Omega City

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Kids!” said the comet. “I’m coming down to get you.”

  Savannah jumped to her feet. “Yay! We’re saved!”

  The floodlights veered in wild arcs and zeroed in on the figure.

  Just then, I heard a massive whirring sound, and a few seconds later, a strong wind wafted over my face, lifting the ends of my still-damp hair. I looked at Howard, who raised his hands in defense.

  “I didn’t touch anything this time.”

  Far above us, the comet started careening around. Whoever it was had clearly lost his footing on the elevator shaft, and was swinging from his rappelling rope.

  “What did you do!” he cried. It was definitely a he.

  “Clint!” Fiona’s voice echoed down from the ceiling.

  The wind had increased to a roar, blowing my hair around and plastering my wet clothes to my skin. I had no idea where it was coming from. Above us, Clint—or whoever he was—slammed back against the elevator shaft. He was close enough to see now, as he gripped the shaft and his safety line with his legs and one hand, while with the other he started fumbling with something strapped to his waist.

  “Are you okay?” I screamed above the wind.

  “Don’t move,” Clint cried, and pulled out his gun. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  12

  THE MIDNIGHT SEA

  I IMMEDIATELY DUCKED, THOUGH THE SECOND I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, IT seemed pretty silly. If the guy threatening to shoot you is directly above you, you’re the same size target standing up or crouching down.

  Howard hadn’t moved. “He must think we know nothing about guns,” he said. “My dad hunts. There’s no way he can hit us from that distance swinging around like that.”

  “You are so missing the point,” I hissed at him. “There’s a man with a gun who has just threatened to shoot us.”

  “And he’s getting closer every minute,” Savannah added. She’d put her hands over her head like a character in an Old West holdup.

  “Look, man,” Nate called up to Clint, his hands also in the air. “We’re not trying to cause trouble here. We didn’t mean to . . . trespass or whatever.”

  “This place isn’t his,” I said. “It’s Dr. Underberg’s.”

  Nate glared at me, then returned his attention to the weirdo in the sky. “So we’ll all just go back up the way we came and I’ll take the kids home, okay?”

  Clint gestured with his gun. “Get in the elevator. We’ll meet you up top.”

  “You heard the man,” said Nate. He started herding us toward the elevator shaft. “Howard,” he said to his brother, “I know you think now’s the time to play elevator games. But don’t talk about them.”

  “Okay. I won’t.” Howard nodded his head once and marched toward the elevator.

  “Excuse me?” I crossed my arms. “The whole reason we’re down here is because we were running away from them. You want us to surrender?”

  “Gillian,” Savannah said, her pitch getting higher and more frantic. “Come on. He’s getting closer.”

  “Listen,” said Nate. “This is pretty simple. They have guns and we’re trapped underground. So go.”

  I started stomping toward the shaft. “Wait! Where’s Er—”

  Nate shoved me hard in the back. “Shut it.”

  I blinked up at him. What was going on?

  We walked around the shaft to the back, where the door was. I couldn’t see Clint dangling down from the sky anymore. I expected Nate to lead us back inside the elevator but instead he pressed us all up against the sides of the shaft. He looked at Howard and nodded. “Elevator games, bro.”

  Howard ducked his head in the door and pressed the button, then whipped out again before the doors shut. I heard the engines start to lift and understood. We were sending the elevator back to the surface . . . empty.

  “Wait,” Nate whispered over us. We were shoved together closer than we’d been even in the elevator. Savannah was panting short, scared little breaths, and I don’t think it had anything to do with being in Nate’s bear hug.

  For a few moments, all I could hear was water lapping against the sides of the platform and the blood roaring in my ears as I peeked out from under Nate’s arms in search of my little brother. Where was he, and what would Fiona do to him if she caught him?

  Just then, his head popped up over the platform at the edge of the water. Was he swimming? No, he wasn’t wet—just damp, like the rest of us. He grinned at me and beckoned. Had he found another way out?

  I wrenched my neck looking up at Nate in confusion. He winked. I turned back to Eric. Now, he mouthed. Nate gave me a little shove.

  Ducking under Nate’s arms, I bolted blindly toward my brother and catapulted over the ledge, holding my breath like I was about to plunge into the lake. But instead I fell onto a soft, springy platform—a woven fabric float spread between two inflatable pontoons.

  Leave it to my brother to find the only boat on an underground lake.

  The catamaran was grimy and wet, but I was already a mess from the shower, so I didn’t much care. Eric was still examining the skies, waiting to see if Clint was looking. He made another signal at Nate, who sent Howard over, then Savannah, and then sprinted and made the leap himself. One by one, they bounced onto the fabric, splashing dark water up over the pontoons.

  “Any second now, they’re going to realize we’re not in that elevator,” Howard mumbled. “And now they have an easy way to get down here.”

  Savannah hugged her knees and bit her lip.

  “How did you do that?” I asked Nate.

  “I told you. I know how to talk to Howard.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t make us get on the elevator,” I said.

  “I want us out of here,” Nate replied. “But I don’t have a good feeling about people who’ve threatened to shoot us twice. When people have guns, you run in the other direction or you’re meat. We have a half-dozen deer heads on the wall at home that can tell you that.”

  “Or would,” Howard added, “if they weren’t dead. And deer.”

  Either way, we were still here, which meant we still had a chance to find something that could help my dad.

  “We have to find another way out,” Eric said. He pointed to a big metal pole sticking out of the catamaran’s frame. “The sail’s folded up inside there. There wouldn’t be a sailboat on this lake unless there was something to sail to, right?”

  “Why would there be a sailboat on an underground lake?” Savannah asked.

  The weird wind picked up again.

  She swept her hair out of her face and smiled sheepishly. “Oh.”

  Eric quickly cranked out the sail, which, thank goodness, was black, like the pontoons, the float, and the lake itself. “Downwind’s that way,” he said, pointing out over the water. “I suggest we try it.”

  I’ve been on enough boats with my brother to know the drill. Do as he says with the ropes, stay out of the way of the jib. The little catamaran didn’t seem built for five passengers, but Nate and Howard flattened themselves out on the float, I pushed us away from the platform, and soon enough, we picked up speed and left the cement island far behind. Even in the darkness, I could see the size of Eric’s smile. I used to complain about all the time we’d spent at my little brother’s regattas. Now I was grateful he knew what he was doing.

  “I don’t even see that guy anymore,” Howard said, staring at the sky. “Do you think he went back up?”

  “Yes. I’d rather go down in an elevator than on a rope,” Savannah said. “Especially in this wind.”

  “Yeah,” said Eric. “This underground wind.” He gave me a look that was halfway between determined and bewildered, but I had no idea where the wind was coming from, either. Darkness fell all around us as we got farther from the lights on the platform. If there was a distant shore, I couldn’t see it. I really hoped Eric wasn’t sailing us into the center of the Earth.

  I didn’t know what to think. On one hand, why would someone put a sailboat here if
no one was meant to sail? On the other, Underberg had an elevator filled with Cyrillic buttons meant to trap Russian spies. I tried to remember if he had anything against yachtsmen.

  “That sound is getting louder,” Nate said after another minute of sailing through blackness. It was. The whirring, which had been a low grumble on the platform, was now a pounding roar.

  “And what’s that glow?” Savannah added. I felt her arm move as if she was pointing ahead of us. Sure enough, a faint orange light, like the beginning of a sunrise on the horizon, was growing stronger along with the noise. It all seemed to be coming from ahead of us. When I looked back down at the others, I could even make out their features in the darkness.

  “Um . . .” Eric frowned. “I think I may take the sails down. I don’t know if I like where we’re headed.”

  “Smart move,” Nate said, rolling his eyes and flattening against the float.

  Eric and I lowered the sails, but the boat still moved at a decent clip.

  “That’s interesting,” Eric said, looking over the side of the port pontoon.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “There seems to be . . . ah . . . a current?”

  “Like a river?”

  “Yeah.” His frown deepened. “Or, you know. A drain.”

  Savannah whimpered. “A drain?”

  Uh-oh. “No,” I said, patting her on the arm. “It’s a river. I’m sure it’s a river.”

  “Yeah?” she replied. “A river to where?”

  “Look at it this way,” Eric added, still clearly thrilled to be at a tiller once more. “At least we’re away from Clint and Fiona. And . . . that third guy.”

  “But away where?” Howard asked.

  I was back to looking ahead of us, where the weird orange glow had grown strong enough to make out what we were heading toward. A massive, curving wall. And right in the middle was a giant, whirring fan that had to be several stories high.

  “Good news,” I said to the others, pointing. “It’s not a drain. It may slice us to pieces, but it’s not a drain.”

  Everyone shot up, no longer worried about wind resistance. If anything it might help. Nate said, “It looks like an exhaust turbine. Probably pumping in fresh air for the chamber. . . .”

  “No.” Eric was shaking his head. “If we’re heading toward it, that means it’s pulling the air, not pushing it. It’s sucking whatever air is here deeper into the ground.”

  “Like maybe there’s even more to this place?” Nate asked.

  Savannah shrugged. “Well, that platform wasn’t much of a city, was it? Omega City, remember?”

  “So then what’s this supposed to be?” Nate snapped. “Omega Lakefront Property?”

  Howard was peering at the turbine. “We’re not going to get sucked into the fan. There’s a ledge just in front of it. We can stop and get out.”

  But as we got closer, we saw that the ledge was really just the bottom frame of the giant turbine and it was about eight feet higher than the water level. I wasn’t sure how we’d be able to get up there—not that we’d want to, seeing how it came with the risk of getting ourselves sliced to pieces by the blades of the fan. The outer wall of the chamber seemed to be covered in concrete and as Eric steered us close I saw a set of stairs built into the side of the wall, going from the turbine ledge down into the water. The water here glowed golden, like a swimming pool at night. I leaned over the side of the boat and saw the steps going down the side of the wall, deep under the remarkably clear water. At the bottom of the lake, about seven or eight feet down, was another glowing orange light set into the wall over what was unmistakably a door.

  The water level in this chamber must be a lot higher than Underberg had ever intended.

  “Look!” Savannah cried over the roar of the fan blades. She pointed. Over to the left side of the wall, right above where that door was, was a large metal cage, half submerged in the water. “I wonder if it’s another elevator.”

  “I’m done with elevators,” said Howard.

  “Maybe there’s a button inside that can stop the fan,” she clarified. “Like a control panel.”

  We guided the boat along the wall until we hit the cage. Up close, it looked like those freestanding cage elevators you sometimes see at construction sites, with four wire-grid walls, a wire ceiling, and a solid metal floor. I could see the rail it was attached to descending along the wall down to the underwater landing. The door on the side of the elevator seemed to be stuck closed but when I looked inside, I saw a blinking panel of buttons that still sat above the water level. A laminated sheet was posted to the top of the panel. I reached between the bars and tore the paper free.

  The others gathered around me as I squinted down at the page in the orange light. One side of the sheet looked like a schedule of some kind—maybe meant to assign times for the fan to be on or reversed or whatever. But the other side had a diagram showing dozens of chambers sitting on the other side of this wall, all neatly labeled and with arrows and other color coding that showed air, water, and electricity flow.

  On the top it read Omega City.

  My eyes widened as I took it all in. This wasn’t some little bunker. This was a whole underground world. And it was only a few yards away.

  Nate jabbed the sheet, where a bunch of little red signs pointed the way to exits. “Look. Exits marked. We just have to get in.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” Eric asked. “That door is underwater. Chances are whatever’s on the other side is, too.”

  The recorded voice bounced around the cavern again.

  You have arrived at the Omega City Welcome Center. Please prepare for your decontamination showers.

  “Uh-oh,” said Savannah. “They’re here.”

  “Maybe the water cannon will wreck their guns,” said Eric.

  I listened, but I didn’t hear any screaming. Maybe the water cannon didn’t have enough pressure for another shower so soon? A moment later, a distant shout floated across the water. “Kids?” Fiona.

  “Where did they go?” came a male voice, echoing the way only a vast underground cavern could. “They didn’t just swim off this thing, that’s for sure.”

  There were more shouts, but we couldn’t make them out over the roar of the fan above us.

  “Maybe they’re hiding in another shaft.” Fiona again. “Find them. Now!”

  In the orange glow emanating from the water, my friends’ faces were filled with terror.

  “We have to stop that fan,” Savannah said. She rattled the locked door of the cagelike control booth. “Open up, you stupid thing.”

  I looked through the metal grid inside. The bottom of the booth, sitting in about two feet of water, was rusted and broken, leaving a huge gap where the metal had rusted out and fallen away. “I bet someone could swim up into that hole.”

  “Someone really skinny,” said Nate.

  Everyone got quiet. Everyone looked at Savannah.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she said.

  “It’s not like you aren’t already wet,” I said.

  “And the water looks pretty clean,” Nate added. “I mean, we can see all the way down. It’s probably a reservoir or something. You won’t get any weird disease.”

  “Are you up to date on your tetanus shots?” Howard asked her.

  “Look!” yelled one of the guys across the water. “Ropes. They must have taken a boat.”

  “Find another,” came Fiona’s voice.

  “We need to stop the turbine,” Nate said. “Now. I’m not going to fit in that hole. Please, Savannah?” I think it was the first time he’d used her name.

  Savannah sighed and clenched her jaw. Then she pulled off her hoodie and handed it to me with an annoyed look. “This is your worst idea of all time.”

  “Agreed.” I stuck the map in the waistband of my jeans. “I owe you. I really owe you.”

  “Yeah. You owe me a whole new outfit.” Savannah tied her long hair in a loose knot, took a deep br
eath, and jumped off the side of the boat. We saw her form, white tank top and pink pants, ghostly in the water, and then she disappeared beneath the elevator. A second later, her blond head broke the surface of the water inside the elevator. For a second she just treaded water, half in and half out of the elevator.

  “Try not to cut yourself on the metal,” Howard said. “Tetanus.”

  “You think?” Savannah swiped her wet hair off her face. Gingerly, she pulled herself up onto the broken floor, then stood, her legs braced wide to avoid the hole. “Okay. I’m in. Now what?”

  “What do the controls say?” I leaned over the top of the cage, trying to read the panel through the bars. The pontoons butted up against the metal grid and the water inside sloshed around Savannah’s thighs. I hoped she wasn’t going to get electrocuted in there.

  “They aren’t marked. Wait, this one has an arrow.” She pressed it and the elevator shuddered upward.

  I lost my grip on the cage and stumbled back, falling against the float of the catamaran as the broken-bottomed elevator lifted up out of the water with the awful sound of shrieking metal. The catamaran pitched wildly from side to side and we all held on tight to keep from being thrown off.

  “Gillian!” Savannah shouted as the booth kept rising. She flattened her body against the wall and jammed her fingers through the bars. “The floor! It’s crumbling!”

  Nate made a leap for the bottom corner. He missed, but the move sent the boat directly under the elevator. The metal mast banged against the booth and Savannah wavered on her feet. Above us, there was a horrible crash, and then a big section of the jagged, broken bottom of the cage swung free over our heads like a trapdoor. A giant, sharp, very deadly trapdoor.

  “Stop! Stop!” Savannah jabbed her free hand against the buttons. Far above us the turbine shuddered and groaned, its ancient blades screeching and—marvelously—beginning to slow.

  “You did it!” Eric cried up at Savannah. Nate hooted his approval and I pumped my fist in the air.

  But we celebrated too soon. The elevator stopped, and started lowering again.