by Gregory Mone
“No, I’m not.”
“How about—”
He held up his hand, interrupting her. An actual plan had occurred to him. A decent one, even. “I’ve got it.”
“Okay . . . I trust you. I probably shouldn’t, but I do,” Hanna said. “Write down your message for me first. It has to be short. Fifteen words or less. And put something in there so your mom knows it’s from you.”
He nodded. “When do we start?”
“The sooner, the better.”
Hanna turned back toward the bedroom.
Lewis stared down at his soccer ball. Fifteen words? What was he supposed to say? He started juggling again. In his head, he wrote a whole series of messages, counting the words in each. All of them were too long. Finally he settled on something short. He found a notebook in his backpack, tore out a piece of paper, then slipped the notebook into his back pocket. He dashed off the message. Hanna was lying on the top bunk, studying something, when he handed it over.
Quietly, she read his note aloud. “I’m with Dad. I’m fine. Be home soon. Tell Michael he smells like cheese.” She squinted at him. “Cheese?”
“They’ll know it’s from me.”
“And the distraction?”
“We’re good. Ready when you are.”
“All right,” she said, swinging her legs down off the bed. “One more thing, though, Lewis.”
“Yes?”
She threw a familiar sock at his face. “My bunk is not a clothesline.”
Lewis’s father was in the cockpit and didn’t hear him approach. Lewis coughed. Nothing. Then he clapped once, hard enough that his hands stung, maybe a little too close to his dad’s ear. His father nearly leaped out of his seat.
“What the—”
“Hey, Dad, can I ask you something?”
“Why did you . . . I’m busy, here, Lewis. I need to make sure we’re on the right course.” His dad leaned over his maps.
“Okay, sure, I’m going to head to the kitchen for some food, anyway. I was just wondering . . . I mean, besides the waves and all”—he hesitated, ensuring that his dad was listening—“what makes you think Atlantis is real? No rush. Just wondering. You can tell me later.”
Lewis started to walk out of the room.
He began counting.
Three seconds.
That was all it took for his father to switch over to autopilot, ditch his maps, and follow him to the kitchen. He never missed a chance to explain his theories about Atlantis, and during multiple rounds of the can-tossing game, his dad rambled on and on about the hidden world. He explained that the waves were only part of the evidence. There had been sightings throughout history. Stories told by fishermen. Rumors of strange craft washing up on beaches around the world, then being quickly snatched away by various governments. He talked about the ancient texts discovered around the world that mentioned a highly advanced seafaring civilization, one that ruled thousands of years before the ancient Egyptians. His dad was a geophysicist by training, and he referenced scientific ideas about shifting tectonic plates and rising seas that could have caused a giant island to gradually sink into the ocean.
None of this was new to Lewis, but it still fascinated him. He tried to picture this catastrophe—an island slipping beneath the sea. How could the people have survived? Were they already mermaids and mermen when the island sank? And how would that have worked, living both on land and in the ocean? You definitely wouldn’t walk too well if you had a big tail instead of legs. Maybe they rolled themselves around on wheeled carts. Or what if they army-crawled everywhere? That would be awkward. And slow. But sort of funny.
“Of course, you’d assume that this civilization would have been wiped out by the rising waters and sinking land,” his dad continued. “But I believe they adapted over time—not in an evolutionary sense, but a technological one. They built down into the ground instead of up, effectively sealing themselves off from the water. That’s how Atlantis survived, Lewis, and how its people continue to thrive underground, beneath the sea.”
His dad was smiling now. But Lewis still had questions. One in particular. “Why would they send all those waves?” he asked. “What did we ever do to them?”
The question injected his dad with new energy. He began pacing in the small kitchen. Lewis sat up on the counter to give him more room. “I wondered that myself, of course!” his dad began. “In the early days of the waves, before the oceans were closed off to travel, I was on the beach one morning, walking at sunrise, watching the water. The tide was out. A fishing trawler was pulling in its nets offshore. The nets were practically empty. A few silvery fish, but little more. I continued walking, picking up bits of plastic and trash as I went. I filled an entire backpack with salt-encrusted garbage before I’d gone fifty meters. Then, farther along, I noticed thousands of dead crabs scattered everywhere, all with brittle, papery shells. Thinking of the empty nets, the dead crustaceans, the plastic, I stopped and stared out at the sea.”
His dad was gazing at the wall as if it were the open ocean. “And?” Lewis asked.
“And I thought, ‘Of course they’d be furious!’” his father continued. “We’re filling the sea with our trash. We’re poisoning the atmosphere. Aquatic life is dying out in droves. We’re destroying the oceans. Why wouldn’t they wage this war?”
That actually made sense. Well, sort of, anyway. Lewis jumped down off the counter. “Wouldn’t they try to talk to us first? Maybe ask us to change?”
Again, his dad had an answer. “Ah, but I believe they did try!” he said. “Eight years ago, there was a massive explosion in the water near what used to be the great city of New York. The government called it a submarine accident. But a naval officer contacted me in secret and told me it was really an Atlantean ship that was attacked and destroyed by our own military.”
Now he wasn’t making sense. “Why would we attack their submarine?”
“The officer said it was a mistake,” his dad explained. “The object was traveling as fast as a torpedo, and efforts to make contact with it failed. The navy was left to assume that it actually was a torpedo, since no submarine technology of ours has ever traveled half as fast. We had to destroy it, Lewis, to save the city. But of course, it wasn’t a torpedo. It was an Atlantean ship! The craft was decimated, the government covered up its mistake, and the war began.”
His dad even said he had evidence, a collection of sonar readouts tracking the craft. At one point, he’d had a few fragments of the exploded ship, too, but these had been lost in his laboratory fire. Of course, his dad blamed the fire on some secret government agency. But no one bought that idea. The officer who had sent him the information had also disappeared. Basically, no one believed his father. Or no one important, anyway. Online? Sure. People loved the story. One site even listed it as one of the top ten Internet conspiracy theories, right after the idea that the last president was actually an alien.
Lewis paused, waiting to see if his father was done. His dad was sitting on one of the tiny kitchen stools. He looked like a giant resting on a mushroom. He seemed exhausted, as if explaining his theory had drained all the energy from his body and mind. Then he cracked his knuckles and straightened his back. “The final question,” he continued, “is how to find her. But I won’t bore you with my gravitational anomaly theory.”
“Thank you,” Lewis said.
His dad looked a little disappointed. Was Lewis supposed to ask for more? His brain was already full.
His dad held out his wristpad and projected a three-dimensional map of the ocean floor. “Anyway, all of my research suggests she’s right here,” he said.
Lewis stared at the projected map. “That’s the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Are you sure?”
Hanna stood in the doorway. “That’s why we’re going, right? To find out for certain?”
“That’s right!” his dad replied.
She winked when his father wasn’t looking.
The message had been sent.
At least now his mother would know he was okay. But was he okay? After listening to his father for an hour, he wasn’t so sure. Were they actually on an epic adventure, or were they just diving into the dark sea? Was his dad a brilliant explorer, or had he lost his mind somewhere along the way?
Maybe everyone else was right about his dad.
Maybe Lewis should have stayed home.
Three days passed.
The first few times he saw fish outside the window, he was thrilled.
The thrill faded quickly.
He experienced whole new levels of boredom. He slept longer and later.
Being stuck inside your house on a rainy day could be difficult.
Sitting through a really painful movie your mom makes you watch.
Reading one of those books they assigned in school about kids with feelings who feel things all the time, and nothing ever explodes except for their feelings.
All of those things were boring.
But then there was trapped-inside-a-submarine-miles-under-the-surface boredom. He invented a dozen different throw-the-can games. He kicked the soccer ball so many times his feet blistered. But the absolute low was when he started to play hide-and-seek . . . against himself. On the morning of the fourth day of their journey, he’d been crouching underneath the fold-down table in the kitchen for a really, really long time when his dad found him. Explaining himself was embarrassing.
“Did you win?” his dad asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Listen, I already talked to Hanna about this, but . . .”
He could see it on his dad’s pale, saddened face. He’d found out about the message.
Lewis felt horribly, completely selfish. They’d risked the whole mission! His dad’s work. Everything. He was supposed to trust his father. “I’m sorry, we just thought—”
“No, I’m sorry,” his dad replied. “You were right. You were both right. Your mother, Hanna’s parents—they needed to know the truth. I guess I just got so caught up . . .”
The subsphere turned suddenly.
Lewis grabbed the edge of the table, but his dad was thrown off his feet. The cans in the cabinet rattled. His dad rubbed the back of his huge head, then called to the cockpit from the floor. “What was that? Did we hit something?”
“I don’t know,” Hanna yelled back. “Get in here!”
His dad scrambled forward. Lewis raced behind him. Their footsteps clanged on the metal grates. At the controls, Hanna was switching between screens. “Whatever we hit, it was big and it was moving.”
A map of the seafloor appeared on the screen. “There are some weird formations up ahead.”
His dad pushed a pair of old-fashioned, circular reading glasses up his large nose. He leaned in to study the image. “Weird how?” he asked excitedly. “Buildings?”
“No, more like underwater mountains.”
“What bumped us, though?” Lewis asked.
Part of him hoped it was another submarine. A luxury one, owned and operated by a reclusive billionaire. Ideally, this billionaire would invite them aboard and feed them a lavish, delicious dinner. Maybe he’d give them all bathrobes to wear, too. Fancy ones, with little monograms. And slippers. Really soft slippers.
“I don’t know,” his dad answered. “Nothing big enough to push our sub to the side swims at this depth. We’re four miles down.”
“That thing might disagree,” Hanna said.
Out of the darkness in front of them swam the largest creature Lewis had ever seen—an aquatic monster that looked capable of swallowing their subsphere in two ravenous bites. The beast’s nose reminded him of a shark, but its huge eyes popped out like those of a crocodile. An enormous, tightly closed mouth stretched below the snout. The creature didn’t have to open wide for Lewis to guess what was inside. He imagined rows and rows of sharp, metal-crunching teeth.
“What is that?!” he asked.
“Hold on!” Hanna shouted. “Strap into your seats, both of you!”
The subsphere steered right, grazing the giant’s side.
Lewis was still buckling. “Was that a megalodon?”
“No, they’re extinct,” his dad answered. “But that creature was gargantuan! Do you know what this means? We might have discovered a new species of megafauna! No one does that anymore!”
A giant prehistoric creature was attacking them miles below the surface, and his dad was thrilled. Lewis leaned to the side as Hanna steered the subsphere to the left.
“We’re not going to get any credit if that thing eats us,” she said. “The sub isn’t built to evade sea monsters. You have any ideas?”
As the huge creature passed in front of them again, circling for another attack, Lewis noticed something strange. The subsphere didn’t crank out enough light for him to be sure.
He unbuckled.
“Get back in your seat!” Hanna ordered.
He ignored her and reached for the control panel.
“What are you doing?” his dad demanded.
“Does this ship have headlights?”
“LEDs. Why? You want to startle it?” Hanna asked.
“At this depth, creatures are attracted to light, not startled by it,” his dad said. “So that would be a bad idea.”
Lewis found the dials on his own and turned them up. Bright white light filled the dark sea in front of them. Hanna reached for the buttons, but he covered them with his hands. “I’m not trying to startle it,” he explained. “I’m trying to show you something.”
“Show us what?”
“That it’s not going to eat us.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not a fish,” he said. “It’s a machine.”
The huge thing swam through the bright white lights, and now Lewis could see them clearly: Seams that stretched across the skin where two metal panels met.
“You’re right,” Hanna said, almost in a whisper. “He’s right.”
His dad said nothing. He just stared. “What do we do?” he asked.
Lewis had kind of hoped that his dad would answer that question himself.
The robotic monster turned toward them again, but this time it came no closer. The bright water pulsed and rippled. Lewis felt invisible waves push through his face and chest, as if he were standing next to a giant speaker blasting bass at a concert.
His nose quivered. His ribs and hands, too.
The room around him clouded over.
His jaw tightened, and then everything turned black.
7
Bodies from the Darkness
Everything was going perfectly.
Kaya had made it into the water.
She’d started to rise to the surface.
The suit was amazing. She didn’t even feel the cold or the pressure.
Then the water around her started moving. As if some invisible hand had grabbed her around the ankles again, she stopped rising. She was caught in a strange, and strangely powerful, current.
The water spun her faster and faster, in smaller and smaller circles. Had anyone ever thrown up in a dive suit? She really didn’t want to be the first.
Now the water pulled her down, still spinning.
She felt like she was falling off a cliff.
Yet she didn’t splash down into a pool or an aquafarm. Instead, she was sucked into a small, watery room. A door closed, sealing her off from the surrounding sea, but the space was still flooded. Where was she? At first, she couldn’t even tell which way was up. Her legs flipped over her head. Then she steadied, floating between the floor and the ceiling. The water was moving again, draining out of the room through grates in the floor. Kaya tried to calm her rapid breathing. Her stomach had settled. She wasn’t going to vomit. That was good, at least.
Once the water was less than half a body length deep, she planted her feet and stood.
There were no windows, but even through the helmet she could hear water rushing past outside. She was
in some kind of submarine, and the vessel was dropping fast. She had to stagger her feet, one in front of the other, and hold on to a railing to stop herself from falling forward. Kaya moved downhill, hand over hand, toward what she guessed was the front of the vessel, hoping to find a cockpit. But there were no other rooms or cabins. She’d been swallowed by a submarine, and she was alone. This was . . . good.
Yes, this was good!
Fantastic, even.
Sure, she hadn’t made it to the surface, but if no one else was inside the submarine, then no one knew what she’d done, and she could avoid getting in trouble. Maybe the whole thing was automatic. Some kind of Atlantean probe programmed to collect divers who drifted too far from the ridge. This wasn’t totally impossible. If Rian was to be believed, Atlantis had all kinds of secret technology that most people knew nothing about. And if she’d been grabbed by some super-smart robot submarine, she could slip back to Ridge City unnoticed.
That was the optimistic version, anyway.
The other possibility? She was about to be thrown in jail.
Even erased.
She shivered at the thought.
Soon the submarine slowed and leveled out.
Then it started rising again.
The vessel stopped.
Kaya heard bolts sliding, and a loud hiss as a hatch at the front popped open. A man with long silver hair stared back at her. Right. So the whole nobody-knew-where-she’d-been idea? Not so much. She wasn’t getting out of here unnoticed.
But the situation wasn’t all bad. Even though he was pointing a large sonic blaster at her stomach, one that could knock down a dozen soldiers with one shot, the man himself didn’t look too frightening. He wasn’t as ugly as the monster at the trading post that morning. He was probably a few years younger than her dad. His face was round, and he was biting his thin lower lip. Was he nervous? He blinked often, as if his eyes didn’t like the light.
“Out of the submarine, and off with the suit,” he ordered.
Kaya held her hands up and stepped out slowly.
This wasn’t going as planned. And that meant she’d have to make a new plan. First, she needed information. Data. Where was she? She scanned the room. An impressively large cave. Unpolished walls. A colossal darkwater pool large enough to hold at least a dozen submarines. Three times the size of the pool she’d used that morning, at least.