My skin tingles; waves crash inside my ears.
The door of the pod is on the same sort of spring as the hatch and closes when she releases it.
She points to herself and to me. Yes. We knew there were four empty ones, ours plus Callum and Beti’s. She quickly pulls open the next three. And then we both see it, the beams of our torches criss-crossing. The next pod is also ajar.
Iona and I hold each other tight, forearm-to-forearm, in the dark. All I can hear is the container’s hum and my own hissing breaths through the regulator in my mouth.
It doesn’t matter that the power is on, that the hatch is undisturbed; the technology malfunctioned anyway.
The hibernation pods have become coffins.
This whole box is a group tomb.
I detach myself from Iona because I have to know. If this experiment failed and they are all dead, I need to see for myself, no matter how bad it is. My torch flicks erratically around the container as I kick across to the gaping pod and haul it open.
Empty.
No Poppy.
I fling open the next and the next. Empty, all of them empty, but I can’t stop until I have opened every single one. Then I scan across the ceiling, the floor. Iona swims to the wall on my right, next to the last pod and starts feeling along the wall. She locates a notch and opens a small door to reveal a control panel; each button and lever dimly lit. It looks basic, military. Three large handle levers in a row at the top: one red, one blue, one black. Below them are rows of metal flip switches like you might expect to see in the cockpit of a plane. I hover closer. On a small digital screen at the top is the number 276. Iona shakes her head. I don’t know what it means of course, because I’ve never known what any of this means.
All I know is Poppy isn’t dead.
Because Poppy isn’t here.
Sam’s eyes flicker open and it takes a moment to remember that he’s aboard Nygard’s yacht. The doctor calculated that the only place along that precise line of longitude that was plausible was a tiny uninhabited atoll in an isolated stretch of the South Pacific. They should reach the coordinates today.
Sam didn’t like lying to his parents about where he was going. Mum and Dad think he’s with a couple of mates for the spring break, riding the mountain trails, camping in the bush. He’s done that kind of thing before and warned them he probably wouldn’t have a signal or charge on his mobile, but he’s only got a week left before they start to worry. He hopes he’ll be back by then.
He peers out of the small window in his cabin. The sea is calm, the sky the deep blue before dawn. The muffled voices of Nygard and his cronies come through the thin ceiling. He’s grown to intensely dislike the two men Nygard has hired. They are cousins; around Nygard’s age with matching gelled-back dark hair. One is tanned and wrinkled as a walnut and the other has teeth that are far too white. Nygard did tell him their names, but Sam thinks of them as Tan and Teeth. They think of nothing but hunting. Birds, fish, turtles – no living thing is safe, and they have a freaky array of harpoons and knives. When the yacht slows, they pull on black wetsuits and snorkel gear and go diving. The first day they caught a huge sailfish with a beautiful rainbow fin and left it thrashing on deck for ten minutes before Nygard finally whacked the poor thing over the head.
Teeth and Tan don’t think much of Sam either, they can’t get a grasp on his lack of enthusiasm for death. He’s tried to stay out of their way and the yacht is big enough that it’s just about possible. Nygard himself is polite to Sam, and whenever they talk his eyebrows still tilt up in the middle in that trustworthy way. But he hasn’t given a straight answer to a single one of Sam’s questions about what the plan is if they actually find Iona. He’s determined to retrieve his research, but how?
There’s a knot in Sam’s stomach, and it has been steadily tightening.
He sometimes hears his Granda’s voice. You can tell a lot about a bloke from who he hangs out with. Steer well clear, kiddo.
Why did Nygard bring him at all? Sam made that halfhearted attempt to threaten exposing his work if he didn’t take him. He also left a note in his desk drawer with the coordinates of the island and Nygard’s name, so that if he didn’t come back, his parents would be sure to search his room and find it. At the time this had seemed smart but now – not so much. When Nygard gets what he came for he could throw Sam overboard and disappear, change his name, never return to New Zealand.
Sam sometimes catches Nygard looking at him and has the unsettling impression that he hasn’t decided what to do with him. Yet.
Sam pulls on a T-shirt and stumbles up the stairs and out on to the deck. The approaching sunrise is a bleached-out patch of blue on the horizon. For the last few days it’s begun to feel like there is nothing but this. Half the world is sea, the other half is sky, and Nygard’s yacht is a speck riding the line in between. Sam scratches his chin. He forgot his razor in the rush to leave, and has a surprising amount of blond stubble. All his factor 30 sun cream is finished, and his hair feels like straw from the hours spent on deck. In the cabin’s bathroom mirror he barely looks like himself.
By mid-afternoon, Sam is shirtless in the roiling heat, a floppy fisherman’s hat on his head. His eyes water from staring into the binoculars.
He follows the dark line of the horizon for the thousandth time. No sign of land.
He drops the binoculars so they rest on his chest and flops down on one of the padded benches on the rear deck. The yacht is set up for luxury cruises – probably involving harpoon hunting – with faux-leather seats, polished wooden decking, everything else either gleaming white or chrome. He rolls flat on his back, pulling down the brim of his hat, resting his eyes. Every muscle aches. Bright blobs travel across the back of his eyelids.
Teeth calls out, ‘We have visuals.’
Sam springs up and rams the binoculars into the bridge of his nose. An unevenness at the horizon. A break in the flat sea. The atoll.
They pass through the channel between the nearest two islands and Nygard directs all of them to search for signs of life on the beaches with their binoculars. There’s nothing on the first two islands. They pass closer to each one and scan the sand for footprints, the tree line for hammocks, or signs of man-made construction of any kind. They seem untouched. Nygard wears a loose, blue shirt and khaki shorts. His dark baseball cap is pulled low, and his eyes glint beneath the brim.
It is Tan’s turn to call out. ‘Unidentified object at twelve o’clock.’
Sam rolls his eyes. These guys speak like military wannabes, but it’s pretty obvious neither has ever been in the armed forces. Sam walks along the side of the cabin to the front of the boat, scanning the horizon. He spots a tiny dark speck, aims his binoculars, and fiddles with the focus dial. A boat? Way out here, in the middle of this uninhabited atoll, is a sailing boat.
The engine revs and as they close in on the boat, it becomes clear how tiny it actually is; a wooden canoe with two hulls and one sail in between and a single person on deck.
Sam can’t hear what Nygard and the others are saying over the roaring engine. He watches the boat with a sick feeling in his stomach, more than simple anticipation. He brought Nygard and these two trigger-happy jokers out here with no clue of what they’ve actually got planned.
Nygard joins him as the yacht draws closer to the sailing boat, which isn’t attempting to move, the sail flapping pointlessly in the wind. It looks like the person on deck is a black girl or woman, wearing a grey wetsuit and a straw hat. She’s facing away. Nygard’s binoculars are high spec, very powerful, and Sam guesses she doesn’t even know they are there, unless she has similar equipment.
As Sam watches, two more figures flop aboard the sailing boat. It looks like they’re rigged in black scuba gear. Where the hell did they come from?
Nygard calls out. ‘Slow down. Turn on the sonar and scan the area. And get kitted up.’
Back on board the sailing canoe, I strip off the scuba mask and mouthpiece and crumple under the weigh
t of the rebreather backpack, without the water to support it on my back. For a few seconds I lie there, cheek against the warm wood of the deck, listening to Iona tell Beti that the others weren’t in the container. Then I sit up and unfasten the buckles at my waist and chest, shrugging free from the kit. I take a grateful gulp of the water Beti offers me, even though I feel sick with anxiety.
Poppy wasn’t at the island, she isn’t in the container. Iona doesn’t know where my sister is and I can’t bear to hear her admit it.
‘Then where are they?’ says Beti. Her voice is abrupt and she folds her arms. I sense her last threads of faith in Iona dissolving, and it shakes me.
Iona swigs water and swipes a hand over her face. ‘The guidance systems in the life jackets are programmed to find land—’
I interrupt as a thought enters my head: ‘The number on that control panel thing – 276 – what does that mean?’
Iona doesn’t get a chance to reply. The boat lurches, and we all crouch to keep our balance. Beti crawls to the edge and peers over.
‘Did you see that? Something in the water – there.’
I spin around. A dark shadow beneath the surface. More than one. Seven, eight, no – nine shapes, gliding together in a group, almost a formation.
Beti skips to the platform at the back. ‘Might be a pod of dolphins. No, look – they’re diamond-shaped.’
I spot the rippling white undersurfaces of their huge wings. Manta rays. Is it Sea Boy? If so, then he’s not alone.
‘Wait. It’s—’
Iona voice interrupts me, calm. ‘The two of you haul up the anchor, then be ready at the tiller.’ She is already shaking the sail so the woven reeds crackle. ‘They’re pretty big; we don’t want to be capsized.’
The manta rays sweep back and forth alongside us. Beti and I haul the rock we’ve been using as anchor up on deck and the boat surges forward.
A squatting figure bursts out of the water.
Sea Boy. He flicks black hair from his eyes and crouches low on the back of the manta ray, using one hand to balance, his feet covered by the lapping waves. Others surface behind him. Eight more, crouching on the backs of the manta rays as they skim the surface. All have the same dark slices of gills at the top of their chests. They wear rags and are armed with knives, black spears, and slim white harpoons.
I’m aware of Iona and Beti’s voices, but can’t make out what they are saying.
Sea Boy tilts his head as he looks at me and waves his arm at the others behind him, gesturing for them to lower their weapons.
At Sea Boy’s shoulder there is a brown-skinned girl with ragged, red dreadlocks interwoven with shells. Puckered scars dot her stomach. When she raises a handful of sea urchin spines, my hand darts to my knife. I lock eyes with her – and I know I’ve locked eyes with this girl before. In the cabin of the Deep Retreat, with the gas swirling around us. How can this be the same girl?
Beti calls out, ‘Sunee? Talal?’
Beti knows them. From Wildhaven, but they can’t be. These aren’t the students I last saw in the boat cabin, dressed in the grey suits, excited about a snorkelling trip – these are sea people, riding on manta rays.
The boy next to Sea Boy holds a length of wood with a shard of glass embedded in the end, glinting in the sun. Are they attacking us? My mind is working too slowly. I see more familiar faces but no names spring to mind. I raise both of my hands, palms out.
Threat fizzles like electricity in the air.
My eyes switch back to Sea Boy.
Iona scrambles across to grasp the rope, and the boat catches the wind and lurches towards Sea Boy and the others. She calls out more names and at the same time, the rock we’re using as an anchor rolls across the deck and hits my foot hard. I yelp and stagger back, and the rope it is attached to tangles around my ankle. I try to catch my balance but I’m right at the edge of the deck, arms wheeling. I tumble backwards into the water and surface, spluttering. Beti crouches above on deck, only a metre away, and she stretches out her hand to me, calling my name in panic. I kick hard and strain my fingers towards hers. Then something constricts around my lower leg and I am yanked down without a chance to gasp a breath.
I reach out for the surface as the anchor drags me down, spinning deeper and deeper.
Ikick and kick, trying to free myself from the rope but it only winds tighter around my ankle. I can’t see through the clouds of bubbles. Are we still above the drop-off or has the boat drifted to the deeper water in the centre of the atoll?
The rock answers me by landing with a thud on the seabed. I jerk up, like I’m on a reverse bungee, and then hang there tethered by the rope at my ankle. I see dark, waving brown. I’m at the edge of the kelp forest and I look up through the fronds. The rays of sunlight are cut through by the silhouette of the rope binding me to the boat. I’ll have run out of air by the time Iona gets her dive gear back on.
Every fibre of my body wants to struggle and thrash my way free, but I force myself to fall still. My chest is constricted; all my air has already gone in the panic.
My knife.
I grab it, sunlight glinting off the blade.
I will cut myself free. I can do this.
Reach. Kick. Breathe.
Yes, Mum. I know.
I jack-knife down, fronds of kelp brushing my face. The yellow nylon rope is thin but very strong, and is wrapped twice around my ankle. I aim for the section of rope below where it is drawn taut, swinging from side to side. My blade slips up and down a few times before I manage to make a notch and start sawing, strands of rope springing free. My lungs burn; I saw faster and another thread of the rope pings free. I’m over halfway through, got to keep going. But black spots creep across my vision, my hand trembles. Panic surges through my body.
I’m not alone. Sea Boy appears through the kelp fronds. I meet his eyes, beseeching.
Help me.
He shakes his head once, shoots forward and grabs my wrist, stopping my hand.
Stopping me cutting myself free.
I writhe in his grip, and remember when we were below the jellyfish. Once he got hold of me – he was so strong. I twist, my spare hand finds purchase on a thick kelp root and I kick out my free leg, my heel connecting hard with his stomach. Sea Boy releases my wrist and spins into the kelp doubled over in pain. I’ve dropped my knife, it’s out of reach.
I’m going to breathe in water; this is it, finally it.
Reach.
I reach across to my other hip and draw my machete. I’m not finished yet—
Someone yanks the weapon from my grip.
The sea people hover all around me now. Not sea people – the kids from Wildhaven. But that can’t be true because why would they watch me drown like this? Sea Boy reaches out a hand as if to reassure me and I don’t get this – he stopped my escape. I shake my head and wheel backwards and then my body convulses, ankle jerking at the rope. I have to get free.
Reach. Kick. Breathe.
I’m underwater, Mum!
Breathe.
The kelp parts and the sun shoots a halo of shards.
Mum, I can’t. I give a silent wail and the extent of my grief engulfs me. I lost Poppy and I can’t do it any of this without you. Mum – come back please! I need you now . . .
Her voice again. Breathe.
I have no choice. I suck in the sea in a long murderous gulp. The water invades my nose, my throat, my chest and every muscle tenses in anticipation of the pain, of the end.
Nothing. Silence.
The sea is salty and cool, heavy and so very wrong inside me.
I’ve drowned. Finally, after everything, I’ve drowned.
So why doesn’t it hurt?
I open my eyes. Sea Boy’s hands are wrapped around both my clenched fists. He meets my gaze and then nods to my chest.
I look down.
Adrenaline hits and I claw at the fabric of my swimsuit, pulling it lower.
My skin.
Indentations have appeared
, slim channels between my ribs growing deeper and pinker. It is as if an invisible knife is slicing the skin open from the centre of my chest to the outside of my ribs. There is no blood. It hurts, but in a new way, like scratching an itch a little too hard. Panic thuds through my veins, flashes across my skin. I cycle my free leg and flail out. Instinct overrides every other thought. I need air, light, the surface. What I’m seeing isn’t real.
The black spots join and spread until everything is dark.
My eyes spring open to find my chin tilted back, firm fingers at my jaw, and a face very close to mine, his lips hovering over my mouth. I instinctively push hard against Sea Boy’s chest. My ribcage drops and water passes out of the slits at my chest. I touch my – gills? – feeling the warm puffs of exhaled water.
And my chest rises, bringing in a fresh inhalation of sea . . . I am breathing. Underwater.
Sea Boy’s eyebrows arch high, his face a mask of concern.
Time is suspended.
He knew. Beneath the jellyfish he knew this was possible. He wasn’t trying to drown me.
He knew I couldn’t drown.
I hold out my shaking hand to him. He grips my forearm and I grip his. I steady myself and stare around me at the others. Poppy, where is Poppy? Oxygen from the water hits my brain, new connections firing.
The girl with the red hair collects my machete and knife from the seabed and hands them to me. I slot them back into my belt with trembling fingers.
Sunee. I nod my thanks to her.
I scan each of the underwater people, searching for Poppy’s face as I try to work out what this all means. They look so different: muscled, ragged and fierce.
Secret Deep Page 15