Dark Life: Rip Tide (16 page)

I rode back to the Trade Station alone in the back pod of Captain Revas’s skimmer. She hadn’t questioned my choice, just let me know that she would inform the troopers, Gemma, and my neighbors of what we’d found. I was glad she’d volunteered to pass on the news. I couldn’t even begin to put it into words.

I sat alone in the pod, staring out at the moon-streaked waves, and felt … nothing. It was as if my body didn’t believe the obvious conclusion.

Ma and Pa were gone.

I tried considering the situation from every angle. Maybe Fife’s men had tied my parents to that girder only to change the plan and cut them free. Not likely. No doubt what happened to Ma and Pa was exactly what Fife had intended. They’d been tied up and dropped into water up to their necks, and when the tide came in, they’d either drowned … or were devoured by sharks.

The air inside the back pod thinned, and without warning the pressure plummeted as if a storm were brewing.
But I could see outside the pod. Could have counted the stars if I wanted; the night was that clear. So why was it so hard to breath?

They’re gone.

I tried to shake off the thought, only to send a prickling numb feeling down my arms and into my fingers. Nothing was definite. I hadn’t found their bodies. Leaning back, I closed my eyes.

They’re gone!

With every nautical mile, the air pressure seemed to increase until I felt close to shattering, all while my brain fizzled and popped with that phrase. But no matter how insistent the words, how irrefutable the logic, I couldn’t quite believe it. Not all of me anyway.

When Captain Revas’s skimmer surfaced in the moon pool on the Access Deck, I took a moment to collect myself before sliding back the viewport of my pod. Gemma’s skimmer had arrived first, and she was waiting for me as I climbed the ladder to the wet room floor.

I braced myself, thinking that she’d throw her arms around me or cry. Instead, she offered me her hand, which I took with a rush of gratitude. Had she done more, my composure might have cracked and I didn’t want that to happen here, even though at nearly midnight, there were only a handful people in the vehicle bay.

As Captain Revas stepped off the rim of the moon pool, a trooper rushed to attend her. Ignoring him, she paused by me. “Ty, so much of this situation has been a setup—the kidnapping, framing Hadal as the villain—I’m not about to jump to conclusions because of a convenient piece of evidence. You shouldn’t, either.”

I nodded. But really, if someone wanted to plant evidence, would he drop it on the seafloor where it could be swept away by the outgoing tide?

Lars was waiting on the Access Deck as well. He’d probably come as soon as he’d gotten Captain Revas’s call. He joined us, looking solemn.

“Does Zoe know?” I asked him.

“No. I thought you ought to be the one to tell her.”

He may as well have been asking me to impale her with a harpoon. How could I possibly inflict that kind of pain on my little sister? Pain she’d never get over.

“You two always have a home with us,” Lars went on. “You know that.”

“Thank you.” I sounded like a bad actor in a traveling stage show—but none of it felt real.

“We’ll join our farms so the ‘wealth don’t try to claim your land because you’re underage,” Lars went on. “Not after all the work your folks put into cultivating it.”

I looked away, retreating from his words.

A trooper jogged across the access bay to Captain Revas. They moved off to talk.

“Have you found Drift?” I asked, following them, because I had to know. But also because I refused to talk logically about what to do with Ma and Pa gone.

The trooper seemed appalled by my interruption, but Captain Revas said, “Not yet. We’ve set up a grid across the trash gyre, near where you found Nomad. Starting on the north side, we’re searching mile by mile, heading south.”

“We won’t even cover a tenth of the gyre by daybreak,” the trooper told her. “That’s how long we figure they have until the cold kills them—daybreak. Provided they have air. If they couldn’t get their backup generator running, they’re already dead.”

I shivered. Daybreak didn’t seem so far off.

“Leave it,” Revas ordered the trooper who’d maneuvered a clamp on to her skimmer and was about to haul it out of the moon pool. “I’m going out again. And you’re coming with me,” she told the man before her.

“We’re joining the search?” he asked.

“No, we’re going to arrest Mayor Fife. I can’t pin the missing townships on him. Not yet. But I can arrest him for keeping animals that led to Hadal’s death, and anything else I can think of between here and Rip Tide.”

“Is Fife stealing part of the surfs’ rations?” Gemma asked.

Revas shook her head. “I suspected that, too. But no, he hasn’t taken a thing. The ‘wealth really did cut the surfs’ rations by half several years ago.”

“I want to help search,” I said.

All of them looked at me—Captain Revas, Gemma, Lars, even the trooper.

“Son, you should take it easy, after the shock you’ve had.” Lars put a hand on my shoulder. “Come home with me and rest up. Be there when Zoe wakes.”

“Hadal gave his life so that I could try to save my family. The least I can do is try to save his.”

“That’s the Seaguard’s job,” Revas corrected, though not unkindly. “Take care of yourself and your sister, Ty. No one expects any more than that.”

She was giving me a pass—without judgment—but I didn’t want it. “I know the trash gyre better than anyone. If Drift only has till daybreak, you need my help.”

“Our help,” Gemma put in.

“You’re sure you’re up for it?” Lars asked me.

“My parents would want me to,” I said. “I want to.”

“You’re right about your parents,” he said with a sigh. “They’d want all the settlers to join the search.”

“Well?” I turned to Captain Revas and was surprised to see a trace of a smile on her lips.

“Think you can you drive a skimmer?” she asked.

As a trooper readied a vehicle for us, I assured Lars that I would get over to his homestead first thing in the morning to be there when Zoe woke.

Lars climbed into his sub. “Anchored, huh?” he said as if unable to believe it. “I’ll make some calls. See if I can rouse a few people from their beds to pitch in.”

“That would be great.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” he warned. “I may not get any takers.”

“I know. But if anyone does want to help, tell them we’ll be on the south end.”

“You do know that gyre is the size of a state, right?”

I nodded.

“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

After getting a quick lesson about skimmers from a trooper named Escabedo, we headed for the moon pool that took up more than half the access bay. Gemma stood on the submerged ledge by the skimmer, which had been dropped into the water by a mechanical clamp.

“Do you understand what we’re supposed to be watching the screen for?” she asked as she climbed into the front pod.

“A low frequency noise. We won’t hear it, but the reading will be repetitive. Nothing like whale song.”

As I started to climb in after her, I heard someone call my name. Turning, I saw Escabedo coming back our way.

“I almost forgot,” the trooper said. “Captain Revas said to give you this.” He handed me a small metal square. “It’s the title card for Nomad. It’s all yours now. We even fixed the engines.”

“The Seaguard is done with it?”

“We learned what we needed. Drift has the same backup generator as Nomad. It’s ancient, but if they got it to work, they have oxygen. Just no heat.”

“Like on Nomad,” I said, remembering all the bodies curled on the floor, wrapped in blankets.

He nodded. “That’s how we figured out how we might locate Drift. When we got Nomad running, we noticed its backup generator had a low frequency hum. Too low to hear, but the equipment picked it up.”

“And that’s the noise that we’re supposed to watch for on the screen,” I guessed.

“Yep.” He backed away from the moon pool. “The irony—here, we’re hoping that the surfs on Drift got their generator to work. But if they did, that hum is so low, it’s making them sick.” With a wave, he headed toward the elevator.

“Okay,” Gemma said. “Let’s go.”

I nodded, though my thoughts were suddenly racing along a different track. “Be right back.”

I leapt onto the moon pool’s rim. “Sick how?” I called after Escabedo.

He turned, though the elevator doors had opened.

“How does the hum make people sick?” I asked.

“It shakes up their insides without them knowing it,” he said, now impatient.

“Including their eyes?”

“I don’t know, kid. I’ve got to go.” He stepped into the elevator.

When I turned to scramble down again, I found Gemma standing knee-deep in water on the submerged ledge.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “That I feel sick in the ocean because I’ve been hearing noise from those generators.”

“Sound travels farther and faster in water than it does in air,” I said, wading over to her. “If you can hear things other people can’t on the Topside, imagine what you’re picking up subsea.”

“What about the ghosts?” she asked. “How do you explain those?”

“If your eyeballs are resonating in their sockets, you’d see all sorts of things. Blurry things.”

“So you want me to undo the hypnosis? Make myself see them again?” Her voice rose sharply. “What if you’re wrong?”

I was asking a lot of her; I knew that.

“And even if you’re right,” she went on, “knowing that I’m sick from a sound won’t make that feeling go away.”

“If we find Drift in time and shut off the old generator, the feeling will go away.”

She was close to tears. “And if that’s not the cause? I’ll undo it and never be able to go in the water again. I won’t be able to live with your family….” She paused and then shook her head as if she’d realized something obvious. “Of course I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I won’t be able to live with
myself
if I don’t try.”

“Why do you think Fife is doing it?” Gemma asked as we sped through the ocean in a skimmer, heading for the south end of the trash gyre. “Anchoring townships?”

“Greed,” I said. “He can’t keep selling goods to the surfs at triple cost if they start buying from us.”

“So he terrifies the surfs by making examples of the townships that go against him,” she finished. “Nice.”

And making examples of my parents to prevent future sales.
I shook the thought away. I’d decide tomorrow whether to have hope or grieve. For now, finding Drift would be all I would concentrate on. I owed Hadal that much.

Outside the viewport, the blades of an old wind turbine slowly cartwheeled past. I figured I’d have to be more careful about plowing through trash in a skimmer. Fortunately, the head beams were powerful and the viewport automatically tinted for ultraviolet viewing, so I could see the debris in time to avoid it.

I studied the control panel. “Escabedo said our
monitor should pick up the signal from at least three miles away. But maybe you can sense it from even farther.”

“Farther than sonar equipment?”

“Whales can hear low frequency sounds from one hundred miles away.
Feel
the sounds, really. Sonar equipment doesn’t register feelings. But if you’re really sensitive to infrasound, maybe you’ll feel queasy even outside the signal range.”

“Queasy. I should be so lucky.” She smiled, though I could see that she was pale and shaky.

“I’ll turn on the skimmer’s autopilot so it holds its position. That way I can dive with you.”

With a nod, she reached behind the bench for her helmet.

“Ready?” I asked.

She sealed her helmet, clearly set on toughing it out. “Ready.”

I dropped out of the hatch first and treaded water until she emerged. She wore the expression of someone listening intently. I couldn’t hear anything except the usual creaks of the derelicts piled up on the seafloor and the distant grunting of a male toadfish. Watching her, I began to feel queasy myself. Not from any vibrations, but remembering how bad it had been for her last time. And what if I was wrong? What if her terror didn’t come from some old generator? She’d never dip a toe in the ocean
again, and I’d only have myself to blame for asking her to undo the hypnosis.

She closed her eyes and treaded water for ten long minutes. When she opened her eyes again, she shook her head and pointed to the skimmer.

We pushed through the port in back and climbed over the bench. After she caught her breath she said, “I feel slightly sick but it could be just nerves.”

“Let’s go in farther. Closer to the gyre’s center,” I suggested.

We stopped again and pushed through the port. Again she floated with her eyes closed. This time she made a sour face. But back in the skimmer she said, “I don’t think it’s working.”

“You didn’t look happy out there.”

“I’m not. And I do feel worse. But I don’t think it’s because of some vibration.”

We continued to head toward the middle of the gyre. Next time we stopped, she popped out first. Just as I emerged from the skimmer, she waved me back in. “What?” I asked as soon as I cleared the Liquigen from my lungs.

“I don’t feel as bad here. Let’s go back to where we were.”

“You could just be getting used to being in the water.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged.

But when we were farther south again, she told me to stay inside the pod. “I’ll hold on by the viewport.”

Almost instantly, she gripped a handhold by the viewport and waved me east. Driving very slowly with her hanging on to the skimmer, I could judge from her expression that she was starting to feel bad. She motioned for me to stop and climbed back in.

“Let’s go a couple miles east. Then I’ll go out again.”

The next time she popped out, she climbed back in less than a minute later. Pale and shaky, she nodded and waved me to keep heading east without even bothering to clear the Liquigen from her lungs. We kept at it mile by mile, and then she began directing me north—into the wide eye of the vortex.

“Stop here and I’ll try again,” she said. She pushed through the hatch. When she didn’t appear beside the viewport, I assumed she would crawl back inside. But long seconds passed, and I panicked. I couldn’t see her, and I had no idea whether she could hear me through her helmet’s receiver. I fumbled to put the skimmer into autopilot, then sealed my borrowed helmet and sucked in Liquigen simultaneously.

I shoved through the back port and didn’t see her anywhere near the skimmer. Sonar clicks weren’t much help. There was so much debris around me, twirling slowly in place—I couldn’t see past it. Frantic, I swam among the
junk, looking for her. Hating myself for having sent her out here. And still I couldn’t find her. Much of the wreckage had nooks and cavities, where dangerous sea creatures could lurk. Anything might have snatched her up.

I fought the crosscurrents to swim farther from the skimmer, leaving it behind in the darkness, wishing I could yell for her. Then something large and gray darted past, just on the edge of my vision. By the time I turned and sent clicks in that direction, there was nothing—it must have slipped past a piece of debris. My anger at myself and my terror for her were messing up my thinking. I couldn’t stay oriented, wasn’t sure which direction the surface lay. And with junk and pieces of vessels creaking around me, it was impossible to tell.

I focused on the swirling water currents, feeling for the powerful upwelling that kept all the wreckage afloat. It was easy enough to single out. Swimming against it was hard, yet I kicked deeper as I searched for Gemma among the debris.

But there was no sign of her. Not even when I sent my sonar as far and wide as possible. Had she curled into a ball again? At least with the upwelling, she wouldn’t sink. But even so, there was a good chance that I’d never find her in this whirlpool of refuse. The thought made me feel so sick,
I
wanted to curl up and sink.

Another gray shape swam past on my left. I spun, but again, it was gone before I could tell what it was.

I shot a series of clicks into the darkness, but suddenly I knew—even before the echo bounced back—that there would be nothing there. And there wasn’t. Because I was seeing Gemma’s ghosts firsthand. Exactly as she had described them.

Knowing that I was experiencing a physical reaction to infrasound didn’t make the overwhelming feeling of despair go away, though. Or ease my worries. If we were so close to Drift that
I
could pick up on the vibrations, how much worse must it be for Gemma?

Knowing her determination, I reasoned that she would have headed toward the source, not away. So I tried to still my racing thoughts and concentrate on my body. I moved to my left and felt no change. But when I pushed against the current to swim deeper, my skin prickled as if a thousand ghosts were whispering in my ears. I could almost hear their voices. Almost. I shook away that horrifying thought and clicked in every direction, focusing on the pictures in my mind.

And there she was.

Far below me, Gemma lay still on top of something massive. I flipped over and stroked downward as hard and fast as I could. Now I could see her with my eyes as my helmet lights penetrated the dark. Her body lay limp and oddly strewn across a mountain ridge of blue flexiglass.

She’d found Drift.

Concentrated beams of light blinked on and off inside the dome. Flashlights, I realized. The people inside had seen Gemma’s helmet lights and were trying to signal back. But Gemma was incapable of responding. I touched down next to her and was alarmed to see that she’d vomited inside her helmet. All I could see behind the flexiglass were her eyes resonating under the lids—which meant she was alive.

Pressing her wrist screen, I turned off her crown lights so that only mine were visible through the dome. Then I began flicking my helmet lights on and off. I hoped the people inside knew Morse code. Twice I spelled out:
Will come back. Turn off generator.

Then I swept Gemma up in my arms and kicked off. Swimming while holding her wasn’t hard with the powerful current pushing us upward. At one point she rolled in my arms and then thrashed as if waking from a bad dream. I held on tighter, wishing more than ever I could talk with Liquigen in my lungs. But she blinked and focused on me and that was as good as words. She wrapped her arms around my waist and kicked with her fins. Together we made it back to the skimmer.

As soon as we were inside the pod, I zoomed for the surface. We broke through the waves, and I was momentarily surprised to see that it was still nighttime. It felt as if hours had passed.

Gemma slid back the viewport and jumped into the ocean to rinse out her hair while I got out the red and white signal buoy.

After flipping on its radio beacon, I dropped the buoy’s long weighted chain into the water. “There’s no wind tonight, so it should hold its position.”

“I think they turned off the generator,” Gemma said as she bobbed on the moonlit waves. “I don’t feel anything.”

“That’s good. But I’m not getting any response from the Seaguard. They’re too far away.”

“Do you hear that?”

I smiled. “All I can hear are the waves. What are you hearing?”

She ducked under the water. When she popped up, she scrambled onto the bumper of the front pod and pointed past me. “A sub, coming toward us fast.”

The words were just out of her mouth when I saw the speeding wake with no boat—meaning a sub was traveling just under the surface. And Gemma was right: It was headed directly at us.

“Dive!” I hollered.

We both hit the water swimming just as a sub broke the surface and rammed into the skimmer at full force, flipping it over with the front pod open.