Day One

by Kelly deVos

  My blood turns to ice. I’ve done enough drilling with Jinx to know that it’s the barrel of a gun.

  Okay. Okay. Um. What was the drill?

  I’m gonna get shot.

  I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to turn and strike the person’s nose with the palm of my hand. Or maybe gut punch or...

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  It’s Jo. Who hates us, but probably won’t kill us.

  “Turn around,” she says. “Slowly.”

  Jo steps back a few feet. She’s positioned in front of the sink, leaving me in the center of the room. Terminus stays put behind the cereal.

  The thing is, Captain Josephine Pletcher, the supreme supersoldier, is scared out of her damn mind. Like, if I had a mirror right now, we’d probably look the same.

  Absolute terror fills Jo’s eyes. “Don’t even tell me that Jinx Marshall is on this sub?” She pokes her head around me, like she expects Jinx to pop out from every corner.

  Out of all the things that should concern her, I’m not sure why this thought fills her with such fear.

  “No. It’s only me. Listen—” I have to figure out a way to get through to her.

  She scowls at me. “Where is she?”

  “Jinx? Back at SEALAB. But—”

  Jo’s shoulders relax, but her eyes retain their skeptical squint. “You expect me to believe that the daughter of Maxwell Marshall sent you off on the Perun? By yourself?”

  My anger flares. “She’s not the boss of me! And anyway—”

  Jo moves around the kitchen, glancing here and there while also trying to guard me. She peeks behind the rack. “Partridge! Oh perfect.”

  Terminus climbs out from behind the rack with his hands in the air. “Come on, Jo. Put down the gun. There’s nowhere to run and, seriously, are you gonna shoot us?”

  Jo presses her lips together like she’d enjoy nothing more than taking us out. She sighs. “All right. Let’s go.” She waves the gun toward the mess hall.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To the general. Where do you think?” she shoots back. But something catches her eye. She ducks behind the rack and returns with our e-tablet.

  This is getting better and better.

  Terminus and I are in the center of the kitchen as Jo tries to herd us into the mess hall.

  Planting my feet firmly on the ground, I stay right in front of her. “You have to listen to me.” Even though Terminus gives me a look of warning, I go on, pointing at the e-tablet in her hand. “Back at SEALAB, Jinx got ahold of these files. At Los Alamos, The Opposition knows we’re coming. Copeland is sending my father into certain death.”

  “And...you want me to do...what? Exactly?” she says. Slowly. Coldly.

  I wonder what Jinx would have done if she were here.

  “All we’re trying to do is talk to my dad. Please.” I try to catch her gaze. Josephine Pletcher has stubbornly refused to tell us anything about herself. But she must have a father. She must understand how I feel. “Just let us hide until we reach the port.”

  Terminus’s face goes blank. I can’t tell what he thinks of my plea.

  A mixture of voices fills the mess area. I recognize the cooks from earlier.

  But also.

  Copeland.

  In a second, people will be in here setting up for the next meal service or something, and it won’t be possible to hide anymore.

  “Please,” I whisper.

  Terminus shakes his head. A small, barely noticeable gesture.

  The seconds tick by as Jo stares at me. “Sir, we have a problem in here,” she calls out in a loud clear tone.

  Copeland enters the small kitchen with two male soldiers in tow. With his rigid posture, the general seems oddly out of place. No doubt it’s been a while since he was on KP. He’s wearing an outfit that’s similar to ours but way cooler. He’s got blue pants and a jacket made out of the same material as our jumpsuits, but a cozy dark navy undershirt.

  The two soldiers glance from Jo to us and then to the general.

  “If I’m about to find out that Jinx Marshall is on this sub, it’s gonna mean someone’s ass,” Copeland growls. But there’s genuine worry behind the tough exterior.

  Clearly Jo’s concern wasn’t misplaced. But why is everyone so freaked about Jinx’s whereabouts?

  “She’s not with us,” I tell him.

  “Sir,” Jo says, in her usual brusque professional manner. “I don’t believe Miss Marshall is on board the Perun. But I’m about to order both thermal computer and manual sweeps.”

  “Good. Carry on,” Copeland says.

  The man at his right asks, “Sir, should I contact SEALAB to confirm Miss Marshall’s location? Or alert them to the presence of our stowaways?”

  Copeland’s angry stare might bore a hole into my forehead. “No. Maintain radio silence. Give Captain Pletcher whatever support she requires.”

  Jo hands Copeland the e-tablet. “Sir, they had this with them. They say the device is full of files relating to the mission.”

  The general turns to the two men. “Go up to the control room and request the sweeps that the captain mentioned.”

  “Yes, sir,” the tall man answers. The two of them take off up the corridor.

  Copeland waits until the two soldiers are gone before turning to Terminus. “Partridge? You’re really turning out to be a pain in my ass. Being in Max Marshall’s good graces will only carry you so far, and I think you’ve reached the limits of the great man’s largess.” There’s a sarcastic edge to these words.

  “We know about Operation Turquoise Eagle!” I say with as much energy as I can muster. “My father is walking into a trap.”

  “Jay Novak understands a great deal more about what’s really happening than you do, young lady,” he tells me curtly.

  His insinuation hits me right in the gut. Dad had been acting so strange. He probaby knew he was on a suicide mission, and he didn’t care.

  The general hesitates. “And anything else?” he asks.

  I can feel the blank expression overtake my face. “You’ve got a plan to get millions of people killed. What else is there?”

  “Nothing,” he says, tucking the tablet under his arm.

  All of a sudden, I know I have made a terrible mistake. I have really messed up. Something else is going on. I was so impulsive, so rash, that I’ve screwed up our chance to find out what it is. Worse, we’ve taken the e-tablet from Jinx, so she has no way of figuring out Copeland’s real agenda either.

  LEAD: Irresponsible journalist and the guy she sort of wishes was her boyfriend are about to get thrown out of high-tech sub into Pacific Ocean.

  Ugh. No one will care. No one would read that story.

  “Captain, escort our stowaways to quarters until I decide what action to take.”

  Copeland is already walking away when Jo answers, “Yes, sir.”

  She herds us down the hall the same way we came in, toward Copeland’s quarters. Our boots land with squeaks and thuds on the metal grated floor.

  “It says in that file that the other mission, the one in Portland, is doomed. They don’t expect any survivors,” I say, trying to match her cold voice.

  She walks between Terminus and me and uses an electronic key to open the door on her right. Jo practically pushes us into a comfortable-looking room, similar to Copeland’s, but not quite as nice. The kind of place an assistant would stay.

  Her lips settle into a hard smile. “For your sake, I hope you’re wrong. Jinx Marshall is going on that mission. And your brother? Captain Novak? He’s leading it.”

  The last thing I see is her smug expression as the door slams closed. I have messed everything up so bad.

  Well. I’m crying.

  Again.

  Terminus reaches out and pulls me int
o another hug. “I should have told you before,” he says. “She was never gonna help us.” The words rumble in his chest. “Her full name is Josephine Pletcher Copeland.

  “She’s the general’s daughter.”

  The masses are moved by the marvelous. The unlikely. The unprovable. The conspiracy theory. A crowd might follow a hero. But a society needs an icon. And an icon needs magic.

  —AMELIA AOKI

  Report: The Image of the Second Civil War

  Stamped: Top Secret

  JINX

  It’s early in the morning when I wake up, crowded with Navarro on the small bunk. Curled up in the space between his chest and the wall.

  My neck is cramped. Also, he snores. Still, it’s the safest and most secure I’ve felt since, well, a long time.

  I wonder if Charles is alone. If anyone is taking care of him.

  That thought jolts me awake.

  Navarro is already awake too.

  “I’ll wake up MacKenna.” I scoot to the foot of the bed and crawl out, falling onto the floor. “We should decide what to do.”

  Navarro nods but he reaches out and grabs my hand. “Susan, there’s something else,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “When we get to Oregon...if we have a chance to destroy that thing... I have to take it. My father died because...”

  Because he didn’t want that cold fusion bomb to fall into the wrong hands. I give his hand the most reassuring squeeze I can muster. He closes his eyes as I pull the ugly jumpsuit up around my shoulders. Then, I creep into MacKenna’s room.

  It’s perfectly quiet.

  The room is sparse and dark with a short, square night table that has an alarm clock with a blue display. According to the clock, it’s 6:03 a.m.

  But.

  Something’s wrong.

  MacKenna doesn’t move or snore or...

  Breathe.

  I hit the light switch. A cheerful, yellow glow spreads across the room.

  The form in Mac’s bed has a lumpy rectangular shape. I rip back the scratchy wool blanket to find her pillows arranged in a long mass. Someone put them there to make it look like MacKenna was asleep in her bed.

  I race back into Navarro’s room.

  Poking him several times in the ribs, I say, “MacKenna’s gone!”

  He yawns and mutters, “What are you talking about?”

  I shake him. Hard. “MacKenna’s bed is empty.”

  In a panic, I make a run for the dormitory door. The access panel hangs off like it did when we used the e-tablet to hack the locking mechanism.

  I’m ransacking the tiny kitchenette searching for the e-tablet when Navarro emerges, buttoning up his jumpsuit. “Terminus is gone too.”

  Perfect.

  My hands shake. “Someone’s taken them.”

  Navarro takes my hands in his. “No one’s taken them. They left, Susan.”

  Hot anger floods my insides. “How can you say that? We agreed that...”

  That we’d stay together.

  Navarro takes my hand and guides me to the sofa in the common room. “We’re in a secret underwater base at the bottom of the ocean. Where would they have taken Terminus and MacKenna? And why?”

  Rosenthal and Copeland hadn’t wanted Terminus or MacKenna to be a part of the next phase of our mission. But they didn’t seem particularly bothered by the idea either. Still, they aren’t being honest, and there is more happening here than we understand.

  We have to find MacKenna.

  Now.

  I’m about to jump up from the sofa when Navarro grips both my hands in his.

  “Think about it,” he says. “Terminus has been with Copeland for months. Why kidnap him now? Why bother putting the pillows in the bed? That was clearly designed to fool us. Why am I still here? You heard what Jo said.” His eyebrows arch with worry. “They’d like nothing better than to dispense with me. But here I am.”

  The angry energy drains out of me. Part of me can’t believe that MacKenna would leave us here.

  Leave me here.

  I shake my head. “It could be a trick. Designed to get us to cooperate or...”

  Navarro fiddles with the top button of the jumpsuit. “You really think Rosenthal needs to trick us into cooperating? What choice do we have but to cooperate?”

  The idea of someone deliberately fiddling with the alarm panel to mess with us did sound pretty stupid. My arms flop down in defeat.

  “No offense, Susan, but I warned you about this,” he continues. “That day at the gas station. MacKenna’s impulsive. Reactionary. And we don’t know anything about Harold Partridge’s real agenda.”

  That day at the gas station seems like a lifetime ago. But MacKenna left us then too. For Jay.

  I frown at Navarro as warm anger flares in the pit of my stomach. “So you’re saying, I told you so? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  He ignores this. “I’m thinking the same thing. MacKenna found something on that device related to her father. Then didn’t stick around long enough to share it with us.” Navarro can’t keep the frustration out of his voice.

  How does he always seem to know what I’m thinking?

  And.

  What do we do now?

  “We need to think,” I say. I hate to admit it, but since we left the bunker, we’ve lost control of our own fate. We’re at the mercy of Copeland or Rosenthal. People we don’t know and can’t trust. “We need a new plan.” I don’t wait for him to remind me that he thought our original plan was doomed to failure. “Let’s assume we’re right. MacKenna wanted to help Jay. That means she and Terminus snuck out of here and onto the Perun?”

  The sub was, after all, the only place to go.

  Navarro brushes a random clump of blue hair off my face, leaving a trail of warmth that lingers on my cheek. “I think that’s the only explanation. The fact that no one has shown up looking for them probably means they’re on their way topside.”

  We’re quiet for a minute.

  “What specifically did they tell you in the briefing?” Navarro asks.

  I shrug. “They’ve brought in a marketing consultant to turn me into a war hero. Or the idea of a war hero. You’re going to handle the camerawork. Rosenthal said we’d spend the next week or so in training.”

  “Okay. Okay,” Navarro mutters.

  Suddenly, what we need to do becomes clear. “All right. We need to go back to sleep.” Or pretend to sleep anyway. “When they get here this morning, we’ve got to act surprised.”

  “Okay,” Navarro says.

  “Then we train. Go along with what they say. But we need to steal whatever equipment we can. Find out whatever we can. Then. When we get back on land, we make a break for it.”

  “Agreed.” He leans over to kiss my forehead. “There’s one thing though.”

  “What?”

  He squints. “It has to be just us. We can’t trust Toby. He’s one of them.”

  Mom is off running the evil empire. Dad is dead. Jay and MacKenna are gone. Toby is the only family I have left.

  “Gus... I’m not sure. For all we know, he’s off with MacKenna right now.” That thought stings in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

  “Maybe,” Navarro says. “But we don’t tell him anything until we’re sure one way or the other. I need your word on that.”

  “Okay,” I say with a nod.

  Navarro goes over all the likely scenarios, but in broad strokes we agree to wait until someone mentions MacKenna and then be shocked to find her missing. We fix the alarm panel, put the pillows back the way we found them and then sit there for a while in silence.

  Eventually there’s nothing left to do but go back to our own rooms and wait to be escorted to breakfast. There are a few pairs of sweats and blue T-shirts in the closet that look more comfortable than the jumpsuit. After I chang
e, I toss and turn alone on my own bunk. I can’t relax. My mind drifts. I try not to think too much about what just happened between me and Gus. I find myself thinking about the old nights in our house in Rancho Mesa. The summer storms of the monsoon would blow the branches of the mesquite tree against my window. Sounding like jagged pointy fingernails. Something terrible. Trying to get in.

  My mom would wrap me in a blanket and plop me on the couch in between her and my dad. They’d be there, working on their laptops, and I’d fall asleep with the rain coming down, safe between the two of them. Knowing nothing was coming to get me. Mom would kiss me on the forehead.

  Was any of it real?

  Or was my mother always a sleeper?

  Always pretending.

  A little before seven, I hear the door to the dorm open and someone moving around in the common room. I open the door to my room a crack and peek out. It’s Toby.

  He’s casually making a cup of coffee using the small pot in the kitchenette. Not the demeanor of someone whose sister is off on an experimental submarine.

  I fluff up my hair, scrunch up one leg of my sweats and make a big show of stumbling out into the common room.

  “Morning,” Toby says. Bland. The way that you’d greet an old acquaintance.

  Not a family member.

  He takes his coffee and sits on the sofa. There’s a large plastic binder and a stack of e-tablets on the table in front of him.

  “Hi.” I yawn out the greeting and sink into the armchair.

  Navarro comes out a minute later carrying two cups of coffee. He hands me one of the cups. He’s put cream in the coffee. The way I like it.

  Toby picks up the binder. “We should get started. Breakfast service ends at 08:00. Where’s Mac? And...uh...what’s his name?”

  “Terminus,” Navarro says.

  In some ways, I think Navarro’s got it easier than me. He’s always surly and brooding. It’s up to me to carry shocked and surprised, despite the fact that my insides are jiggling like a bowl of potato salad.