Fathom

by L. L. Standage

  In between a couple bits of junk mail, I found a letter postmarked in some European language from Aunt Shannon. I smiled and took them inside while tearing open the envelope. When I pulled out the letter, two tickets with pictures of dolphins on them fluttered to the ground.

  Dear Olivia,

  A few weeks ago, I was on a discount deals website and saw an offer for these passes to a new aquarium-type adventure park. Then of course, I forgot about them! I found them in a side pocket in my purse during our train ride to Hamburg. So sorry I forgot to leave them with you! Anyway, I thought you’d like to check out the park, so I dropped them in the mail the first chance I got. Please contact me if there’s anything else you need. I hope you’re having a good time. I’m having an amazing time out here! Hamburg is incredible. We’re headed to Berlin next and I can’t wait! I’ll send you a post card for every country I come to.

  Love you, sweetheart!

  Aunt Shannon

  I smiled at her signature and grinned at the tickets. A swirling logo read Oceana Marine Adventure Park. A dolphin smiled from underneath the wording. This was just the thing I needed to get my mind off the last few days. I’d never been to this Oceana park before, but a crowded, out-of-the-way theme park should be totally safe. And full of park security, so we’d be well protected.

  “Look, Sam,” I said as she came out of the bathroom with her hair in a towel. I held up the two tickets. “My aunt just sent them.”

  “What’s Oceana Marine Adventure Park?”

  “Some new theme park in the area. You want to go?”

  Her eyebrows knit together in worry. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be great. Lots of crowds.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Just don’t make me take any notes about fishies, Liv.”

  I laughed for the first time in three days. “Hey, you owe me for making a fool of myself trying to talk to that Scottish guy, remember?”

  She flinched.

  Samantha turned on the radio and rolled the window down as we pulled away from the house. With the anticipation of going to see dolphins, I almost felt like myself again. Almost. I feared hearing more gunfire. I feared seeing faces, familiar now because of the number of times they'd shown up in my nightmares. And even weirder, I worried about finding more glossy clam shells. But Eamon had said Sam and I were out of danger. Yes, he told me to go home, but he also said we should get on with life. Getting on with life meant getting on with my summer plans, not running away.

  As I watched the city pass by on our way to the theme park, I allowed myself to relax and only concern myself with it being too crowded. What day was it, anyway? Thursday? Friday?

  “What do you want to do once we get there?” Sam said as she played with the settings on her camera.

  “I’m not sure what’s there. Aquariums, for sure. I think there might be shows like the ones at Sea World. Based on what the website said, it sounds like this place is super interactive. Feeding dolphins, petting tide pool creatures, that kind of stuff. I’m thinking about checking if they have any job openings.”

  “I’d like to see sharks if they have any,” she said.

  “Definitely,” I replied with a smile.

  We found a space in the parking lot in between two minivans. A groomed and gardened entrance welcomed us, along with a person in a dolphin costume. We went to the tidal pool exhibition first, where Sam begged me to quit describing the gritty details of how a sea star digested its food. She snapped pictures left and right while I scanned the brochure we received at the gate.

  “This place isn’t nearly as cool as Sea World,” I said. “They don’t even have a dolphin show.” I looked around, noticing the flowers, pretty shrubs, and well-kept exhibits ended from there. The rest of this place felt sparse and small. I looked back down at my brochure. “There is a dolphin feeding, but it doesn’t start until 12:30. Let’s just walk around until then,” I said.

  “Ooh, sharks!” she said, pointing at a sign labeled with a cartoon great white. I grinned, linked my arm through hers, and we both hurried to exhibit.

  We came to the shark exhibit, which not only disappointed, but angered me. None of the sharks were very big, the tanks were too small for the species they kept, and the bluish water looked cloudy. With their rows of jagged teeth jutting from their mouths and their unblinking eyes staring at us, the sharks swam lethargically on the other side of the glass.

  “Look at that one!” said Samantha, pointing and gazing like a six-year-old.

  “That’s a whitetip shark. My dentist went scuba diving in Tahiti with those.”

  “No way!” Her wide eyes turned toward me.

  “Yeah, he told me about it when I had to get my teeth cleaned last February. He knows I like marine life.” I looked back at the white-tip and frowned. A patch of discoloration marred the shark’s side.

  “And he didn’t freak out?” she asked.

  I kept my eyes on the injured whitetip. “Nah, it’s not like they were great whites.”

  “They can still eat you,” she said as she lifted her camera to her eye and clicked it over and over.

  “Probably, if they were hungry,” I said, but only to scare Sam. She shuddered with odd pleasure, while part of me wondered just how well the park fed these poor things.

  We continued through the park and the more exhibits we saw, the angrier I became. I may not have been a real marine biologist, but I knew crumbling concrete and rusty beams couldn’t be good for the fish. This was supposed to be a brand-new park!

  “Sam, these fish aren’t compatible,” I said, looking into a tank containing loach and cory fish. “Why would the park put them in the same tank?”

  “I dunno,” she said. “Maybe to work out their differences?”

  “And look at that plecostomus. It has a torn fin. And look! There’s a dead silver dollar fish in that tank!”

  “Really?” she said, lowering her camera to look where I pointed. “Gross.”

  “Seriously, what kind of idiot did they put in charge of this place?” I ground my teeth as we came to an overcrowded tank of angelfish.

  “I doubt any normal person has thought twice about it,” she said.

  “Doesn’t make it okay.”

  “Put in a complaint,” she suggested.

  “Yeah,” I said, eyeing the angelfish tank with a scowl. “I think I will. Maybe I’ll apply for a job too. Maybe then the animals will actually get clean tanks and decent food.” Thinking of fish food reminded me of the dolphins. “Hey, what time is it?”

  Sam pulled out her phone. “Twelve-twenty.”

  “Let’s go feed the dolphins. It starts in ten minutes.”

  “How about you feed the dolphins and I’ll watch,” she said with snarky smile.

  We walked out of the aquarium exhibit and toward the dolphins. The pool built to feed them was decorated with large artificial rocks and surrounded by a thick concrete balustrade. Fortunately, everything looked well-kept in this area. I got in line at a small snack shack next to the pool, only instead of people snacks, it sold frozen, smelly sardines in a paper container.

  “Look, Sam. Dolphin french fries.” I held my paper container under her nose.

  She flinched. “Ugh. Go get a space before they’re all taken by the other weird people who love fish too much.” She gestured toward the pool and got out her camera.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience, but the dolphin encounter is cancelled for the day. Please come again.”

  “What?” I said to the sky. “I just bought these fish! Ugh, this place is awful.” I took my container of sardines back to the snack shack. The girl working the register saw me coming and held up her hands.

  “Hey, I’m sorry the feeding was cancelled, but all sales are final,” she said before I could get a word out. I dropped the stack of sardines into the trash and frowned.

  “It’s not just the dolphins,” I said, my anger rising. “This whole place is a marine animal death trap.”<
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  She shrugged helplessly. “I just do sales. I don’t know anything about the animals.” Something caught her eye behind me. Her face twitched into a frown. She gestured across the dolphin-less feeding pool. “That’s the park’s owner, over there. The guy in the suit. You don’t like it here? Take it up with him.”

  She smirked. I turned to look where she pointed. Across the pool, past the other disappointed park patrons, I saw the back of a man walking in another direction. He wore a dark blue suit and had light hair. The ire that had built up in my chest spurred me to follow him. The guy had to have marine biologists working here. They had to know this park was unsafe for the animals. He couldn’t keep ignoring it, especially if a patron of his park noticed all the problems.

  “Let’s go, I’m hungry,” said Sam.

  “Hang on,” I replied. “I want to go tell that guy he’s going to get sued if he doesn’t fix his park.”

  “Liv,” said Sam, rolling her eyes to the sky.

  “I’ll be right back, I promise,” I called back to her as I moved around the dolphin pool. “I’ll meet you by the food stands.”

  “Go save the fishies,” she said in dramatic resignation. I hurried to where the man had disappeared around a hedge and followed after him. He headed back in the direction of the shark exhibit. I was only about twenty feet away, when I opened my mouth to call after him, when he nearly collided with an Oceana employee holding a stack of cardboard boxes. He recoiled and snapped at the employee. I caught a glimpse of his profile. Cold foreboding slid down my throat.

  Rich Guy. And in his hand, he held a large, white clam.

  Keep it safe at all costs.

  Along with the spike of fear arose the red-headed woman’s forlorn face in my mind. She had trusted me with something important to her. And I’d given it up to the horrible man who owned this abysmal, cruel theme park. The fear and rage within me galvanized, morphing into determination. A surge of recklessness took hold of me, and I started walking again.

  The clam. Why had Mr. Rich Guy gone to such great lengths to get it? What could be so important that he’d neglect the biomes in his care? Could he be seeking out an expert here in the park to learn more about it? Maybe it was an endangered species. I had to know.

  I followed him from a distance, staying out of sight. What was his name? I couldn’t remember. He passed the gift shop alongside the shark exhibit, walked along the building, around a corner, and through an unmarked door. I hurried to catch the door before it closed, but it clicked shut before I got to it and wouldn’t open.

  I bit my lip in defeat. Several other park patrons passed by. I turned to storm back to where Samantha waited. But just as I had gotten a few steps away, another park employee appeared around the corner, walked past me without notice, and opened the door with a key card.

  I snuck in after him.

  The park employee walked down a hallway with tight-knit blue carpet and white walls. The hall joined another in a T, with the option of going left or right. The employee turned left. Everything looked the same and I couldn’t see where Mr. Rich Man had gone. I felt horribly out of place, like a schoolgirl in a boy’s bathroom. If I got caught, I’d be in huge trouble.

  But only if I got caught. So I continued down the hall and peeked around the corner. The Oceana employee opened a door on the right, second door in. I heard a rustle of papers and a heavy drawer slam.

  “Mr. Linnaeus?” asked the employee.

  Linnaeus—that was his name. I leaned back out of sight and listened.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” I heard the accent drift down the hall before the door closed, shutting off all the noise. I chanced a peek around the corner; it was empty and quiet. What now? Should I go press my ear against the door to see if I could hear the two men talking inside? What if the employee came out while I was snooping around?

  The door opened. I hid back behind the corner.

  “… sure we could get it,” said Mr. Linnaeus. A pause. “I don’t care what the stock numbers say. I have something big that’s sure to pull through. Bigger than big.”

  He came closer. I opened the nearest door and ducked into a dark room. A thin strip of light from the bottom of the door gave me just enough light to see mop buckets, broom handles, and a vacuum cleaner crowding the space. I hoped no janitors were on their way. After waiting a second, I peeked out. The two men headed to the exit, but they weren’t talking to one another, like I'd thought. Mr. Linnaeus chatted on a cell phone, his hands empty of the clam. The employee, also empty-handed, walked out behind him. Now was my chance.

  The seashell—one thing among many I had been afraid of seeing again. And here I was, trespassing to find it. Trespassing again. I took a deep breath to clear my head from the voice of reason telling me to run away and walked out of the broom closet. I crept around the corner and went to stand in front of the second door on the right. On it, a brass plaque read Doran Q. Linnaeus.

  I put my hand on the knob and turned it.

  I stopped in my tracks, struck by the interior of Linnaeus’s office. Almost the entire floor was made of thick glass—a window into the shark tanks. Below my feet, a small tiger shark drifted through the water with menacing elegance. No wonder this Linnaeus guy didn’t have an office on the millionth floor of a huge, mirrored skyscraper downtown. If it were me, I’d rather stare at sharks in an aquarium than a cityscape any day.

  The rest of the office had rich, dark cherry wood furniture: a huge desk, a plush leather office chair, and several enormous bookcases filled with leather-bound books. A filing cabinet stood near the corner, a few branches of a thick, fake topiary peeking out behind it.

  I locked the door behind me. Stupid, really—as if it would stop the man who owned the office from coming in. Still, it made me feel better. A little. Where should I start? A quick scan of the shelves made it clear the clam wasn’t out in the open.

  I started on the drawers. Some of them wouldn’t budge, and the unlocked ones only held ordinary pens, papers, and other assorted office stationery. No clam.

  As I closed the last drawer, the label on a file folder sitting on top of the desk caught my eye: Project Fathom, written in red ink. The rumpled and dog-eared file looked as though Linnaeus had spent a lot of time perusing it. I opened the folder.

  My mouth dropped open.

  On the first page, a paper clip held the 4x6 photograph of a red-headed woman—the same woman who had given me the clam. I read the information scribbled on the page beneath her picture:

  Name: Delfina

  Origin: Pacific, namely North American reach

  Specialty: reconnaissance, human relations

  Current Status: security threat deceased, suicide

  My heart pulsed as I stared at the information next to Current Status. Suicide? Had she given me the clam, then killed herself? In my horror, I couldn’t imagine why. What business did Linnaeus have with her? I flipped to the next page. This one also had a picture of someone I recognized: the man among my kidnappers who had lost a pinky. While the photo of the red-headed Delfina woman looked like a sneaked snapshot from far away, this one was close up and unsmiling, like a mug shot.

  Name: Marinus

  Origin: Australian Pacific reach

  Specialty: Marine resident relations

  Current Status: Earth bound, loyal

  What did all this mean? Why did this Doran Q. Linnaeus guy have pictures of these people? Was he part of the mafia or something?

  I flipped the page. The next page didn’t have pictures, only writing:

  New information: Pacific King called Llyr. Queen Hydria. One son, one daughter.

  Heir apparent…

  The doorknob moved. I froze. I flipped the file closed and pushed it back to its place while the doorknob shook. In a panic, I looked for somewhere to hide. The lock clicked. I dove around the filing cabinet and hid behind the topiary.

  The door opened, then closed. I held my breath, my heartbeat pounding in my head.
Cramped in the corner, I held my hands over my mouth and waited.

  Linnaeus sat down at his desk. The leather chair creaked as he scooted in. He sat still for a moment, a moment that dragged for eternity. I peeked around the topiary and watched the back of his head. If he needed something from his file cabinet, he’d find me for sure.

  He moved and I flinched. He reached into a pocket inside his suit coat and pulled out a jangling set of keys. Then he leaned out of my sight. I heard the sound of a key turning in one of the desk drawers. He opened the drawer, took something out, and closed it.

  He moved again, rummaging for something in his desk. Then, he went quiet… unmoving, hesitant, waiting.

  Then, something happened.

  Lights. Brilliant, soft, golden lights beamed from Linnaeus’ desk in all directions. They reflected off the blue water in the floor, throwing a greenish glow onto the office walls. White smoke rose in the center of the golden lights and formed an indistinct head and torso of a person, rippling and wavering like a colorless reflection on the disrupted surface of a pond.

  Music started playing. Eerie, disembodied voices echoed and keened in a chilling harmony. I could only compare it to the call of a whale, only this was more musical, more beautiful, and more frightening.

  Another voice spoke. This voice sounded human, but stranger. I couldn’t hear the words—at least not with my ears. They came to my head, only slightly louder than my own thoughts.

  By the light of Lord Nereus, and his lady, fair Doris

  Cast blessing to prosper the ocean before us

  By sea, Lord Nereus, keep life in thy hand,

  And grant by this sacrifice limb upon land.