by Gregory Mone
“He’s fine,” Kaya said. “That version’s just painful. It doesn’t knock you out like the others. No permanent damage, either.”
His foot was tingling, but the feeling came back quickly. Still, a little more sympathy would’ve been nice. Even fake sympathy.
Leaning over the side of the cruiser, Hanna asked, “What is this place? Another aquafarm?”
Thick strands of rubbery seaweed hung beneath the surface of the water below.
“We grow a thousand different types of kelp and sea grass,” Kaya said.
“And you eat that stuff ?” Lewis asked.
She searched through her bag, found a rectangular bar wrapped in greenish packaging, and passed it to him. “Baked, dried, fried, boiled . . . any kind of seaweed you could want. This kelp bar has all the nutrients you need for a day’s work. Fish bars are popular, too, but I don’t have any with me.”
Lewis hesitated, sniffing the outside, but his stomach was a mindless, ravenous beast. He would’ve chewed on a lost-and-found gym sneaker if someone told him it had protein. And so he bit off a chunk. Sure enough, it tasted like cardboard. He stuck out his tongue and tried to scratch it clean with his fingernails. “That’s disgusting!” he cried.
Hanna grabbed it from him and tried a small bite. “I disagree. It tastes . . . healthy.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Gross.”
And then he snatched the bar back from her and gobbled it down. Kaya tossed him a bottle of water, then dug through her bag and found another for Hanna. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t even think about whether you’d be hungry. I didn’t really pack enough for three people, but we’ll be home soon, and you can eat as much as you like.”
Home. He still didn’t want to think about home.
Or his mother and his little brother.
And he really didn’t want to think about his dad. His father was alive. He had to be. The Erasers wouldn’t want to hurt him. They’d want to talk to him. Ask him questions. And his dad would be only too happy to chat. A chance to converse with Atlanteans? Maybe even explain his theories? He’d forget all about the blast from the sonic rifle. He’d convince them they weren’t invaders. His father and the Erasers were probably sitting around a table together right now, drinking that fermented kelp stuff, already friends.
A low wall with a path through the center cut across the water ahead of them. On the other side, the water churned in places, as if it were boiling. Lewis pointed. “What’s that?”
“Fish. I’m not sure which kind. We also have pools for algae, not to mention crabs, clams, lobsters . . .”
“So you pretty much just eat seafood and seaweed,” Lewis mumbled. “Weird.”
“Really?” Kaya said. “Why? What do you eat?”
“Vegetables,” Hanna began, “grains, fruit—”
“And chocolate,” Lewis added. “Do you have chocolate here?” Kaya shook her head. “Wow. That’s tragic. Really.”
“We eat meat, too,” Hanna said.
“Meat?”
“You know—from chickens, pigs, cows, goats.”
Kaya looked puzzled. Maybe the words didn’t translate. “What are they?”
Lewis described each of these land animals, then did his goat impression. He was pretty skilled at imitating farm animals; his cow was stellar, and his pig was perfection. Strangely, though, despite his mastery of the chicken dance, he couldn’t quite do a rooster or a hen.
“That was a terrible goat impression,” Hanna declared.
She belted out a few bleats herself. Unfortunately, she was good. Really good. He had to try and match her, and soon the two of them were going goat for goat, and laughing hysterically. Kaya? Not so much. The girl from Atlantis looked massively weirded out.
Quieting their inner goats, they cruised onward and over a wide, still square of water. Lewis wiped the sweat from his forehead, swept his hair back, and pointed down. “What about this section?”
“This is a fallow pool,” Kaya said. “They’ll keep that empty and clean for a few months, then move fish or plant life into it and clean out another one.”
“So the water’s clean?”
“Very.”
“No giant foot-swallowing fish?”
“Not a single one.”
“Lewis,” Hanna said, “don’t!”
But he was already over the side, cannonballing into the water below. His score? Out of modesty, he gave himself a nine and a half, but he probably deserved a ten. The water was cool but not cold. It seeped through his hair and clothes and instantly woke him up. “The water’s perfect!” he yelled when he surfaced.
The cruiser dropped slowly, settling without a splash. Immediately Kaya leaped over the side. Hanna took a little more convincing, but she jumped in next. She swam to the edge of the pool and propped herself up on the stone wall, sitting with her feet in the water. “Are you racing?” Hanna asked.
This was an absolutely terrible idea. The girl from Atlantis swam like a dolphin. He was going to get destroyed. “Let’s go!”
“There and back?” Kaya suggested.
The other side of the pool was ridiculously far away. “No way. Just here to there.”
“Fine,” Kaya said.
He was on the other side of Hanna, holding the wall with one hand. Hanna leaned over and whispered, “Just the first race between an Atlantean and a Sun Person. No pressure.”
“Right,” he said. “Why don’t we just wait a few minutes to catch our breath—”
Kaya nodded in agreement, and he dropped down and streamlined off the wall.
Was it cheating? Maybe. But she was from Atlantis. He deserved a head start, and he burst up out of the water and kicked and swung his arms. He felt fast.
Just not fast enough.
He didn’t have goggles, so his vision was blurry, but the water was clear enough that he could see Kaya streamlining beneath him. She was a body length or two below the surface, swimming with her arms pressed together over her head, rocketing through the water like a dolphin.
Next time he’d find a pair of fins.
When Lewis finally made it to the other side, she was already rested and relaxed. “I’m more of a distance guy,” he lied. “A bigger pool, and I would have passed you.”
Once they’d climbed back inside, Kaya steered over the pools and into a tunnel glowing with lights and crowded with vehicles. They splashed down into the flow of traffic, and Kaya reminded them to crouch so they wouldn’t be noticed. Hanna started complaining that Lewis smelled like the armpit of a hibernating bear. He told her she reeked of the crusty crevices behind its ears. Did bears even have those? Michael did. But forest animals? He wasn’t sure. Still, it was a good comeback.
At the edge of the city, Kaya switched on the gravity drive again—she said she still couldn’t believe Hanna had fixed it—and they drifted above the crowds. She whistled, then cupped her hand over her right ear. Listening to her new messages, Lewis guessed. Then an odd expression formed on her face. Not sad, exactly. Confused.
“What is it?” Lewis asked, leaning into the front seat.
Kaya drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Well, every-one’s worried, obviously. I told Rian and my grandmother I’d be home soon, but my dad . . . he still hasn’t messaged me.”
Lewis looked at Hanna. “Maybe it just didn’t come through yet,” she suggested.
“Right,” Kaya said. “That’s probably it. The signal in those tunnels and waterways can’t be good.” She sat straighter in her seat. “So,” she said, forcing a smile, “what do you think of my city?”
The world below was a sparkling, gleaming wonder. The buildings were all crystal and glass. Hanna said something about how there were none of the straight lines and right angles common to surface cities—how everything was curved. And sure, that was interesting. But the crowds! There were people everywhere, walking shoulder to shoulder, and waterways jammed with small boats and long, thin ferries flowed in different directions. Atlantis was packed!
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br /> As they crossed the city, the buildings and neighborhoods changed. The crystal-lined walls gave way to simple stone. But even these walls were polished smooth, not left jagged and rough, and the windows were made of radiant multicolored glass. Kaya steered into a garage hollowed out of one such stone wall, high off the ground, and they floated gently to the floor.
A dozen other vehicles were parked inside. All of them gleamed, without a single dent or speck of rust. “We’re here,” she announced.
Hanna gently packed the blaster into the gear-filled bag, slung it over her shoulders, climbed out, and traced her fingers over the roof of one of the other vehicles. “Are these all yours?”
“No, no,” Kaya answered. “Twenty other families live in this wall.”
Hanna nodded. “So it’s like an apartment building. Cool.”
Kaya whistled four long, slow notes. A wide metal door slid into the wall, and she led them down stone steps to her level. Someone was playing the drums above them, and Lewis heard a man and a woman arguing. “The Murakis,” Kaya explained. “They’re always yelling at each other.”
At a dark glass door, Kaya whistled again—a different tune this time—and they stepped into a tall, wide-open room. The polished walls rose and curved sharply into a high ceiling. Lights glowed to the right. Windows looking out over the city lined the left side of the room, and a tangle of vines and green leaves grew up out of a shallow pool of clear blue water at the far end.
“Grandmother? Dad?” Kaya called out. “Are you home?”
No response.
Where were they?
“Do you have food?” Lewis asked. “I’m so hungry I’d eat kelp ice cream with kelp sauce and whipped kelp on top.”
Kaya checked the other rooms, then returned and began pulling containers out of some kind of fridge. She laid the containers out on a square table. “Sit,” she said. “You’re going to love this.”
His father was the one who would’ve loved it—and not only because of his fondness for food. He wanted to know everything about Atlanteans. How they lived, what they ate—everything! Lewis felt a kind of pit in his stomach. An emptiness.
Hanna dropped the bag on the floor next to a large couch and stared at the spread of foods on the table. “So, how do we . . .”
“Right,” Kaya said. “I’ll show you.”
She sat with them and unfolded what looked like a seaweed wrap. Then she loaded it with these strange little brownish-green cubes and all different kinds of thick greens. She pinched salt—Lewis hoped—out of a small stone pot and sprinkled it across the top. Next she grabbed a few bottles from the fridge, set them on the table, and dribbled a few dashes of a brownish, syrupy goo onto her food. Lewis leaned forward and sniffed one of the bottles. His nose was instantly on fire. His sinuses cleared. His whole world had suddenly changed.
Everything was brighter, better, more wonderful.
They had hot sauce in Atlantis.
As he started putting together his own wrap, Kaya pulled two sides of hers together and chomped down. She savored the flavors, closing her eyes as she chewed.
“We’re not the only hungry ones,” Hanna remarked.
“Go ahead,” Kaya said. “It’s delicious.”
Lewis and Hanna fought over the containers, overloading their wraps with mystery cubes and what looked like crab-meat. Lewis flooded his messy masterpiece with one of the Atlantean hot sauces. He’d beaten his friends Jet and Kwan in hot-sauce-eating contests before. He was still in training, though, and he might never reach the level of mastery of his uncle John, who had once won a hot sauce challenge by pouring the fiery stuff into his eyes.
Kaya held out her hand. “Not too much,” she warned.
He dashed on a few drops more, then braved his first bite. The wrap was actually kind of good, and the cube things, although mildly fishy, were way, way better than that kelp bar he’d tasted in the cruiser. And the hot sauce wasn’t even that—
The fire rolled in slowly, beginning near his lips.
Then the heat spread back over his tongue and all around the inside of his mouth.
Soon he was burning from the inside out. If he burped, he thought he might actually breathe fire. The girls began laughing as he leaped and jumped around the room, then splashed into the small, ankle-deep pool against the wall. He drank the pool water. He splashed his face and mouth. He even grabbed some of the vines hanging down the wall and rubbed them against his lips—anything to stifle the flames. Between laughs, Kaya raced to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of bluish liquid. She pressed it into his hands and ordered him to drink. He slugged some down, and it tasted like yogurt. He rinsed it around inside his mouth and spat some into the pool at his feet. A bluish-purple cloud spread out. Was he supposed to spit in there? Probably not. He was turning to apologize when the door opened.
An Atlantean boy stepped into the room. His hair was short and silver. He had wide shoulders, wide feet, a flat nose, and his skin was pale. Almost colorless. Kaya rushed across the room but stopped short of hugging him. “Well,” she asked, pointing back at Lewis and Hanna, “can you believe it? What do you think?”
The boy’s huge eyes widened as he looked from Lewis to Hanna and back. “Whoa,” he said at last. “They really are weird! Especially that one,” he added, pointing at Lewis.
What? The Atlantean boy was the weird one. Lewis glanced over at Hanna. He tried to see her and himself through Atlantean eyes. She was still at the table, seaweed wrap in her hands. No rags from Edgeland could disguise the fact that she was not from Atlantis. Her dark hair and long, slender frame were probably alien to this kid. And Lewis? Well, he wasn’t exactly Captain Normal, either. His height, his hair, his freckles, the shade of his skin. Plus he was standing in the pool with bits of vines dangling out of his mouth and a cloud of blue Atlantean yogurt at his feet. The kid probably thought he was using the pool as a toilet.
He let go of the vines. “Hello,” he said. Then he pointed to the blue cloud. “Hot sauce problem. Long story.” Thankfully, the supreme, cosmic awkwardness that followed lasted only a second. “This is Rian?” Lewis asked.
“I’m not her grandmother,” the boy replied.
A decent comeback, Lewis decided. He’d let the Atlantean have this minor victory. Did they shake hands in Atlantis? Or high-five? Lewis wasn’t sure, so he waved, and Hanna did the same. He stepped out of the pool and returned to the table, leaving wet footprints on the floor. Rian remained on the other side of the room. Was he scared of them?
Meanwhile, Hanna had devoured her wrap and was starting to put together another one. Lewis wasn’t even halfway through his first. He was hungry, sure, but the wrap was soaked in devil sauce, and for some reason, seeing Kaya relax in her home had flattened his appetite. He was happy for her. Totally. And racing through Atlantis had been amazing. Wild, terrifying at times, but amazing. But now he was done. Now he was ready to find his father and get home. As soon as possible. He wanted to be with his family, in his house, eating his food. Somehow, they had to escape from Atlantis.
Something metal tapped against the floor outside.
“Someone’s coming,” Kaya whispered.
Hanna scrambled away from the table. The pack with the blaster was on the floor near the couch, and she hurried over to it. She motioned for Lewis to stand next to her, and they both ducked behind the couch, out of sight.
“Relax,” Rian said.
An old woman appeared in the doorway. Her skin wasn’t wrinkled, but her back was stooped, and she walked with a cane.
“Grandmother!” Kaya exclaimed. She rushed over and embraced the old woman, who broke off the hug quickly.
“You owe me an explanation, child.”
Instead of offering an excuse, Kaya signaled for Lewis and Hanna to stand up. “They are my explanation.”
The old woman staggered slightly. Rian rushed to grab a chair and set it down near the door. Carefully, Kaya’s grandmother sat, then held her cane in front of her and breathed
out heavily. “Astounding,” she said. “Simply astounding.”
Now Lewis heard more footsteps—a group of people rushing down the stairs.
“Is that our friend?” Kaya’s grandmother asked Rian.
The boy shook his head. “No, that sounds like a few people.”
“What friend?” Kaya asked. “I only messaged the two of you and Dad that I was coming home. I only mentioned the Sun People to Rian.”
“And I didn’t tell anyone,” he insisted. “Honestly.”
His response was quick and forceful. Lewis believed him.
“You mentioned these visitors?” her grandmother asked.
“Sure,” Kaya said with a shrug. “Why?”
Her grandmother sighed. “They listen to everything, dear. Everything.”
“Who?”
Two people burst into the room through the open front door. The woman was slim, had blond hair cut short, and looked like a smaller version of Lewis’s third-grade teacher, Mrs. Finkleman. He recognized her from Gogol’s shop. The man, too. The thick green hair growing from his chin looked like a clump of weeds. The Erasers had tracked them again.
“You were at the theater,” Rian said to the woman. “You took Elida.”
“They were at Gogol’s shop, too,” Lewis added.
Hanna stood beside the couch. The bag of gear was at her feet.
Mrs. Finkleman aimed a deadly trumpet. “Nobody move.”
“Do I look like I’m moving?” Kaya’s grandmother replied, still sitting to the right of the unwanted guests. “Whoever you are, this is a private home, and you have no right to be here. You’re aiming your weapon at children.”
“We’re not here to hurt them,” Mrs. Finkleman answered. She pointed at Lewis and Hanna. “We’re here to take those two with us.”
“Absolutely not!” Kaya shouted. “These are my friends!”
“No, child,” the woman said quietly. “They are not your friends. They are monsters.”
“When my father hears about this—”
“Your father is powerless, Kaya,” Mrs. Finkleman said. “Your parents, too, Rian.”
“How do you know my name?” the boy asked.
“We know all about each of you,” Mrs. Finkleman sneered.