The Indigo Thief

by Budgett, Jay

  I pointed to the surface above: it was time to go. The plates were clean, and we were almost out of time.

  But before we could rise, a shadow sprang up from the abyss. The megalodon. Having been fooled by the oxygen tank—perhaps having eaten it by now, for all I knew—the livid monster was now in search of heartier prey. Its beady black eyes wandered again to the shining plate. Freed from its coat of rust, this plate was now far brighter than the last one the beast had seen. The monster put the glowing plate tentatively between two massive teeth and bit down.

  My hand trembled, and I struggled to keep the light’s beam still. I’d seen more megalodons in my lifetime than most, but their broad faces still terrified me. Mila cautiously stretched a hand toward the regulator; she was out of oxygen. Unfortunately I’d wrapped its cord around the wrist of the hand that was holding the flashlight. Freeing the regulator would mean moving the light—and that meant certain death.

  But she needed air, and she needed it fast. She pointed to her throat, and looked toward the surface. I shook my head—it was too far, too great a risk. The megalodon would see her move through the water, and she’d be dead in less than a minute. And if Mila died, there’d be blood in the water, and the rest of us—including, perhaps, those up above—were dead too.

  I wondered what Charlie would do in this situation. The kind of girl who looked at a snail and saw a soul.

  Mila looked up again, stretched her arms high in the water, and crawled toward the surface with her legs trailing limply behind—she was afraid to kick and move the water, I figured. Afraid of death. A trail of her own bubbles followed her to the surface.

  I held my hand steady—I couldn’t move the light. It had to be still; I was too close to the megalodon. And I couldn’t breath, either; it would hear my bubbles. Above me, Mila blurred from my view, and I imagined her face breaking the surface, her arms beating against the waves as she swam toward the boat.

  Well, one survived, Vern would say to Phoenix. Then he would turn to Mila. I should hope no spots were missed—for your sake.

  The megalodon still hovered near the plate, chewing its edge, strangely mesmerized by its brilliance. My chest felt tight: I had to exhale. I let out a quick, short spurt, and bubbles trickled from the regulator’s corners.

  The megalodon’s snout jerked up toward me. I flicked my wrist, and hit its beady eyes with the light. It gnashed its teeth in response and raced toward the surface, following the bubbles, the force of its flicking tail swirling the water around me.

  Suddenly the polished plate glowed red, then rocketed upward, slamming into the monster’s stomach, burning its skin while lifting it right out of the water. I kicked hard to the surface, screaming, as bubbles shot from my lungs like bullets. The megalodon flailed at the surface above me, the plate continuing to burn its stomach.

  My head broke the surface just in time for me to see a burst of light smash into the monster’s snout. Its suddenly limp body rolled off the plate and floated, motionless. I glanced up and saw Bertha standing at the ship’s edge cradling the Paralyzer. Mila was in the water beneath her, swimming toward safety.

  Fog triggered by the plate’s launch gathered as I swam after Mila, grabbed a ladder and climbed aboard. Kindred greeted me with a towel. Mila was huddled on the deck, shaking, her hand wrapped in a white bandage. I found out later that she’d cut it along the edge of her suit. It was her blood, not the flick of my wrist and my bubbles, that had drawn the megalodon to the surface.

  Kindred rubbed the length of my arms. “You’re shaking, dear.”

  “Th-the plates,” I said, fighting to catch my breath. “Th-they were under th-the water, but then—then they floated up. T-to th-the top.”

  “There’s a switch,” said Phoenix, glaring at Vern. “That brings them up.”

  “And turns them right on,” Vern said sharply. “Try polishing the damn things while they’re up, and they’ll burn your hand right off—it’s no use.”

  “Better burned off than bitten off,” Phoenix said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”

  “I wouldn’t be too worried about a bite. The monster would’ve swallowed them whole.”

  “Come now, Captain.” Phoenix rubbed his hands along Mila’s arms to warm her. “I think we both know that some monsters like to play with their food before they eat it.”

  “You’d know more about that than I would, wouldn’t you, old chap?” Vern smiled slightly. “How’s Bugsy, by the way?”

  Phoenix’s jaw tightened. “He’s dead.”

  “You’re—you’re sick!” spat Mila as she coughed and rattled water from her wet lungs. Her lips were blue now, like Indigo.

  Vern adjusted his cap. “You just remember whose boat you’re on, honey. Remember who runs this ship.”

  “And you remember who’s stealing you all your s-stupid Indigo,” Mila shot back.

  Kindred moved between the two. “I’ve made us all muffins! Cinnamon apple walnut with an almond drizzle, mmm! Doesn’t that sound delightful?”

  Mila shook her head. “We don’t have walnuts on New Texas.”

  “We don’t on New Texas,” said Kindred. “But the Caravites do. Intercepted a shipment of them from the Federation last week. Wonderful, huh, dear?”

  Mila moved into the cabin. “Yeah, it’s something all right,” she muttered.

  Kindred and Phoenix followed her, and I alone was left on the deck with Vern and his men. He looked me up and down before offering his hand. “Welcome aboard, son.” I shook his hand hard. “It’s a pleasure to have you with us. You’ll enjoy your time here, I trust.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said with only slight hesitation. “I—I’m sure I will.”

  But I was anything but sure. The way he’d looked me up and down… it was like he was sizing up a threat, an enemy. He’d let me aboard, sure—he sort of had to—but I wasn’t on his team. I would never be on his team.

  Whose team was I on?

  I thought of Charlie’s chopsticks and the balloons Mom brought to the kids at H.E.A.L. when we visited on their birthdays. They were my team. They were the ones I was fighting for.

  But how would I find them? And would they be alive when I did?

  Chapter 23

  The Caravan boats were wider than Churchill’s, with long walkways lined with smaller rooms along the sides. The boats were grouped by function—one cluster served as a kitchen, another made garments, the last five made the medical bay, and the list went on and on. Each boat featured a small spiral staircase leading to the lofts above, which contained the minuscule Caravite homes.

  “Not a bad climb,” said Sparky as we rounded a staircase. “Hardly tiring at all. I’m barely perspiring.” Tim was asleep along the crook of his back, his head resting on Sparky’s shoulder. We paused at a landing.

  “One more flight,” said the woman in front, a Caravite who’d introduced herself as Sadie. Her brown hair was piled in a messy brown stack, and she wore a white ruffled shirt that hung around her shoulders. A black vest was cinched around her waist. She’d told us that her ancestors had been among the Caravan founders nearly three generations before—fishermen out at sea when the bombs were dropped on the rest of the world. Bertha muttered something about them actually being pirates, but Sadie ignored her.

  Sadie pulled open a door that led to a roof garden and we stepped out into a sea of flowers, all shades of blue, circling a series of glass panels that gazed at the sun.

  “Solar panels,” Sadie explained. “It’s how we power the Caravan. All the boats have them up top.”

  I glanced at the mass of clouds that always hung over the Federation. Onshore, I guessed it was raining. “There’s hardly any light.”

  “I think you’ll find we make do with the little light we’re given. And with the hope that someday there’ll be more sun.”

  I leaned against a patch of flowers. Each blue petal was painted with a single yellow stripe—irises. Mom had showed me pictures of flowers like these once, but they
were too expensive to buy in Moku Lani. It was strange seeing so many growing at once.

  As Sparky and I left the roof and wandered along a hall with glass windows that displayed rows of pastries—the bakery, I figured—a part of me wondered if he was mad at me for shooting him with the Darts. I knew I would be.

  “Have you been here before?” I asked, hoping to break the silence.

  Sparky nodded vigorously. He seemed to do everything vigorously. Kindred had said the Cafetamines kept him awake at all hours of the day and night. “Twice before,” he said, his lips quivering as he spoke. “Once when I first met Phoenix, and once a few months ago.”

  “And did they make you polish?”

  “Affirmative. Though they weren’t entirely successful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He grinned. “I shorted the Caravan’s power supply. The plates drifted up like ice cubes in a glass of water. Nearly wrecked their whole IT system. Vern had to let me aboard to fix it.”

  “So no megalodons?”

  “Oh, there were megalodons,” he said, chuckling. “There always seems to be megalodons when people polish.” He jumped from one boat to another, and I followed. “Why do you think I shorted the power? Had to get out of the water somehow—I’m certainly not equipped to handle one of those monsters. I can hardly brush my hair.” His bundle of curly hair rested atop his head like a tumbleweed.

  Sparky was smart. Strange, but smart. Like the other Lost Boys.

  We crossed one boat that Sparky said was the Caravan’s bazaar: a marketplace where people bought and sold goods seized from Federal ships. The ceiling was higher here, and vaulted—the boat had no loft. The spiral staircase here went straight to the rooftop garden. As we pushed through a crowd of buyers and sellers, people lowered their heads whenever I met their gaze.

  They were afraid of me. But why?

  We emerged at the bazaar’s other end, and found the next boat to be quieter. Seamstresses sat at windows with needle and thread, but they, too, dropped their heads as we passed. I wondered now why Sadie of all people had shown us kindness.

  “Why do they look down?” I asked.

  Sparky frowned as his body tensed. “What—what makes you say that? What makes you think they drop their heads?” I pointed to the seamstresses, and he sighed. “I suppose you’ve noticed things aren’t great between Phoenix and the captain.”

  “Sort of hard to miss.”

  Sparky pointed to a clear spot at the edge of the next boat, and we sat, kicking our feet out over the open water. “I suppose they see different futures,” Sparky said. “Not that one is right or one is wrong—they just want two different worlds.”

  “What’s wrong with the world we have now?”

  “Well,” he said, chuckling. It was hard to believe he was about my own age—not sleeping must have aged him. “That’s a whole ’nother discussion. One I’m sure you’ll have with Phoenix, or maybe Mila, in time. Not my cup of tea. Not even my type of tea. Not my anything at all.”

  I liked Sparky. He didn’t give me smoke and mirrors like the rest of them. He probably didn’t get enough sleep to have smoke or mirrors. “So what kind of world do they want? One with more ministries? Less ministries? Flying cars, maybe?

  “They tried those a hundred years back,” he said, “and they were a disaster. If you thought a pileup on the Tube was bad, you should see one in a skyscraper. All it took was one person to go a bit slow on the brakes and you had the whole airway piled up halfway through Montesano Tower.”

  “Then what kind of world do they want?”

  Sparky stared at the floating island of New Texas in the water behind us. “Phoenix wants a revolution. He wants to start over. He wants the Federation to fall.”

  I was right—the Lost Boys weren’t just stealing Indigo. It wasn’t about the Indigo at all—it was about war. A war Phoenix was determined to start.

  “And Captain Vern?” I asked.

  “Vern wants to run. He doesn’t know where, and he doesn’t know how far from Federal waters they could even make it. They can only grow so much food, and the rest of the rations they have to steal from Federal ships or fish from Federal waters. You know what would happen if they fished outside Federal waters…”

  I nodded. The gnashing teeth of hungry megalodons were unforgettable.

  “But he knows they have to do something. They’ve gotten too big, stolen too much. They’re no longer just a freckle on Chancellor Hackner’s face, but a mole. And moles turn into cancer.”

  “What about Bugsy?” I asked. “What was Vern getting at with Bugsy?”

  Sparky leaned his head into his hand as Tim yawned, crawled over his shoulder, and seated himself on his lap. “Bugsy joined us three months ago. He was a year younger than you. He wore this pair of brown glasses all the time—called them his spectacles, thought they made him seem more distinguished. And he was always waking up early to watch the sunrise, before going back to sleep. His parents died in a car crash—the Feds told him it was suicide, but he knew better. He met Mila on one of her raids a couple months after their death. He’d been living with an aunt on one of the Suburban Islands, but he’d begged Mila to take him. Said he had to get away from it all.”

  People passed on the platform behind us, jumping from boat to boat as they headed to their own lofts for the night. Sadie had told us that the Caravites went to bed earlier than most in the Federation; she said they didn’t want to have to waste the energy on lights after dark. Better to rise and fall with the sun instead.

  Sparky stood. “It’s getting late.”

  “Did Bugsy ever come on the Caravan?”

  Sparky nodded. “Affirmative.”

  “And did he have to polish the plates?”

  “The first and only time he came, he did. Polished them all by himself, and Captain Vern had a fit. He didn’t want Phoenix taking in any more kids. He thought the Lost Boys were big enough.” Sparky glanced in both directions and then whispered. “I think he figured if we got too big, Phoenix would start the war himself. Vern liked us at the size we were.”

  “And then I came along,” I finished.

  “Affirmative. You came along, KB. Like clockwork, Bugsy was out and you were in.”

  “Tick, tock,” I said, smiling weakly, but feeling sick to my stomach.

  We headed back toward the pastry shops—we’d been set up in bunks above them. I was surprised to see Sparky heading for his loft.

  “I thought you didn’t sleep? Not with all your Cafetamines…”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but sometimes it’s nice to close my eyes and lie down. Gives the mind a minute to slow down.”

  There wasn’t room for us all to bunk together. At least that’s what they told us. I guessed Vern just didn’t want us congregating—probably saw it as scheming in his very midst. So they put us in separate boat lofts, in separate bunks, two by two. Sparky was with Dove, Kindred was with Mila, and I got stuck with Bertha.

  She slept with a red mask plastered across her eyes, and her snoring was so loud that, at some points, I could have sworn she’d swallowed a chainsaw.

  I wrapped a pillow around my ears, which dulled the snoring to a quiet roar, but it remained a roar nonetheless. At last I gave up on the possibility of sleep, and crawled from my bed and down the stairs.

  The cabin’s sole light was cast by a waxing moon’s white tendrils, peeking out from behind a curtain of black clouds. The boat’s wooden floors creaked as I stepped, but the sound was lost beneath the thunder of Bertha’s snores.

  I hopped from boat to boat—it was lucky the Caravites left their doors unlocked—jumping through the bakery and then the bazaar. Farther ahead, I saw a stout cylinder standing like a tower—the Captain’s quarters, I guessed, and the Caravan’s locomotive engine of sorts. I wondered if that was where Phoenix slept. It made sense when I thought about it. There, Vern could keep a closer eye on him.

  I continued to leap from boat to boat, and as I moved up the line, the ro
oms grew stranger, the halls wider, the ceilings higher. Wood paneling now ran along the walls. As on the rear boats, the halls here were lined with doors, but these boats lacked windows: there were no pastries or garments on display.

  I stopped to examine a door dressed with a beautiful velvet tapestry. Veritas vos liberabit, it declared in gold. I ran my fingers along its letters, and the velvet fabric felt soft beneath my fingers like peach fuzz.

  I opened the door, and wandered into a library lined with mahogany shelves too similar to Madam Revleon’s to be a coincidence. Now that I thought about it, the tapestry, too, had seemed familiar—a twin. A lone chair had been pulled from an old desk’s grip, and a narrow slit in the wall—it could hardly be called a window—let in the soft glow of moonlight. My eyes flashed to books sprawled across the desk on their spines. It was beginning to feel like an unattended library was a prerequisite for plotting conspiracies. I grabbed a book from the desk and held it in the thin beam of moonlight.

  The cover read: “The Megalodon: a Magnificent, Marvelous, Malevolent Mutation of the Great White” by Bill & Mary Bradbury. Dad’s name had been crossed out with black ink, and Mom’s had been circled in red.

  My heart grew tight in my chest, and I leaned against the desk, my head woozy. They’d done something to Mom. They’d circled her name.

  Where was I? Who were the Caravites? And what had they done to Mom?

  She could be on the boat, I told myself. She could be staying here, on this very boat. The Feds had Charlie—that much I knew for sure—but the Caravites could have Mom. They could’ve gotten to her before the Feds did. That could explain why Phoenix was so eager to have me think her dead: he didn’t want me to find her.

  I returned to the hallway, and began opening other doors. Behind one I found a room filled with filing cabinets, behind another I found a public restroom. I opened door after door, and they fluttered on their frames like the heart that beat in my chest.