Poppy is way above us already. The three divers are almost at the surface, along with the boy and the girl they’ve taken, now bundled struggling in white nets. Poppy’s legs thump powerfully; she is gaining on them.
I kick with all my strength. What the hell is she playing at, facing them alone?
One of the divers floats free and spins to face her. No.
He pulls out a gun and aims at Poppy. My heart stops. He’s so close. He’ll kill her.
Something white shoots from the end of the diver’s gun and another net, peppered with small weights at the edges, spreads out to enclose Poppy. The net draws tight, forcing her into a flailing ball.
I kick harder. I won’t let her go again.
The third diver aims his gun down at me and I dart out of the way, crashing into Sea Boy as a net shoots past us, missing its mark. Poppy and the others have already been hauled aboard.
I consider allowing myself to be caught; at least I’ll be with Poppy, but I can’t rescue her if I’m just as trapped as she is. What will Nygard do with her? She’s got gills, he can’t just let her drown on the surface; maybe he has a tank or something on the boat.
My mind races as I hover, staring upwards. Nygard wants us. Or at least our blood. Iona found all those samples, surely he won’t be satisfied with only three of us now he knows the rest are down here.
The last diver slips off his flippers and climbs the rungs of the ladder at the back of the boat. I wait for the engine to start, to find out I’m wrong and I’ve lost Poppy again.
Silence.
They aren’t leaving right away. We need to plan.
Sea Boy grasps my hand, and I allow him to guide me back to the wreck and down the side, then over a second drop-off. He sinks down, upright. This is now truly the dark pit at the centre of the atoll. There must be a fissure in the sea rock because there’s no sign of the bottom. The water around us is dark navy, and it sucks at my body as if it wants to drink me down its cold throat and swallow me.
Sea Boy halts my descent by gripping my upper arms. I gape up at the distant surface above, like crumpled foil; I’m mesmerized by the depth. Poppy is all the way up there. He leads me through some fern-like coral into a disguised cave opening. All the sea people are huddled together and their violet-blue bioluminescent globes illuminate a small cave.
My eyes dart around in dismay. We can’t stay here. If Nygard found the atoll, and then found us, he must have scanning equipment, sonar or radar, that can map underwater. But we can’t escape him and leave, not without Poppy and the other two Wildhaven kids.
A figure appears at the mouth of the cave. It is another scuba diver and this time the sea people are ready. They brandish knives, lengths of pipe and sharp shards of rock and surge towards the diver at the same moment I recognize the grey suit and the white of the writing slate. I dart in front of them, blocking their way, my hands raised.
It’s Iona.
The sea people whirl me aside as they surround her.
One boy jabs a spear inches from her face. Sea Boy hauls him back and there’s a struggle. The light is dim but catches on her silver-grey suit clearly now; they must realize who it is.
But these are the Wildhaven kids. The last time they saw Iona, she gassed them on the boat, and then somehow they ended up down here, with gills, hiding in the shipwreck. They’ve just seen three of their people captured and although they know Iona and Nygard had a disagreement at the camp, they don’t know the extent of it, and could think they are now working together again. They might kill her, and might kill me if I try to stop them. And then what will happen to Poppy?
Iona’s hand shakes as she draws out a pen and fumbles with the writing slate. She pauses. What can she write that would explain any of this?
It is almost like she catches my thought as she looks straight at me. I touch my gills. If Iona knew about the gills, would she have taught me to scuba dive?
Iona offers us the pen and slate.
Sea Boy swims up to her, snatches up the slate and scrawls on it, then points up. I read his words at an angle.
He took 3.
Sea Boy is holding back the questions he must have. He only needs to know if Iona can help. The others gather closer, weapons still drawn.
Iona reads what Sea Boy has written, then rubs it with her gloved hand. She writes something and turns it to show everyone.
I will help.
I see the steadiness of her eyes through the mask and remember the pufferfish nest in the lagoon. The huge complicated pattern made by the tiny fish. Nothing is impossible to Iona. We have a better chance against Doctor Nygard with Iona here.
But the sea people don’t trust her.
There is shifting in the water, more angry gestures. A group start to close in on her.
Iona strips off her dive mask and removes the regulator from her mouth. The sea people fall back, looking at each other, confused.
She unclips the rebreather unit at the chest and waist, shrugging herself free so the equipment floats behind her. I swim forward and meet my aunt’s eyes, but I don’t touch her. Her hands curl into fists and her eyes widen as she runs short of oxygen. I know that feeling far too well. But Iona doesn’t wait like I did; she witnessed this happening to me, she knows.
Words can’t convince the Wildhaven candidates that she is on their side. But maybe this can. She said she tested the treatment on herself first. Whatever has been done to us has also been done to her.
Iona’s whole body trembles as she pushes aside the grey material of her swimsuit to watch her gills open to the sea.
The sun sets, and the yacht doesn’t move. The only lights are at the wheelhouse. Beti and Sam sit on the canoe in silence, taking turns with the binoculars. Beti offers him some warm water from a foil bottle, then looks at him sideways. Sam gives her a tight smile. Even though he’s on a tiny boat with a stranger, exposed in the middle of nowhere, he feels more relaxed with Beti than he ever did on Nygard’s yacht.
Sam has been expecting Nygard to notice he’s gone, to remember the small boat is there, and come for them. But Sam isn’t important to the doctor. In fact he suspects he’s probably expendable.
When Nygard and his cronies hoisted the nets on board with three people struggling inside them, Sam and Beti had taken turns watching through the binoculars, helpless. He couldn’t believe he was seeing people dragged up from the ocean like fish, with no sign of scuba gear. Beti is almost as shocked as he is; she describes over and over what she saw earlier, how they rose from the water on the backs of huge fish, how they had lines across the tops of their chest for breathing.
Beti told him that Iona Wright had put the teenagers from the camp into hibernation on the seabed in order to cure them of a cancer gene, and that most of them woke early and can now breathe underwater. He would have thought she was delusional if it weren’t for the research he’d carried out on Iona and Nygard. Sam and Beti have pooled together what they know. Sam described the papers Iona wrote on hibernation and cancer-resistant animals. Seems Nygard decided he needed the kids’ blood for the mysterious Marisogen he was trialling with Granda. So Nygard and Iona fell out. Big time.
Sam wishes he had the internet now, so he could research how a geneticist could use blood to make a drug.
Beti interrupts his thoughts. ‘You were on board. Any idea how we could damage the yacht?’
Sam meets her eyes. ‘No clue, sorry. And they’re really well armed.’ They give each other a weak smile.
‘They haven’t left yet because they want to capture more of them – of us. Don’t they?’ says Beti.
Sam sighs.
‘Do you know anything that could help stop them?’ says Beti. When he meets her eyes they are so hopeful and expectant, he really wishes he did. He suddenly remembers the blog post he found about Nygard.
‘I don’t think it will help, but I read this thing. When Nygard was young he told people he found a prehistoric mermaid, but then said it was a hoax.’
&
nbsp; They stare at each other for a long moment.
‘And now there’s a load of people living beneath the sea, breathing underwater,’ says Beti.
He nods and stares back out at the yacht. ‘Not actually helpful now though, is it?’
Beti shakes her head and stands, hand on hips, the canoe rocking.
Before she says anything, Sam knows she’s going to go back. And if she’s going, he’s going with her.
Now the moon is nearly full, shining a pale gold path across the calm ocean. Sam and Beti row the sailing canoe as close as they dare to the gleaming white yacht, dipping their paddles carefully to make as little noise as possible. They swim the last stretch through inky waters, where Sam’s legs kick out in jerky spasms of fear. He never much liked being in deep water without a surfboard to hang on to, even in daylight.
The yacht looms above them. They haven’t been spotted; no torches are sweeping the water. Beti and Sam wait. When they are sure there is no sign of movement on deck, they swim to the ladder. A light shines from the wheelhouse, but the windows further back remain dark. Beti reaches the ladder first and turns, her eyes liquid in the moonlight.
‘We’ll try not to get ourselves killed, right?’ Sam whispers.
Beti smiles. She has a gap between her front teeth. ‘Good idea.’
She climbs up, waits for Sam to do the same, and they crouch together, dripping, behind the trunk that Sam knows contains weapons. No movement, so Sam peers around the box. The deck at the back of the boat is empty.
Beti edges towards the door at the back of the cabin. Sam follows, although nothing about sneaking back on to Nygard’s yacht in the dark is remotely sensible. They open the door and wait for a moment. There’s a low hum of voices coming from the wheelhouse at the far end, and a rim of light shines around the edge of the door. Sam has the urge to get closer, to try to hear what they are saying. But there’s another sound, muffled.
Beti thumps him on the arm and he turns to see a figure lying bundled on the sofa to his left, eyes wide open, a gag tight across her mouth. There’s another on the other side of the cabin, a boy. Both are in rags, their hair matted, wildness in their eyes. They are bound at the ankles and wrists with orange rope. Beti darts over to the girl and makes an exaggerated shhhh sign, finger to lips, then snips away the gag. The girl’s intake of breath seems too loud and Sam glances nervously at the wheelhouse door. When Beti begins to saw at the girl’s ropes, Sam does the same for the boy. There’s no sign of the third prisoner. Beti leads them out of the cabin. Sam follows and they stop still, crouching on the back deck. They can still hear voices coming from the wheelhouse, but by some miracle, they haven’t been detected. The boy and the girl shoot a curious look at Sam, then both grasp Beti in a tight hug, only for a second, but with an intensity that shows they know her well. They gesture to Beti’s chest and she shakes her head. Sam catches sight of the boy’s chest in the moonlight and gasps. Four diagonal grooves on each side of his upper torso, highlighted by shadow. The girl has the same. Sam knows it’s rude, but he can’t look away and has to stop himself leaning closer. Could those really be gills?
The girl beckons them in and whispers, her hands holding her chest and her voice slow and cracked. Her hand is coated with dark smudges. It looks like dried blood. She’s injured, but she doesn’t seem to notice it.
‘They have Poppy.’
‘Where?’ says Beti.
‘Through the door in the front,’ says the boy. Sam follows his pointing finger. He means the door from the cabin through to the wheelhouse.
‘You go to the others. We’ll get her,’ says Beti.
The boy and girl nod and pad across the back deck, flinching as if expecting a blow from above. As they pass the equipment box, Sam opens the catch and the boy meets Sam’s eyes with a tight nod. The boy and girl grab a bundle of vicious-looking metal harpoons, test the sharp ends on their thumbs and nod at each other, arming themselves. They slip down the ladder and into the sea without glancing back. Sam peers over the rail and stares at the ripples. They are gone. Swimming. Underwater. The lines on their chests really were gills. He shakes his head, trying to make the truth settle into his brain. Beti searches through the rest of the weapons. Ropes. Long knives in black coverings. A couple of gun-shaped weapons, one with a white web of netting hanging from the end. Sam takes the other net gun and tucks it in the back of his waistband, feeling like he’s playing at being James Bond while wearing board shorts.
But this isn’t funny. Teeth and Tan are dangerous and he knows now that Nygard is the most dangerous of them all.
Beti grabs a bundle of the equipment they aren’t using and drops it overboard. Sam winces at the splash but there’s still no movement from the front of the yacht so he scrapes up the last of the ropes and does the same – if these underwater people have friends below, they could use them.
Poppy is inside, with Nygard. Sam feels a vein pulse at his temple. Why has he separated the kid from the others? Maybe he’s already taking blood from her. Sam brought Nygard here, so it’s his responsibility to rescue her, but there’s no time to come up with a plan. Beti is already making her way back through the cabin and he shadows her, treading more carefully as they get closer. Sam grips the hilt of the knife, tight.
A hand across his mouth, a hiss in his ear: ‘Shhhhhh.’ He stumbles backwards into a solid wall of person. Beti whispers, ‘Iona!’
Something cold presses against his neck.
‘Iona. This is Sam – he’s helping.’
The woman releases him and he props himself up against the wall, hand at his neck as he realizes the coldness he felt there was the knife in her hand. Iona is as tall as he is and has short, black hair. Her dark eyes are heavily shadowed but still glint brightly against her brown skin. She wears the same grey suit as Beti.
Her chest. The top of her chest above the swimsuit has the dents in her skin that he saw on the boy and girl. The gills. He drags his eyes back up to her face. She is one of them.
‘Poppy is inside. With Nygard,’ says Beti.
Iona nods and leans forward. ‘You two go, now. I’ll talk to Nygard, get Poppy.’
Beti opens her mouth but Iona holds both her shoulders.
‘Go. I mean it.’
Beti nods. Iona watches as they tiptoe out of the cabin. They turn and she makes a shooing gesture. Then she opens the door to the wheelhouse and steps inside. It sways shut behind her.
Beti grabs Sam’s hand and squeezes it and he’s surprised by the feel of her warm skin, but in a good way.
‘I can’t leave them,’ she whispers. Sam shakes his head at her but at the same time remembers how those nets were hauled up the side of the yacht, the kids inside treated like cargo.
‘You can go if you want,’ she says.
Yeah right. He gives her a withering look, squeezes her hand back then drops it. They make their way back to the wheelhouse door. It swings ajar and they flatten themselves at the wall either side of it. Iona is talking to Nygard. Beti presses her finger to her lips. Sam gives her a sarcastic smile. Obviously.
‘If you let us all go now, no one need ever know what you did. You can get on with your life.’
Nygard releases an unpleasant laugh. ‘So you can claim my discovery as your own?’
‘I’m not claiming anything, Jonathan. No one can ever know about what we did. I’ll keep the candidates safe, then integrate them back into society when they are ready. These . . . genetic alterations can be hidden. We weren’t to know the lungfish code would have this effect.’
Now Nygard’s laugh is almost genuine. ‘You still think this is down to your little animal-splicing plan? It didn’t work, Iona! None of this is down to you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I did this. All of it. You simply provided the candidates to test it on.’
Silence.
Sam’s mouth drops open. The fossilized mermaid from the article.
Nygard raises his chin. ‘The animal D
NA was ineffective, at least in deactivating the cancer gene, although the hibernation seems to have functioned. Luckily for you, as you could have killed them all.’
‘There was no luck involved; I tracked their metabolism. I knew the hibernation was necessary for the therapy to work, and safe. I told you that.’
Nygard smiles and shakes his head. ‘You still have no idea, do you?’
‘Tell me,’ says Iona.
‘When I was a student I discovered an aquatic hominid fossil.’
Silence. The waves slap against the side of the boat.
‘Your prehistoric mermaid hoax?’ Iona whispers.
‘It was no hoax. I reported it, but when I realized the value of what I had, I covered it up. I retrieved fragments of her bone, and there was bone marrow inside. I extracted DNA. But the ice shelf shifted and Maris became impossible to reach. I’ve worked on her DNA ever since. Until you destroyed the last samples of it that I had stored at the lab.’
‘Maris is the mermaid fossil? You named ancient remains, yet you treat living human children like specimens.’
‘Come on, Iona. We both knew the Wildhaven kids were specimens.’
Sam chews the inside of his cheek. Maris is the fossil. Marisogen, his Granda’s therapy.
‘So you piggybacked my trial,’ says Iona.
‘You contacted me. You needed my help! Your trial had no effect, the cancer markers remained after the first batch of therapy. It was only once I added portions of Maris’s code that the cancer genes were deactivated.’
Sam tries to process what he is hearing. So Iona and Nygard were working together on this hibernation cancer cure but secretly Nygard added the mermaid thing.
Secret Deep Page 17