Ben frowned at the clock, which read 7:25. “Are you not grumpy about us being late?”
Lori let out a slow breath. “Not today, kiddo. I don’t have work in the morning, and you were really nice to my friends last night, so today, we are going to be nice to each other. ‘Our family might get there late . . .’ ”
“ ‘But we’ll get there together.’ ” Ben gave her a little smile. “Okay. If I get my Pokémon and Legos superfast, can you come with me on the late ferry?”
Lori checked her phone. Iara had said she would text Lori when she had a new lead, and so far there was nothing. “You’ve got it.” She headed to her room and pulled on a sweatshirt that was warm enough for what promised to be a breezy day.
She had one more day to find Tia Lake and stop her. One more day to destroy the Lake Foundation and Kirk, whatever he was, and all those eels. Part of her wanted to panic about it, but she’d panicked about it yesterday, and that hadn’t much helped, had it? At least they had a file.
And Lori had friends. Not friends like Jenn, who just thought she had a job that kept her busy after school, friends who would turn blank when Lori asked if they remembered anything about the water rising. Friends who were like her.
Maybe even friends who did like her.
She thought of Maya and the one kiss, which had ended with Hawk making a “D’awwwww” noise until Iara whacked him, and her own face hot and Maya blushing but still grinning as she shot Hawk a dirty gesture. She thought of Maya’s hand pulling against hers when they said good night, like Maya wasn’t ready to let go even as she started down the stairs with the rest, her fingers warm in Lori’s hand, and then Maya pulling away and running her fingers through her bouncy wavy hair and still blushing.
She didn’t know everything about Lori, but that was okay. Nobody knew everything about someone else. Everyone was allowed to have secrets, and if Lori’s secret was that she wasn’t a real person, then maybe if Maya liked her enough, it didn’t matter. What made someone a person except other people? Maybe if Lori felt like she felt something, it didn’t matter if it was just Handler doing a good imitation of making a person who felt something. Maybe acting like you were real was what really mattered.
“Lori?” Ben called over from his room.
“Yep?”
“What’s nooky?”
Maybe Lori was going to have to kill somebody.
“Have you been watching Let’s Play videos without me around again?” Lori called back in sudden desperation, wondering if the world was actually going to open up and swallow her here in her bedroom.
“No,” Ben said, incredibly helpfully.
“So where did you hear about nooky?”
“Hawk asked if Maya was thinking about it last night, and she said yes, a lot.”
“Um,” Lori called back. The birds and the bees flashed across her mind. So did euphemisms about grown-up kissing. “It’s a thing you put on pizza,” she said instead, and in a fit of inspiration added, “but only if you’re grown-up.” Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it.
Handler: Redirect, redirect, redirect!
“Hey, have you got all your Legos?” she asked.
“Oh, right!” Ben called back, and Lori heard the merciful sound of plastic bricks clattering all over the room.
“I’m going to brush my teeth, and then we’ll go.” Lori pulled her hair back into a ponytail, then looked it and thought about Hawk and Maya talking last night, tugged it out of the ponytail, and brushed it a few more times.
Maybe the true test of being a person was mortification. She’d never seen a feeder get embarrassed. That had to count for something.
IARA
On the rooftop of PortManta, Iara took a long slow sip of the berry smoothie Hawk had brought up for her and smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“No worries.” He was wearing another short-sleeved button-up shirt, this one beige, again left open with a thin white undershirt beneath that clung to his frame. His dark eyes sparkled as he smiled at her. “No sense in you having to do another elevator trip, right?”
“I suppose.” Why could it not be simple politeness, or him finding her pretty? Why did it have to be because of the chair? Iara forced another long sip, ignoring the brain-freeze headache it gave her, and eventually Hawk walked over and flopped back down in his chair next to Maya and Tapper.
Today, Iara wore a long purple sundress with thin straps that left her arms bare. She had pulled her pale green hair back up in a tumbled knot atop her head, so that her neck and shoulders were bare in the breezy morning air.
She knew she had attractive shoulders. There were some benefits to swimming or pushing a wheelchair for most of one’s waking life.
But yesterday Hawk had carried her around the Lake Foundation building, and last night it had been the stairs leading to Lori’s home. Now all he could see was a girl who could not do things herself, regardless of how much she had already done for the team.
“You need anything?” Hawk asked, seeing her look. “I could go back down and—”
“No,” said Iara, and forced a smile. “I was only thinking. Sorry.” She put her eyes back on the screen of the tablet computer she’d had the man at the electronics store remember selling her yesterday after their adventure. It was easier to read things there than on her phone.
That could have been why Hawk had asked if she needed anything. It could have been chivalry, an understanding that she was doing more research while the rest of them browsed the Internet and checked their mail.
It wasn’t, though.
She had really thought that he was different. Or at least that he could have been different. Or that he would stop thinking of her as helpless once they were out of danger. It had seemed that way to her yesterday, before they snuck into the Lake Foundation. Now . . . she sighed to herself and put it aside.
Some of the notes had been made by scientists, and much of it was raw data and jargon that she didn’t understand. It took her a while to realize that “subject lost” meant that someone had died, which made the data much more disturbing. Eventually Iara skipped to overviews or executive summaries, since the language was more plain there, and it was easier for her to understand what was meant. It did not help that in many cases, the scientists themselves did not understand what they were studying.
Supposition that external dimension comprises primarily antimayaer belied by positron-emission testing, one of the notes read. Laws of physics as conventionally understood do not apply in this instance, but the biological testing on living Nix samples may yield means of eliciting pain response from the miracoral incursion.
“Well, that sounds unpleasant,” Iara murmured. “Do any of you know the English word ‘antimayaer’?”
She wasn’t sure she was pronouncing it right, and the looks that Maya and the boys gave her suggested as much. “Is that like antimatter?” Hawk asked.
“No, or she would have said that,” Tapper muttered, going back to his phone with a glare. “It’s her legs that don’t work, not her eyes.”
“Dude,” Hawk said.
“It is fine,” Iara said to Hawk firmly.
“It’s probably just a typo.” Maya looked down and gulped her chocolate smoothie. “What else does it say?”
Iara sighed. “They want us because Lake wants the miracoral,” she said.
“But like, they have the miracoral,” Hawk said, looking down from the rooftop at the water below. In the late-morning light they could see sporadic glittering flickers that were bits of miracoral-dotted support pillars below. “They use it for electricity, right? And our chairs and stuff?” He tapped the gray-pink plastic of the chair he sat in, working the material with one of his fingernails.
“Lake wishes to . . .” Iara sighed again. “I think that to Lake, it is a key. She can harvest it, but she wants it for something more. It can . . . it may be to get what she desires.”
“So we’re a way to the miracoral, and the miracoral is a way for her
to get what she really wants.” Tapper glared. “Figures we’re just a step for her.”
Subject found unsuitable for implantation and gestation of new growth, read another note. Removed to Deepwater Lab for hybridization potential. Subject restrained and introduced to live coral bloom. Bloom produced red coloration; symbiote defenses destroyed subject. Tia Lake present; destroyed remains of subject as well as miracoral bloom and symbiotes. No sign of transdimensional alarm detected from miracoral. No interest from Leviathan detected. Formayaing of possible distress signal may be outside parameters of this universe; further results difficult to measure.
“I do not understand this all,” Iara said, “but there is another laboratory. Deepwater, they call it. They do more tests there. Lake does some of the tests herself. She wants something called Leviathan.”
“Great!” Maya shot Iara a thumbs-up. “Does anything in the document say where it might be?”
“Let me see,” Iara said, and began scanning the document again. “Oh, what is the word ‘formayaing’?”
“Just science garbage,” Tapper said, waving it away. “Forget that, and get us an address. Then we can go find out what Lake is and kick her slimy butt back to wherever it came from.” He jerked to his feet and rattled his empty cup. “I’m getting more. Anybody want something?”
Maya smiled at him. “If I could get a four-pump mocha double-blended mint-chocolate frapp—”
“Ugh, just give me your cup, it has the old order on it.” Tapper held out his hand without looking, then glared at the cup Maya passed him. “Amount of sugar in this, it’s no wonder you can barely do sentences. Least I’m self-medicating when I hit the caffeine. Pint-Size, Ipanema?”
“I am fine, thank you,” Iara said. Hawk shook his head.
Tapper stalked off, muttering to himself.
“Jerk,” Hawk muttered in a voice Iara wasn’t supposed to hear, except that as a Nix, whatever that meant, she had very good ears. Then, in a voice she was supposed to hear, he said, “Don’t let him get to you, Iara. You’re part of the team, just like the rest of us.”
Iara smiled at him. He had pretty skin the color of wet earth, and his body was warm and his smile infectious.
“And don’t worry if it’s a pain getting you into this Deepwater Lab. I’ve got no problem carrying you around when we get there,” he added with a grin.
Iara tried not to sigh. She had green hair and a pretty smile, and her skin was like a summer sunset on a day that had seen storms, and yes, the chair, of course. And while boys who offered to help when necessary were lovely, boys who could only see the chair were usually bad kissers.
“I will see what I can find,” she said, and looked down so that she would not have to look at him.
LORI
They didn’t catch the on-time ferry, or even the one after that. It was close to ten when Lori got Ben onto the ferry. While she was fine letting him go on the morning ferry, whose driver knew Ben and had a lot of other kids on the boat as well, the late-morning ferry was filled with adults in suits. Lori hopped on the ferry along with Ben to ride with him.
She flashed her pass at the driver, who nodded, and found a spot for her and Ben to sit near the back. Ben was kicking his legs in the air under the seat, making a little Lego ninja on his backpack rattle each time he hit it. “Can you pick me up early today?”
“I think so.” Lori smiled over at him. “And you remember today is Wednesday, so you’ve got swimming in the afternoon?”
“Awww.” Ben said it more out of habit than real feeling. “Do I have to go today, even if I’m tired from your friends coming over yesterday?”
“Uh-huh.” Lori managed to not roll her eyes.
“But I don’t really like going to swimming.”
“Nobody likes going to swimming,” Lori said, and then winced, because being relaxed was probably making her a little too honest, “but you need to do it to stay healthy, and also so that you’re okay if you ever fall into the canal.”
“I can swim fine,” Ben said, and did roll his eyes.
“Then maybe when these lessons are done, the teacher will say that you’re done with Starfish level and can move up to Turtle level, so I know you’re fine.”
“If I get to Turtle level, can I get the new Lego dragon-bot that turns from a robot into a dragon and has flick missiles?”
“Absolutely,” Lori said without missing a beat. Her phone buzzed.
Handler: That set is $149.
“Or at least a Lego set,” she amended, which Ben pretended not to hear.
They arrived at the Sandee Day Care stop a few minutes later, and Ben leaped from the boat with boundless energy, backpack trailing behind him by one arm.
Lori followed him down the sidewalk. On the left was the middle school where she’d gone a few years back, still closed for the summer, although a group of students was running out front in gym clothes, probably doing summer training for one of the sports teams. On the right was the elementary school where Ben went, vacant except for the playground area, where kids ran around the swing set and monkey bars while their parents sat at benches nearby. In a canal city like Santa Dymphna, open room for kids to run around was a precious commodity.
Past the elementary school was Sandee Day Care, a small brick building whose imposing features were softened by paintings of sun and rainbows and animals running around in fields. The day care shared its fenced-in playground with the elementary school, and the children were outside running. A number of harried-looking day care teachers watched them run and play and generally tried to keep anyone from bleeding.
Ben dropped his backpack by the fence. “Hi, Josh!” he yelled into one of the packs of kids. “Guess what! My sister said I could get the Lego RoboDragon Rampage!” He turned back to Lori and gave her a hug. “Bye, Lori.”
“Bye, little guy. Have a good day.”
“Are you dropping him off?” came a man’s voice, and Lori winced, covered it, and looked up at Mister Barkin, who was coming over with his usual disapproving expression.
“Yes,” Lori said brightly. “We had a bit of a slow morning, since I didn’t have to get to work early.”
“You know that normal drop-off hours are between six thirty and ten,” Mister Barkin said severely, giving her a tired glare. It looked like he’d had a rough night.
“Yes, I know,” said Lori, and looked at her phone, which read 9:56. “Which is why I tried to get him here around ten, and here we are!”
“It’s very important that the children arrive on time,” Mister Barkin added. “If he gets here much past ten, I may not always have teachers available to take him. You also didn’t send Ben in yesterday, and it’s important that we know when children aren’t coming in, so we know how many teachers we’ll need.”
“I know,” Lori said again, keeping her polite smile stapled to her face, “and I’m so sorry that I forgot to call. I kept Ben home yesterday because he wasn’t feeling well.” Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it.
Handler: Stomach bug. They always back down when you say “stomach bug.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Barkin asked sharply.
“Oh, he had a little stomach bug,” Lori said, still smiling, “and he seemed to be better yesterday, but I didn’t want to risk getting anyone else at day care sick—”
“Oh, no, no no no,” Barkin said quickly, “you should definitely do what’s right for Ben.”
“And we came in late today because I wanted to make absolutely sure he was feeling better,” Lori added.
Barkin glanced at Ben a little nervously. “Well, we appreciate that.” Then he recovered and turned back to her. “Also, you haven’t given us the money for the pizza party on Friday.”
“Oh, I didn’t know there was going to be one,” Lori said, now comfortably back on the defensive. Seeing Ben coming back from his group of friends to grab his backpack, Lori called over, “Ben, were you supposed to give me a flyer for a pizza party on Friday?”
&nb
sp; “Oh,” Ben called back, still rooting through his backpack. “Yeah. You need to give money to day care.” He looked up at Lori and Mister Barkin. “Also, I don’t want to have any nooky on my pizza, please.”
Lori closed her eyes and let out a breath through her nose. “I will make sure to order you a cheese pizza.” She turned to Mister Barkin, who had his mouth open, and, since the world had failed to open up and swallow her whole as she’d been hoping right then, said, “I’m not sure where my little brother picked up this new language. I’m hoping it wasn’t from the older children here.”
She had been trying for a redirect, but Barkin’s face seemed to go blank instead. “Little brother,” he mumbled.
Lori shoved a few bills into Barkin’s hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work. Bye, little guy!” she called to him, and dashed away before Barkin could think of a comeback, her phone buzzing in her hand as she did.
Handler: Good save.
Lori: I am going to kill Hawk and Maya.
Handler: Fair. Maybe use the RoboDragon Rampage.
Handler: I hear it has flick missiles.
Handler: Which it better, for what we’ll be spending on it.
Lori was interrupted by the phone ringing. The caller ID said “Tapper,” and she brought the phone up to her ear. “What have you found?”
“Find a suit you’re good to wear in front of Blondie,” he said. “We’re going swimming again.”
HAWK
They met at the spot Iara had picked, a large dock not far from Reef Square. The shopping plaza was busy with afternoon shoppers, and little vanilla-scented ferries puttered by, dropping people off and picking them up. Looking up from street level, Hawk watched people cross the broad canal on the same gray plastic bridge they had used on Monday, when Lori had shown them the train car. The day had turned cloudy and windy, and he thought he could see the bridge sway overhead. The idea of crossing a bridge made of the stuff still creeped him out, so he let it go.
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