I relaxed and slid down the wall. Will made certain the guards had withdrawn, and then we eased forward carefully until we reached the common area. There were several couches gathered around a blue glass table and two wireless screens on the wall broadcasting a news feed. The doors were now directly in front of us, and a second set of doors to our right—that’s where the voices were. I stayed close to Will, my hand on his elbow. He pushed gently at the release latch, but the doors were locked. There was a small window above eye level, about as high as Will could reach on his tiptoes. He leaned against me for support and stretched.
His slow intake of breath was like the sound as all the air exits a balloon.
“What is it?” I whispered.
But he just shook his head and slowly sank back down on his heels. “You look,” he said. He laced his fingers together, and I hesitated, then tentatively placed one foot in his hands. I braced myself with my good arm against the wall, and pushed myself as high as I could climb. Will lifted me until my eyes just cleared the window, and I could make out the mahogany-paneled room with its vases of real fresh flowers and two small trees.
I was not good with politics or government. I wasn’t interested in deal-making or brinksmanship, and I couldn’t distinguish an undersecretary from an overseer. But there was no mistaking the perfectly coiffed hair of the Canadian prime minister or the sun-baked face of the president of Minnesota. There were also several WABs I recognized from the wireless, and the chief administrator of Arch. His beard was neatly trimmed, and the skin on his face was unnaturally tight, as if it had been screwed onto his skull. At the front of the table was Torq, his smooth head like an egg, hands steepled beneath his hairless chin.
What were they doing here, together in the same room? Sworn enemies, gathered around the table, not fighting but debating, arguing like old friends?
“Hey, you!” a guard’s voice bellowed. “Halt!”
CHAPTER 16
We dashed back down the hallway, veering away from the prison wing and heading for a single blue door at the far end that promised Emergency Exit. The guard’s communicator squawked loudly, and his boots thumped as he ran after us. Will was limping, and my shoulder ached, and there was no way we could outrun a muscular man even if we weren’t both injured.
Will flung the door open. Steel stairs stretched up and down, with no platform in sight. Whichever way we went was a gamble, playing cards we hadn’t been dealt. Will went down. I followed. The door clanged shut behind us. We took two steps at a time, our feet skidding on metal. I kept one hand on the railing and the other reaching for Will. My balance precarious, my grip slipping, I fought hard to stay upright.
Despite the sign and the emergency, there appeared to be no exit. The stairs corkscrewed down as far as I could see. Overhead, men shouted, and we heard the heavy clanking of their heels on the stairs. I focused on Will’s back, locked on the one thing I could trust. The world compressed into a single point of his spine.
“Here, Vera, quick!” Will commanded.
He stopped so suddenly that we nearly collided. He was kneeling before an open hatch. It was about thirty centimeters in diameter—no bigger than a mine shaft and just wide enough for a skinny teen.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Water gutter,” said Will.
“We don’t know where it goes!”
“It goes down!” said Will. That was enough for him. “Come on!”
The men were getting closer. Their squawkings were unmistakable. It was capture or the unknown. I dove. Will followed. Down we plunged. It felt like a nightmare—one of those dreams where you are falling and yet never seem to reach the ground. Arms and legs beyond your control. Eyes unable to focus. I tumbled and banged against the slippery sides, yet nothing slowed my fall.
Then I was suddenly plunged into something cold and liquid, brackish and wet. Water! We were in the ocean! But I had no time to be amazed. I was still falling, and now there was water over my head. I knew I shouldn’t breathe, but the urge to take a breath was powerful. I had no idea how to swim, although I knew that’s what people used to do. Once there were even giant pools of fresh water for no purpose other than swimming—not even drinking—and athletes played games to see who could swim fastest.
But now I was drowning. Strange: at the time I didn’t even know the word. My lungs ached, and my brain felt as if it were burning. I flailed wildly in the water, kicking hard. Seawater went up my nose and stung my eyes. My mouth filled.
I might have died. I should have died. But my flailing propelled me back to the surface, where my head broke through at the last possible moment before I lost consciousness. I gulped in great breaths, bobbing on the surface. The water’s abnormal salt content kept me afloat, even though I had no idea how to swim or tread water. I was also sheltered by giant steel piers. From below the enormous structure looked like a hovering spacecraft in bad need of a paint job. The gutter through which we had plunged was just one of an intricate series of pipes, conduits, cylinders, and ducts that sucked in seawater, processed and transformed it, then dispatched it to giant holding tanks while dumping the poisonous residue back into the ocean.
There was a splash, and Will emerged about ten meters away. Like me he had been forced to the surface by enough salt and pollutants to float a small car. It left a taste like licking a metal fence: saline mixed with tin, iron, and rust. He spat and thrashed but managed to stay afloat. I called out to him, and he clawed his way over to me. His swimming wasn’t elegant, but it moved him through the water. When he reached me, we embraced: wet hair, wet faces, salty tears in the salty water.
But we weren’t out of danger—not yet. Although we were only several hundred meters offshore, we had to fight the currents and several enormous intake drains that sucked water back into Bluewater. We kicked, paddled, and kept our heads above water while the sea eddied around us, churning and swirling and carrying us to land. Finally we collapsed in the black, sulfurous sand, coughing and tearing, our noses running and eyes burning. But alive.
“I don’t like swimming,” I said after I finally caught my breath.
Will hiccupped a small laugh. “It’s not like we’re going to be doing it a lot.”
“I never want to do it again.”
Will didn’t disagree. Instead he asked, “Why do you think they’re here?”
I knew he was talking about the politicians. I propped myself up on my elbows. “A peace conference?”
Will shook his head slowly. The republics had been at war for so long, it was difficult to imagine peace. And why gather here, at the headquarters of the giant desalinator? PELA, Bluewater, the Canadians, the Minnesotans, and our own chief administrator gathered in the same place where Kai and Ulysses were held prisoner…
“It’s Kai,” I said.
Will nodded.
“We have to go back.”
“I know.”
We were both standing now, staring at the spider fortress. We were soaking wet, and our clothes stank. The seawater was contaminated, unfit for any kind of life except the hardiest and the lowest. Neither of us had the energy to venture back the way we had come. Even if we could, then what?
Behind us the black sand gave way to scruffy sparse vegetation, prickly and dry. A broken road that looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades cut through to the beach. Beyond, there were a few small ruined buildings, broken signs, abandoned vehicles, and rusted machinery. In the far distance, we spotted wavering gray towers, like a field of concrete grown wild.
“Where do you think we are?” I asked.
“Somewhere on the Great Coast, near what used to be New York City.”
“How can you tell?”
Will pointed to the gray shapes in the distance. “Skyscrapers,” he said.
I had read about the giant buildings, so tall they scraped the clouds. From the ground they appeared delicate and beautiful, their thin forms spiking heavenward like trees seeking light. I was too far away to see the broken
windows or collapsed skeletons, the buildings that lay in piles of rubble on the street. In the Panic the skyscrapers were deathtraps; smoke and fires trapped millions inside. But from the horizon, all was picturesque, peaceful, serene.
“There must be someone in the city who can help us,” I said.
“They haven’t had water for years. Even if there’s anyone alive, there are gangs and criminals and psychos. We would never get out.”
He was right. After the Panic, it was said, those who survived in the cities resorted to cannibalism when water wasn’t available. I didn’t necessarily believe all the stories, but if only a quarter of what we’d heard was true, the cities were still deathtraps. Yet we had no other choice.
“If there are people, there have to be boats,” I said, remembering my geography. “Manhattan is an island, and they blew the bridges. We can’t get them out of Bluewater without a boat. Ulysses can’t swim, and Kai and his father might be injured too.”
Will pondered the options. He knew I was right. We couldn’t fly a jet or a helicopter, and without something to get from the sea to the shore, we wouldn’t travel far.
“How do we find a boat?” he asked. “We can’t buy one. If we steal one, we’ll never get back here alive.”
“We bribe them.”
“With what?”
“Water,” I said.
We didn’t actually have water, of course, but we had the promise of water. No thief would kill us if he thought we could lead him to water. But Will wanted to know what we would do when we arrived at Bluewater. Besides, who would be crazy enough to join us? Anyway, it was probably at least a ten-kilometer walk to the city, with barely enough light to make it there before nightfall.
I said we could do it in an hour if we hurried, and the return would be faster with a boat.
We argued until a sound like a broken condenser interrupted us. We looked out, and there was a misshapen egg floating on its side in the water. It appeared squashed at the narrow front end and bulbous and lumpy at the rear. But it moved quickly—faster than seemed possible given its ungainly size. In fact, it wasn’t actually in the water at all but hovering above it, creating a wake that traveled in two parallel trenches as the egg—whatever it was—zipped along the surface.
“Skimmer,” said Will.
I had never heard of such a thing. Will explained they were fast-moving boats that sucked fresh water from the surface of the ocean using a process similar to desalination. Their great speed filtered the salt water through a membrane that yielded fresh, drinkable water.
“They’re not pirates, exactly,” said Will. “But they’re not legal either.”
I waved my one good arm at the skimmer and started shouting. Will grabbed my hand. “What are you doing?”
“They can help us, Will!”
“They’ll want water. They’ll want Kai.”
“So? Isn’t that the point?”
Will closed one eye and squinted into the distance with the other. Of course it was dangerous to volunteer Kai—what if he couldn’t help, or didn’t want to?—but without a boat, we might as well lie down and die on this spit of dirty beach. We were on hostile ground without food, water, or shelter, and night was approaching. Will reluctantly released my hand, and I began waving and shouting again.
The skimmer was doing more than simply sucking the warmest layer of ocean water into its cargo hold. It was circling like a thirsty insect around the pylons that supported Bluewater’s headquarters. In fact, as I waved, jumped, and shouted, I realized that the skimmer was trying to suck up the water that spilled back into the ocean as waste from the pipelines. This explained why no other boats tried to stop it and no jets tried to sink it. It was a parasite, living in symbiosis with its host, drinking up its poisons and selling them to others. Cadmium, mercury, thallium, lead—these metals would slowly kill anyone who drank them. But the skimmer ignored us. I waved until my other shoulder ached, then I sank to the sand next to Will.
“It’s no use,” I said.
Will nodded. His jaw clenched tightly. I could tell that he was in pain. He had been quiet about his leg, but I had seen his grimaces and drawn complexion. The medicine was wearing off. I knew he would not be able to make it all the way to the city.
“Will,” I began.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“We can rest here for the night.”
“We’re not resting anywhere. Look at us: We’re wet, and we stink. We have no food or water. We won’t last a minute out here. You’re right: we have to go to the city.”
Before we could move two steps, however, a high-pitched whining tore the sky. Two men in dark blue wet suits, each atop a machine that looked like a boxy motorcycle, cut through the top of the waves. Their engines screamed and sprayed foam. They had emerged from Bluewater and were heading toward the beach.
Will saw them too. “They’re coming for us,” he said without emotion and stood up next to me.
“Shouldn’t we run?”
“I’m tired of running.”
I took my brother’s hand.
The two of us faced the ocean, oddly still as the guards on their moto-skis buzzed toward us. After all the cycling, running, driving, flying, and swimming, it felt good to stand still. Not surrender, because that meant giving up. But defiance and resolve.
The moto-skis drew closer. The noise was as loud as the jet that had pursued us over the soy fields. Each man wore a pair of yellow-tinted goggles and a black breathing mask. The skin around their masks was grayish-green. The ocean was black and brown. The sky was a pale sickly orange.
The machines were fifty meters from the edge of the beach when each man suddenly reared up as if performing a flip, then somersaulted off the back of his ski. The machines continued toward the beach without drivers, fast and furious, roaring up on the sand, grinding and careening and finally crashing into each other. It was all we could do to avoid being struck by rocks and debris before one of the moto-skis burst into flames and the other followed.
The entire incident took less than a few seconds, and neither of us noticed that the top of the skimmer was now open, and a woman stood in the hatchway, a harpoon in her hand.
CHAPTER 17
The said her name was Sula. She stood over us with a tempered steel harpoon, no larger than a sword, but finely honed and deadly sharp. It glinted blue in the afternoon sun. Her arms were exposed in her wet suit, and the muscles twined up her forearms like ropes. Beneath her black cap, her hair was salt-bleached blond, and her eyes were a deep violet-blue. The water still dripped from her suit, and there was blood on her hands.
“You’re a long way from the city.” Her voice cracked like someone who was not used to speaking.
“We’re not from the city,” I said.
“No. I can see that.” Her gaze was flat and direct and did not linger.
“Did you kill those men?” asked Will.
Sula nodded.
“What will happen to you?”
She shrugged and wiped one hand on her wet suit. “They’ll come after me, I expect. They won’t find me, and then they’ll forget. They usually do.”
“Have you killed a lot of men?”
“When I’ve had to. Women too.” She began walking toward the burning moto-skis, and we followed. She picked up some of the scattered debris, examined it, then tossed most of it into the fire. “Bluewater rubbish,” she said. “Plasteel and tin.”
“Shouldn’t we be running?” I asked.
Sula gave me the flat gaze again, efficient and expressionless. “You’ve got a broken collarbone, and he’s got a leg wound. You’ll not be running far, I expect.”
“Can you take us? In the skimmer?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Water. We know where to find it.”
“Not hard to find,” she jerked her head toward Bluewater. “They’re sucking it out of the sea.”
“No. We know someone who knows how to find fresh water. A diviner, they ca
ll him.”
Sula exhaled sharply through her nose. “I’ve heard of such a thing. But I don’t believe it.”
“I’ve seen him do it,” I insisted. “He knows where it flows. They’ve got him locked up in Bluewater with his father and a pirate king.”
“A pirate king!” Sula’s lips curled into a slight smile.
“It’s true!”
“Stomping your feet won’t change my mind.”
I was tired, beyond exhausted. The pain in my shoulder was vibrant and aflame. My skin was chafed, chapped, and raw. But I wasn’t going to let this harpoon woman scare me, or worse, ignore me. Who did she think she was?
“We’ll go back by ourselves, then,” I said. I stripped to my underwear and threw my shirt to the sand. Will stared at me, wide-eyed. “Come on, Will,” I said. “We’re swimming. And my collarbone’s not broken,” I added.
Sula’s fingers on my forearm were like the keys of an old- fashioned piano, solid and delicate at once. “You shouldn’t be swimming in these waters. Not without a wet suit, goggles, and a breathing apparatus.”
“I don’t care! We have to rescue Kai. And Ulysses.” I stood before Sula, hands clenched, breathing hard. Will came up beside me. I really was prepared to swim back to Bluewater, and no one could stop me. I had abandoned reason for pure emotion. It coursed through my blood like holo-sugar, a chemically induced energy infusion. I felt like I could have jumped back into the ocean, chemicals be damned.
“I’ll take you in the skimmer,” said Sula.
“You will?” Despite my outburst, I was surprised to have convinced this woman of anything.
Sula scooped up my clothes and handed them to me. “I don’t like Bluewater, in case it isn’t obvious. When I saw those men on their skis—what kind of men kill children? And who knows? If there’s fresh water to be had…” She let her voice trail off.
The Water Wars Page 14