The Isle

  “We stay as we are.” Benny’s voice is firm. “We’ll give her two minutes. If after two minutes, nothing—”

  He doesn’t need to finish his sentence: immediately, we hear the high-pitched sounds of metal scraping metal, like two mobiles grinding sides. The DI Omni nears, zigzagging down the strait, but never losing pace.

  “Does anyone have Sipu’s comm ID? Can we reach her?” Benny asks.

  Callum, Ter, and I exchange glances—no one answers.

  Then Sipu’s Omni rises out of the water. She races forward, and for a few seconds, it’s a battle of speed. The two are neck and neck. She spins her wheel, cutting into his, but he doesn’t slow. He only veers farther and farther east, until he’s able to make a complete turn, facing back in our direction.

  The inside of my palms sting from clutching the rail so tight.

  Ter takes my hand and holds it flat against his. “It’s not even a competition.”

  I frown, feeling my palm grow sticky against his, but I see he’s right—Sipu’s Omni has taken off again.

  She’s gunned her engine until she and the DI are parallel, and then she rides it even harder. Her mobile flies over rocking waves, gaining speed, moving ever faster. It reminds me of a holo I once saw showing the moment a meteor broke the atmosphere, seconds before becoming a fiery mess.

  She whooshes past the DI’s mobile on the left and, spinning the wheel, she cuts him off at a T. Then she kills the engine.

  “What’s she doing?” I ask. At the same time, I cover my mouth with understanding.

  A white-hot boom cracks the night wide open. Like a sun exploding, the two mobiles fly together, then apart, in great pops of spewing metal—an orange cloud burns on the horizon, violent, sparking into the water.

  I gasp, choking on air. I shake my head as the tears crawl against my eyes. “B-but—” I stammer. “Did they both . . . ?”

  “That kind of crash, at that speed,” Ter says, lowering his eyes. He lays his hand on the small of my back. The Cloud revs to life. I’m thrown hard into the rail, like I’ve been punched in the gut. My hair curtains out around my head, a white tunnel trailing the Cloud. Strands stick to my cheeks.

  In the distance—one final, blazing gasp. It sets the black water aglow, and then the strait swallows it whole.

  It’s consumed everything.

  Left nothing behind.

  48

  REN

  9:51 P.M., FRIDAY

  In the shallow moat, Dunn has assembled a unit of four Omnis docked side by side. Their black chrome exteriors are nearly invisible in the water. Meanwhile, a giant red-bottomed vessel churns downriver. Fluorescent floodlights illuminate a bare deck—the barge.

  Fighting a tightness in my throat, I hop into the only Omni still empty—a single-seater, best for navigating small spaces. The convex moonroof shudders closed, giving me a plastic view of the night sky.

  A panel of neon-green buttons on the dashboard control shi-shi things: internal temperature and the gender of the VoiceNav. I tap the screen, and it draws me an underwater map of the UMI.

  The VoiceNav beeps twice, ready for me to tell it where to go.

  “Lihn’s Take-Out,” I say into the mic.

  That’ll get me close enough, as the restaurant and Derek’s place neighbor each other. It also won’t give Dunn an exact location. On the Nav screen, a fat yellow line worms its way through the old city’s rubbish, ending at my destination.

  Estimated time is about thirty-five minutes to cross the strait.

  The mobile submerges. Bubbles trace around the moonroof and disappear. I don’t have to step on nothin’—the Omni does all the work: a mobile with military capabilities adapted for even the laziest of folk. It spins out east, headlong into the strait. Like a needle of light, its beamers pierce the brack water. They shine on the sunken city—geometric structures covered in fuzzy green.

  I take even breaths, force the calm down into my nervous system. I think about being inside a twister, where they say you don’t get swept up. Through the rounded glass, building remnants give way to a riverbed of seaweed. Schools of fish shimmer past.

  Flanked by two DI Omni and trailed by a third, I make my way across the strait. No scenic underwater buildings here, just days and days of open water. I adjust the speed to an easy cruise, and I wait.

  “In approximately three hundred feet, you will have arrived at your destination,” the Nav’s cool voice informs before I get a visual confirmation. Moments later, boxy structures wrapped in green wool are my welcoming committee. Hairy plants wave us by in slow motion.

  The mobile veers between two buildings, down what was once a road. Its internal proximity sensor kicks in—a sharp left, then right. It even avoids land mobiles, now no more than muddy, leftover lumps.

  I feel useless, despite my lofty decision—destroying this planet’s greatest curse and its greatest miracle.

  In the rear and side mirrors, three Omnis still surround me.

  A few blocks from the famous Lihn’s Take-Out, I spot twin black chrome Omnis. Our parade of headlights has caught their attention, blood in the water. One for Kitaneh and one for Lucas.

  Guess Derek’s comm disappeared into the void.

  The mobiles cross each other, then blow toward me.

  Now’s no time for autopilot. Reaching under the wheel, I disengage so I’m back in manual.

  “Agent Dane!” I hear through the mobile’s internal comm—it’s from one of the other Omnis. “Explain to me why we are under attack—”

  The speaker cuts out, replaced with white noise. I try to send a message to Dunn from my own cuffcomm, but the timewheel just spins around and around and the message never sends. Nav system’s gone dark as well.

  Only one answer: Kitaneh’s jammed both the GPS and all outgoing radio signals . . . she don’t want anyone finding out where we are. I might be able to receive messages, but I’d have to get one to know.

  I do the only sane thing I can think of—gun the engine and make off like a tuna fish with a rocket on its back. Thankfully, in this baby, there’s no lag time.

  I slingshot right past one of the black bullets.

  Through the window, I spot the Derek look-alike. His square jaw has more iron than his brother’s.

  Spinning the wheel to the right, I take off down a sliver of a road. An alley, hardly wider than this Omni. I’m right where I found the airlock. That time, I broke the code and swam to the spring from inside.

  Doubt it’ll work twice. Kitaneh would have changed the code, for sure. I need Derek to find me a different way in.

  I check the rear, curious to see how she’s handling three DI all by her lonesome. She dives under one Omni, scraping its undercarriage. It takes me a moment, but then I see what she’s doing—she’s trying to either jam their artillery barrel with the darts inside, or knock them loose.

  Like a black cloud, Lucas’s mobile floats into the cramped alley, blocking my view.

  I angle my wheel upward to bring the Omni diagonal. Then, straight vertical. Finally, I’m rolling backward, nose over butt in a perfect 180.

  I hope my heart doesn’t fall out of my mouth like emptying the garbage. Dangling by the grace of my seat belt, the blood rushes to my eyeballs. I flex my quads, using the muscle as a buffer between the seat belt and my thigh fat.

  I gun the engine, leaving Lucas behind.

  Ahead, Kitaneh’s playing cat and mouse, attacking and dodging at the last possible moment. One DI tries to launch a dart into her mobile, but it sputters underneath him—her sabotage was a success. The two Omnis go nose-to-nose, at a stalemate.

  A fifth DI joins the fray.

  It targets another DI Omni. A dart ejects from its undercarriage, followed by a net. The dart strikes home, and the net wraps itself around the mobile. Its props slow, caught up in the tough cord.

  It’s Derek—I inhale, spotting his lucky hair glinting in the cockpit.

  He targets the Omni still nose-to-nose with Kitaneh.

/>   No dart this time—he just catapults himself through the water.

  It’s a suicide mission . . . Derek’s ten feet from the other Omni. Eight feet, no intention of slowing. What’s he playing at? My knuckles go bone-white on the steering wheel. I hold my breath, watching. Kitaneh, however, seems like she might have a clue. She waits there, eye-to-eye with the DI mobile, as Derek races closer.

  Moments before the two collide, Derek dives from the airlock. I gasp, loosening my grip on the wheel. A beamer severed from the totaled Omni floats to the riverbed, lighting up Derek’s hair. He’s a copper fish swimming through river mud, appearing in my windshield. Past him, I can make out Kitaneh’s headlights—she cuts around a corner, disappearing.

  Tap, tap, tap—

  Frenzied, I glance around the pit. Finding the button that opens the airlock, I slam it down much harder than necessary.

  Derek swims in. The airlock closes behind him and water drains away. He falls into the small space behind my seat, a soggy, sodden mess.

  “You pulled a me,” I inform him, impressed, keeping an eye on the remaining two Omnis. Their yellow beamers zig and zag, aimless. They’re blind as bats until the mud settles.

  Derek shakes his head like a dog, brack water spitting around the pit. “To the cave?” he asks, hoping I’ve changed my mind.

  I haven’t.

  I nod.

  Derek’s cuffcomm buzzes. “It’s Sipu,” he says, confused. “She just sent me coordinates.”

  “Coordinates?”

  Shrugging, he shows me the message:

  40°46'42.46"N, 74° 0'11.37"W

  “No idea,” he says, lowering his wrist.

  Kneeling behind me, Derek lays his hand on my knee. “I can get us to the cave—us, Ren. I’m coming with you. You’re not dying, not on my watch. If that means I have to keep you alive every step of the way, that’s what I’m doing.”

  I take his hand in mine. Our fingers interlock, and we squeeze palms. If he’s expecting me to put up a fight, he’s mistaken. “Okay,” I say.

  That’s my only answer.

  I don’t want to do this alone.

  49

  AVEN

  10:25 P.M., FRIDAY

  Thirty miles turn to twenty, then fifteen.

  A perfect circle of a moon hangs in the sky, lighting up forests on both sides of the strait. This far north, it’s more of a river. Hundreds of trees hug the coast, more types than I ever knew existed. Dark, furry, cone-shaped ones. Fluttery mammoths that shiver all over with the wind. They swallow the ground. You’d never know there was ground.

  A few miles downriver, strange lights dot the bank.

  I join Benny at the helm and inspect his map. We learned geography at Nale’s, but that was ages ago. Although Upstate is considered a single region, it’s actually split into thirty: one for each reservoir. They have that many.

  Only one aqueduct, however, can still supply the UMI with fresh . . . the one in Falls.

  In the back of the Cloud, Callum frantically draws math on the air. “Benny, you wouldn’t happen to have a pen and paper, would you?” he asks, pausing and cursing. “I can’t remember this many numbers.”

  Benny rummages around in the glove compartment. “I don’t know,” he grumbles, skeptical.

  “What are you doing?” Ter asks, sitting next to him.

  Callum doesn’t answer.

  “Use the back.” Benny hands over a stick of black chalk and a folded-up map. He returns to the wheel, frazzled gray hair sticking out in a hundred directions. His looks like one of those globe things we had in Nale’s science room, with electric lightning inside.

  “Nearly there, kiddos,” he says.

  Turning face-front again, I gasp.

  Fluorescent towers rise into the sky, each level shaped like a flat wheel. Inside—farms. I’ve never seen one for real, just on holos in class. Upstate exports all sorts of fresh produce, since they have the water: another reason why they wanted to cut off their supply.

  Squinting, I make out yellow and red and blue fruits growing against the glass. At the center, a mega-sprinkler goes ch-ch-ch, dousing them with water.

  More towers line the coast, bright glass farms that spiral up into the sky. Between each, greenery takes over. If I didn’t know a place like the Ward existed, nothing about this strange land would make me believe—back home is so different.

  “Guys . . . how will we even find the magistrate?” I ask, realizing I know nothing about Falls—I’ll have no idea what to do when we get there.

  No one answers.

  I go backward in my mind through all of Nale’s forgotten classes, trying to think of something that will help. Remembering the protest, I turn to the others. “What day of the month is it?”

  “The thirtieth, maybe? Or the first . . .” Ter checks his comm. “Thirtieth. Why?”

  “And what days of the month are the water auctions held?”

  Callum doesn’t look up from his work. “The first, the seventh, the fifteenth, and the thirtieth, I believe,” he answers, still drawing his math squiggles. “At midnight, they release the dam into the winning aqueducts.”

  “The auction,” Benny says, tapping his temple.

  Callum curses. He throws his fist into the back of his soft, cushioned seat. “Dammit,” he says again, staring into the air. The map, now covered in black, falls off his lap.

  “What is it?” Ter asks, but Callum presses his lips together.

  Defeated, he shakes his head. He won’t tell us. “Dammit,” he says again. This time it’s just a whisper.

  Squeezing into the plush seat next to him, I ask, “What did Ren ask you? If it has to do with her, it has to do with me too.”

  Callum folds up the map. “It’s nothing,” he says softly. “She made me promise.”

  “I’m making you unpromise. Tell me.”

  He laughs, barely, and stands. “She has her reasons, Aven. She doesn’t want you to worry about her,” he says, handing Benny the blackened paper.

  “But should I be worried?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know herself.” He returns to his seat and avoids my eyes.

  My heart cowers. I keep very still. He won’t let me pry this thing out of him—no means no. And if I want to fight with that answer, I can’t.

  East of us, higher up, headlights flash by. Shadows run across the river. Engines vroom against concrete.

  “They’re mobiles, for land. Cars.” Benny points to a road nestled in the hill. “With the price of gasoline, though, anyone still driving one is probably wealthier than we can imagine.” He pauses, awed, watching the cars go by. A gargantuan, brightly lit sign hangs over the eastern road. On it, green painted trees and the words—

  “Welcome to the Falls!” Ter bellows as we pass it by.

  We’re really here.

  My insides shudder like someone’s banging on the window. Wringing my hands, I press my fingernail-less fingers against my lips.

  Can we really stop a war?

  50

  REN

  10:25 P.M., FRIDAY

  Like sharks dancing, three identical Omnis duck and dodge in the murk. Kitaneh veers for mine, but one DI guy blocks her off, their mobiles screeching underwater. “How do we get into the cave?” I ask Derek.

  From the way he’s looking at me, I can tell he’s not excited about the answer. “Find your way back to the airlock,” he says, twisting around in his seat, unsure of the direction.

  Thankfully, my trusty Nav don’t need eyes. Following the screen, I reverse and turn right into the narrow underwater alley. There, a few feet above the muddy sand, is a circular steel door—the airlock, built right into Derek’s building.

  “Okay,” he begins, pointing. “You see how there’s a few feet of brick between the airlock and the riverbed? If you could drill a hole into that gap under the airlock, you’ll wind up in the drainage tank. From there you’re only about thirty feet from the cave.”

  “Drill a hole?” I balk—I di
dn’t bring my drills. “And how do you propose we do that?”

  Derek glances around the pit.

  “We are the drill. Wonderful. You’ve got no back doors? Nothing?”

  “Kitaneh changed all the locks, and our rainwater-collection drains are too narrow. This is our way in.

  “But, Ren—” he warns. “The building is thick. You’ll need to gather enough speed to break through the brick.”

  “It won’t work.” I shake my head, eyeing the narrow alley between Derek’s building and the one next door. “Both this alley and this mobile are about ten feet. I can’t get the momentum I’ll need.”

  Derek looks out the windshield. A school of dark fish swims out the window of the opposite building. “What about a window? Ground floor, across from the airlock?”

  I inhale, skeptical, but I lower the Omni closer to the riverbed. The opposite building has at least four ground-floor windows—one almost directly across from the airlock. It’s the color of mold, green with overgrowth, thick and fuzzy. Ain’t even a window no more, which is probably why I didn’t think of using it first.

  I bite my nail and nod, inspecting it. This could work.

  Like parallel parking a grown man in a shoe box, I reverse through the water. Then forward. Then reverse. Again and again, until I step on it, driving right into the algae-coated glass. My cuffcomm buzzes, but this kind of maneuvering requires both hands.

  The window groans against my Omni. I hear it cracking, breaking away from its frame. Uneven green triangles shower down, bouncing off my mobile’s nose and continuing to sink.

  The debris clears, and I steer us into what looks like it once was a child’s room. Clouds of plankton hover over an algae-coated crib. Holding my breath, I doughnut us around till the nose faces the window.

  This is it, I think. Last time I pulled a stunt like this, I had the good sense not to be inside the damn thing when it crashed. “We can’t use autopilot, right?” I groan, knowing the answer.

  “If you want to risk not hitting the proper speed, sure. Or it could malfunction. You’d end up drilling a hole two feet off-course, which would be completely useless.”