm or if she’d take it the wrong way.
“Please,” she whispered without raising her face, “just leave me alone.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
With an ache behind my eyes, I swam along the dark corridor on Seablite’s first level, which was completely flooded. Gemma probably thought I didn’t care that she was miserable, which made me feel worse than if she knew the truth — that I was just plain stupid.
I touched down and a cloud of sludge rose off the floor. A door stood open. I didn’t want to bother Gemma just yet, so I figured I might as well look around. I squeezed past the door but before I even got a glimpse of the room, the ugly snout of a grenadier slammed against my helmet. I batted the fish aside and glided forward. My crown lights bounced off metal cabinets and an examination table, giving the underwater room an eerie glow. Circling in place, I realized I was in the infirmary.
I staggered back and my skin grew clammy. I’d entered unprepared—hadn’t steeled myself. Now feelings of panic and loneliness entwined within me, the way they always did when something triggered memories of my time in the hospital. But just as my anxiety was smothering the here and now, a low vibration rolled through the room. It was gone before I’d gotten the chance to listen carefully. I hovered, hoping I hadn’t imagined it. And then it came again. My ears caught the sound as it intensified, and I relaxed. Somewhere outside, not too far away, a humpback whale was singing. Closing my eyes, I let the music reverberate through me. Hopefully, one floor up, Gemma was listening and the whale song comforted her as much as it did me.
When the lone humpback began a new chorus, I calculated that the animal was about a mile away and coming closer. An idea came to me. A crazy, wonderful idea. I swam through the open elevator doors and up the shaft, surfacing at the top of the ladder as the whale’s song died away.
That’s when I heard Gemma scream for help.
I dove under the water and swam into the guards’ station. Silently, I broke the surface to see her hunkered on top of the desk. The same instant, she caught sight of me rising from under the water and splashed backward, dropping her flashlight and unsheathing her jade knife.
“Gemma, it’s me!” I scrambled to unfasten my helmet. “What’s wrong?”
“Why didn’t you walk through the door like a normal person?” she demanded, once she’d caught her breath.
“I swim faster than I walk. Are you okay?”
Just then, the whale began singing again. She grabbed my arm. “Do you hear it?” Careening around, she looked for the source of the noise.
Now I understood why she’d panicked. “Let me guess. You think that’s a ghost.”
Slow realization spread over her face. “It’s a whale, isn’t it? A stupid whale.”
“Whales aren’t stupid.” My sense of humor was returning.
She raised an eyebrow and pointed toward the corridor where a glowing light darted under the water. “I suppose you know what —”
“Lantern fish.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have cut her off like such a know-it-all because she frowned as if I’d planted the lantern fish there just to frighten her.
“You told me to go away,” I reminded her.
“I didn’t know there was going to be inhuman howling along with a glowy thing chasing me. Anyone would have thought it was a ghost.”
“Chasing you?”
With her hands on her hips, she was clearly not amused. “You knew I’d be scared out of my wits within five seconds, didn’t you?”
“No, I di —”
She steamrolled over my words. “Then you came back so you could split your diveskin, laughing at the dumb Topsider.”
“If that were true, I would have brought friends.” I scooped up the flashlight and handed it to her. Just then the whale’s singing grew louder. “Come on! He’s almost here.”
I took her by the hand and pulled her toward the elevator shaft—glad that she didn’t yank her fingers out of mine. “Whales are curious.” I flipped my helmet into place. “If we go outside and turn on our crown lights, maybe he’ll come over for a look.”
“Why on earth would we want that?”
I snapped her helmet shut and fastened it for her. “Just let yourself sink,” I said. Together we breathed in Liquigen and jumped into the dark water that filled the shaft.
Once we were outside, the whale’s song was even louder. Gemma clamped her hands over her dive helmet as if covering her ears, while I unspooled the rip cord in my belt. It had clips on both ends and was coated with soft rubber. I fastened one end of the rip cord to my belt, then looped the other end and clipped it to the main line. I could see the whale was still a ways off, plowing along about forty feet above the seafloor.
When our crown lights didn’t slow him down a whit, I mimicked a humpback’s short, social clicks. Sure enough, the enormous creature stopped singing through his two blowholes and angled downward. With his long side fins flapping, he came straight at us, all thirty-plus tons of him. He wasn’t too pretty head-on, with his face covered in whiskered bumps and scars that were probably carved by an orca’s teeth. I checked Gemma’s reaction. She seemed stunned but didn’t back away.
Just before the whale reached us, he sent out what felt like a sigh of greeting. The sound was lower than even I could hear, but I sensed the water’s vibrations. Maybe Gemma felt the low-frequency wave as well, for she seemed to relax as it rolled over her and even smiled when the whale passed just above our heads. Struggling to stay upright in his slipstream, Gemma reached up and, touching the fifty-foot humpback without fear, trailed her fingers along one of the grooves that ran from his chin to his barnacle-covered belly.
I got into position so that just as his tail pumped downward, I slipped the makeshift lasso over his flukes and wound the rip cord around my forearm. As soon as I pulled the lasso tight, the slack in the cord spun out. Grinning, Gemma threw her arms around my neck and pressed close. An instant later, the line jerked taut.
For a timeless second, our eyes met and I could see that Gemma’s excitement matched my own, and then we were swept off our feet. We flew through the water, laughing and whipping back and forth in the whale’s wake, with me holding on to the rip cord and Gemma holding on to me.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Just outside the Peaveys’ bubble fence, I released the lasso from the whale’s tail and Gemma and I touched down on the seafloor. Pushing past the bubbles, I led her through the kelp field, only to stop before we reached the last row. At her questioning look, I pointed at a hovering sub that had just arrived, trailing a loosely drawn net filled with rockfish. As a throng of settlers gathered to unfasten the net and unload bins, we slipped into the hustle unnoticed.
I pointed out my mother and Gemma watched as Ma pried the lid off a container. A cloud of blue burst out of the box—a school of full-grown shad. Every family in the territory had brought some of their own livestock to replace what Shurl and Lars had lost. Spotting us, Ma smiled and waved. I knew she thought that we’d just come from the Trade Station, having retrieved Gemma’s duffel bag. Now I was going to stir up her fears again by telling the other settlers about my run-in with Shade. Around us, my neighbors signed to one another, rapid-fire. I wondered if Gemma realized that they were asking about her.
Lars darted about shaking hands while settlers swam up to the moon pool and climbed into the house. Trying to follow the crowd, Gemma hopped but sank immediately back to the seafloor. Rather than remind her
to release the fins in her boots, I signed upward at the settlers by the moon pool. Instantly, a rope ladder unfurled, nearly hitting her on its way down. I tugged it straight and offered her the ladder with a grand sweep of my arm. I thought my teasing might annoy her, but she surprised me with a grateful smile before clambering upward to the house.
Inside the wet room, settlers unhinged their helmets and towel dried their diveskins until the metallic fabric gleamed. I nodded and answered everyone who called out my name or smiled at me, but my gaze was on Pa across the room, speaking to a cluster of settlers who hadn’t been at yesterday’s meeting with Representative Tupper.
Perched on the lip of the moon pool, Gemma took a deep breath to clear her lungs while looking about curiously. I hoped she wouldn’t say anything about the other kids’ shines.
Gasps of surprise and dismay exploded across the room, followed by angry exclamations of “They can’t!” and “What does that mean for us?” Clearly Pa had just broken the news about the Commonwealth’s decision to abandon the territory. Heart constricting, I set my boots and helmet against the wall.
“Ty,” Gemma whispered, “those little kids are staring at us.”
“At you.” I set her helmet next to mine.
“Why?”
“Jibby told you yesterday and you didn’t believe him.”
Across the room, Pa headed upstairs with a contingent of angry settlers. Those who were left set about cleaning up the equipment bay.
“Hey, Pete,” I called to a neighbor. “Is Doc here?”
“Yeah. Upstairs.” With a smile, Pete added, “Howdy, Gemma.”
Her mouth dropped open. But in a flash, she recovered and returned his smile. “Okay. I get it,” she said to me. “Down here I’m a rarity.”