by Gregory Mone
The whirlpool ship that had swallowed her up was the only watercraft tied to the edge. But the space was crowded with machines and workstations and half-built contraptions. This wasn’t anything like the other deepwater dock. It reminded her of a mechanic’s workshop. Channels carved into the rock carried water from the pool into dark tunnels in the walls.
“The suit,” the man said. “Climb out of it now.”
She unlatched her helmet and removed it.
The man stammered, so surprised he could barely speak. “You’re . . . you’re just a kid.”
She hated when people said that. “I’m fourteen.”
“But you made it out of the ridge! Do you know how dangerous that was?”
“Well, it didn’t feel all that dangerous until you sucked me down with that whirlpool. I could’ve drowned, you know. I mean, what gives you the right—”
“Atlantis!”
“Excuse me?”
“Atlantis gives me the right, young lady. This is my job! Watching our borders. Keeping them safe.”
“From fourteen-year-olds?”
He sighed. His thick shoulders slumped. “I’m just following orders, okay? Close the borders, bring back escapees—I don’t care for any of that! A smuggler wants to catch illegal fish outside the ridge and sell them in Edgeland? Let him! A girl wants to risk her life and go for a swim in the deepwater? Let her be! I didn’t ask for this job.” He bit his lip and stared at the ground. Then he held up a finger. “Actually, I did ask for this job, but I didn’t think I’d have to do anything. I certainly didn’t expect teenagers attempting to escape from Atlantis!”
An alarm startled him. He grabbed his long silver hair. “You’re distracting me!”
“I’m distracting you?” The man seemed pretty good at distracting himself.
“Six months of nothing. Glorious, delightful, pleasant nothing. And now, two alerts in one day! A possible invasion, at that. I can’t believe . . . this is too much. Too much.”
“An invasion?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
“None of your—”
The alarm was blaring now.
He laid his sonic blaster on a table and rushed over to a workstation. He pressed his hand against a tablet. The surface moved, tiny rods rising and falling. She watched the man’s lips move as he read with his hand. Rian did this, too. He couldn’t just feel the words when he read. He had to pronounce them, to hear them.
“Are you counting?” she asked.
“Quiet!” He aimed his weaponless hand at her stomach, then stared down at his empty fingers with surprise.
Some guard. She motioned to the blaster on the table. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not going to grab it. Tell me, though, why are you counting?”
“Two minutes,” he mumbled.
“Two minutes until what? What did you mean by invasion?”
He waved toward a door. “Go. Please. Get out of here!”
He’d already moved to another workstation, as if he’d forgotten all about her. She was curious, sure, but she was free. She could get home after all. Everything was going to work out just fine. She moved as fast as she could in the dive suit. The guard was talking to someone through his earpiece as the door closed behind her. She followed a narrow hallway to its end, then pushed through an exit and into a wide tunnel.
A two-lane waterway ended just outside the door.
Kaya stripped off the dive suit, laid it out on the ground, and flicked the power switch. The material softened, and while the suit flattened out, she stared down the tunnel. The waterway led to a wide-open space. An aquafarm. The very same one she’d drifted over earlier that day. Now she was on the opposite side—at the border station. The one place Rian had warned her to avoid. Still, this was good. All she had to do was switch on her gravity suit and drift across. Then she could follow the same path as before. Make the next train. And get home for dinner with her grandmother.
But why had the guard let her go without even a warning? What she’d done was totally illegal. And what was the invasion he had mentioned? Was he talking about people from the Rift? She’d heard horror stories about the Rift, a region east of the main cities of Atlantis, cut off from the rest of their world. Supposedly the people there were hideous. Suggesting someone was from the Rift was a pretty standard insult. But she’d never heard any tales of Rift dwellers invading Atlantis. Maybe it was just another ship. Or a smuggler.
Kaya clicked her earpiece and checked the time. She still had a little while until the vacuum train home. One last glance into the odd workshop wouldn’t hurt. She left her suit on the ground and slipped back inside in time to hear something crashing against rock. Something heavy and metal crunching into stone.
Kaya crept quietly through the hall.
The door to the workshop was unlocked.
She heard splashing inside, and stepped through to find two gigantic submarines docked at the edge of the pool. One reminded her of some kind of prehistoric beast. The other, a gleaming metal ball as large as her entire home, sat heavily in the water alongside it. A hatch was open in the side of the spherical ship, and a long metal ramp reached down to the stone floor. Water splashed onto the rock as the sphere bumped against the edge of the pool. As Kaya watched, the long-haired guard stomped out of the opening and down the ramp, carrying across his shoulders the largest, strangest man she had ever seen.
8
People of the Sun
Lewis blinked. The cockpit was dark except for a dim blue glow. His head ached. His ears rang. And he was on the floor. Lying on his back. Had he been napping? He was a very talented sleeper—always had been. He could sleep on floors, stretched out on countertops, sitting in school during Health and Wellness class. One time, he fell asleep in a tree, then tumbled out and broke his arm. But now he didn’t even remember—
The monster!
That weird metal monster.
That shock rang through him.
Then he was standing in a dark forest surrounded by low trees, and from the branches of the trees hung socks of every color and thickness, and the socks were all clean and fresh-smelling, and . . .
Wait. That last part was a dream.
The other stuff did happen, though. He jumped to his feet.
His dad was gone.
Hanna was gone.
The air inside the subsphere smelled different. Musty. Like his grandmother’s basement. No, worse. Like the old couch tucked away in one of the dark corners of her basement. He’d used it as a hiding spot once (in a game against other people) and had sneezed for hours afterward.
The cockpit was hot, too. Sweat was trickling down the ends of his eyebrows. He wiped his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. Where were Hanna and his dad? The heat, the dim blue light, the lack of power in the cockpit—everything felt weird. Wrong. And why weren’t they moving? No water rushed past the glass, so they weren’t under the sea anymore. A tall rock wall loomed through the windows. Lights embedded in the rock glowed dimly.
Someone grunted.
The someone was not his father.
Footsteps clanged against metal.
Lewis tiptoed toward the sound.
The sub was rocking slightly, as if it were floating in a calm sea. And the hatch was open. So they had to be back on the surface. But where? Maybe they’d drifted up and floated to the shore of some tropical island. One with coconuts, not cannibals. Maybe they’d have hammocks on the island, too. And treasure! Gold and emeralds and rubies. He’d use it to buy his mom a house with a robotic kitchen and that sweet AI.
He crept closer to the hatch and peeked out.
This was no tropical island.
There was no treasure, and not a hammock in sight.
The subsphere was tied to the edge of a pool in some kind of gigantic cave. The space was three or four times as large as his school gym. The rock wall he’d seen through the window stretched high overhead. The metal monster—he recognized the seams along the side—was d
ocked beside them. Almost everything in the cave was dripping, as if the walls were sweating.
Crystals in the rock glowed blue, and a metal ramp led down from the subsphere to the stone floor, where a small, wide-shouldered man was gently laying Hanna on the ground. His dad was stretched out next to her.
The man’s hair was silver and long, his skin gray, almost sickly. He was short, too. A few inches shorter than Lewis, if he had to guess. But he was even wider and thicker than Lewis’s dad. His shoulder muscles were huge, as if he’d stuffed small soccer balls into his shirt, and his eyes were too large for his face. They looked like they belonged on a cartoon character Michael would draw. Next to this odd man, leaning over his dad, stood a girl with enormous, moonlike eyes and ghostly pale skin. Her long, straight hair was silvery white, and she was even shorter than the other stranger. She wore a blue-gray suit of some kind, almost like a full-body bathing suit, and a backpack was strapped around her waist and over her shoulders. She could have been dressed for a hike or a war. Lewis’s heart started beating faster.
The girl was weirdly pretty.
Both of the strangers turned and stared up at him.
Neither of them offered coconuts. He really hoped they weren’t cannibals.
Lewis froze. Should he run? Call for help? Hide under the fold-down kitchen table? Do the chicken dance? No. Too much pressure.
Instead, he shrugged and waved.
The girl did not wave back.
Neither did the man with the soccer-ball shoulders.
Suddenly, Hanna woke with a jolt. She rolled over and accidentally kneed his dad in the ribs. The professor struggled to a crawling position and sat up as Lewis rushed down the ramp.
“What happened?” his dad asked. “Where’s Lewis?”
“I’m here,” he said.
His dad rubbed his temples. “Where are we?”
The two silver-haired strangers were still watching them. They’d backed away a few steps. Were they afraid of them? Were they even people? They weren’t as small as leprechauns, and they didn’t have red hair. Lewis kind of hoped they were leprechauns, though, because those Irish fairies were famously skilled shoemakers, and the whole one sneaker thing was getting annoying. He pointed at them. “Maybe we should ask those two,” he said. “They might be leprechauns,” he added, lowering his voice to a whisper, “or cannibals.”
“Cannibals? What are you talking about?”
The moon-eyed girl was staring at him like he was an alien. Did he have food stuck in his teeth? Lewis ran his tongue along the grooves and found nothing. Was it his hair? He’d gotten it cut only a few weeks earlier, and it was kind of long on the top and short at the sides and back. And the unwashed look sort of worked—for pop stars, anyway. His hair should’ve been good. He swept his hand over his head. The girl copied him.
“Does she think that’s a greeting?” Hanna asked.
Lewis’s dad waved. “Hello!”
The man reached into his cloak, removed an odd instrument, and pointed it at them.
“Is that a trumpet?” Lewis asked. “Maybe they’re musicians!” He noticed for the first time that their feet were bare. Another strike against his leprechaun theory. But barefoot musicians were cool, too. He’d always wanted to be a harmonica player. “Why aren’t they wearing shoes?”
“Their footwear is the least of our problems,” Hanna said. “I don’t think that’s a trumpet, Lewis. People don’t point trumpets at other people.”
“Maybe it’s a deadly trumpet,” Lewis joked.
No one laughed. Then again, it wasn’t very funny.
The man raised his threatening instrument.
“Just be calm,” his dad said. “They must be Atlanteans. This is probably strange for them, too.”
“Atlanteans?” Hanna said. “Come on, Professor, they’re just really weird-looking.”
Lewis was doubtful, too. Atlanteans? There was a much better chance that they’d stumbled upon two very pale, short, shoeless musicians who might also be cannibals. “We’re probably just in a cave on some deserted island,” he said.
His dad turned his wristpad so Lewis could see the screen, which revealed their current depth. “That’s right?” Lewis asked.
“We’re four miles below the surface. This is a cave, but we’re not on an island.”
Hanna motioned to the strange pair watching them. “So who are these two?”
“They’re Atlanteans,” his dad insisted. He held up his hands and faced the man with the weapon. “Do you speak English?”
“Why would they speak English if they’re from Atlantis?” Hanna asked.
“Good point,” his dad admitted.
The girl tapped her ear, then placed her hand on the man’s instrument, forcing him to lower it. Slowly she approached Lewis. He backed up toward the ramp. She tapped her throat, then placed her fingers over her mouth and flung them outward.
Finally, he’d found someone who spoke his unique language. He produced a light, airy little belch. Delicate but clear.
The girl winced and scrunched up her nose.
“What was that?” Hanna asked.
“I thought she wanted me to burp.”
“No, imbecile, she wants you to speak,” Hanna said.
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. Just talk.”
Lewis waved to her. “Uh . . . hi?”
“And the first word spoken by the great explorer, Meriwether Lewis Gates, was Uhhhhhh . . .”
His dad tapped his wristpad. “We’ll strike that from the record,” he noted.
“You’re recording this, Dad?”
“Of course I’m recording this! This could be first contact! Do you know how important this moment is?”
Now he did. No pressure or anything, though. Just maybe one of the biggest events in the history of both of their civilizations, and he’d started it off by belching. Lewis breathed in slowly through his nose. They were four miles below the surface. There was a decent chance these two might actually be from Atlantis. And one of them wanted to talk to him.
He could do this.
He closed his eyes, then began. “Hi, I’m Lewis?”
The girl watched his lips. Her huge eyes narrowed. She was tapping at her right ear.
“Keep talking, son.”
“So I’m Lewis . . . and this is Hanna. This is my dad, Richard. The professor.”
“Keep going,” Hanna said. “She’s listening. Maybe she’s trying to recognize our language or something.”
“What do I talk about?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
Lewis wasn’t used to monologuing. In the fifth grade, he’d won a part in the school play, but he’d forgotten most of his lines and done the chicken dance whenever it was his turn to speak. The play was a success. His teacher said Romeo and Juliet had never made any audience laugh so hard. The local newspaper even wrote a great review.
But this was different. Now he had to talk. So, with his father’s and Hanna’s encouragement, he rambled on about anything that entered his mind. He talked about his favorite types of peanut butter and his love of swimming and his odd broken family and the subsphere and his imaginary career as a spy, code name Lefty.
The whole time, the girl’s expression hardly changed. She tapped her ear twice while he was blabbering. After a while, he asked, “Can I stop talking now?”
This was meant for his dad, but the girl answered instead. She touched her throat. “Yes, I understand you.”
“What is this peanut butter thing you mentioned?” the long-haired man asked.
Lewis was too shocked to speak.
His dad was stunned. “Wait, you just learned English?”
The girl pointed to her earpiece, then her throat. “We have translators.” She motioned to Lewis. “I asked you to speak because your voice has a nice high pitch. It’s easier to analyze.”
Hanna laughed.
High! That was ridiculous. “My voice is not—”
&
nbsp; His voice cracked before he could finish.
“How does it work?” Hanna asked.
“The earpiece turns your language into ours, and this”—she pointed to a clear patch on her throat—“changes our words into ones you’ll understand.”
“Amazing!” his dad declared.
“Right,” Hanna said, slightly annoyed, “but how does it actually work? What kind of processor do you have in there? What sort of algorithms does it run?”
The girl ignored her questions. She turned to stare at Lewis. “Are you . . . People of the Sun?”
“People of the Sun? Of course!” his dad said. “What else would they call us? Yes, yes, that’s us.” He pointed to the roof of the cave. “We’re from up there!”
Way, way up there, Lewis thought. They were in the Earth’s basement, really, with four miles of ocean above them. He scanned the huge room again. Water from the pool flowed out through narrow channels in the rocky floor, spilling into tunnels in the walls.
“What’s your name?” Hanna asked.
“Kaya.” The girl pointed to the white-haired man. “This is—”
“Naxos,” the man announced. “My name is Naxos. You . . . you don’t look like invaders.”
“Invaders? What are you talking about?” Hanna asked.
The girl interrupted them. “I knew it!” she said. “You’re real! I can’t believe you’re here.” She reached out and touched Lewis on the shoulder. He felt a chill. She faced Naxos. “Can you believe this?”
The man didn’t answer. He looked more confused than surprised.
“Where are we?” Lewis’s dad asked. “What is this place?”
“A border station not far from Edgeland,” Kaya replied.
“Edgeland?”
“A city known for smugglers and criminals,” she added.
“Sure, sure,” the professor said. “But what is this place called? This world?”
As if it should have been super obvious, the girl replied, “Atlantis.”
Hanna leaned back, away from the girl, or maybe the idea. “Are you joking?”