Iara had gotten them money using her “you remember this” trick and sent them off to get something they could swim in. Hawk had gone for dark gray board shorts that were like the ones he had back home. He was wearing those and flip-flops and a swim shirt with a sea turtle on it. He didn’t actually need a swim shirt, since the water wasn’t particularly cold, but if they were going to be exploring another laboratory, he didn’t want to be walking around shirtless.
Tapper and Maya were waiting by a bench, doing something on their phones. Hawk wasn’t sure if they were playing together or arguing. Possibly both. “Like I see how he could mean it like that,” Maya was saying, “but maybe he just honestly thinks you haven’t seen the show in a while and should watch it again to like enjoy it!”
“He’s saying I haven’t watched the show, and my opinion is invalid,” Tapper said, his phone clenched in a white-knuckle grip, “so now I destroy him.” Tapper wore black wetsuit shorts with a deep red stripe down the side and a short-sleeved top of the same material. Hawk guessed he hadn’t been the only one who didn’t wanna run around shirtless.
“Or,” Maya said, “or you could like maybe just post a gif back to him—”
“Of course you say it with a soft G,” Tapper muttered.
“—with a cat doing something cute, and that could be your comeback, and then your account doesn’t get locked again, but he still like knows that you don’t agree with him . . . ?” Maya trailed off hopefully. She was wearing a bright pink two-piece swimsuit with a tied-off T-shirt over the top and a little matching wrap around her waist. Hawk wasn’t sure how much of it was real and how much of it was, well, Maya, but it was a cute look for her either way.
Tapper glared at her sullenly. “It’d have to be a really good cat pic.”
“Hey, guys.” Hawk waved, and they looked up at him. “Any sign of the others?”
“Yes,” came Lori’s voice, and Hawk looked over to see the girl coming their way. She wore a dark blue wetsuit that covered her from neck to ankles, plus swim shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looked more like a ninja than a girl about to go swimming.
Then Maya said, “Hey, Lori!” and because Hawk was looking at Lori, he saw a little color come to Lori’s cheeks.
“Hey. Um, what have we got?” Lori asked. “Tapper said it was a lab?”
“Ipanema found it,” Tapper said, springing from the bench and glaring at a passing jogger until he was safely out of earshot. He ran his hands through his hair. “Someplace she does the nasty stuff, where she doesn’t have to pretend to be people.”
“Iara said that it was in an old place that was a gym or something before the water rose,” Maya added. “She saw that the Lake Foundation had bought the building and done a bunch of repair work, but the part of the building above the water is just part of Reef Square now.” She pointed over at the plaza. “Like I think it’s either the frozen yogurt place or the place with the overpriced shoes, but I didn’t really—”
“Nobody cares, Blondie,” Tapper said.
“Okay.”
“Well, I care.” Lori said it quietly, like she had to get the words out before she thought about them, and when Maya blinked and grinned and blushed, Lori added, “We might want frozen yogurt after all this.”
“Right.” Maya smiled shyly, then looked over at Hawk. “So we’re just waiting for Iara. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“She said she’d meet us. Guess she’s running a little behind.” He shrugged. “I’m sure she’s doing the best she can.”
“Here she comes,” Lori said, pointing, and Hawk looked over.
Iara’s hair was not pulled back in a ponytail. It tumbled down behind her in curly green waves that matched both the bikini top she wore and the frames of her dark sunglasses. A blue-and-purple wrap clung to her hips, and little seashell charms on the fringes jangled with every step she took.
Every step she took was actually a kind of hop, as Iara came toward them using a pair of stainless-steel forearm crutches. She planted the crutches in front of her, then hopped forward with both legs together. Plant-hop, plant-hop, Hawk thought.
“I can carry these along with me as I swim,” she said, pausing and holding up one of the crutches. “I persuaded someone at our old hotel to get them for me.”
“If you want,” Hawk said, and then, “I mean, yeah, if that’s what works for you, and if you need somebody to carry them—”
“She wouldn’t bring them if she couldn’t bring them,” Tapper cut in. “We good to go? We’re drawing attention out here.”
“I really love your top!” Maya said to Iara. “Would you supermind if I made mine a pink version of it?”
“We spent time picking out an actual swimsuit,” Iara said, smiling at her. “I gave you money!”
“Yeah, but then I got hungry and bought some frozen yogurt, and they had a thing where you got an extra topping if you gave a donation to a wildlife fund, so I added some for that, and also I’m a tiny bit scared of swimsuit dressing rooms, no offense,” Maya said, mumbling at the end.
“When this is over,” Iara said firmly, “we will shop.”
“When this is over,” Tapper cut in, “we can all go back home and not have to get in each other’s business anymore.”
“Where are we trying to get to?” Lori asked, looking around. “Tapper’s right. If this place belongs to Lake, she may have people up here watching.”
“It should be below the dock,” Iara said, gesturing with a tilt of her head. “We can enter the water right here, then swim underwater to reach it. Hopefully no one will think to look down into the water.”
“Wait, isn’t that where we threw the old man into the water?” Maya asked. “We threw the old man into the water right over an evil underwater lab?”
“We saved his life,” Iara said firmly. “He is fine.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to get over the railing with those?” Hawk asked Iara, looking at the waist-high railing between the sidewalk and the canal. “If you want, I could—”
“If I need assistance,” Iara said politely, “I will ask. Until then, you may assume I am fine.”
“Okay,” Hawk said, “but—”
“Dude,” Tapper said, “stop.”
For a moment Hawk remembered being back at school—which one, he couldn’t even remember now, he’d moved so often—and offering to help a girl. One of the guys had said something like, “Look at the new guy trying too hard,” and it had sucked.
Then the feeling whisked away, leaving a pleasant emptiness behind it, and Hawk shrugged. “Whatever, dude, be a jerk if you want. Just because you don’t care what she’s going through doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t show a little consideration—”
“Excuse me,” came Iara’s voice, and Hawk looked over to see that she had already crossed the sidewalk to the railing and was undoing the wrap at her waist. A man in a suit looked at her in concern as she turned the wrap into a kind of makeshift bundle and tossed her sunglasses into it.
“Um, miss, you can’t swim in the canals,” the man in the suit said. “It’s illegal, and the miracoral is actually dangerous. You don’t want to get hit by a boat, either—”
“Why did the water rise?” Iara asked, cutting him off and holding both crutches in one hand.
The man in the suit went blank. “Guess it was just one of those things,” he said flatly, and as he said it, staring at nothing, Iara dove smoothly into the canal.
The man in the suit stared blankly at the spot where Iara had been. After a moment he looked around as if trying to remember what he’d been doing. Then he walked off.
“Nice.” Hawk chuckled. “Probably could’ve just waited a minute, though.”
Tapper snorted and shook his head. “I know you’re invulnerable, but somebody still needs to smack you upside the head.” He looked over at Maya and Lori. “Come on. Ipanema’s showing us up.”
The three headed for the railing, and Hawk, angry f
or a moment and not sure why, let the feeling go away and headed after them.
08
LORI
Lori walked quickly to the railing, vaulted over cleanly, and then sank beneath the water of the canal before any boats came by.
She was a decent swimmer. Anyone who lived in Santa Dymphna had to be. It wasn’t as though people swam to school, but the simple likelihood of accidentally ending up in the water after slipping while getting off the ferry made sure that while kids on the mainland were learning to ride a bicycle, the children of Santa Dymphna were treading water or swimming laps.
Lori had done a few perfunctory years of swim team when she’d been Ben’s age. She and Jenn had even done distance swimming during the school year, when some of the popular kids at school had gotten excited about it, and she’d spent far too much money on a good wetsuit. She hadn’t worn it since the start of summer, though.
Then, as she thought about it, she wondered how much of that was true. What had Santa Dymphna been before the water rose? It hadn’t always been a canal city, so why would she have been focused on swimming as a child? Maybe it was a false memory.
Maybe all of me is a false memory, she thought, and then decided that wouldn’t get her anywhere. Or maybe I should just focus on stopping Lake and keeping Ben safe. She looked up at the sunlight flickering brightly above her, and then she sank down beside the scum-slick green canal wall and sucked in a lungful of water.
It didn’t hurt to have the water fill her lungs, but just as before, there was a quick moment of flailing panic, of having to fight the feeling that she was drowning until her lungs were completely full and decided that they could handle water just fine. Then it was eerily peaceful. Breathing in the thick water made time seem to move in slow motion, and she could taste the salt water more than smell it.
All around her the canal was a cool rippling field of gray-green, the old features of the buildings that made up the canal wall ominously murky in the distance. Scattered here and there on the bottom, she saw the telltale golden glow of the miracoral, usually near buildings that would use it for power. You stay down there, Lori thought, glaring at the nearest patch, and I’ll stay up here.
A moment later a puttering engine noise sounded behind her, and Lori turned to see the foamy chaos of the boat coming her way. She dove a bit lower for safety—though still well away from the miracoral—and watched as the boat sped by, leaving a trace of the vanilla scent of the miracoral fuel in the water behind it. She had to stop herself from plugging her nose as she looked up at it. The surface overhead split into the white foam of a wake, and a moment later three dull splashes marked the others jumping in as well.
Tapper sank like a stone, and then blurred in the water and evened out. Hawk did the breaststroke, movements slow but controlled as he cut through the water. Maya flapped wildly, as far as Lori could tell, kind of pulling herself through the water like she was holding on to bits of it, but somehow it still seemed to work for her.
She’d also taken off her T-shirt and wrap, and her bikini was very bright even in the murky gray-green water. She smiled and waved to Lori, and Lori felt herself blushing and waved back.
“Are you coming?” came Iara’s voice suddenly through the water, as clear as if she were speaking normally.
Lori looked around in the murky water. “Where are you?” she said, or tried to say. What she actually said was more like, “Whrblbrblbrbloo?”
“If you swim toward the shopping plaza, I am at the corner, where it opens up to the docks,” said Iara, who had apparently heard her just fine.
“Obrbl, webrblbrblbrrr!” Maya called back, and Lori was glad that it wasn’t just her who couldn’t talk underwater. At least that wasn’t something all the Nix could do that she couldn’t, another little sign that she wasn’t really one of them. Lori glared down at the miracoral, then started swimming.
She didn’t have any swimming powers. Handler hadn’t neglected to tell her that, anyway. While Tapper blurred through the water in a frenzy of bubbles and Hawk coasted with slow graceful strokes, Lori just swam like a normal person, albeit one who stayed below the surface and didn’t come up to breathe. Maya kept pace beside her, or rather flopped ahead with her uncanny flexibility and then waited for Lori to catch up, looking over from time to time with a cheery smile to offer encouragement and a friendly “Yurblbrblbreat!”
The building on their right was uneven. Back before the water rose, it had probably been a bank or a museum, someplace with big fake pillars to impress everyone who walked by. Now it was home to a lot of seaweed, as well as tiny little fish who stayed close to the weeds and darted away when one of the Nix got too close. A cluster of miracoral grew by the base of the building near the corner. As they got as close to it as Lori was willing to get—still several meters away—she had to close her eyes against the harsh glare of the brain-shaped cluster. The light didn’t seem to bother Maya, and Lori tried to ignore it.
By the time they reached the corner, Hawk and Tapper were already there, treading water next to Iara, who had her crutches tucked under her arm. With the other arm, she was gesturing ahead. “There. You see it? This is where the Deepwater Laboratory is, but . . .”
Lori reached the corner and looked at the docks at Reef Square. Or at least where the docks should be.
It couldn’t be right. The docks were where the boats tied off when people came to the shopping plaza. Reef Square had no direct access to the ocean—you could get here only from the canals—so it wasn’t like the little man-made bay needed to be deep enough to allow for oceangoing freighters. It shouldn’t have been any deeper than the canals themselves, fifteen or twenty feet at most.
Instead a dark chasm yawned out ahead of them, the water deepening to an inky black.
Up at the surface, the pale light of the cloudy day was broken by the silhouettes of boats, their wakes tailing behind them as slowly splitting curls of white. Looking at where they were clustering, Lori could make out the docks themselves, and the water there at least seemed shallow. The little bay, really no more than a wide intersection where several canals joined to give access to the docks, somehow had a massive hole in it.
“I do not know,” Iara said. “It is real, or real enough that it did not return echoes when I sounded.”
“It’sbrbeal,” Tapper said sharply, and Lori caught that, at least.
“I do not know whether this was made by normal means,” Iara said, “or if it is something tied to Lake or created by her. Or something else. No one would make a dock next to such a thing back in Brasil, but here, perhaps they do not even notice it.”
Guess it was just one of those things, Lori thought, and shuddered.
Then, because someone had to, and because Handler had said that she only had until Thursday morning, she started swimming.
The others made all kinds of bubbly excited noises behind her, but she ignored them, and after a moment Iara said, “She is right. We have no choice. Stay close. I can guide us to where Deepwater should be.”
A moment later she darted past Lori. Even with crutches tucked under her arm, she sped through the water with impossible grace, one arm knifing back and forth to pull her through the water in an effortless glide. She went a little ahead of Lori, then turned and looked back at them, her hair rippling around her like brilliant green seaweed.
Maya and the others were there a moment later, all of them moving slowly enough that they could stay together, and all as one, they swam down into the darkness.
The first thing that struck Lori was the cold. It wasn’t the normal cold of deeper water. It was cold with a mind of its own; cold soaked in around her like fog and then stabbed at her armpits and feet, completely ignoring the wetsuit and swim shoes that should have provided more protection. Lori looked up at the surface and saw that it was dim and distant, the boats little black dots against a wan gray sky, though she didn’t think they had dived down that far.
The ground fell away below them. One moment it wa
s the normal canal floor, old concrete and asphalt overlaid with silt and sand, and the next it was a yawning abyss. Lori had been looking to see whether it sloped down or ended in a jagged cliff, but still somehow she had missed it. Or it had made her miss it, she thought.
She wished she could use her phone underwater. She wanted Handler, and not just the buzz she could feel through the protective pouch, but a real message, where Handler would say something practical, or even something silly, and that would let her know what to do, what to feel.
Stupid, she told herself. Stupid. I’m not even a real girl. I don’t need Handler to tell me what to feel. I feel whatever Handler wants me to feel, and right now, it wants me to feel cold dread and a creepy sensation of being watched, because that’s a valuable survival mechanism that will make me be careful and not get myself damaged.
So she kept swimming.
Her fingers kept making little phantom movements, like they’d be checking her phone for messages if they were holding it, but that wasn’t too bad.
Iara was still ahead of them, darting forward and then waiting. Even in the darkness, Lori could see the others. They were all a little lighter than the darkness, like they were at one of those glow-in-the-dark mini-golf or laser-tag places and wearing clothes with a little white thread in them, only the glow was faintly gold instead of UV purple.
After a little bit, Lori realized that all the Nix were glowing with the same light as the miracoral.
Down and forward they swam, still going. Lori looked up, and the surface was just a vague gray suggestion far overhead. Her friends were dim golden silhouettes, and Lori was part of the darkness, cold and alone.
Iara paused up ahead and made a clicking noise—
From below, the cold changed in rippling waves, and Lori heard the shifting rumble of something moving, something very large.
In the protective pouch on her upper arm, Lori’s phone buzzed twice.
Lori kicked forward desperately and slapped Iara’s shoulder.
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