Dark Life: Rip Tide (12 page)

The valley lay hidden among a series of seamounts. I doubted anyone else even knew of its existence, which meant the resident fish would be numerous and bold. Determined to erase the memory of Gemma’s last dip into the water, I’d been proceeding cautiously, so she took me by surprise when she launched herself over the edge of the cliff and floated into the valley below.

Following in her wake, I drifted down the cliff wall, where masses of colorful sea anemones crowded the overhangs while neon blue crabs scuttled underneath. Just beyond my reach a shoal of golden snapper darted in perfect sync.

When I touched down, Gemma had a fat dorado already in her sights. Over six feet long. Keeping her bow arm rigid, she took aim, only to have a school of silvery palometa engulf her before she could release her arrow. Round and flat, the fish reflected the sunlight like a thousand mirrors as she shooed them away. By the time they’d scattered, the dorado was gone. I laughed at her look of frustration and pointed to a mushroom-shaped guyot some distance away where the dorado had headed.

Together we swam the length of the valley. Protected by the channel’s high walls, soft coral flourished, as did sponges and sea plumes. As we neared the rock formation, I dropped to the seafloor. Most likely the dorado would hide along the bottom, so when Gemma touched down beside me, I pushed aside the waist-high seaweed. Spotting the metallic green fish under an outcropping with its forked tail poking out, I beckoned Gemma closer.

Just as she lifted the crossbow and took aim, a voice blared into our helmets simultaneously.

“We’re coming,” Trilo shouted through the receiver. “Be ready to jump in.”

Though I wanted to type on my wrist screen that we weren’t ready to come back, something about his agitation worried me.

Upon seeing the sleek outline of the
Specter
above us, we kicked our way up to the bottom hatch and hoisted ourselves in. The moment Trilo slid the cover back in place, he shouted into an intercom. “They’re in. Go!”

“What’s going on?” I asked as soon as I’d cleared my lungs of Liquigen.

“Nothing you need to know about,” Trilo said, heading for the hatchway.

I blocked his path. “We’ll find out soon enough, so tell us now.”

He considered it and then shrugged. “While you two were out playing, we spotted a mark.”

“A what?” Gemma asked.

“A fishing trawler. So a couple of the boys went to check it out. Now we’re swinging back to get them.”

I didn’t step aside. “Check it out? What does that mean?” Though I could guess the answer.

Gemma inhaled sharply. “Are they robbing some ship?”

“We gotta bring something when we go to the Ruins.” He shoved past me but then paused at the hatch. “Showing up empty-handed would be …” He searched for the right word. “Rude.” With that, he banged out of the gear room.

“Guess that’s a yes for robbery,” I said.

As I pulled off my dive boots, I thought hard about how I was the one who had let Shade out of his jail cell. Had I kidded myself for even a second that he was going to give up being an outlaw? No. Truth was, my only concern had been getting Shade to agree to take me to Hardluck Ruins. Looking at the consequences down the line—the way Captain Revas had done with the hypothetical boy on the boxing raft—hadn’t factored into my thinking at all. And now some fishing trawler was suffering the consequences.

When I looked up, I was surprised to see Gemma smiling. “You’re not upset that your brother is off robbing a ship?”

She shrugged. “He’s not going to change. But I did,” she said, beaming. “I didn’t see or feel a single ghost.”

I wondered once again what she had really seen. Could I be so certain there were no ghosts in the ocean? Certainly enough people had died in it.

“And you can come live with us again,” I finished with a smile.

She nodded as she tugged off her boot. “Now that I can do what you like doing again.”

Something about her phrasing brought me up short. “That’s not why you stopped living with us before, is it?”

“Not the only reason.”

“That shouldn’t have been a reason at all,” I said, feeling put out. “Yeah, I like spending time in the ocean, but I don’t care if you go in or not.”

She hesitated. “I think you do, even if you don’t realize it.”

“You’re wrong,” I said firmly. “I don’t write people off based on what they can or can’t do. Only a complete jerk would. Think about it. You like to talk. If some parasite eats my tongue, are you going to cut me off cold?”

A smile pulled at her lips. “Could we pick a different example?”

I remained serious. “Why did you think it mattered to me? Did I say something?”

Her cheeks turned so pink, so fast, I was stunned. I’d struck a nerve.

“No,” she said, backing off. “I was just being dumb.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.” Stepping over piled boots, she headed for the hatch. “It’s stupid.” When I got there first, she stopped short and sighed. “Okay,” she relented. “I noticed that after my first freak-out, you didn’t like me as much.”

“You’re right,” I said, and she stiffened. “That
is
stupid.”

“Well, that’s how it seemed,” she said defensively.

“Why?” And then it dawned on me. “Oh. Because I didn’t kiss you again.” Her flush deepened and I
knew I’d hit the mark. “I thought maybe I’d caused your freak-out.”

“I told you it was the ocean.”

“You could have been just saying that. I figured if you wanted me to try again, you’d give me a sign.”

“A sign?” Her tone was incredulous.

Now
I
felt stupid, though also relieved, knowing for sure that I hadn’t set off her panic attacks. “I was trying to be considerate.”

“Okay, there’s considerate. And then there’s dense beyond belief.”

“Hey—”

“Exactly what kind of sign were you looking for?” she asked. “Ten feet tall with blinking lights?”

I leaned in and kissed her, partly to stop her teasing but mostly because after squashing the impulse for so long, I’d finally gotten a go-ahead—even if it was roundabout. Her response, however, wasn’t roundabout at all. As soon as my lips touched hers, she slipped her hands around me and kissed back. A soft kiss. Lingering … until something heavy slammed into my leg.

We broke apart in time to see a helmet surface in the hatch, while a bulging sack lay at our feet, having just been thrown there.

“What a haul!” Eel hoisted himself into the gear room and gestured at the sack. “Wait till you see the size of those oysters.”

As we followed Eel into the bridge, I asked, “Big fishing boat?” I couldn’t help wondering if the outlaws had targeted some poor floater who depended day to day on his catch.

“About as big as they come,” Eel said, motioning to Kale to take the
Specter
topside. “Just look at that monster. She’s strip-mining the sea. Ain’t right,” he said with a shake of his dark head.

Gemma and I moved into the bridge’s rounded viewing dome as the
Specter
broke through the waves off the starboard side of a massive ship. One glance at the giant chute mounted on the ship’s stern told me Eel was right. I knew how these trawlers operated. They came equipped with enormous nets that scraped along the ocean floor, scooping up everything from clams to fish to dolphins—whatever happened to be in that stretch of ocean. Then a winch would haul up the net and empty it into the chute so that its contents spilled straight onto the deck for sorting. Nothing got tossed back.

A trawler like that could easily haul in two hundred tons of fish an hour. If the captain kept off the Seaguard’s radar, his ship could scoop up far more marine life than the official limit. And almost all of them did. Too bad there weren’t enough skimmers on the ocean to enforce the regulations.

Suddenly the irony of that hit me, and I grimaced. I’d just wished for more Seaguard.
To bring justice to the ocean frontier,
like the trooper had said.

When the
Specter
closed in on Hardluck Ruins, Gemma and I returned to the bridge as the sub surfaced again. Stacked rubble formed a wall, topped with a fence of barbed wire, surrounding what had once been a city. Now the buildings stood semisubmerged in the clear water of a lagoon.

“No way to get past the wall in a ship,” Shade said. “We moor on this side.”

“What about those?” I asked, pointing at an open patch of water on the other side of the barbed wire where a flotilla of small boats bobbed. Instead of true sails, long swags of colorful sheer material hung from their masts.

“The surfs keep those to use in the lagoon,” Pretty said with a nod at the odd sailboats and their ineffective sails. “Those are their market stalls.”

“That’s the black market?” I asked. “A bunch of boats?”

“That’s where the surfs sell things. What they’ve caught or made.”

From the pilot seat, Kale pointed out the remains of a large building some distance away, once mostly glass—now mostly scaffolding. “That’s the main market.”

“What’s the difference?” Gemma asked.

“That’s where they buy.”

“You have to pay to set up a counter in there,” Pretty explained.

“So how do we get in?” I asked him.

“There’s a break in the fence up ahead. We’ll drop anchor as close to it as we can.”

“Shade,” Kale called, sounding alarmed. When Shade came forward, Kale pointed in the distance where several vehicles zipped across the waves, heading for the ruins. “Those are moving an awful lot like Seaguard skimmers.”

Though they were barely more than dots on the horizon, I saw what he meant. The back halves swung out as if separate but tethered to the front. And then one popped up on a wave. Definitely wasp-waisted skimmers.

“Take her down,” Shade ordered.

Kale jammed the throttle forward, tilting the
Specter
into a near-vertical dive.

“What are they doing here?” Pretty wondered. “They can’t cross into the Ruins without a warrant. This city was deeded to the surfs. Same as their garden.”

“Drop her in there.” Shade pointed at a mass of plankton.

Kale buried the
Specter
within the thick green cloud. Not only was the sub well out of view, but the plankton was so dense, it would show up as solid on a sonar screen, without revealing what was hidden within.

“Give the skimmers time to circle to the other side, then take off,” Shade told Kale.

“Take off for how long?” I asked.

“Not coming back tonight,” he said firmly. “We’ll try tomorrow.”

“Gabion told me to come tonight,” I protested. “I’ll go alone.”

“Don’t want to do that.”

“I’m not scared of Gabion.”

“He’s not the only thing that can kill you in the Ruins,” Shade said.

“I’ll take my chances.”

I turned to head for the gear room, only to see Pretty blocking my way with his knife drawn. “Those skimmers are here because of
you.
Shade escapes. You’re nowhere to be found, but your sub is still bobbing by the cliff….”

“So the Seaguard guessed that I came
here
?” I scoffed.

“Not guessed. You told someone back on Rip Tide that you were itching to get to Hardluck Ruins. Maybe asked for a ride. No way the
Specter
was your first choice.”

I stiffened, remembering how I’d begged Mayor Fife for the coordinates. Would he have passed that information on to Captain Revas? Maybe. If she’d blamed him for Shade’s escape and he needed to save his own hide.

“We’ll wait until tomorrow,” Gemma said, pushing aside Pretty’s knife. “I don’t want to go in there without
you guys. And neither does Ty, even if he’s not thinking straight right now.”

Pretty looked like he wasn’t buying what she was selling.

She turned to Shade. “Will you at least take us to the surf’s community garden tonight? So we can maybe find out what it is that they know about Drift that Captain Revas wouldn’t tell Ty.”

I wasn’t going to settle for that even if she was. I saw Shade’s gaze flick to Pretty.

“The garden is between here and the coast,” Pretty told him. “Due west.”

Shade nodded in answer to Gemma’s question. “So long as no skimmers show up.”

“Okay,” she said. “We have a plan. Okay, Ty?”

Pushing past them, I left the bridge. I heard Gemma quietly say, “Give me a minute to talk to him.”

I paused in the galley, listening to them.

“You shout if he tries to dive,” Shade ordered.

“He won’t,” I heard her say. “He’ll listen to me.”

Anger shoved my feet forward. I
was
going to dive. Just let her try to talk me out of it. The only question standing was whether she would yell for Shade.

When she came up behind me, I didn’t acknowledge her. She slipped a hand under my arm that I was about to shake off when, instead of trying to pull me back, she pressed me forward.

“Hurry,” she hissed in my ear. “Pretty will check on us before a minute is up. Hey,” she called to Eel as we crossed through the common room where he and Hatchet were throwing daggers at a dartboard.

When he glanced over, she smiled. “Be right back,” she told them, while nudging me toward the gear room with a hand on my back. “We’re just going to talk privately for a minute.”

It wasn’t until she closed the gear room hatch and jammed a fishing spear through the wheel that all doubt about her washed from my mind. I didn’t even know how to begin an apology of the magnitude I wanted to make.

“Don’t just stand there,” she ordered. “Get your helmet on. Let’s go.”

“Shade is going to be really mad at you,” I warned.

“He better get over it. We broke him out of jail.” She sealed her helmet with a snap and shimmied through the hatch in the floor.

Following Gemma, I dropped soundlessly out of the
Specter.
As she disappeared into the viscous darkness, a column of green light appeared in her wake. Then I noticed the bright tracer lines all around me made by fish darting past.
Shoot.
Disturbing the plankton turned it bioluminescent. I swam after Gemma, sending plumes of translucent green swirling into the darkness with every kick and stroke. Beautiful, yes—but also a neon sign advertising our departure. After a moment, I checked over my shoulder. As far as I could tell, no outlaws were coming after us.

We surfaced and swam along the piled rubble that formed the wall until we spotted the break in the fence that Pretty had mentioned. The rubble was slicked with rock snot and silt, which made climbing it difficult, but we finally clawed our way to the top of the wall and slipped through the gap in the barbed wire.

On the other side of the fence, a rope net hung over the water, leading from the rubble wall to the shell of what had once been a three-story building; now two
levels were submerged. We scrambled across the net and into the abandoned building.

There was no glass in the windows and no interior walls. Probably torn down long ago to salvage the wood struts. As we splashed through puddles toward the other side of the building, I wondered what it had been before the Rising. Maybe a bank or city hall. Something important, judging from the inlaid marble floor. Now tall weeds sprouted in the cracks, making it hard to spot rats until we were nearly on top of them.

“Wait,” I said, slowing my pace. “I need to apologize. I thought … I didn’t realize you were lying to them back there. On the
Specter
.”

She raised a brow. “You just forgot that I love your parents and want to find them?”

“I …” I wanted to promise never to doubt her again. But after my about-face, I wouldn’t blame her if she scoffed. “I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” she said, seeming unoffended. “I’m a great scammer; you fell for it. So did my brother, who’s good at reading people.”

“And I’m dense beyond belief,” I conceded.

“Only sometimes.” She smiled. “Come on. By now they’ll have figured out that we’re not on board.”

She took off through the open building and I followed, still feeling guilty about my lack of faith in her. Ahead of us, a section of the wall had been knocked out. A ladder
dangled in the opening. We’d have to climb to the roof to get onto the hanging bridge, which crossed the lagoon.

“Does this setup look safe to you?” She gave the ladder a shake and frowned. “This is definitely not safe.”

I followed the jerry-rigged bridge with my eyes to where it ended at a platform by the moored boats. “Not safe at all,” I agreed. The water, on the other hand, looked inviting—crystal clear and not more than twenty feet deep. Leaning over the edge of the building, I could make out an ancient street under the water, with rusting cars covered in seaweed. “It’d be quicker to swim.”

I turned to Gemma, but she was studying the path of knotted rope nets that were strung up through what was left of the city. “They all lead to the market,” she concluded.

“Let’s try to get there before sunset.” Which wasn’t long off. Winding through the half-submerged ruins at night would be like navigating a maze, even with my Dark Gift.

“Okay”—she reached back to flip up her helmet—“swimming it is.”

“You don’t want to do that,” a voice warned from behind us. “You’re inside the wall now.”

I turned to see a rough-looking man, clearly a surf, sloshing through the puddles, hefting a sack. His expression turned to one of surprise upon getting a look at my shine, followed by a scowl.

“Why?” I asked, despite his obvious hostility. “What’s in the water?”

“Things that bite,” he snarled, and swung himself onto the ladder.

Every inch of the ocean contained things that bite. Why this lagoon should be so much more dangerous, I couldn’t guess. But remembering all the surfs with scars, I decided to take the man’s advice. Gemma eyed the water warily as she followed me up the ladder.

From the rooftop, the hanging bridge looked even less safe. Pieces of railing had been wired together and dipped at odd angles. Planks cut from old doors had been laid over the rungs haphazardly. In the gaps—nothing but bars. The surf seemed to cross it easily enough, so we ventured on, gripping the cable that hung along one side.

Halfway to the boats, I looked down and spotted the remnants of a playground under the water. Something round and rusted spun in a circle. Swings drifted upward, caught in a light current. And then a shadow glided past the far end of the clearing. I didn’t get a look at what cast the shadow, but a chill crept over my skin. Whatever it was, it had been big, at least fifteen feet long. Plenty of fish came that size. But something about the way the shadow moved told me it was no fish.

“What do you see?” Gemma paused, holding on to the cable with two hands.

The ancient wood by her foot caught my eye. The plank was shorter than the rest and its ragged edge was lighter in color, meaning that part of the board hadn’t been exposed to the elements as long. When I knelt and nudged her foot aside, we inhaled in unison. A tooth was sticking out of the wood. I wiggled it free and held up a daggerlike fang.

“Is that from a shark?” Gemma asked with alarm.

“The biggest shark tooth I’ve ever seen was three inches long. This is at least five. And look at the shape. I don’t know what it’s from.” I peered down at the water and felt my nerves grow taut. “Something down there can launch itself at least twelve feet into the air,” I said, judging by the height of the bridge.

“Let’s get to the boats now.”

She got no argument from me. We hurried to the platform on the far side of the lagoon and climbed down another rope ladder. At the bottom floated a walkway made of tethered barrels that ran between the boats, which looked even less safe than the hanging walkway. At least the boats were moored bow to stern, forming something of a barrier on either side. Some were little more than rafts, while others resembled pontoons and catamarans, yet all the hulls were crafted from salvaged ship and sub parts—from many time periods—all soldered together. Brightly colored mosquito netting hung from the masts, draped to provide shade. I always
preferred nature to any kind of man-made beauty, but I had to admit there was something appealing about the hodgepodge crafts.

“So where do we start looking?” Gemma asked.

“Here.” I nodded at the boats.

“Okay, you go in one and I’ll go in another. But you keep your eyes peeled for Gabion in case this was all a setup.”

He was the least of my worries. Boarding the closest boat, I ducked past the mosquito netting and saw three women inside the makeshift tent, sitting behind piles of clothes made from feathered bird pelts. The moment they saw me their eyes narrowed. Probably because of my shine. “Hi,” I said, trying for a polite smile.

Their reply, resounding silence. I plowed on. “I’m trying to track down a township. Drift. Have you seen—”

“We don’t do business with you people!” shouted the oldest woman, though I was within feet of her. Either she was hard of hearing and hadn’t understood me … or she really hated pioneers.

“I’m not here to do business.” I raised my voice, hoping it was a hearing issue. “I’m trying to find—”

“Get out!” she shrieked. “We don’t buy from pioneers. Never will!”

“Okay, got it,” I said, backing out fast.

Gemma jumped onto the barrel walkway an instant after me. “Any luck?” I asked.

“That was weird,” she said, looking disturbed.

“And you don’t even have a shine.”

“The guy was normal—well, for a surf—until I asked if he’d seen Drift. Then he told me to get off his boat or he’d throw me into the lagoon.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Weird.”

“No. The weird part was that he was terrified.”

“You wouldn’t think that was strange if you got a look at the surfs from Drift.”

“Ty, he was scared of
me.
Like I was going to hurt him.”

“What? No. It’s just ’cause you mentioned Drift.”

She shrugged, having no explanation, but wasn’t buying mine.

Thinking about it, I wondered if the old surf woman could have been shouting at me out of fear, not anger. She’d known that I was a pioneer. Could the surfs be afraid of us? Then I glanced at Gemma with her bounty of freckles, ponytail, and borrowed diveskin that was so oversized, she looked like a kid playing dress-up. I’d seen scarier seagull chicks.

Not ready to give up, Gemma and I boarded a dozen other boats where surfs from different townships sold a wide variety of goods. Carved beads of shell, clay, and halibut vertebrae; clothes handmade from cured fish skins; awls and needles of bone; walrus stomach gear bags and bladder water pouches; and whale sinew, split and combed
into fine thread. As different as their crafts were, the surfs’ reactions were nearly identical upon seeing my shine or hearing any mention of Drift—fear flashed across their faces and we were told to disembark pronto.

“Okay,” I said finally, though there was nothing okay about any of it. “Whatever Gabion wanted me to see, I don’t think it’s here. Let’s move on to the main building.”

The sun had just slipped past the horizon when we entered the market building by way of another cable bridge. Tarps were strung up between the exposed girders, sectioning off the stalls. They reminded me of the fish vendor tents that circled the Trade Station’s promenade, except that those were colorful and inviting, while these tattered sailcloths and fishing nets were just sad.

After walking through one level of the open building, my fear of running into Gabion had dried up completely. There were plenty of people in the market. And not just surfs. The booths were operated by fishing companies, dry goods vendors, and other businesses. What astounded me most were the prices.

“They’re charging triple for sea lettuce here what we negotiated with Drift’s sachem,” I said, stopping by a girder to look at the darkening sky. “And about ten times more than what the ’wealth says it’s worth.”

Gemma stayed farther back from the edge. “That makes no sense. Why would a market with the poorest customers have the most expensive goods?”

“Because the surfs have nowhere else to buy things,” I guessed. “They either pay these prices or they go without.”

“Why can’t they go to the coast to buy things like the settlers?”

I figured out that one easily. “Because the townships aren’t allowed to get close to the coast except near Rip Tide.” I looked around at the windblown stalls. “This really is the only place they can shop.”

Gemma inched a little closer to the girder to look out over the lagoon. “Those don’t belong to surfs.” She pointed at a marina’s worth of boats in the distance, moored outside of the rubble wall where it was interrupted by a stadium. All small yachts and sailboats.

“Probably came from the coast,” I agreed. A glow emanated from the open-topped stadium. “Something’s going on there.”

“And they’re going to it.” She pointed down at the flotilla of scrap boats. Now loaded with surfs, the boats cut silently toward the stadium. “Could be another boxing match.”

A click went off in my brain. “Gabion didn’t just say go to Hardluck Ruins. He said go
tonight.
Whatever it is that he wants me to see—it’s in the stadium.”

Only one hanging walkway headed that way, and its entrance was one floor down. I took Gemma’s hand. “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”

We climbed down another rope ladder and started
toward the hanging bridge. But as we passed a stall that took up nearly half of the floor, I paused. Not only was it ten times bigger and fancier than any other stall we’d seen, it was bursting with customers.

I slipped in by the fluttering tarp and saw baskets and buckets of seafood but also tables heaped with other goods—bolts of fabric, tools, even engine parts. In the back, a thickset man in an apron threw a skipjack onto the chopping block, and using a fillet knife, he separated the fish’s flesh from its bones with one slice.

“What are you looking at?” Gemma asked from behind me.

“Nothing.” Curiosity satisfied, I turned to go and noticed the trough by my knees. The seaweed piled into it was freshly harvested. The filmy fronds ran from brownish green to purple-black. As the son of subsea farmers, I knew seaweed. This was laver. Good boiled or pickled in vinegar. Good baked into bread. More important, it didn’t grow naturally on this side of the Atlantic. A lot of settlers had fields of laver on their homesteads, but none had planted as many acres as my family. Now, looking at the three long, overflowing troughs of it, I knew beyond any doubt this was the seaweed that Pa and I had harvested two days ago.

“Who runs this stall?” I demanded.

Setting aside his knife, the sweaty man stepped from
behind the chopping block. Too well fed to be a surf. “What do you want?”

“Where did you get this seaweed?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It’s fresh. Meaning it didn’t grow on the other side of the Atlantic. So where’s it from?”

“Come here and I’ll tell you.” He snatched up his knife and started for me.

“Run!” Gemma cried, taking off for the hanging bridge with me on her heels.

“Heading for a dead end, boy,” the man yelled. “Only way back is the bridge, and I’ll be waiting right here to give you that answer.”