Fractured Tide

by Leslie Lutz

  I hooked an arm around Felix, my limbs heavy and slow, breathing too fast. His hair floated around his mask, and the regulator—way too big for him—made his mouth look huge, comic.

  Phil swam up to the grate and produced a small screwdriver from a pocket at his waist. Mom unbuckled Felix from his BC and he slipped out, his mouth still connected to the regulator. Even in the wet suit, he was shivering. The grate fell with a dull clank to the floor.

  Mom reached into her mesh bag and pulled out the pony bottle and its rig. She didn’t hesitate. The time for doublethink was over.

  Mom swam up to the small opening and slipped the pony bottle through. A muffled thud followed. Felix would swim into the hole, find the bottle with his dive light, and breathe for a precious few minutes. And open the door. If his hands were strong enough. If it wasn’t locked with a key. I never hated a door so much in my life.

  I shined my light in front of my hand and made the okay sign. A question. Are you okay?

  Part of me wanted a headshake. I would grab him, get out of the lab. Go up. Stay on this broken island forever, stuck on an endless loop. Maybe the Bubble would break on its own.

  Felix’s small hand entered the beam of my dive light. Thumb and forefinger together. An okay sign. His hand wasn’t even shaking. I wished, at that moment, for your steel cage heart. I checked my gauge to give myself something to think about.

  Mom pulled the regulator out of his mouth. He turned and swam up to the grate. A strong swimmer, the pale bottoms of his feet catching the light. He gripped the edge of the opening. I held my breath, something you told me never to do at depth. A bad habit that gets divers killed. And watched Felix disappear.

  I counted to ten. Then twenty. Thirty.

  Phil hovered an arm’s length from the handle, his hands clasped, radiating calm. I directed my beam down the hall, a clear shot to the back wall.

  God, forty seconds. I wanted to punch through that door. You would have. Mom floated beside me, her light trained on the handle. I pointed my light at the small opening Felix had slipped through. His bubbles still clung to the top edge.

  Fifty seconds. Where was he?

  Phil hovered by the door, his knees bent and his fins crossed. Mom glanced at her watch every two seconds.

  I started to swim up to the crawlspace above the door, a bubble of panic hitting me hard in the chest. I would squeeze through. Even you, with your broad shoulders, would find a way to get through. Scrape a layer of skin off if you had to.

  Then, in Phil’s beam, the handle turned with a glint. And when the door swung open, the world wasn’t dark anymore.

  Green light. Oozing out of the rectangle Felix had opened.

  ENTRY 31

  FELIX’S DARK FORM, a silhouette. A child coming home after a long day, surrounded by bubbles and phosphorescence.

  Phil pushed away from the wall, his fins stirring up silt. Mom dropped the spool of wire.

  Dad, you don’t know how the panic took hold of me, in a way it never has before. Ever. I grabbed Felix and pulled him to me. Stuck my regulator into his mouth. Turned to swim. Phil rushed past me in a blur of bubbles. A sharp elbow to my face knocked my mask sideways. It instantly filled with water.

  Another hand on my arm stopped me. Mom, her iron grip. Two squeezes on my bicep.

  Stay.

  I struggled to free myself. My heart beat against the rocks filling my lungs, like wave crash in a storm. Stay. Go. Listen. Ignore. What would Dad do?

  I stopped struggling and turned, holding tight to Felix. Through my flooded mask, the world had become a green haze. My hands shook, but I cleared the water out, took a few breaths from the regulator, and forced myself to look.

  No beast slid through the doorway. But the green glow was everywhere. The phosphorescence came from the room itself, which was the size of a small house. Green light oozed from the gears of a machine that honeycombed the walls, like steampunk coral.

  The word came to me again: connected. The thing out there circling the Andrews, and this room, this machine. They were both part of the same thing. But how?

  Mom rolled the depth charge inside the room to set it on Ben’s imaginary X. I followed, amazed at her steel nerves. Felix held on to me, his breathing as fast as a sprinter’s.

  I stopped swimming and put a pulse of air into my BC. Floated above the lab floor and hung on to my brother. Dim light bled out all around us in the water, seeped into the edges of my wet suit, stained my exposed skin green. On the edge of my vision, Mom worked to unscrew the panel on the depth charge.

  Felix’s body wasn’t trembling. Neither was mine. I felt small, like a flower petal floating on the surface of the big blue, about to drop. So small that my fear disappeared.

  A current, through the walls. Pushing against my face. The walls, moving, as if made of baleen.

  The machine. We had floated into its heart. I could feel a whisper-thin tether reaching out—no, thousands of them, spreading into the world to grab on to what they could. The creature. The machine. Which one was the alpha? Which one the omega? I’ll never know.

  The walls shimmered. Expanded. And then the world turned into a kaleidoscope.

  A diver appeared, floating on the other side of my mother as she wired the bomb. Two more, wearing my wet suit, with my long black hair, swimming toward me. Three others hovering over three other metal barrels. Six barrels. Then twelve. Three divers holding a child. More lying on the floor, dying.

  Felix took two breaths, handed my reg back, clung to me again. The walls bowed as a current hit my face. A pull took its place, a gentle undertow. The walls had gills. The walls were breathing. In the soft glow of the room, Felix met my eyes, and I held on to him tighter.

  The divers around me replicated, until hundreds of Sias and Felixes and a couple of Phils and several Grahams floated in the lungs of this strange machine. I turned in a circle. All around me, a kaleidoscope of possible realities. Zoe who’d never left the dock, she was there, wiring up the depth charge. That captain Mom hires sometimes to fill in, the one who didn’t come with us on this trip, he was there too, helping her.

  And the truth hit me. The bubble we’d been caught in was expanding, all the way into Key Largo, picking up people on shore and tossing them into my life again. So I looked for you. Of course I looked for you.

  There I was, clinging to my brother and searching faces in a crowd, like a lost kid at the train station. As Mom worked and Felix and I shared breath, I sorted through the kaleidoscope images, eliminating them one by one until . . .

  You weren’t there.

  Felix tapped me on the shoulder. I’d forgotten to give the regulator back, too busy wondering if my wet suit would keep my insides from spilling out. I gave it to him and focused on Mom, watching her wiring up the bomb to explode so we could make it back home.

  Home. That word has always been tangled up in you. But floating there inside the heart of the machine, I realized something awful. No version of you exists that pulled his punches that night. No version of you walked away from the bar fight and came home to us.

  No version of you exists that did the right thing.

  It’s the little moments that break us. That’s what you said.

  How could you? How could you leave us?

  I decided not to write another word to you. No, I wouldn’t pick up a pencil to scratch my sad “Daddy, please understand me” crap anymore.

  You see how well that worked out for me.

  Felix and I floated in that nexus, clinging to one another until my vision blurred, became so full of phosphorescence I couldn’t think about anything else.

  I almost didn’t feel the tug on my arm. Lost in the soft green glow. A memory trying to rise. Of you. Me. A beach. A strange phosphorescent glow covering the sand.

  Another tug. Harder this time.

  Mom, pointing back down the hall. A wire trailed from the depth charge, out the door. Time to leave.

  We slipped into the empty hall. While we pushed Fe
lix back into his rig and bungeed him into place, I noticed Phil’s mesh bag lying on the floor. He hadn’t come back. He’d saved himself, left us behind.

  Mom’s beam moved between us. Her hand in the light. An okay sign. I returned it. Felix’s fingers snuck into the circle to join ours.

  Mom and Felix and me, in the sunken world of silt and rock and breath, finning our way through the labyrinth. We would find our way out. Together. Even without you, we’re still a family.

  Mom turned, her dive light running along the walls, and swam. I followed, Felix clutching to my side. We moved fast, stirring up the silt behind us like new divers. If everything worked out, we’d never come down here again. My light danced on the back wall.

  Right turn. Down the hallway, past signs I couldn’t read. Past doorways I didn’t need to open anymore. Past the stores of food that would soon be blown up with all the rest. Past the flickering image of the metal walls shimmering like mercury, and a girl swimming into the sponge beds.

  Left turn. Mom beside me, her beam on the wire and the orange line leading us out.

  Right turn. The pale rectangle at the end of the hallway glowed with a gray light. The entrance to the sinkhole lay ahead. Beyond that, our escape and the world above. To Ben. And eventually, back home to Key Largo.

  Felix took another breath from my regulator. Mom swam ahead, her slim form moving as easily as a dolphin.

  The three of us shot out of the sinkhole onto the catwalk. I grabbed the railing, ready to head up.

  A clamp on my arm forced me to still. Mom squeezed once and let go.

  Just below the catwalk, in the dark maw of the sinkhole, a green glow rose.

  Felix’s grip tightened. I sank to the mesh of the catwalk. Mom covered her light with her hand. I did the same.

  The mesh bit through my neoprene. Darkness. Breath. The soft green glow rising just beyond the railing.

  Still. Be still.

  My tank became just another part of the metal surrounding me. The bubbles just artifacts of nothing. We were small. Not worthy of notice. Your words came back to me. Swim, little fish. I pushed them out of my head.

  But maybe you were right, and we should have made a break for it.

  I stayed put. So did Mom. Felix hung from me, his fingers digging into my arm, his bubbles coming faster.

  The phosphorescence rose and brightened. My eyes widened. Huge. Its body filled the sinkhole. And as I peered into the light, through the membrane I saw movement inside.

  A skittering light bled from my hand, and I realized my fingers were shaking. I clamped a fist over the dive light.

  A thrashing. Something inside its body. Its monster heart, beating.

  The beast rose past the catwalk railing. Each breath became a vise upon my lungs. I silently begged it to sink, to go away, to head back to the threshold and out into open ocean.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. A shudder, its heart jerking. I hoped the thing was sick. Maybe its heart would burst.

  And then I saw what really moved inside the thing. The outline of a tank. A regulator. Something jerking. Legs and arms.

  Phil.

  Felix realized it at the same time I did. He thrashed out of my arms, swimming awkwardly for the doorway. I reached for him. His leg slipped out of my grasp. Mom turned, her hand uncovering the light and sending a beacon into the black.

  The glow swept up from the darkness, a long cord snaking toward me. Over the catwalk. I swam back in a panic, past the depth charge, toward the hallway.

  A sting on my ankle. A cord cutting through. I fumbled for my dive knife.

  A second and a third filament, snaking over the grill like glowing vines, seeking the rest of me. I didn’t think about how it would react when I cut it. How it would spasm.

  A quick slice and my ankle was free. The thing shuddered. Its tentacle wrapped around anything it could find. The railing. Metal dangling from the walls. Rocks that jutted from surfaces between the floors, that broke off and tumbled into the deep.

  And the depth charge, sitting on the catwalk.

  The tentacle, glowing in the darkness, slithered over the barrel and cinched tight on the bar that circled its crown. The metal casing of the depth charge scraped across the grill, to the edge of the catwalk, and caught for a moment on the railing. I swam for it, my fingers almost catching the end. Then it slid over the rim. Plummeted into the darkness.

  I scrambled back toward the hallway.

  Swim, little fish. This time I listened.

  In my head, that depth charge falls on an endless loop, plummeting into the dark.

  One hundred ten feet, one hundred twenty feet.

  The green glow pierced the black hallway. I swam back into the lab.

  One hundred fifty, one hundred sixty. Falling in space.

  That thing, squeezing itself into the hallway, lengthening. Reaching its filaments along the floor to find us. I dropped my dive light, swimming into the dark.

  One hundred eighty, one hundred ninety, the bomb spinning into the abyss.

  I reach the back wall. A thousand nettles envelop me, cover my body like a second skin, break through the neoprene as the beast takes me into itself.

  Swim little fish, your voice said again. And I knew, a split second before it happened, that the charge had fallen far enough to end us all.

  Two hundred feet.

  Boom.

  ENTRY 184

  I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME, but I have to tell you. Record it. Everything changes now, all the time.

  Truth. With a capital T. I’ve written that entry 153 times since we tried to blow up the machine. 153. Each time the Bubble blows, the last few pages go blank. And I write the last entry again. Every time. Because it’s the only way to make myself remember.

  Blowing up the time machine didn’t work. Ha, ha. I guess that’s obvious. But we did manage to break it a little more.

  Four hours. That’s what my life has become, a four-hour slide into a hurricane. Over and over.

  Sometimes it starts with the dream of my grandmother. We swim down into the reef, past purple sea fans, the thick barrel sponges and brain coral. I follow her as she kicks forty, fifty, sixty feet down, her knife in her hand, and then the drip, drip of the storm begins. Drip. Drip.

  Daybreak, and a storm coming. I don’t realize it’s a storm, and I kiss Ben, and sometimes that kiss lasts a thousand years. In that moment, we don’t need to rig the bombs to explode. When he’s kissing me, I don’t remember that I die in the lab, becoming the most recent meal of our resident horror show. The time machine puts its big metal finger on the rewind button, and like puppets we all go back to the beginning, asleep on the sand in a shared nightmare.

  As soon as the kiss ends, I remember. So does everyone else.

  At first, we tried to blow the place again. That never worked. Then we stayed on the beach and watched the rain build in the distance, watched it sweep over the beaches. Sometimes I get to the Last Chance and pry the gun away from Phil before he can kill Ben. I guess I haven’t told you about that version of things, when everything went to hell. Sometimes Phil shoots me, and I bleed out on the beach. But each time, that sinkhole eventually blows, whether we’re there to pull the trigger or not, and the rubber band pops us back in time.

  I’ve become a collection of splinters, a shattered window, a repeated breath in an endless loop, caught up in a whirlpool of I don’t know where and I don’t know when.

  And Phil, Phil talks to himself more and more each time we pop back in time, humming to himself as he drags tanks around, his eyes on the palm forest, as if he wants to go in there and never come out. I wish he would—go away and never come out. In most of our realities, he finds the stash of morphine. Sits on the beach, high as a kite, and counts the cans like some sort of beach bum dragon curled around his gold, demanding that we ask him before we eat anything. I’ve thought about killing him, but each time I get ahold of myself and remember that’s a bit of your dark side in me trying to get out. Phil would just pop
back to life again anyway.

  Four hours.

  Our whole existence, for the rest of eternity, lived over and over inside the opening act of a hurricane.

  I don’t have much more time to write, because I have a plan. Graham’s got the gear ready to go, and he’s coming with me. We have to go back to the wreck, the USS Andrews, where this all started. We have to blow the second half of the machine, which lies inside a crate in the room with the rest of the depth charges. At least we don’t have to move them this time. Convenient.

  Felix is sitting beside me, and he’s crying. He doesn’t want me to go. He wants me to tell you he loves you, and he misses you. Mom is here too. She says she’s sorry, and you know what for. Ben and Steph both asked me to send a message to their parents, that they love them. Graham’s already suiting up. Everyone he knows back home died long ago.

  When I finish my last entry, I’m putting the journal in a dry bag from the charter, inflating a BC, rigging it together with a dive flag, and sending it to you. Mom thinks it’s a waste, but I don’t care. Even if it ends up on the bottom of the ocean, it’s okay. Besides, people don’t send a message in a bottle thinking someone will ever find it. People throw the bottle into the waves just to watch it float out to sea.

  And I want you to know one last thing, something I almost remembered inside the heart of that machine, covered in phosphorescence.

  That trip to South Carolina, when we walked the beach after sunset at low tide. I was six, and the sand glowed, soft and green.

  You told me the sand was alive, and you scooped it up into your palm. I looked closer and saw them. Tiny, each one. Small enough to fit on a fingertip. Thousands of little sea creatures, stranded, covering the beach for miles.

  The way I felt then, I feel it now. A little sad, watching them expire on the sand. But awed at how death could be so beautiful.

  The wind is picking up, so I have to go before the sea’s too rough to dive. And I’m excited, I want you to know, to be floating in space again, because you’ll be there with me. Always. Dear Mr. Gianopoulos: