by Joel Ross
“Yeah, except the Fog thinks that people are pollution.” Mochi grabbed a potato rind from the table. “And chased us to the mountaintops, and here we are.”
“What I don’t understand,” Hazel said, “is where the Compass comes in.”
Mochi crunched her rind. “The Compass is an ancient machine, I guess.”
“That controls the Fog,” Loretta said. “Yeah, we heard that much.”
“It still doesn’t make sense.” Swedish rubbed his nose. “If they had a machine to lower the Fog back then, they would’ve used it.”
“Maybe they couldn’t,” Jada said, appearing behind Mochi.
“Why not?” Swedish asked.
Jada shrugged.
“So you think the Compass is real?” Hazel asked her.
“Kodoc does,” Swedish muttered when Jada just shrugged again. “And he’ll kill to get his hands on it.”
“The cogs do, too,” Mochi said. “They’re the ones who discovered it. A long time ago, they found an old scientific journal. Uh, do you know what that is?”
Bea nodded. “A kind of book.”
“Books,” Loretta muttered, scraping her bowl with her spoon. “What’s the point? You can’t wear ’em, you can’t eat ’em, and you can’t even stab someone with ’em.”
“What did it say?” Hazel asked.
Jada sat beside Mochi. “The engineers predicted that a machine called a ‘Compass’ would eventually self-assemble in the Fog—and trigger the Fog to lower.”
“Eventually?” Hazel asked. “When?”
“When the time is right.”
“Self-assemble?” Bea chewed her lower lip. “Like, build itself?”
“The cogs aren’t sure,” Mochi told her. “They think so, but most of the old books were written on ear eaters, so we can’t read them anymore.”
I peered at her. “Written on what?”
“Ear eaters. You know, books on screens.”
“I think those were ‘e-readers,’ not ‘ear eaters.’ They’re why we know more about the old days, back when they used paper and plastic.”
“Yeah,” Bea said. “Everything they wrote on e-readers is lost.”
“‘E-readers’ can’t be right,” Mochi said, tugging at her frizzy hair. “I mean, who’d want to read just the e’s? You need the rest of the letters, too.”
“That’s true.” Bea giggled. “Otherwise you’d just sound like eeeeee!”
“Eeeee!” Mochi said. “Ee!”
I glanced at Hazel and caught her covering her mouth to hide a smile. Her brown eyes shone.
“Mochi!” Jada said sternly.
Mochi flushed. “Sorry.”
“So they found a journal that predicted a Compass?” Hazel asked, trying to keep a straight face. “Then what?”
“Then nothing,” Jada told her.
“Not for years and years,” Mochi said. “I mean, what could the cogs do? Nothing but wait. So they kept looking until finally, finally they found something. . . .”
She paused, and I leaned forward eagerly. Had they really found a way to control the nanites? To lower the Fog?
“Some of the cogs think the Fog is different in different places,” Jada said. “Like the nanites programmed themselves to adapt to different regions. So there could be a thousand Compasses, no two exactly alike, spread out from here to—”
“What did they find?” Bea interrupted. “Tell us, tell us!”
“Yeah,” Loretta said. “You’re as bad as a book.”
“They found a map,” Mochi said.
“Not a map,” Jada corrected. “Just a clue about a map.”
Mochi nodded, her eyes bright. “Some lady wrote in her diary about a map she’d seen in the Station. A map with pictures and directions and—”
“—a Compass,” Jada said.
“A huge Compass,” Mochi said. “We’d found the Station a long time ago, so then the cogs knew where to find the map. Now we just need to get to the map, find the Compass, and shabazz! We’re all set.”
Hazel tucked a braid behind her ear. “Something tells me it’s not that easy. What’s a ‘Station’?”
“A place in the Fog,” Mochi told her.
“So getting the map and finding the Compass will take at least two dives.”
“Surrounded by driftsharks and polar bears,” Loretta said grimly. “And . . . and haze rays!”
“What’re haze rays?” Bea asked me.
I shrugged. “Never heard of them.”
“I made those up,” Loretta said. “I mean, who knows what’s in the Fog after all this time? I wouldn’t go diving for all the Compasses in the world.”
“She’s right,” Jada said. “There’s worse than polar bears in the Fog. There are ticktocks.”
Swedish grunted. “Clockwork monsters.”
“Nobody’s ever seen a ticktock!” Bea said.
“Not for a hundred years,” Mochi told her. “But a long time ago, a girl was born with Fog in her eye.” She glanced at me and then away. “She spent more time in the white than anyone. And she saw ticktocks. Just once, but—”
“Crawling in the Fog,” Jada cut in grimly. “Chewing through everything in their path.”
“Horrors from the deep,” Swedish added. “Lurching toward higher ground.”
Jada nodded at Swedish. “Lurching and creeping and killing.”
“You’re such a chuzzlewit,” Mochi scoffed at Jada. “They can’t still be around after a hundred years!”
I had no idea what “chuzzlewit” meant, but Bea pointed a finger at Swedish and said, “That’s exactly what you are! You’re a chuzzlewit!”
“If ticktocks existed,” Hazel said, “Chess would’ve seen them.”
I shrugged a dubious shoulder. After three years of diving, I’d seen plenty—but I hadn’t seen everything. The world inside the Fog below was still full of surprises, not all of them pleasant.
“They’re out there somewhere,” Jada said.
“Hiding,” Swedish said. “Waiting.”
“Stop it!” Bea muffled her ears with her hands. “Tell a story from the scrapbook or I’ll get nightmares!”
“What’s a scrapbook?” Mochi asked.
“A book of facts from before the Fog.” Bea peered around the room, then asked me, “Do you know anything about the food back then?”
I thought for a second. “They used to eat ‘fast food,’ which came with something called ‘catchup.’”
“‘Catchup’?” Loretta scratched the tattoo on her cheek. “Like a race?”
“I don’t know. Tomato catchup.”
“How do you race tomatoes?” Mochi asked.
“How hard is it to catch them?” Bea asked.
“The ancients were totally peanuts,” Loretta said.
“Yeah,” Hazel said, and I nodded. Even Swedish and Jada couldn’t argue with that.
5
WHEN WE RETURNED to the infirmary, we found a doctor talking with Isandra at the foot of Mrs. E’s bed.
“Ekaterina is very sick,” the doctor told us. “While we can’t cure her—”
Bea gasped and grabbed Hazel’s hand.
“—we can help her,” the doctor finished.
“She’ll never recover completely,” Isandra told Bea. “But she’ll live. She’s not going anywhere for a long time.”
A knot in my heart loosened. Hazel plopped down on a chair and closed her eyes, Bea hugged herself, and Loretta squeezed Swede’s arm.
From the doorway, Isander said, “Unless . . .”
The knot in my heart tightened again.
Hazel opened her eyes. “Unless what?”
“Unless, bonita,” Isandra said, “the entire Port is doomed.”
“If Lord Kodoc kills us all,” Isander said, “he will not spare Ekaterina.”
I frowned at the cogs. What were they talking about? Port Oro wasn’t doomed. Port Oro was safe. That was the whole reason we’d come. To find treatment for Mrs. E and safety for the crew.
“Kodoc’s not going to kill anyone,” Loretta told them. “His ships can’t get us while we’re here. Hazel says he attacked like a dozen times, and the Port’s still here.”
“He’s never tried to conquer us,” Isandra said. “Only to weaken us. Which was painful enough. However, an invasion isn’t our primary—”
“—concern,” Isander finished, his blue eye grave. “We’re facing something worse.”
“Far worse,” Isandra said, leaning on her cane.
“If Kodoc finds the Compass before we do,” Isandra said, “he’ll kill us without firing a shot. Or he’ll take everything we have—including our freedom.”
“If the Compass exists,” Hazel said. “And actually works.”
“We can’t take that chance. We need to stop him.”
Swedish cracked his knuckles. “Next you’re going to say that we owe you.”
“We’ll say what?” Isandra asked, brushing a dreadlock from her face.
“You’ll tell us the reason you bothered helping us in the first place,” Swedish told her.
“We always help when we can,” Isandra told him.
“We don’t always succeed,” Isander added gently. “But we do try.”
“Nobody helps for free,” Loretta said.
I nodded. That was a lesson that every slumkid learned young—and learned over and over again. “Just tell us what you need, and we’ll—”
“—talk it over,” Swedish interrupted. “We owe you, but that doesn’t mean we’ll pay any price. You want Chess to dive? We’ll see. There are risks we won’t take.”
“There are risks,” Hazel said, “we won’t let him take.”
A silence fell, and the medical machines rattle-clicked. I wanted to tell Swedish and Hazel that I’d decide which risks to take . . . except I wouldn’t. We’d decide this as a crew, just like we decided everything.
Isander and Isandra exchanged a glance. “Let’s step onto the balcony,” Isandra said, and left the room, her cane thumping the floor.
We headed down a corridor with open doorways on both sides. I peeked inside them as I passed, and saw workshops and bedrooms. I paused for a moment outside a big room where dozens of small kids sat on the floor facing a bald guy.
“What’re they doing?” Loretta asked beside me.
“Working, I guess.” That’s what little kids did—they assembled delicate mechanisms in factories where small hands were worth more than brute strength.
“But they’re not,” Loretta said.
I looked closer. She was right. They were just sitting there, listening to the bald guy talk. “Maybe they’re on break?” I guessed.
“That’s a classroom,” Isander told us.
“So they’re . . . learning?” I asked him.
Isander nodded. “Math and gearwork and reading.”
“How do you sell any of that?” Loretta asked, rubbing her spiky hair. “I mean, where’s the money in it?”
“We—we don’t—” Isander sputtered to a halt. “There isn’t any money in it, Loretta. We teach them because they’re children.”
“So you don’t get anything?”
“Other than educated children? No.”
Loretta shot him a scornful look. “You wouldn’t last a week in the junkyard.”
The balcony was a corner of the skyscraper with a low ceiling and a chain-link fence instead of exterior walls. The fence faced the Port mountains, and the sight took my breath away. The high spires of buildings caught the sunset above a cliff where a stream of people climbed steps carved into the rock. Farther down, Port Oro looked more normal, with buildings made of rusted car bodies, shiny plasteel, and mud bricks. Smokestacks dotted the hillsides alongside bustling squares and marketplaces, and I heard a few faint shouts and the distant grind of engines.
Dozens of bridges arched from one neighborhood to the next, and below them, in the valleys between the ridges of the mountain, the Fog billowed and swirled.
“Whoa,” Loretta said.
“Check the mutineer docks,” Hazel said, pointing.
A high platform rose on the nearest mountain peak, held up by massive struts. A dozen mutineer airships lined the edge of the platform, hunched over the city like gargoyles, with the last rays of sunset glowing behind them.
“Ooh,” Bea said, “and those repair bays are the purplest!”
“Instead of gawking,” Swedish said, “maybe we ought to ask the cogs what they want from us.”
“Oh! Right.” Hazel took a breath, turning toward the cogs. “You helped us for a reason.”
“Perhaps we did,” Isandra said. “Perhaps we—”
“Well, of course we did!” Isander said. “What’s the alternative? That we helped for no reason?”
“You know what she means,” Isandra scolded him. “That we helped because we want something.” She nodded to Hazel. “I suppose we helped for a variety of reasons, some more selfish than others.”
“And now we’re in your debt,” Hazel said. “Exactly where you wanted us.”
“That’s a . . . harsh way of looking at it.”
“But it’s true,” Hazel said.
Isandra’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not going to make you do anything.”
“We’ll pay our debts,” Hazel told her. “If we can. And after that, we won’t owe anything to anyone. Not the bosses, not the mutineers—not you. We’ll start over, free and clear. So tell us what you want.”
“You’re quite blunt,” Isandra said, leaning on her cane.
“She’s honest,” Isander said.
“We need to get the Compass before Kodoc does,” Isandra told Hazel. “You know this already. Which means we need a crew—and a diver.”
“You have your own tetherkids,” Hazel said.
“A special diver.” Isandra turned toward me. “Do you think you know the Fog?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“We need more than a guess,” she said.
“Chess survived three years diving down into the Fog for salvage,” Hazel told the cogs. “Moving through the ruins like a shadow. Does he know the Fog? He lives the Fog. Nobody alive knows the Fog like Chess.”
Isander hmmmmed and Isandra inspected me, her gaze narrow and intent. “Show me your eye, Chess.”
My breath caught. After a moment, I said, “What— what happened to your eyes?”
Isandra touched her cheek. “We tried to fill them with Fog.”
“And we failed,” Isander told me.
I looked at Hazel for guidance, and she silently returned my gaze. Instead of telling me what to do, she was saying that she’d back me up whatever I decided. Still, she was right. We owed them. I needed to do this. For Mrs. E, for Port Oro. And for myself. So I raised my hand to my face to brush away my hair. Isandra and Isander leaned closer, and flickers of lamplight glinted off their white eyes—and all in a rush, I saw that they were glass.
Cold, lifeless marbles.
A shiver ran through me. They’d willingly sacrificed their eyes to the nanites of the Fog and replaced them with glass. Why? Because of an old story about a girl with Fog in her eye? My freak-eye meant something to the Subassembly—something big and meaningful—and I couldn’t face that, no matter how nice they seemed. Not yet. Their glass eyes meant that I wasn’t just me. I was part of something bigger than my crew—and I didn’t want to be.
I lowered my hand. “I don’t think so.”
“Please,” Isandra said.
“Not yet.” I stepped back. “Not yet.”
“You can’t blame him,” Isander told her. “Born on the Rooftop, marked by the Fog . . .”
“I don’t blame him,” Isandra said. “But we must know for certain what he is.”
“What’re you talking about?” Loretta asked them. “You know what he is. We all know. He’s got a Fog-eye. You want me to draw a picture?”
“Actually, that’s not a bad id—” Isander started.
“We need to see it,” Isa
ndra cut in. “To be sure that the nanites are truly embedded, and this isn’t merely an illness or mutation.”
Great. Now I might be a sick mutant? I frowned, and Hazel nudged me with her hip. “You’re not a mutant,” she murmured. “You’re a chuzzlewit. There’s a difference.”
“We’ll need to test him, in any case,” Isander told Isandra. “To ensure he can survive these dives.”
“What kind of test?” Hazel asked.
Swedish shifted uneasily. “The same kind they give lab rats.”
“Don’t press Chess too hard,” Isander told Isandra. “If he’s the diver we need, he’ll come around.”
Isandra huffed. “If he’s the diver, then Kodoc knows he’s here. And Kodoc won’t wait. He’s already planning.”
“Planning what?” Bea asked in a small voice.
“Something,” Isandra said ominously.
“Something bad,” Isander explained.
“Yeah, we figured it wasn’t a parade,” Loretta said.
“Let the children explore the mountain,” Isander told Isandra. “Let them meet a few people, eat a few meals. Give Chess’s leg a little time to heal.”
“And then what?” Hazel asked.
“And then,” Isander said sadly, “we ask that you pay us what you owe.”
6
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke on a comfy rag-stuffed mattress in a bedroom near the infirmary. The cogs lived lower down in the skyscraper, closer to the Fog, while the gearslinger workshops were near the roof. That way, the Fog didn’t mess with the engines—and airships could launch directly through wide doors that opened into midair.
Still half asleep, I prodded the bandages on my leg. The harpoon cuts ached, but not too badly. I’d always healed fast. I lay there blearily until a wind buffeted the skyscraper, and the whole building swayed, creaking and squeaking.
“That’s better,” Bea said from the next mattress, stretching her arms overhead. “It’s weird when the floor doesn’t move around.”
“Yeah,” Loretta said, after a huge yawn. “Feels more like the junkyard now.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Hazel told them, lifting her head from painting her toenails in the corner. “We’re moving to the Port as soon as . . . y’know.”