Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  He waded out of the ball pit and climbed through the gap in the netting, onto the padded floor that led to the tables where all the grown-ups sat and looked at their phones.

  Jenn wasn’t at the table where she had been before.

  Ben looked around, and after a moment he saw her. She had a group of big men around her. They wore dark suits, and one of them was holding Jenn by the arm. They didn’t look like Splash Zone Lifeguards, and Jenn looked scared.

  Ben went over to her to see what was wrong.

  “Miss Vickers, if you have any information about your friend, you need to tell us right now,” said one of the men. “The fact that you’re here suggests that her brother, Ben, isn’t far away, and it’s important that we get him to safety as well.”

  “Get away from me!” Jenn yelled, and Ben looked around for adults to come help, but all of the adults stood there with blank faces instead. “Leave Ben alone!”

  Another man reached into his pocket and took something out, something small that moved in his hand. Ben didn’t know what it was, but Jenn pulled against the men, and Ben knew that it was something bad.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Leave her alone!”

  The men and Jenn turned to him.

  “Run!” Jenn yelled. “Ben, run away now!” And she kicked one of the men in the shins and threw herself down as the other one started to come toward Ben.

  Ben tried to be brave, but Jenn was the grown-up, and he was supposed to do what she said, so he ran. He climbed back into the play zone as the men in the dark suits came after him, pushing past the other kids and then climbing nimbly through a little hamster tube to get up onto the next level. Lori always had trouble finding him when he did that.

  He peeked out of one of the tiny windows and saw some of the men in the dark suits pacing back and forth in front of the play area.

  The other men had taken Jenn to a table, and it looked like they were trying to put something in her mouth.

  HAWK

  The doorway that Hawk followed Iara through led to a kind of indoor plaza area between the stores, most of which had been filled in with concrete when the water rose. Past a fountain and marble benches, both mostly submerged under the still-rising water, Hawk saw shoe stores and electronics shops and places to buy expensive chocolates, the front facings still bright and attractive, with bare blocks of gray behind the windows.

  “We need to . . .” he began, and then broke off, because why would anyone listen to him, anyway?

  Maya, treading water nearby, looked over at him. “Do you have an idea?”

  He had too many ideas, and that was the problem. Too many ideas and not enough execution.

  Tapper splashed back through the water, which was now chest high, sloshing around the closed-off stores. “It messes with your head,” he said. “Come on. We gotta keep moving.”

  Letting the water carry him forward, Hawk looked ahead to where Iara was swimming, so pretty in that swimsuit that matched her bright green hair. She’d kissed him like he meant something. Like he hadn’t just been a loser.

  “You were right,” he said to Tapper. “The miracoral . . . I think it chose us all because we were broken. Like you said.”

  “What do you mean?” Maya said, at the same time that Tapper said, “So?”

  Hawk squeezed his eyes shut, felt his heart hammering. “I had a bad time last year. It was nothing special, you know, but . . . I started doing this . . . thing where I’d take a knife, and I’d . . .”

  A hand closed over his own. He looked up to see Iara. He’d forgotten how good her hearing was. She nodded.

  “I wasn’t gonna kill myself, but it helped to cut a little. It, um . . .” He broke off.

  “It let the pain out,” Maya finished.

  “Yeah.” Hawk tried a smile, and Iara squeezed his hand. “Guys in my family don’t talk about feelings, and my dad would have thought I was weak, and . . . And then one day I woke up, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt myself anymore. Couldn’t get hurt at all. Just like Iara woke up and was killer in the water, or Tapper—”

  “So?” Tapper said again. The girls looked over at him angrily, and he waved them off, splashing water around as he did. “Yeah, my brain is different, and that was hard even before I realized I liked guys—”

  “Wait, man, you had a crush on Iara,” Hawk said.

  Tapper glared. “You have a crush on Iara,” he said, “and this?” He held up his hand, and it blurred in the air. “Maybe the coral was trying to help, or maybe it was just messing with us, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t get banned from comment threads for what I am. I get banned for what I do. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.” He looked back toward the entrance, where the guards were swimming through the doorway. They saw them and began yelling. “So you wanna prove them wrong? Do something.”

  “Prove who wrong?” Maya asked. “The coral, or those guys, or the people back in high school who were mean to him?”

  Tapper glared. “Everyone, Blondie. Everyone.”

  “Dude,” Hawk said, “good bro speech.”

  Tapper actually grinned at him. Then he blurred into the water, going under and cutting a point of white into the rushing water as he arrowed back toward the guards.

  “Split them up and take them down!” Hawk yelled, and pulled away from the girls.

  The first guard fired at Hawk as he drew close, and the shot, some kind of spear-dart thing, bounced off his chest. Before the guard could fire again, Tapper slammed into him, knocking the gun aside and hammering the guard into the wall. Another guard raised a different weapon, something that crackled with electricity at its tip, and Hawk dove under the water. He saw Iara race past him, knifing through the water, and then she leaped up, and a moment later Hawk saw the guard who’d aimed the electro-thing tumble limply into the water.

  He surfaced, saw a guard raising his gun toward where Iara had been, and took the man down with a single punch. Over on top of a bench, Tapper was a blur, hammering on a guard who had Maya wrapped around his face.

  “We don’t have to beat them!” Hawk called over. “We get Kirk in here, and then run back out, okay?”

  “Got it!” Maya called as the guard went down, and then, “Look out!” as a guard tackled Hawk.

  It didn’t hurt, but the guy was bigger than Hawk was, and even as the memories started to come back, being pinned there on the playing field, everybody laughing, Tapper blurred by him and caught the guard with a punch. It gave Hawk the leverage to get a grip on the man, and he hauled him over his head and slammed him into a half-submerged bench.

  Kirk swam through the doorway, his lips curled into a sneer. “This is your plan, children? Punch a few more people and make me swim farther before I take you down? Unless exercise is the key to defeating me, I think you may be grasping at straws.”

  Hawk dove under the water and pulled as hard as he could against the current. He couldn’t match Iara’s speed, but he could cut a path, and he saw Kirk’s legs and chest, pulled over out of his path, and angled past him to the door. Then he was through, out of the plaza area and back in the clothing store. Iara darted through the doorway a moment later, flashing him a smile under the rushing water, her hair flaring out like magical seaweed. In a blur of white water, Tapper raced through as well.

  And then . . . nothing.

  Hawk surfaced along with the others. The water was too high to stand in now, at least for him. “Where’s Maya?” Iara and Tapper were looking around frantically.

  “Oh, were you leaving?” Kirk called from the other room.

  Hawk let the current take him, but he wasn’t as fast as Tapper, who shot back into the other room with water spraying out behind him.

  Maya was backed up against the fountain, with Kirk coming toward her. “Go!” she yelled. “Get out! He’ll get all of us!”

  “No chance, Blondie,” Tapper muttered, and slammed into Kirk in a blur of white water.

  Kirk bobbed around a little, then grabbed hol
d of Tapper. “Well done, Mister Taylor,” he said as Tapper writhed in Kirk’s grasp. “That will make all the other kids want to play with you at recess.” He pushed Tapper under the water.

  Hawk rushed in and punched him, and then punched him again, and then again, yelling in rage, and Kirk rocked back, taking the blows and never losing his smile. “What shall I do with you, Mister Bautista? Shall I pin you down? You’re supposed to be big and strong and tough, but you can’t even stop me from hurting your friends.”

  “Stop it!” Maya yelled, and then she was between Hawk and Kirk, her arms circling around Kirk’s and breaking his hold on Tapper. “Leave them alone!”

  Kirk shifted his hands so that he was holding her wrist instead. “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since we met you, young Finch,” he said, smiling eagerly. “Of all the shame and self-hate of you Nix, I figured you would be the best.”

  “Why?” Maya asked, and blinked, and then looked down at Kirk’s hand. “Oh, because of that?”

  Kirk’s smile froze.

  “Um, I was a popular kid on the football team, and I left on purpose because I knew who I was,” Maya said, and squinted. “But you don’t feel like you’re real. You feel like . . . there you are.” Her free hand darted into the water and came up with . . .

  Hawk squinted. It was . . . something. A feeder, maybe, but a tiny one, something like a crab or a spider, with tons of tiny legs and grasping pincers and a lumpy transparent shell through which Hawk could see its insides working.

  “You can’t!” Kirk sputtered.

  Maya broke free from Kirk’s grip and brought her hand down hard on the top of the fountain, which was still above the water level. There was a soft, wet, squishy crunch.

  Kirk flickered and vanished.

  “How did you know?” Iara asked. Hawk hadn’t heard her come up behind him. “I never heard his real body.”

  “I never saw him,” Tapper said, “and I see everything.”

  “I dunno,” Maya said, and shrugged. “Maybe you were focusing on him.”

  “What did he mean?” Hawk asked. “He talked about you feeling ashamed and all, and—”

  “Hey,” Tapper cut in. “Not our business.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Maya said, “see, I was on the football team, and like I was popular and cool and stuff, but I didn’t like who I was, so I dropped out and I . . .” She stopped and looked at Tapper. “You knew, didn’t you? You can see me?”

  “Sometimes,” Tapper said, “but also antimayaer.”

  Maya winced. “I always forget to specify full-word-only on search and replace.” She smiled at Iara with a little trepidation. “So, um, remember when I grabbed the hard drive data and then gave it to you later? I maaaaaybe made a tiny adjustment. In the files they had on all of us, it, um, originally called me Matt.”

  Iara looked over at Tapper, then back at Maya, and let out a small sigh. “Ah. And you corrected this before giving me the disk.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” Maya ran her fingers through her hair. “I just—”

  “Alemã,” Iara cut in, smiling, “it was yours to share when you were ready.”

  “Wait,” Hawk said, frowning. “So if Maya was Matt, you’re really a—”

  Tapper was very suddenly in front of him. “She’s really a doofus with terrible opinions about anime and a short attention span,” he said, “and you wanna make fun of Blondie for that, you go ahead, but otherwise—”

  “Dude, chill.” Hawk raised his hands. “It’s cool. We’re cool.” Tapper gave him a long and careful glare before moving out of the way.

  “Come,” Iara said, “with the guards down and Kirk destroyed, we can flee in safety before Tiamat arrives.”

  “Too late,” came a voice from the doorway, and Hawk turned to see a mass of coiling tentacles slide through, with Tia Lake’s torso atop them. “You have destroyed too many of me, and now you have taken the one creature I trusted.” She looked down on them, coldly furious. “We shall see if the miracoral screams when you do.”

  LORI

  She lay on the bedroom floor for a long time as the sobs took her. She couldn’t have said what she was crying for, only that the tears would no longer stay inside of her, that it felt like part of her came out with them. Her parents. Handler. The friends she couldn’t reach, couldn’t help.

  Finally, sniffling, she pulled herself out of the bedroom. She shut the door behind her. She would remember it now.

  She tried her phone, but it was definitely dead. Maybe it would work after charging.

  Handler had said that the phone would have new identities for her and Ben.

  She stumbled down the hallway, still looking at her dead phone.

  Why and Ben?

  Handler needed her to feed, but Ben was just . . . what? A way to motivate her? A reminder that she was vulnerable, that she had to be careful? That didn’t make sense. Why would it have connected with Ben, let Ben remember their parents? That wouldn’t motivate Lori. Lori hadn’t even been aware of it. Why would Handler try to help a human it had no reason to care about?

  It didn’t matter anymore, not with Handler dead, or as good as dead. Lori had no powers. She had what she wanted instead. She was a normal girl again, with a normal little brother.

  And Handler was dying. Had told her to go.

  So she’d do that. She wiped her face, shoved her phone in her pocket. There were Legos on the floor, a plate on the table, and a yogurt cup on the counter. Would someone come in and find them? Not Lori’s problem. Her job was to get Ben, get on a plane with her new identity, and get to the mainland. She took one last look at the kitchen, gripping one of the chairs by the back for support.

  That was what Handler had said. That was what it wanted. That was all Lori could do, in fact. She couldn’t help Handler. She was just a normal human. She couldn’t help Maya and Tapper and Hawk and Iara, either, and that was all right. That wasn’t her job. They had the miracoral for that, and it was stronger than Handler. It was what the Leviathan that had . . . erased . . . her parents had been chasing in the first place.

  She couldn’t help her parents. She couldn’t remember her parents.

  For a moment she thought about going back to the bedroom and grabbing one of the pictures. Her hands ached as she thought about it. One of them was gripping the back of the kitchen chair so tightly that her fingers had gone white.

  The other was in her pocket, clutching her dead phone.

  She grabbed the plate from the table angrily and stalked over to the counter. She dropped it into the sink, breathing hard. She would do what Handler had said. It was the only thing she could do. The others would take care of themselves. Or not. It was a big and unfair world, and terrible things happened to everyone.

  If she were lucky, she could recharge the phone, and once it was working, she could get the fake IDs Handler had made. It had been weak, but it had promised it would make them.

  It always kept its promises.

  Just like it sassed her and encouraged her to kiss Maya and reminded her to be nice to Ben.

  Just like it held her when she cried, as best it could.

  Not it. She.

  Lori took a breath, swallowed, and looked up from the sink, and there was the stupid sign.

  OUR FAMILY MIGHT GET THERE LATE . . .

  Lori stumbled to the door, staggered down the stairs, and came out onto the sidewalk. It was still deserted. The canal was empty, the water calm. There would be no ferries for the next five or ten minutes, going by the normal schedule.

  And there, down at the bottom, glowed a patch of miracoral.

  Before she could change her mind, she vaulted over the railing and into the water.

  The water was cold, but it was only water, and she let it wash over her and pushed out her breath, sinking down to the bottom of the canal as a cloud of bubbles floated up. She opened her eyes, ignoring the sting.

  There it was, the miracoral, with its harsh yellow glow that was already turning red as
she drew closer.

  It didn’t do that for normal people. That was something.

  All right, she thought at it, here I am. Could it hear her? One way to find out.

  She pushed herself down closer to it. The angry red glow got angrier and redder, and the crayfish popped out from the little brain grooves of the coral. They probably weren’t even different creatures. They were probably just parts of the creature, like Lake and her eels, or like Handler and Lori.

  How she’d thought she’d been, anyway.

  I’m not leaving, she thought, and pushed herself forward. Pinch me, shock me, whatever you’re going to do.

  There were dozens of crayfish swarming her. They flashed forward, a cloud of claws between her and the coral, and they latched onto her, and it hurt, their claws digging in like tiny little electric shocks that—

  go away go away go away don’t hurt me

  —hurt more than anything had ever hurt in Lori’s life, and she screamed out more bubbles and shook in the water.

  And did not swim away.

  I need your help, she thought, and kept swimming forward. And you owe me! You’re the reason the Leviathan took my parents!

  More claws flashing into her, pinching her arms and legs and face, too fast for her to protect herself—

  no you are feeder you are like what I fled you will make more come

  —and the shocks drove her back, her muscles spasming from the sudden deadening thrum of the electricity.

  No! Nobody wants to hurt you! Handler eats things that hurt people, Lori thought as loudly as she could, and you are going to help it—no, you’re going to help her and me, so that we can help your Nix.

  She was getting dizzy, and her pulse pounded at the edges of her vision. The crayfish hovered in front of her, hundreds of tiny little legs flicking as they treaded water.

  One of them darted forward, then zipped back, as though it was scared of her, and then it crept forward again and touched her very gently on the arm with a tiny little shock.

  explain

  12

  IARA

  Tiamat was massive and terrible, floating into the plaza on a cloud of tendrils that formed her lower body. They frothed the water as she slid toward them, blocking the doorway that was their only path to escape.