Secret Deep

by Lindsay Galvin

  I recognize some of them.

  Boy.

  Iona knows them. Before I fell, I heard her call out to them.

  Another boy – Darnell?

  White girl.

  The Wildhaven kids weren’t in the pods. They have gills.

  Girl with brown skin, not Poppy.

  Boy.

  I have gills.

  Boy – Dimi.

  Girl with black skin.

  That’s all of them. Eight plus Sea Boy.

  It’s a group of Wildhaven kids, about half of them. And Poppy’s not with them. Where are the others?

  Without thinking about it, my chest is gently sucking water in and easing it out.

  I focus on Sea Boy, still gripping my arm. One of the kids swims down and slices through the rope holding me to the anchor. I rise up out of the kelp.

  I’m free, I’m flying, I’m impossible.

  Sea Boy is wearing the remnants of the grey suit we arrived in, the suit I am wearing now, but only the ragged torso of it, arms cut off. I reach out with one finger and touch the zip, low between his ribs. I feel the warmth of the water leaving his gills and snatch my hand back.

  I remember the glove I found on the mangrove island: worn, old, disintegrating. It must have belonged to one of the Wildhaven kids.

  How long have they been here?

  A lot longer than ten days.

  A clicking sound disrupts my thoughts. It’s the same sound Sea Boy made when he called the manta ray. The girl with the red hair works her jaw, and a manta ray speeds towards her. Now the others are also clicking – whirling on to their mantas, sweeping away.

  Above, a figure descends through the kelp towards me, tubes curling from her mouth. Iona in her scuba gear.

  Sea Boy tries to shake free of me but I grip his arm tighter. He points to the surface and to his ear. I can’t hear anything and I refuse to let him go. He must know where Poppy is, and I plead with my eyes, mouth her name. His face crumples but he shakes his head as he peels my hand off his wrist. Iona drifts clumsily down towards me.

  Sea Boy’s manta ray sweeps up to him and he mounts. I struggle to keep upright in the turbulence from the huge fish then strike out towards him. The others are disappearing towards the centre of the atoll, and he follows.

  I race after him, even though I know it’s hopeless. I try to build some speed in my butterfly kick, but the seawater flowing through my open mouth is disorientating. I’ll never catch Sea Boy, and then I will never find Poppy.

  I stop to stare as he banks around and heads back to me. He slows enough so I can grasp him around the waist and I cling on tight as his manta races after the others, now long gone into the darker blue. I turn my head to see Iona, imprisoned in her bulky dive gear, attempting to follow. The boat is a tiny silhouette above her.

  And there’s something else now: a growling sound that hums through the water, vibrating my skull.

  Sam pushes open the door to the wheelhouse at the front of the yacht. It’s also called the bridge, and is where all the high-tech boat controls live with screens for navigation and whatever else. All three men now wear black wetsuits and are staring at the sonar system, a dark screen with flashing dots. He’s seen Tan and Teeth use it for tracking schools of fish.

  ‘They’ve stopped. We are directly above them,’ says Nygard. Tan pulls on a lever and the engine dies.

  Sam swallows. ‘Shouldn’t we be going back to the people on that small boat? One of them could be Iona – couldn’t they? They might be in trouble.’

  Nygard turns and gives Sam a smile. ‘Sam, we’ll check out the boat shortly. I’d like you to stay below deck for a couple of hours. We’ve got this under control.’ He pauses and dips his chin to meet Sam’s eyes. ‘Remember Marisogen and your grandfather.’

  Sam shakes his head and points at the screen. ‘Got what under control? What are you looking at?’

  Tan turns to Nygard. ‘Want me to lock him in his cabin? Be my pleasure.’

  Nygard looks thoughtful, and when he doesn’t say no, Sam feels tingles of fear run up and down his spine. He knows for sure now that he made a huge mistake coming here, bringing this man here. Those three people out on the boat must be who Nygard has been looking for all this time, but now he isn’t interested. It makes no sense.

  Tan takes a step towards Sam with raised eyebrows and when Sam jumps back, he smirks. Sam blinks at Nygard. Isn’t he going to say anything when the guy is threatening him? But the smile on Nygard’s face is fixed and although he is looking at Sam, it’s like he sees straight through him.

  Sam holds up both hands. ‘Fine. I’ll stay out of your way,’ he says.

  He backs out of the wheelhouse and through the cabin behind it. He glances down at the steps leading to his cabin. Whatever the hell they are all up to, Nygard doesn’t want Sam to see it, which means it is nothing good. At the stern of the boat Teeth opens a box containing harpoons and nets. Sam ducks and waits for him to choose a selection of hunting gear and pass around the other side of the cabin. Sam steps outside, flattens himself against the outside wall, and raises the binoculars. He locates the small boat. Now the girl is alone again – the two scuba divers who were with her are gone.

  A splash in the water. Sam darts to the corner of the cabin to peer around. Teeth is overboard now, fully kitted in his scuba gear and with two harpoons at his back. He touches his hand on his head to show he’s OK. Nygard and Tan are also kitting up next to the wheelhouse door at the far end of the yacht. Teeth tips forward in the water and disappears with a flash of flipper.

  Sam tucks back around the corner. What are they doing underwater with all those harpoons?

  The urge to get away is overwhelming but there is nowhere to go.

  Except one place, but that’s . . . nuts.

  Back in the cabin, Sam skips down the stairs below deck, stuffs his few belongings into his dry bag, and sneaks back up the stairs. His heart pulses in his throat. What the hell is he doing?

  He stares once more through the binoculars. The girl is still there on the boat, crouching down to look over the side.

  Sam grabs a lifebuoy from a hook by the ladder at the stern of the yacht. He’ll tow it behind him in case he gets cramp or something. It is silent on board. All three men must now be beneath the water. He’s never seen Nygard scuba dive before.

  The feeling in Sam’s stomach is more like a flock of trapped birds than butterflies. He climbs down the steel ladder and slides into the water. The sun is low in the sky, but he’ll definitely get to her before sunset. He has to.

  The sea is cool, not cold, but the girl’s boat is further than it looks. If she decides to sail away he’ll be alone in the middle of the atoll, too far from any of the islands, and he can’t imagine Nygard will send a rescue party. He forces himself on, wishing he’d put more effort into swim training rather than obsessing about bikes. His shoulders burn with the effort, but he closes in on her slowly. He changes to breaststroke and tries not to think about the dark depths below him and what could be lurking down there. Finally he swims the last few metres to her boat and grabs on to one of the hulls. He rests his head on his arm, coughing and panting.

  The girl glares down at him, machete drawn. She has an oval face with a slim nose and a wide mouth. The muscles on her arms gleam, and she looks like she knows how to use a weapon.

  ‘Hey. I’m Sam,’ he says between gasped breaths. ‘I came here to try to find some people. Aster and Poppy and their aunt, Iona.’

  The girl’s eyes widen in surprise then narrow suspiciously. ‘You came from that yacht.’

  ‘There’s a doctor. I was with him, kind of, but . . . I’m not with him any more.’

  The girl squares her shoulders and raises her chin.

  ‘What doctor?’ she says.

  ‘It’s a doctor who was treating my Granda at a hospital in Gisborne, New Zealand. He also worked at a camp in the bush. East coast—’

  ‘Wildhaven. It’s Doctor Nygard,’ whispers the girl,
pressing a fist to her lips.

  ‘He has this drug Marisogen that was helping my Granda, and he said he could make more if he found Iona, so I helped find this place. But I . . . I think I made a big mistake.’

  She nods. ‘Huge mistake. Give me one reason why I should let you on board if you brought him here?’ she says.

  ‘Because I jumped off the shiny yacht and swam over here, probably through shark-infested waters, because I’m scared of him and I know shouldn’t have brought him here. I want to help.’

  The girl purses her lips.

  ‘Not being funny, but would it be OK to carry on this convo aboard? My dangling legs probably look like shark bait.’

  The girl sighs and steps back, lowering the machete. Sam hauls himself up and crawls to the centre of the wooden boat. He flops down. It is so good to be out of the water.

  ‘I’m Beti. Aster and Iona are down there. Somewhere,’ she says. She bites her lip to stop it trembling and gestures out towards the centre of the atoll. ‘Aster fell in, Iona went after her with spare scuba gear, but they haven’t surfaced. The others from Wildhaven are underwater. They have . . .’ She indicates her chest. ‘You have to see it to understand.’

  Sam frowns, trying to make sense of this. He remembers the dots Nygard was tracking on the sonar screen. ‘O-kay, are they all scuba diving?’

  Beti shakes her head, exasperated. ‘You don’t understand. Iona brought us here to get us away from Nygard.’

  ‘Why?’ says Sam.

  There’s a long pause, then Beti meets his eyes and hers are a rich brown, the whites reddened by tears. But her jaw clenches and her gaze is steady.

  ‘He wants us. He wants our blood,’ says Beti.

  Sam curses, apologizes, then curses again. Could it be their blood that Nygard needs for the Marisogen therapy? No. Way.

  Beti frowns at him. ‘It’s only been ten days. You didn’t take long to find us.’

  Sam doesn’t understand. She’s only been here ten days? Maybe she is nothing to do with Iona, Aster and Poppy. No – she has to be.

  ‘Beti – it was nine months ago I met those girls on the plane. I found the camp burnt a week later, and saw Nygard there poking around in the ashes. I found Poppy’s phone on the beach. I’d nearly forgotten about it, when the same guy turned up at my Granda’s hospital bed and I recognized him.’

  Beti murmurs to herself. ‘The hibernation. They woke up, and we must have still been asleep in the container. For nine months. That is why they look so strange.’

  Beti gasps, hands at her face, eyes wide as she stares at the yacht.

  ‘The four of us were in hibernation for nine months and they were living . . . under the sea?’

  The manta ray, Sea Boy and I are riding darts away from Iona so fast I can’t see where we are going, and can barely keep hold around his waist. They’ve left her behind and I think I understand why. She did this to Sea Boy and the others. I grip tightly to my own forearms, hook my legs around his, and press my cheek between his shoulder blades. My mind speeds over the possibilities as quickly as the water speeds through my mouth and out through the gills at my chest and neck. If Sea Boy and the others are from Wildhaven then they must have been down here in the water longer than we were on land. Their clothes are ragged, and they are completely at home underwater. They’ve learnt to ride manta rays.

  Hibernation. We must have been in the pods longer than they were; it’s the only answer.

  After trusting Poppy was on Halo West, then that she was in the container, I can’t now believe she’s one of these sea people. What if something happened to her?

  My chest cramps with fear.

  We’ve only been on the manta ray a few minutes when it slows abruptly, rearing up, wings flapping. Sea Boy drops free with me still wrapped around his back. I release him, kicking and circling my arms to orientate myself. When we were moving, the water rushed through my gills, but now my chest rises and falls more slowly than it would normally to ease the heavy sea water in and out. I run my fingers over my chest. Unbelievable.

  Slices of sunlight cut through the ever-moving surface far above, but the blue around us is dark. The manta ray has taken us deep. There is no sign of the other eight sea people; they travelled faster than we did. Sea Boy grips my arm and points down.

  We are at the edge of the drop-off. About six metres below us is an uneven shelf.

  I stare in disbelief as the shape resting on the ledge starts to make sense to me.

  A shipwreck.

  It is camouflaged against the backdrop, as if it’s been dipped into a lumpy green-brown batter. It’s the Deep Retreat. But it’s so overgrown, it can’t be; it hasn’t been down there long enough to look like that. How long was I in hibernation?

  I meet Sea Boy’s eyes, questioning, but he is already pointing back at the surface, indicating his ear and shaking his head. He makes a cutting motion across his throat, then with his smooth dolphin kick, he shoots down the cliff face towards the shipwreck.

  The low growl vibrates through my skull rather than my ears. It could be an engine although I can’t see anything on the surface. I look into the distance for Iona. If she is following alone, then she must be far behind us and the rebreather cylinder only lasts four hours. My kit is on the boat but Beti didn’t learn to dive. She’s on the boat, alone.

  Sea Boy hovers above the wreck. I spin to face downwards and circle my jaw, releasing the pressure in my face and ears as I sweep down to join him. It can’t be safe for humans to swim this deep. Darkness passes over me and I look up.

  A block of shadow with a pointed end. It was a ship we’ve been hearing. Whoever is steering must somehow have tracked us here, or detected the wreck with equipment. I can’t tell from this deep how big the vessel is.

  I kick powerfully towards Sea Boy and he pulls me the last few metres down to the wreck, which is coated in a thick layer of barnacles, shellfish, and fuzzy weed. Can Sea Boy and the others really be living here, inside the wreck of the Deep Retreat?

  I had thought the light was colourless and ghostly at the container, but this is another level; the violet-blue orbs tied to Sea Boy’s shoulders provide the only light. He gestures to an opening in the top deck. I look up. The shadow of the boat is directly over the shipwreck and this feels like the last place we should be right now. I shake my head and when I meet Sea Boy’s eyes I see fear, but also determination – he feels he has no choice. And nor do I if there’s any chance Poppy is inside this sunken ship. When Sea Boy swims inside, I am right behind him.

  At first it seems pitch-dark and I almost reach out for Sea Boy, but my eyes adjust. The water is cold in my lungs, and tastes faintly metallic. We are in the cabin. The windows are dulled with algae and other sea life but a dim light comes from more of the bioluminescent globes, which hang along the cabin walls. I turn. The door is wedged ajar, the same door I tried to wrench open, where I beat my fists as white mist billowed around me. This is the cabin where Iona released the gas; the last place I was with Poppy, holding her in my arms as she slumped into unconsciousness. My chest cramps. Sea Boy offers his hand, and I take it. We glide like ghosts above the rows of chairs – where Poppy and I had sat when we thought we were taking a day trip. Cool water floods through my gills, clearing my head. A red and white spotted fish with tentacles – a cuttlefish I think – shoots past us. Figures loom into sight at the end of the cabin. A circle of sea people gesture to each other with expansive arm movements, like a large-scale sign language.

  They see me, fall still, and turn. I kick closer, searching for Poppy.

  Doubt bubbles up.

  Can they really be the kids from Wildhaven, or do I have this all wrong?

  A small figure streams towards me, whirling the others out of the way.

  Her hair splays around her face in narrow cords, pale at the ends.

  I can’t believe it.

  I look into her dark, deep-set eyes.

  Her cheekbones catch the violet light from the orbs at he
r shoulder. My sister.

  She’s alive. Nothing else matters, it is Poppy.

  She reaches for me at the same moment I reach for her, and I dig my fingers into the warm muscle of her shoulders – muscle she didn’t have before – making myself believe she is real. She grasps my jaw almost roughly and surveys my face, her brows low.

  Her lips move. You.

  I nod and feel my hot tears leak into the sea. I clasp her to me tight, and we spin, chests heaving; the warm water from our gills mingling.

  I’ve got her. Now I need to get her out of here—

  Clang.

  A clash of metal against metal judders through the water. Poppy and I cling to each other as we stare up at the ceiling of the ship, then she breaks free of me and whips out a knife. Sea Boy darts forward, signalling for the others to gather round.

  The sound again, as if the deck is being bashed with something.

  Shiny silver rams through the clouded window at the side of the cabin, shattering the glass with a crackling sound like an ice cube dropped in water. I haul Poppy back by the shoulder, kicking out as a figure, bulky with scuba equipment, enters through the window at the same moment as glass breaks on the other side of the cabin. The diver regards me through the mask. His eyes are colourless down here but at the surface they would be pale turquoise.

  Nygard.

  There are now two scuba divers, one either side of us. Another shadow looms at the door, blocking the way.

  A boy has been caught around the neck. The weapons are wrenched out of his hands, and he is dragged kicking out of the window. I grip Poppy’s shoulders more tightly and another girl swims forward, her knife catching the light from the globe at her shoulder. I recognize her as the girl I saw doing yoga at Wildhaven. A flash of silver. The same metal harpoon that broke the window. Nygard has it across her neck and hauls her backwards. The girl kicks but is powerless to escape, clutching the harpoon and cutting her hands on its sharp barbs.

  I taste iron on my tongue. Her blood clouds the water.

  Before anyone can move, the girl is wrenched out of the broken window. Poppy kicks free of me and spins to Sea Boy with an angry gesture. I try to get hold of her again, but she is too quick for me. She grabs the harpoon left by the first diver and shoots out of the window. When I follow, Sea Boy pulls me back by the waist but I draw my machete, shaking my head. Our eyes connect with understanding. There’s no way I will leave Poppy. He releases me and draws a black spine from behind his shoulder. When I swim out of the broken window of the shipwreck, he is right behind me.