by Adam Blade
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
1. THE FINAL FIGHT
2. THE BLACK CAUES
3. FAMILY REUNION
4. DOME OF DEATH
5. PLAYING CATCH
6. THE PROFESSOR’S LAIR
7. A LIFE-AND-DEATH DECISION
8. ESCAPE FROM THE ABYSS
9. FAREWELLS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREVIEW: THE CHRONICLES OF AVANTIA #1 FIRST HERO
ALSO AVAILABLE
COPYRIGHT
THE OCEAN CURRENTS TICKLED MAX’S SKIN LIKE an autumn breeze. He shivered and tightened his grip on the aquabike’s handles. The bike’s thermometer reading was dipping more the farther north they traveled, but that wasn’t the only thing making him jittery. Every mile they traveled was a mile closer to the Black Caves and their enemy, the Professor.
Closer to my dad, too, thought Max.
The Professor had kidnapped his father, Callum North, from their home in Aquora. According to Max’s Merryn friend, Lia, the Professor was collecting experts to help build weapons. The Professor wanted to take over the oceans of Nemos. So it made sense for him to take Max’s dad, who was the Chief Engineer of Aquora. Max just couldn’t work out how the Professor had found Callum in the first place.
I won’t lose both my parents to the sea, he thought.
Max’s mother had disappeared on a voyage years before, along with her brother. They had been looking for Sumara, the city of the Merryn — a legendary race of underwater beings. But neither had ever come back. Just two more explorers lost in the perilous oceans of Nemos. Max had been to Sumara himself — that’s where he’d met his friend, Lia, whose help had been invaluable on their trip so far.
Silt danced in the water ahead, so Max switched on the headlights. The beams caught Spike’s flashing tail as the swordfish swam through the water with Lia on his back. No, the Merryn were definitely not just a legend. Lia glared back, her eyes wide, and her silver hair billowing like a cloud.
“You may as well announce to everyone that we’re coming!” she said.
Max dimmed the beams, twisted the throttle, and drew up alongside her. His dogbot, Rivet, followed with a pulse of his propeller.
“Sorry,” Max said to the Merryn princess. “I’m still learning, I guess.”
Lia scanned the sea ahead. “I’ve never been this far from home before. I can sense something out there.”
“Tell me about it,” Max replied, nervously patting the harpoon gun strapped to the side of the bike.
They’d traveled miles from Sumara, where Lia’s father ruled. They were even farther from the city of Aquora, where Max had grown up with his dad. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d first followed the Professor’s evil Robobeast Cephalox the Cyber Squid into the ocean. Max had nearly drowned. Only Lia’s Merryn touch had saved his life. His fingers searched his neck for the gills she’d given him. It was still hard to believe he could breathe underwater without a diving suit.
Max reached out to rub Rivet’s metal head. “I can’t help thinking we could be heading into a trap.”
Lia shrugged. “I don’t think we have a choice. We have to track down the Professor.”
Aside from snatching Max’s dad, the Professor had stolen the Skull of Thallos from Sumara. Without it, the Merryn had lost their powers to control the seas, which meant their whole race was in danger. The Professor was using the skull fragments and robot technology to control the giant Beasts of the ocean, turning them into vicious fighting machines. Max and Lia had defeated three Robobeasts and recovered one piece of the skull after each battle — but every battle had been more deadly than the one before.
“You’re shivering,” said Lia. “Hang on a moment. I know what you need to warm you up.”
She leaned forward and whispered close to Spike’s head. The swordfish dipped his sharp nose and dove. The dark water swallowed him and Lia up. Max waited, glad he had Rivet’s red eyes and flashing lights to keep him company. He wondered whether he’d ever get the chance to confront the Professor face-to-face. One of Lia’s Merryn cousins, Glave, had told them a terrible Robobeast guarded the Black Caves — Kraya the Blood Shark. Even the name was scary enough to make Max want to turn back.
Lia emerged from the seafloor, trailing what looked like a rug in her hand. She slipped off Spike’s back and held it out. “Put this on,” she said.
As Lia got closer, Max realized it was a blanket of waving orange tendrils. She had torn two armholes in it.
“What is it?” asked Max.
“Fur-weed,” said Lia. “We make blankets out of it for Merryn tadpoles.”
“Tadpoles?”
“Our young,” she said. “You know, hatchlings?”
Max slipped on the vest and instantly felt warmer. “You come from eggs?”
Lia frowned. “Of course. Everyone knows that.”
Max grinned. “Never mind. Should we check the skull for directions?”
“Let’s keep moving,” Lia replied. “I don’t like it here.”
They swam on through the murk. Gradually, the water became clear enough for Max to switch off his bike’s lights completely. The ocean floor stretched for miles on all sides, flat and bare but for a few pebbles and scraps of dying weeds. The water was empty of fish or any other marine life.
Max felt more relaxed now that he could see farther. Rivet was obviously glad to be out of the murky patch, too, and nosed playfully around Spike’s belly until the swordfish gave him a whack with his tail and darted off to scour the seabed.
“Here, boy!” Max beckoned to the dogbot, and Rivet swam over.
“Fish hit me, Max,” he barked.
“You asked for it,” said Max, sliding open Rivet’s back panel. Bright blue light burst out and made him blink. “Wow!” said Max. He opened his eyes a crack and took out the glowing Skull of Thallos. The three fragments — a jawbone, eye sockets, and a beak — were magically fused together. Each piece had pointed the way to the next, but they’d never glowed this brightly before.
“We must be really close,” said Lia.
“I don’t understand,” said Max. “There’s nothing around —”
A deep rumble from the seabed drowned out his words and he felt the water pulse. “What in the seven seas is that?” he asked, quickly stowing away the skull.
“I don’t know,” said Lia, “but I don’t think we should stay here. Spike!”
The ocean shook again.
“Go up!” Lia cried. “Quickly!”
Max gasped as a crack opened in the seabed — a huge black ring of broken sand, running all around them. There was another rumble and a whirring sound as two enormous curved glass walls rose from the ocean floor. Before they had time to move, the glass snapped shut over their heads like a giant transparent eyelid.
On the other side of the shield, Spike swam frantically back and forth, knocking against the prison wall with his sword. Inside, Rivet barked wildly, then lowered his head and set his propellers to full throttle. He charged at the glass but bounced off with a dull clang. The dogbot sank back through the water dizzily.
“Hard, Max,” said Rivet.
Lia swam to the line where the two halves of the dome met, and Max followed her on his aquabike. There was a faint ridge at the join, but he couldn’t get his fingers in to pry them apart. The dome had to be at least a hand’s width thick.
Lia slammed her fist against the glass.
“We’re trapped!” she said.
THE PROFESSOR … THAT HAD TO BE WHO’D trapped them.
Rivet sniffed at the glass, following it all the way down to the seabed. Nothing down there but sand and rocks, thought Max. But his dogbot started barking wildly. At the
same moment, Max felt a tugging at his clothes, as if they’d been snatched by a strong wind.
“Uh-oh,” said Lia.
The sand on the seabed shifted and split, opening a black hole at the base of the dome. Max felt the tugging at his clothes getting stronger. They were being sucked down into the hole! He gunned the aquabike in the opposite direction, but the suction became stronger and stronger, pulling him toward the hole. Unless he did something fast, that dark chasm would be his tomb.
Max spotted a boulder lodged in the sand at the very edge of the dome and steered his bike toward it. With one hand he grabbed ahold of the rock. With the other, he pulled the harpoon gun free from its harness.
The aquabike shot out from underneath him. Max clung on to the rock, watching his bike spin toward the hole in the seabed, then disappear underneath.
“Grab my belt!” he called to Lia.
She clawed her way through the water toward him, her hair streaming along her back, clothes flattened by the power of the sucking water. She hooked her fingers around his waist. Rivet’s tail propellers whined in the powerful current, trying to reach them.
With a gasp of effort, Max hooked the harpoon gun over the top of the boulder, holding each end to lodge himself in place.
“Hold on!” he said to Lia.
She still gripped his belt tightly. “I’m not going anywhere!”
Rivet’s legs scrabbled desperately in the water.
“Swim harder!” Max said. “Full throttle!”
The dogbot managed to nose forward, then dropped back, his eyes flashing with panic. He pushed again, trying to keep himself from following the aquabike, but Max could see it was hopeless.
“I’m slipping!” Lia shouted.
“Me, too!” Max replied. It felt as if his arms were being tugged from their sockets, and he could feel the harpoon gun creaking under the strain. He wondered which would break first.
Rivet’s tail propeller stuttered and jammed. With an electronic howl, the dogbot streaked backward and disappeared into the hole.
“No!” Max cried. Half a second later, the fingertips of his left hand slid off the harpoon-gun handle, and he was snatched by the current. Lia screamed as the water dragged them both across the seabed.
They plunged into darkness.
Max had no idea which way was up and which way was down. Lia let go of his belt. He felt water whip past his body as he rolled over and over, trying to keep one hand on the harpoon gun. The back of his head slammed off a hard surface, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. Where was Rivet? Lia?
Then he was being pulled sideways by the current, sliding along instead of falling. He caught flashes of Lia, curled into a ball just ahead. Suddenly, they emerged from the darkness into dim half-light.
They were shooting through a transparent tube over an underwater canyon. Below, through his dizziness, he saw brighter lights. The suction had stopped, and Max let the gentle current carry him along. He moved his arms and legs, checking for broken bones, but he’d been lucky. Lia’s tunic was torn, and her eyes were wide in shock, but she looked unharmed, too. Rivet had gone cross-eyed. He shook his head, and his eyes went back to normal.
Max’s breath caught in his throat as he realized what he was looking at below the tube. Buildings and bubble domes of all different sizes littered the seabed. But this was no Merryn city sculpted from coral and rocks. The domes had metal hatches. Pipework and cables linked them, and electric searchlights swept across the landscape. Other lights flashed and valves hissed open and closed. Giant pincers on metal arms gripped and extended, lifting metal crates or huge coils of cable from one dome to the next. This was hi-tech — more advanced than anything Max had seen even in Aquora.
Max spotted one set of claws that had gotten ahold of his aquabike. As he watched, the robotic fist closed around it.
“No!” he yelled out, but there was nothing he could do. With a crunch of metal, his beloved bike was reduced to scrap.
The tube suddenly dipped, tipping Max onto his front and carrying him steeply down into the canyon. He tumbled over again and could make out shapes moving within the domes and buildings. People! He peered closer. In one dome, several Merryn were treading water, shaping something out of a sea plant. In another, two humans with blowtorches were at work on a piece of machinery. Some domes must be air-filled and others water-filled, Max realized. More robots scurried this way and that.
“Factories,” he said in wonder.
Lia was floating ahead of him down the tube, her nose pressed to the side. “More like a prison,” she said. “I think we found the Black Caves.”
Max spotted what looked like an entrance halfway up the opposite side of the canyon — a circular metal door, big enough for a Robobeast, set into the rock and reachable by a sloping walkway. Dozens of metal bolts, each as thick as his leg, locked it in place.
The Professor obviously didn’t want anyone sneaking in there uninvited.
Well, we’re here now, thought Max. Even if it’s not exactly the entrance I hoped for.
Above the door loomed a dark giant screen, even bigger than the doorway and visible by everyone in the canyon below.
“I hope Spike’s all right,” said Lia. “He’s stuck up there on his … Aagh!”
In an instant, she and Rivet were sucked through a hole into a smaller side tube. A hatch slammed shut over the hole, cutting them off from Max. The dogbot’s legs scrabbled, but there was nothing to grip on to. Helpless, Max watched them slide down toward a large cage on the seabed that looked as though it was made of glass.
“Look out!” Max called. He tried to jam the harpoon tip into the edge of the metal hatch to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. And now he was being tugged onward by the current, down the main tube, toward a massive water-filled dome in the center of the canyon, below the reinforced main entrance.
With a mechanical whir, another hatch slid open, and Max tumbled into the dome. He righted himself in a stream of bubbles. The dome was gigantic, but apart from him, it was empty. A pair of metal double doors at its base looked securely closed. What now?
“Max!” shouted a muffled voice.
He peered around to get his bearings and spotted Lia and Rivet in their cage just outside the dome. He swam toward them, but once again, thick glass stood in the way. They were trapped, they were separated, and they were completely at the Professor’s mercy.
“Welcome, Max,” said a booming voice. “Nice of you to join me.”
The words seemed to come from all around, but Max caught a glimpse of movement up above. A huge metal throne, glinting and flashing with lights, descended through the canyon. Bubble jets hissed from built-in thrusters on every side, controlled by a man seated in its center. A man that Max recognized. He wore a lightweight underwater wetsuit. A network of ultrathin wires spread over the webbing that hugged his figure like a second skin.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the man. “I am the Professor.”
Fear seeped through Max’s bones. He could hardly draw breath into his gills.
The throne hovered in the water on the other side of the dome, so that just a few inches of glass separated their faces. The Professor’s mouth twisted into a smile behind the visor of his helmet. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your uncle?” he asked.
WHERE’S MY DAD?”
The Professor tapped the side of his nose. “In time, Max. In time.”
Lia was staring at Max. “You know the Professor?” she called.
Max nodded. “He’s my uncle.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d met his uncle in the flesh, but he recognized the face from holophotos his dad kept in their apartment. In those shots, his uncle Dedrick had been smiling kindly at the dinner table, or standing at the water’s edge in his diving gear.
There wasn’t a trace of kindness in his features now. All that remained in those chilly blue eyes was arrogance and cruelty. His thin lips were locked in a permanent sneer. But the most
surprising change of all was the gently opening and closing gills on his neck.
“It all makes sense now,” said Max. “I couldn’t work out how you had the DiveLog from the Leaping Dolphin. But, of course, you were on board with my mother all along.” Max slammed a fist against the side of the dome. “Let me out of here now, and release my father.”
From the cage, Max heard Rivet growl, “Bad man, Max!”
The Professor shook his head. “I admire your spirit, Max,” he said, “but you’re hardly in a position to make demands. The way I see it, you have a choice. Join me, or die.”
“Don’t listen to him,” called out Lia.
Max looked up at his friend, trapped with Rivet, her eyes wide, her webbed fingers wrapped around the glass bars.
The Professor frowned and switched back to the language of Aquora. “Don’t pay any attention to that girl,” he said. “Without the Skull of Thallos, the Merryn are no more powerful than plankton.”
“That’s because you stole it!” Max shouted.
The Professor shrugged. “The choice is yours, Max. Come and work with your uncle Dedrick. Together we can rule the oceans with a steel fist. You’ve shown you understand technology, like your father. I’ve only just started here. We can build an army — unstoppable machines to seize power not only under water, but above it, too. People will bow at our feet —”
“Enough!” said Max. “I don’t want any of that. I want you to give back the final piece of the skull, and I want to see my dad!”
The Professor sighed and rolled his eyes. “Just like your mother. Last chance, Max. Will you join me?”
“You must have water blocking your ears,” said Max. “I’d rather drown.”
“Oh, it will be worse than that,” said his uncle. He pressed a button on the armrest of his throne, and a microphone rose up in front of his chest. “Release Kraya!” he cried.
Max saw the huge screen on the canyon wall flicker, glowing bright. Hundreds of other monitors dotted around the Black Caves blinked on, all showing the same image — Max floating in the water-filled dome. “What’s going on?” he demanded.