Just as the sub sank beneath the surface, Gemma leapt from the rim of the hatch onto the submerged ledge. I got there in time to offer her a hand up to the wet room floor and then heard a splash behind me.
Turning, I saw Shade skid along the submerged ledge toward Doc, who frantically backstroked away from the ladder.
“Most of the boys can’t sleep,” Shade murmured as he circled to head off Doc, who was swimming for another ladder. “And when they do, they wake up screaming. Even now. Every time they shut their eyes, you’re there — with your needles and scalpels …”
Growing desperate, Doc swung the speargun off his back. He sidestroked for the ledge again, aiming the gun with one hand. “Take the shot,” Shade taunted, opening his arms wide. “Only chance you got.”
Doc fired, missing Shade by inches. The outlaw didn’t even flinch, just tsked over the lost opportunity. Doc’s movements were slowing. Soon he’d be too cold to tread water. Leaping to my feet, I snatched a long pole from the wall and headed back to help him. But Shade, with his tattoos winding up his arms, blocked me.
“He’s about to go under!”
“Really?” Despite his cool tone, there was no missing the fury in Shade’s eyes. “Shame.”
Doc thrashed for the floating Liquigen pack. Grabbing it, he pressed his lips to the hole in the pack’s side and sucked in whatever Liquigen was left.
Behind me, boot steps rang from the ladder inside the service duct. I turned to see Pa emerge through the hatch with Ma right behind him. “Help me get Doc,” I shouted. But when I swung back to the moon pool, Doc was gone. I ran to the edge and scanned the dark water but saw no trace of him.
“He’ll get ten minutes off a hit of Liquigen, maybe,” Shade said as though offering consolation. Gemma pressed her forehead to the window, trying to see downward.
“He can’t swim to the surface from here.” I followed Shade across the wet room, past the other settlers spilling out of the service duct. “He’ll die!”
“You’re welcome.” He yanked the half-crushed mantaboard from between the elevator doors and tossed it aside.
“There’s no Liquigen left,” Ma called from the refill station. All the slots were empty. “We can’t dive for him.”
Pa crossed to the window. “The Access Deck is nearly two hundred feet from the surface. He could make it if he swims hard.” Pa turned to me. “Did Doc fill his lungs all the way?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know if there was any Liquigen left in the pack after Doc pierced it.
“Without fins, he’d have to be one heck of a kicker to get Topside,” Jibby said.
Ma shook her head sadly. “His clothes will pull him down.”
“Then we dive for him,” Lars said. “We try anyway.”
“You think you can hold your breath long enough to find him?” Raj scoffed. “Good luck.”
“It’s a moot point,” Pa said grimly. “We can’t swim deeper without Liquigen. The pressure would kill us.”
With a hand, Shade stopped the elevator from closing. “Lotta concern for the man who would’ve turned your kids into lab rats. Tell you what, if I see him out there, I’ll haul him aboard.”
Ma frowned. “So you can do something worse to him?”
“Aboard what?” Pa asked.
Shade pointed past us and we turned to see the Specter surfacing in the moon pool.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Sorry we’re late, Shade.” The outlaw with the dark hair and wide smile stepped through a hatch in the Specter‘s side and onto its pectoral “fin” — Eel.
“Thought you’d never show.” Shade strolled out of the elevator. “Five minutes earlier and you could’ve said good-bye to Doc.”
“No!” Eel cried with disbelief, bounding onto the edge of the moon pool. More outlaws spilled out of the hatch, all not much older than me.
“Where’s he now?” Pretty demanded, pushing through the others with his long braid swishing like a sun-bleached rope.
“Taking a walk on the seafloor,” Shade replied.
Pa drew Zoe and me back into the fold of settlers. Weapons drawn, Raj and Jibby moved to the edge of the group. But they’d be no match in a shoot-out. The outlaws were armed and positioning themselves atop the Specter and along the rim of the moon pool. Pretty scowled at the dark water. “Drowning ain’t enough. Not after what he did.”
“And here I thought my news might improve your mood,” Shade said dryly.
An outlaw sniggered, revealing a mouthful of sharpened teeth. I recognized him from the air lock in the sunken rig and wasn’t surprised to see that his arm was in a sling. One look from Pretty stripped the grin from the guy’s face. Guess he wasn’t as scary as his teeth made him seem. Or else, under that cool surface, Pretty was even scarier.
“Eel!” Shade pointed at the viewphone on the wall. “Bust that.”
Heading across the wet room, Eel passed Gemma, who was standing apart from the cluster of settlers. As he pressed his hands to the screen, he flashed her a dimpled smile. “You’re Gemma. I’d know you anywhere.” She ignored him. “Done,” he called to Shade.
“Do the elevator, too,” Shade said. “We need a head start.”
Eel gave Gemma a sidelong look as if he wanted to tell her something.
“Now,” Shade ordered, which sent Eel hustling to the elevator, where he placed his palm on the panel. Shade smiled at the settlers’ confusion. “Electromagnetic pulse. Very handy.” With a tip of his head, he sent Eel back to the sub. “The rangers should be here soon enough to let you all out,” he told the settlers. He paused by Ma. “Want to keep them safe, stay in the ocean. Move Topside and the ‘wealth will find an excuse to study them.”
“You’re wrong,” she said.
“Am I?” he asked softly. Skin whitening, he cocked his head toward her. When she stumbled back in horror, I saw that a puckered and rectangular scar marred Shade’s scalp. Like someone had created a flap to access his brain. He shouted at his gang, “Am I wrong?”
In unison they lifted shirts, pulled off bandannas and hats to reveal their scars. Surgical scars. Eel’s ran the length of his taut torso, sternum to navel. Pretty’s wrapped around his ear and disappeared under the collar of his silky jacket.
“Let’s make wake,” Shade ordered, only to have Gemma step into his path.
“That’s it?” she asked. “You’re just going to leave?”
“Had my fill of staying in one place.”
When pain flashed in her eyes, Shade’s expression softened. “You’ll do fine. You’ve got a survivor’s instincts.”
“I don’t want to survive. That’s all I’ve been doing, except when I was with you.” Her voice caught. “Why can’t I live —”
“No,” he said coldly.
I was tempted to draw Gemma back. Shade couldn’t have been more clear or more intimidating, but she stood her ground.
“Because of them?” She pointed at the milling outlaws whose expressions ranged from amused to bored. Only Eel looked on with wary concern. “You could at least ask them,” she added, fidgeting under the weight of Shade’s stare. “Maybe they won’t mind if I —”
“I mind.” He said it so harshly, she staggered back as if he’d slapped her. “Understand this, little girl. Those ugly clam-suckers, they’re my family now. You’re just old business I had to take care of. And did, when I sent you that money. So now”—he pointed at her—“you’re going to keep away from me.”
She nodded. Though she kept her eyes down, I glimpsed her stricken expression and a flash flood of anger rushed through me. Shade had just confirmed Gemma’s worst thoughts about herself. That she wasn’t wanted. Wasn’t special.
He didn’t seem to care as he turned his attention to his gang. “You looking to settle here?” he asked caustically.
At once the outlaws piled into the Specter, all except for Eel and Pretty, who remained on the sub’s pectoral fin. Eel watched Gemma retreat to the far wall unt
il Pretty redirected his attention with a cuff to the head. As they disappeared through the hatch, Shade headed for the moon pool without another word to Gemma. Or even a glance.
“Wait!” I said, striding after him. “I saved your life. You owe me.”
He paused. “What do you want?”
“Your word that you won’t raid another homestead. The Commonwealth did you an injustice, not us.”
“Oh, yeah, we’ll take the word of an outlaw,” Raj scoffed.
I met Shade’s gaze. “I’ll take Richard Straid’s word.”
His lips twitched but he held up his right hand. “No homesteads, no settlers.”
“There’s something else.” I crossed to Gemma, who remained stone-faced with her back pressed to the wall.
Shade put a foot on the rim of the moon pool. “My life ain’t worth two favors.”
“You’re not doing it for me.” I pulled a paper and pen from the pouch on her belt and strode to him. “You’re doing it for her. Sign this.” I thrust them at Shade.
He didn’t move. “What is it?”
“An emancipation form. It releases her as a ward of the Commonwealth.”
When Shade raised his hand, I jerked back, expecting a blow to knock me into tomorrow. Amusement glittered in his eyes and he tugged the paper from my fingers. “She going to stay with you?” he asked as he signed.
“If she wants.”
I took back the form. As Shade pounced onto the Specter’s bumper, I checked the signature: Richard Straid. Written extra large. I whirled to show Gemma but saw that she’d slipped behind a large rolling toolbox as if trying to make herself invisible.
Jibby stepped forward. “Gemma can live with me.”
Shade’s black eyes found him, underscored by an even blacker scowl. Jibby shuffled back into the cluster of settlers, muttering, “Just trying to be part of the solution.”
Inside the plexidome, the gang of young outlaws waved, their expressions ironic, as Shade slammed the hatch shut behind him. When the Specter sank beneath the water, Gemma slid down the wall until she was hidden behind the toolbox.
“Now what?” Jibby asked.
“They really did shut it down,” Shurl said, standing in front of the closed elevator doors. “The screen is dark and the button won’t light up.”
“As soon as the Specter clears the station,” Pa said, “we get our subs and search for Doc.”
“We all hitched our subs to the inner docking-ring,” Lars said. “With the elevator busted, we can’t get to the surface.”
Ma joined Pa at the window. “Grimes said he’d send back a posse of rangers. If they get here soon …” Her words rolled off. She and Pa shared a grim look.
I found Gemma behind the rolling toolbox with her arms wrapped around her legs. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes pooled with tears as she shook her head. “I want to be born into a new family.”
“You don’t have to be born into a family to be wanted. Stay here with us.”
“You admitted you have a Dark Gift. Now all the settlers will leave.”
My throat tightened but I forced myself to shrug as though it didn’t matter.
“There won’t be any more people like you!” She said it like I was some exotic animal on the verge of extinction. “You must hate me.”
That was a far cry from what I was feeling. But she didn’t wait for me to reply as she went on, “Everyone here must hate me. Your parents. Zoe. Hewitt … Well, maybe not Hewitt.”
I smiled, though she was clearly serious.
“But when Hewitt finds out how awful it is on the Topside, he’ll hate me, too. And then —”
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against hers. Instantly her eyes went round with surprise, but she didn’t pull away so I pressed my mouth to hers the way I’d wanted to ever since I’d found her in that derelict sub. My insides whirled like a comb jelly sending off sparks as I savored the softness of her lips. When I finally sat back on my knees, Gemma blinked.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
That was not what I’d expected. I might not have much experience with girls, but I knew that “thank you” was a weird thing to say after a kiss.
“I know you did it to make me feel better,” she went on. “And it worked. I do feel better. But if I weren’t the only girl down here—the only girl your age — I know you’d —”
This time I put my hand over her lips to stem the tide of words. “I did it because I wanted to and this seemed like the only chance I’d get.”
“The only chance?”
“Usually your mouth is moving.”
She shoved me and I toppled back with a laugh.
“Next time I’ll know when you’re about to kiss me and I’ll shut up.”
“How will you know?”
“Because” — her grin was sly — “you glow.”
“That so?” My eyes drifted to her lips again. “What am I thinking now?”
Her breath caught. But this time when I kissed her, she kissed back.
“The Specter!” Jibby shouted from across the room.
Reluctantly I stood. Gemma, however, drew her knees up as if she was going to stay behind the toolbox forever. I gave her a nudge. “Shade was awful to you so you wouldn’t want to live with him.”
“I know,” she said in a flat voice.
“Not because he doesn’t want you around.” I pulled her to her feet. “He wants what’s best for you.”
We faced the enormous window. Outside, the Specter hovered like a ghost ship.
“You don’t know that for sure,” she muttered.
An eerie light flicked on in the Specter‘s darkened plexidome. It was Shade, glowing like an apparition inside the sub. His eyes sought and found Gemma. For a moment, neither moved. Holding her in his gaze, Shade raised his fist, touched it to his heart, and then vanished like a doused flame.
“Yeah, I do,” I said softly.
The Specter shot away and all that remained was its bubble trail. A loud crack broke the silence in the Access Deck.
“Did they just fire on the station?” Ma gasped.
“Look!” Jibby pointed to the window where a small harpoon trembled, embedded in the flexiglass. Around it, the window spiderwebbed with fractures.
“How could they shoot that from a sub?” Shurl cried. “It’s tiny.”
Hewitt ran closer. “It’s on the inside!”
I choked with realization. “After Doc fell into the moon pool, he fired a speargun at Shade but missed. He must have hit the window.”
“So long as the point hasn’t breached the exterior scale, we’re fine.” Pa hauled the toolbox over to the window and climbed onto it. He peered through the fractured flexiglass to the layer of acrylic scales on the outside, then emitted a string of profanity that was about as obscene as I’d ever heard.
“It went through,” Ma guessed.
Hewitt backed away from the window. “How thick is the scale?” When Pa didn’t reply instantly, he cried, “How thick is the flexiglass? How deep is the point?”
“The exterior scales are four inches thick.” Pa climbed off the toolbox. “The spear penetrated less than an inch.”
“It won’t hold,” Hewitt said miserably.
“It doesn’t have to hold forever.” Shurl took him in her arms. “Just till the rangers —”
The three-foot scale imploded with a splintering crash. The sea roared in through the opening, blasting us in every direction.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
The sea filled the room with such force it set the Trade Station spinning on its tether lines. The water in the moon pool churned from the vibration. Above the splashing and shouts, a Klaxon horn sounded, followed by an eerily calm female voice. “Attention. Emergency. Scale 2093 has been compromised. Evacuate Lower Station immediately.”
“The service tube,” Ma shouted over the din. “Hurry!” Though everyone was scattered across the room, we splashed toward the tube, f
ighting against the spin, water up to our knees.
“We need to prop open the hatch.” Pa hauled up the lid of the toolbox.
“Access Deck lockdown now commencing,” said the female voice.
“Raj!” Pa threw him a crowbar. Just as he caught it, the hatch slid closed with a mechanical hiss.
“No!” Raj slammed the crowbar against the steel-plated hatch.
“Access Deck sealed,” the computer announced. The Klaxon horn wailed on in a demented rhythm as two more streams of seawater burst through new fissures.
Then suddenly the Trade Station jerked to a halt and everybody stumbled to keep their balance. The station’s tether chains were all twisted up. Before I could shout a warning, the chains unwound, starting slowly then gaining speed as they whipped in the opposite direction. Ma caught Zoe as she tumbled past and hoisted her on top of a long row of metal cabinets. The station moaned under the torquing pressure and the sea sloshed in at an even faster rate. All over the Access Deck, equipment shattered. Sparks flew. The walls shook.
Clinging to a pipe, Hewitt muttered numbers to himself, then cried out, “The added weight of the water will make the Surface Deck disengage in two minutes and thirteen seconds!”
Pa splashed through the water, which was now up to his waist. “There’s got to be something left. Mantaboards, an aqua-jet, something!”
“There’s nothing,” I said. “I checked. Not even a pack of Liquigen.” The lights flickered and failed. The emergency lighting struggled to kick on, causing an eerie strobe effect. For the first time, I felt a prick of panic.
“This water is freezing,” Gemma said, joining Zoe on top of the row of cabinets. Everyone else clambered up, too, except for Pa, who tipped over a cabinet. I realized he was checking to see if it would retain air. But no, it sank.
“We’re going to have to swim for it,” Jibby said.
Hearing Gemma’s gasp, I took her cold hand in mine. “We won’t leave you behind.”
“Are you crazy?” Raj asked Jibby. “We’re over a hundred feet down. Without fins, even I couldn’t get to the surface on one breath.”