Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  “Long story, and yes,” he said. “Listen to me carefully, and don’t draw attention.”

  Anastasia glanced around. Everyone was involved in their own business. Scythe Curie was way ahead of them now, not yet realizing that Anastasia had fallen back. “I’m listening.”

  “Goddard has something planned,” Rowan said. “Something bad. I have no idea what it is, but you need to get off the island right away.”

  Anastasia drew a deep breath. She knew it! She knew that Goddard would not let the Grandslayers’ judgment stand if it came down against him. There would be a contingency plan. There would be retribution. She would warn Marie, and they would speed up their departure.

  “But what about you?” she asked.

  He grinned. “I was hoping I could hitch a ride.”

  Anastasia knew that such a thing would not be easy. “High Blade Curie will only give you passage if you turn yourself in.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  Yes, she did know. Anastasia could try to sneak Rowan onboard as one of their BladeGuard escorts, but the moment Marie saw his face, it would be over.

  Just then, a woman with jet black hair and a face with the sheen of too many corners turned, came running toward them.

  “Marlon! Yoo-hoo, Marlon! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She grabbed Rowan by the arm, and she saw Rowan’s face before he could turn away. “Wait—you’re not Scythe Brando . . . ,” she said, confused.

  “No, you’ve made a mistake,” said Anastasia, thinking quickly.  “Scythe Brando’s robe is a slightly darker leather. This is Scythe Vuitton.”

  “Oh . . . ,” said the woman, still a little hesitant. She was clearly trying to figure out where she had seen Rowan’s face before. “I’m sorry.”

  Anastasia feigned indignance, hoping to shake her up enough so that she’d lose focus. “You should be! The next time you accost a scythe on the street, make sure you have the right one.” Then she turned with Rowan, and pulled him away as quickly as possible.

  “Scythe Vuitton?”

  “It was the only thing I could think of.  We’ve got to get you out of sight before someone recognizes you!”

  But before they could take another step, they heard behind them the awful sound of rupturing metal, and screams. And they realized that Rowan being recognized was now the least of their problems.

  • • •

  Just moments before, outside of the council chamber doors, the Australian scythe had come up from below.  “Excuse me,” he said to one of the guards at the door, “but I believe there’s some sort of leak on the lower levels.”

  “Leak?” asked the guard.

  “Well, there’s certainly a lot of water—the carpet is soaked—and I don’t think it’s from the pipes.”

  The guard sighed at this fresh hell. “I’ll notify maintenance,” he said, but of course when he tried, the communication lines were dead.

  Then a page came rushing in from the veranda. “Something’s wrong!” he said, which was the understatement of the year.  When was something not wrong on Endura these days?

  “I’m trying to raise maintenance,” the guard told him.

  “To hell with maintenance,” cried the page, “take a look outside!”

  The guard was not allowed to leave his post at the door to the council chamber, but the page’s panic troubled him. He took a few steps out to the veranda, to see that there was no veranda anymore. A balcony that used to be a full ten feet above the surface was now underwater—and the sea was beginning to spill into the corridor leading to the council chamber.

  He ran back to the chamber doors. There was only one way in or out, and he did not have high enough clearance for his handprint to open the doors, so he began to pound as loudly as he could, hoping that someone on the other side of the heavy doors would hear him.

  By now, everyone else in the council complex, except for the council itself, had surmised that something was amiss. Scythes and their staffs awaiting an audience came piling out of the anterooms, flooding onto the three bridges that led to the island’s inner rim. The Australian scythe did his best to help people wade over the submerged veranda and onto the nearest bridge.

  Through all of this, the council doors remained closed. Now the corridor leading to them was under three feet of water. “We should wait for the Grandslayers,” the Australian scythe said to the page.

  “The Grandslayers can take care of themselves,” he said, and abandoned the council complex, racing across one of the bridges that arced to the rest of the island.

  The Australian scythe hesitated. He was a strong swimmer, and if necessary, could swim the quarter mile across the eye to land, so he waited, knowing that when those doors opened, the Grandslayers would need all the help they could get.

  But then the air filled with the most awful grinding, wrenching sound, and he turned to see the bridge he had just guided dozens of people onto give way, tearing in half and plunging all those people into the sea.

  He thought he was a man of great honor and bravery. He had been willing to stay and risk himself to save the Grandslayers. He saw himself as the hero of the moment. But when that bridge collapsed, his courage collapsed with it. He looked to the survivors floundering in the water. He looked to the council doors, where the guard still struggled to open them, even though the water was now at his chest. And the scythe decided that enough was enough. He climbed on a ledge just above the water level, and scurried to the second of the three bridges, then raced across it to safety as quickly as his legs would carry him.

  • • •

  The small Buoyancy Control room was now packed with technicians and engineers talking over one another, arguing, disagreeing, and no one was closer to solving the problem. Every screen was screaming a different panicked message. When the first bridge collapsed, everyone realized how dire the situation was.

  “We have to alleviate the strain on the other two bridges!” the city engineer said.

  “And how do you propose we do that?” snapped the buoyancy chief.

  The engineer thought for a moment, then she went to the technician, who was still sitting at the center console, staring at his screens in disbelief.

  “Depress the rest of the island!” the city engineer said.

  “How far should we drop it?” he asked a bit dreamily, feeling eerily detached from the reality before him.

  “Enough to take the strain off the two remaining bridges. Let’s buy the Grandslayers some time to get the hell out of there!” She paused to do some mental calculations. “Depress the island three feet past high tide.”

  The tech shook his head. “The system won’t allow me to do that.”

  “It will if I authorize it.” And she scanned her handprint to do just that.

  “You realize,” said the buoyancy chief in abject despair, “that the lower gardens will all be flooded.”

  “Which would you rather save?” the engineer asked. “The lower gardens, or the Grandslayers?”

  When it was put to him that way, the buoyancy chief had no further objection.

  • • •

  At that same moment, in another office in the lowest subsurface level of the same city works building, the biotechnicians there had no knowledge of the crisis at the council complex. Instead, they were scratching their heads over another glitch—the oddest one they’d ever had to face. This was the office of wildlife control, which monitored the living lifescape that made the subsurface views so spectacular. Lately, they had faced schools of fish locked in Möbius-like feedback loops, entire species suddenly deciding to swim upside down, and predators attacking windows so hard they bashed their own brains out. But what their sonar showed them now was a whole new level of crazy.

  The two lifescape specialists on duty could only stare. On screen was what appeared to be a circular cloud around the island—like an underwater smoke ring around Endura—but rather than expanding, it was pulling tighter.

  “What are we
looking at?” one asked the other.

  “Well, if these readings are right,” the other said, “it’s a swarm of our nanite-infused sealife.”

  “Which ones?”

  The second tech took his eyes away from the screen to look at his colleague.

  “All of them.”

  • • •

  In the council chamber, the Grandslayers were listening to a rather inane argument from a scythe who wanted the council to rule that a scythe could not self-glean without first completing his or her gleaning quota. Supreme Blade Kahlo knew the motion would fail—removing oneself from service was a very personal decision, and should not be contingent upon externals such as quotas. Nevertheless, the council was obliged to hear the full argument and try to keep an open mind.

  Throughout the scythe’s torturous discourse, Kahlo thought she heard some dull, far-off banging, but figured it must be some construction on the island. They were always building or repairing somewhere.

  It wasn’t until they heard the screams and the sound of the bridge collapsing that they knew something was terribly wrong.

  “What on earth was that?” asked Grandslayer Cromwell.

  Then a sense of vertigo overcame them, and the scythe who had been in the midst of his argument stumbled like a man drunk. It took a few moments for the Supreme Blade to realize that the floor was no longer level. And now she could clearly see water spilling in underneath the chamber doors.

  “I think we need to suspend these proceedings,” said Kahlo. “I’m not sure what’s going on out there, but I think it’s best we get out. Now.”

  They all climbed down from their chairs and hurried to the exit. Water wasn’t just spilling from beneath the doors now—it was coming between them, as high as waist level, And there was someone banging on the other side. They could hear his voice over the high walls of the chamber.

  “Your Excellencies,” they heard him say. “Can you hear me? You have to get out of there! There’s no more time!”

  Supreme Blade Kahlo palmed the door, but it wouldn’t open. She tried again. Nothing.

  “We could climb out,” suggested Xenocrates.

  “And how would you suggest we do that?” asked Hideyoshi. “The wall is four meters high!”

  “Perhaps we could climb on each other’s backs,” suggested MacKillop, which was a plausible suggestion, but no one seemed willing to suffer the indignation of a human pyramid.

  Kahlo looked up to the sky above the roofless council chamber. If the council complex was sinking, then eventually water would come spilling over the edge of the wall. Could they survive a deluge like that? She didn’t want to find out.

  “Xenocrates! Hideyoshi! Stand against the wall. You’ll be the base. Amundsen, get on their shoulders. You’ll help the others up and over the edge.”

  “Yes,  Your Exalted Excellency,” Xenocrates said.

  “Stop it,” she told him. “Right now it’s just Frida. Now let’s make this happen.”

  • • •

  Anastasia wished she could say she leaped into action when the bridge collapsed, but she didn’t. Both she and Rowan just stood there, staring in disbelief like everyone else.

  “It’s Goddard,” said Rowan. “It has to be.”

  Then Scythe Curie came up beside them. “Anastasia, did you see it?” she asked. “What happened? Did it just fall into the sea?” And then she caught sight of Rowan and her entire demeanor changed.

  “No!” Instinctively she pulled a blade. “You can’t be here!” she growled at him, then turned to Anastasia. “And you can’t be talking to him!” Then something seemed to occur to her and she turned on Rowan with a vengeance. “Are you responsible for this? Because if you are I will glean you where you stand!”

  Anastasia forced her way between them. “It’s Goddard’s doing,” she said. “Rowan’s here to warn us.”

  “I sincerely doubt that’s why he’s on Endura,” Scythe Curie said, full of fiery indignation.

  “You’re right,” Rowan told her. “I’m here because Goddard was going to throw me at the feet of the Grandslayers to buy their support. But I escaped.”

  The mention of the Grandslayers brought Scythe Curie back to the crisis at hand. She looked toward the council complex in the center of the island’s eye. Two bridges still held it in place, but the complex was much lower in the water than it should be, and listing to one side.

  “My God—he means to kill all of them!”

  “He can kill them,” Anastasia said, “but he can’t end them.”

  But Rowan shook his head. “You don’t know Goddard.”

  Meanwhile, several miles away, the shoreline gardens on the outskirts of the island slowly began to flood with sea water.

  • • •

  With communications down all over the island, Buoyancy Control’s only method of reconnaissance was the view from its window, and runners reporting back to them on things they couldn’t see. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the Grandslayers were still in the council complex, which was beginning to founder, even as the rest of the island lowered itself to keep the strain on the two remaining bridges from rupturing them. If that happened, the entire council complex would be lost. While submersibles could be sent down to recover the Grandslayers’ bodies for revival, it would not be easy. No one in Buoyancy Control had immunity, and although Endura was a glean-free zone, they suspected heads would very literally roll if the Grandslayers drowned and had to be revived.

  The control console was now lit like a holiday tree with angry warning lights, and the blare of alarms had everyone’s nerves frayed to snapping.

  The technician was sweating uncontrollably. “The island’s at four feet below high tide now,” he told the others gathered. “I’m sure the low-lying structures have already begun to flood.”

  “You’re gonna have a whole lot of pissed off people in the lowlands,” said the buoyancy chief.

  “One crisis at a time!” The city engineer rubbed her eyes nearly hard enough to press them into her skull. Then she took a deep breath and said, “All right, shut the valves and hold here. We’ll give the Grandslayers another minute to get out before we blow the tanks and elevate the island to a standard position.”

  The technician began to follow the order, then stopped. “Uh . . . there’s a problem.”

  The city engineer closed her eyes, trying to find her happy place—which was currently anywhere but here. “What now?”

  “The valves on the ballast tanks aren’t responding.  We’re still taking on water.” He tapped screen after screen, but everything now showed an error message that couldn’t be cleared. “The whole buoyancy system’s crashed. We have to reinitialize it.”

  “Great,” said the engineer. “Just great. How long will it take to reboot?”

  “Getting the system back on line will take about twenty minutes.”

  The engineer saw the look on the buoyancy chief’s face slide from disgust to horror—and although she didn’t want to ask the question, she knew she had to. “And if we keep taking on water, how long until we’re at terminal buoyancy?”

  The technician stared at the screen, shaking his head.

  “How long?” demanded the engineer.

  “Twelve minutes,” said the technician. “Unless we can get the system back on line, Endura will sink in twelve minutes.”

  • • •

  The general alarm—which was still functional everywhere but the council complex—began blaring across the whole island. At first, people thought it was just another malfunction and went about their business. Only people in the higher towers with panoramic views could see the lowlands submerging. They came racing out into the street, grabbing publicars or just running.

  It was Scythe Curie who read the full level of their panic, and saw how high the water level had gotten within the island’s eye—just a few feet from overflowing onto the street. Any anger she had at Rowan suddenly became unimportant.

  “We need to get to the m
arina,” she told Anastasia and Rowan. “And we need to move.”

  “What about our plane?” said Anastasia. “They were already preparing it for us.”

  But Scythe Curie didn’t even bother to answer her—she just pushed forward through the thickening crowds toward the marina. It took a moment for Anastasia to realize why. . . .

  • • •

  The queue at the island’s airstrip was building faster than the planes could take off. The terminal was filled with all sorts of bargaining, exchanges of money and fistfights, as polite discourse crumbled.  There were scythes who refused to allow anyone but their own party onboard, and others who opened their planes to as many people as they could carry. It was a true test of a scythe’s integrity.

  Once safely on board, people began to relax, but were troubled by the fact that they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. And even in the planes, they could still hear the muffled alarms that sounded throughout the entire island.

  Five planes managed to get airborne before the runway began to flood. The sixth hit deepening puddles at the end of the runway, but still managed to labor into the sky. The seventh plane accelerated into six inches of water, which created so much drag, it couldn’t reach takeoff velocity and dove off the end of the runway into the sea.

  • • •

  In wildlife control, the biologists on duty tried to pull someone with some sort of authority into their office, but everyone claimed they suddenly had bigger fish to fry than the ones that were now surging beneath the island.

  On their screen, and in their window on the sea, the incoming swarm seemed to differentiate itself—the larger, faster sea life reaching the eye first.

  It was then that one of the biologists turned to the other and said, “You know . . . I’m beginning to think this isn’t just a system malfunction. I think we’ve been hacked.”

  While right before them, a finback whale surged past their window heading for the surface.

  • • •

  After the third attempt to climb the walls of the council chamber, the Grandslayers, scythes, and pages in attendance regrouped, and tried to come up with another plan.