The Quest for the Kid

by Adrienne Kress

  “What was that?” she asked in a panic. It was like when she’d seen the baby shark in the tank. Only this was a really big thing with big teeth, and the explorers were trapped underwater in a can.

  “It’s him,” said Catherine softly.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Benedict.

  Evie was tossed forward then as a loud bang sounded from above her somewhere, and the entire ship shook, tossing her and the rest of the gang around in their seats. She heard stumbling behind her as the men in black fell to the floor. Sebastian! Her grandfather! She turned to look. They had both fallen onto one of the couches, a mess of arms and legs.

  “Evasive action, Jason,” said Catherine.

  “Already on it,” replied the Kid.

  Evie watched as the Kid, with a hand on each lever, started pushing and pulling. She could feel the movement of the ship as they turned, the air pressure inside shifting and giving her a bit of a headache.

  “No!” Her grandfather was suddenly there, right by the Kid, grabbing the lever on the right and pushing down hard.

  “Stop it, Alistair!” said Catherine.

  “Just keep diving. It can’t follow us!” Alistair pushed harder. Evie felt herself being shoved back into her seat by what seemed like an invisible hand.

  They dove and dove into the blackness.

  “Stop it!” she heard herself call out. “Grandfather, please, stop!”

  Alistair didn’t seem to hear her. He just kept driving them deeper and deeper, faster and faster.

  This time the beast didn’t even attempt to swim over them. It appeared out of nowhere once again, flying up at them, it seemed, as fast as they were diving down to it. The large teeth were bared and coming right for the window. It crashed right into the glass, causing the entire submarine to spin and shift, and causing Evie to close her eyes and hold on to the armrests of her seat as hard as she could.

  There was another bang from on top of the ship. And another. They whirled and shook, and Evie was feeling really sick to her stomach now. Then there was a loud cracking noise. Like something within the cabin itself had split in half.

  “Hang on, everyone,” yelled the Kid.

  And she wasn’t sure she could hold any tighter, but she did.

  The air pressure in the cabin got so heavy that she thought she might pass out. She kept her eyes closed and had a sense the ship was engaged in some kind of chase, attempting to outrun the beast, going deeper and deeper and deeper…

  And finally.

  There was stillness.

  And there was something in the stillness that felt even scarier than all the chaos.

  Evie opened her eyes. Catherine and Benedict were still in their chairs, their hair a mess, and they appeared exhausted. She imagined she looked pretty much the same. The Kid was slumped over the console, breathing so hard that she could see his shoulders rising and falling. He eased himself up into his chair and rubbed his neck. With his other hand he pushed a couple of buttons on the dash, hit the autopilot, and fell back into his chair with a sigh of relief.

  Where was her grandfather? Evie undid her seat belt and rose. It took her a moment to see him lying to the side of the console. He looked like a rag doll, in a heap, next to the window. She gasped and rushed over to him.

  “Grandfather?” she asked, placing a hand carefully on his arm. When she did, he let out a moan, soft and low, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  And then. She remembered.

  Sebastian.

  She was on her feet in a rush, staggering toward the back of the room. Evie gasped. The men in black were in a painful-looking lump to one side, tangled up in each other’s limbs, some limbs not facing entirely the correct direction. Behind them the large oak table was splintered in two, pieces of it flung this way and that.

  “Sebastian!” she cried, not able to see him in the mess.

  She listened closely for something, anything.

  “Evie.”

  She heard it. She looked around hard and finally saw a leg sticking out from beneath the table. She ran over to it, yelling “Help!” as she did.

  Instantly she was joined by the Kid, Catherine, and Benedict. Together they dug through the remains of the table. Finally Catherine pulled a massive section of it up, the strain of it causing her to cry out, and she threw it to the side.

  There he was. Sebastian. Bruised and battered.

  “Evie,” he said again.

  “I’m here,” she replied, reaching for his hand and holding it. Only then did she notice the large table-leg-sized splinter of wood piercing him through his middle.

  Sebastian had experienced a lot of pain over the last few weeks. Sore muscles, bruised body. At one point, he seemed to recall, he’d fallen from a helicopter into a tree. But up until this moment he’d never been in the kind of pain that hurt so much that he didn’t actually feel anything.

  He was a little aware of what had happened. He knew the beast had attacked. He knew that he’d gone flying all over the place, that the table had broken in two, that he’d been trapped beneath it. It was a lot to be aware of, when he thought about it. But he wasn’t really aware of when it was, what had happened after that, how long he’d been trapped, or much else, really.

  All he’d known was that he needed Evie.

  She would save him.

  Like she always saved him.

  She was leaning over him now, holding his hand, looking extremely worried. But he was so happy that she wasn’t ignoring him that it almost made the piece of wood sticking out of his middle worth it.

  Oh, hey. There was a piece of wood sticking through him.

  “What do we do?” Evie was asking Catherine, who was also hovering above him.

  “Nothing. We don’t move him; we don’t do anything,” replied Catherine. “Benedict, grab those men and take their weapons. Lock them up,” she ordered, pointing toward the unconscious heap of men in black in the corner. He nodded.

  “I’ll get Doris,” said the Kid, standing instantly and disappearing from Sebastian’s line of sight. “Then I’ll check on Alistair.”

  “Doris?” asked Evie, looking at Catherine.

  “She’s not just good at fixing machines,” replied Catherine.

  “Is she a doctor?”

  Catherine nodded. “She never had her own practice, quit once she was offered her first job as a physician. She didn’t love working on people. It was too much for her to handle emotionally.”

  Sebastian found the conversation fascinating, especially as he’d always wanted to be a brain surgeon. Up until this moment he hadn’t really considered that there would be humans attached to the brains. That he’d have people’s lives in his hands.

  “Interesting,” he said softly, and then immediately flinched in pain. Okay, so talking evidently made the pain feel real. Reminded his body of the reality of the situation.

  “Shhh,” said Evie.

  “Where is he?” He heard Doris’s voice, still warm behind the matter-of-fact tone. She pushed through the others and kneeled next to Evie. “Hey, Sebastian,” she said.

  “Hey.” He flinched again.

  “Okay, okay, you don’t have to talk.” She eyed him. “Right. Right. Sebastian, I’m going to have a closer look. Try not to move, okay?”

  He wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t supposed to talk, so he wasn’t sure how he could respond to her “okay?” He hoped it was a rhetorical question and stayed silent as she carefully peeled away some of his shirt and examined his torso close-up.

  Man, he was feeling sleepy. It felt kind of good. For the first time he didn’t have all these worries about if he should tell Evie his secret, if he should go home, who he was as a person, what he wanted to be when he grew up, how he felt about Alistair—none of it. He felt peaceful. Ready to close his eyes and… />
  “Stay with us, Sebastian,” ordered Doris.

  He opened his eyelids and tried to nod, hoping she saw that he was following her instructions. If he was supposed to stay with them, then that was what he’d do. He could still do that while asleep, of course. He’d still be there. His lids began to close.

  “You can’t fall asleep,” said Doris.

  Again he opened his eyes. He could fall asleep, but he took her to mean he wasn’t allowed to. Fine. That would be harder to do. Fine. He’d stay awake. Fine.

  * * *

  —

  Doris stood and then signaled for Catherine and Evie to follow her over away from where Sebastian could hear them. Evie really didn’t want to let go of Sebastian’s hand. Seeing him in such danger, it all solidified her nagging worries from before. That she shouldn’t really be that angry with him, that what he had done was forgivable. But what’s more, it sent her spiraling under a wave of grief. This was all her fault. Again. Well, it had always been her fault, but it was her fault now that Sebastian was like this. She had brought him into all of this. She had wanted him to be a part of all of this. Even now, even when he had said he wanted to go home, even then.

  “Come on, Evie,” said Catherine, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ll be right back,” Evie told Sebastian. He gave a little nod and didn’t say anything, following the rules perfectly.

  She stood up.

  Benedict and the Kid joined the group.

  “How is Alistair?” asked Doris.

  “You should check on him, but…” Benedict looked over at Evie. Her heart sank immediately. Not him too. No, no. Not when she’d just found him. “It’s hard to say.”

  Doris nodded. She was very serious, and Evie didn’t like that at all. She wanted Doris to smile, to make everything feel okay. Like Doris was good at.

  “Well, we need to turn the ship around. We need to get them medical attention right away,” Doris said. “The problem is we blew one of the thruster engines. How long will it take us to get to the surface?” she asked the Kid.

  “A couple of hours to get up top, and that’s not including the journey to land,” replied the Kid.

  Doris sighed hard. She drew her hand over her mouth, thinking as she did.

  A couple of hours? That seemed too long. That seemed far too long to Evie. What would happen to Sebastian, to her grandfather, during that time? She didn’t want to think about it, but she had to.

  She had to.

  “Is there any way to fix them up now, or make something temporary to help them that will give us more time?” asked Evie.

  “I mean, I can try…,” said Doris, her voice fading.

  There was a sound from where her grandfather was lying. Evie turned to see that he was trying to push himself up.

  “No, Alistair, don’t!” said Catherine. They rushed to him as he collapsed back onto the floor. He started coughing. A tiny drop of blood was in the corner of his mouth.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “Don’t talk,” said Doris.

  Alistair waved her away with a weak hand in the air. “Waterfall,” he said.

  Evie’s eyes got wide.

  “Waterfall?” asked the Kid.

  “Of course, the waterfall!” said Evie. “How far away is it?” She looked at Benedict.

  “It’s hard to say. If the beast didn’t knock us too far off course, maybe around fifteen minutes. But, Alistair,” Benedict said, turning to her grandfather, “we don’t actually know the properties of the water. It might not do what we need it to do.”

  “Isn’t it worth the risk? If it doesn’t work, then that’s half an hour added to an already long time before we can get them to safety,” said Evie.

  “I don’t know.” Benedict turned to Doris. “What do you think?”

  “I think we know that it works in some ways. We’ve seen it heal wounds. Maybe if he drank some of the water, it would stop the internal bleeding. If we poured it on Sebastian, he’d heal up. Maybe.” She didn’t appear entirely certain, but she was nodding as she spoke. It seemed like she was convincing herself.

  “Let’s do it,” said Catherine. Evie was surprised. Of all of them to want to take such a risk. Well, if Catherine was up for it, it had to be a positive sign, right? “Let’s do it and stop thinking about it,” Catherine continued. “We don’t have the time.”

  “Okay,” said Doris. “We’ll do it.”

  “What’s happening?” said Sebastian as Evie returned to him. He knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything, but he needed to know. He needed her to know that he needed to know.

  “Shhh,” said Evie, sitting next to him again. “We’re going to the waterfall. We’ll use it to heal you and my grandfather.”

  That sounded like a ridiculous idea to him. He’d never really believed in this waterfall in the first place, and now they were relying on it to make him better. He had so many more questions—like how much danger was he in, was he going to die, and what had happened to Alistair? Though maybe not in that order.

  He couldn’t ask any of it, though. He just had to lie there, staring at the shiny ceiling.

  “I know you probably don’t approve, but it’s so much closer than taking you back to land and hoping…” She stopped.

  Ah. So his life was in danger, then. Good to be aware of.

  He felt so calm about it all. He certainly didn’t want to die, but it was a very different feeling from when he’d been in the plane landing in South Korea. The panic he had felt then, that had been intense. Right this moment he felt almost peaceful.

  He looked at Evie. She was staring at him so intensely. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “You’re not allowed to speak,” she said with frustration. He nodded again. “Anyway, don’t say that. I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at you. You helped me find my grandfather, helped me stay safe, took huge risks for me. All you wanted was to go home and be with your parents like I wanted to be with my grandfather. And I understand the lie. I don’t like it, but I get it. I was wrong. I’m really sorry.”

  She was so good at understanding why other people felt the ways they did. It was impressive. He hadn’t had to say a word. Still, he still felt bad. He should have done more to protect her from her grandfather. He should have volunteered to go along. Not been forced to. And he shouldn’t have lied to her in the first place.

  “And I’m really sorry I voted to go down farther. I’m so sorry. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be…you wouldn’t be…”

  She was crying. How he hated seeing her cry. He knew it wasn’t a horrible thing. He knew it was how she expressed herself. But it was the words with the crying that made it so awful. It wasn’t her fault. He couldn’t not speak. “Alistair,” he wheezed.

  Evie shook her head. “I know, I know. You’re right about my grandfather. He seems pretty selfish. I bet that’s why my parents didn’t want me around him. But I still voted. I still decided, even though I could see it. I didn’t want to see it. I wanted so much not to see it. And it’s so hard when someone isn’t evil evil, you know? When you can see the good in them too. When they’re…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Family,” he whispered.

  She looked at him, tears in her eyes. She nodded.

  You’re my family, Evie, he realized. It was there, right there. Right in front of him. She was his best friend. She had a family. She had him.

  “You. My. Family.” It was so hard to get it out. It took every ounce of strength he had to say it.

  Evie just stared at him. He was too tired to work to read the expression. Why did it take so much effort for him? He hoped she’d understood. He hoped she’d gotten it.

  “We’re approaching the tunnel,” called out Doris. />
  Evie looked away from him. She was gazing across the bridge to the windows. He wanted to know what she was seeing. He wanted to see for himself.

  “It’s really dark, and the Kid is being careful. You can see the sides of the cave,” said Evie, explaining what was going on. She clearly was a mind reader, Sebastian thought with a smile. Ow. Even the corners of his lips hurt.

  “Okay, so it looks like we’re driving right into a wall.” She squeezed his hand tighter, which did not feel particularly good, but he didn’t want her to feel bad that she was hurting him. So he didn’t make a sound. And anyway, it definitely helped keep him from feeling sleepy, so that was good.

  “And we’re going up. We’re so close to the wall that the headlights are showing every crevice on it, and you can see how we’re…we’re still going up. It’s exactly like Catherine described.”

  And now Evie was describing it to him. This experience, evidently, would only ever be known to him through story.

  “The water is rushing away from the window. We’re…out of the water. There’s darkness all around. It’s hard to see anything. But I think we’re here.”

  We’re here.

  Evie looked back to Sebastian. “We made it. You’ll make it. It’s all going to be okay. You’ll see.” She smiled at him.

  He chose to believe her.

  The first thing Evie wondered as she stepped out of the hatch was how she was able to breathe and where on earth the air was coming from. Was there a tunnel that went to the surface somewhere? There had to be. But they were in the depths of the ocean. How could a tunnel exist without getting filled up immediately with water?

  Of course, the second thing she thought was, Where is the magical waterfall? And for some reason that thought felt far less weird than the first, so really, who was she to question what was going on?

  All she knew was that it existed.

  Catherine had said that Evie didn’t need to come out, but it had been Sebastian with a squeeze of the hand who’d insisted she get the chance to see this. She felt a little guilty getting to have such an experience without him, but moving him was totally not the right thing to do in this moment, so it was Evie, Catherine, Benedict, and the Kid, while Doris stayed on the submarine to keep an eye on Sebastian and her grandfather.