by Gregory Mone
Before long, they slowed.
The sub shuddered as the anchors slammed into the seafloor.
The next wave tumbled past them. His father said nothing. Hanna was quiet, too. Lewis studied his watch. A minute passed before the wave slowed to a stop, then flooded back out to sea. His dad released the anchors. Again the ship rolled forward.
“It’s actually working,” Hanna said quietly.
“You doubted us?” his dad asked.
“Well, I mean, maybe a little,” she admitted. “I just didn’t think it would work this well. The ride is more stable than I expected.” She turned to Lewis. “What’s your name again?”
How did she not know his name? “Lewis,” he reminded her.
His dad corrected him. “Meriwether Lewis Gates.”
“After the explorer?” Hanna asked. “Like Lewis and Clark?”
“That’s right!” his dad answered.
“I’m going to call you Meri,” Hanna decided.
“I like Lewis better.”
“What do you think of the sub, Meri?”
“An airplane would be nicer, Susan.”
“Really, though, what do you think?”
Everything was quieter, and they were moving slower now. He was alive. No, this wasn’t the adventure he’d planned. They were supposed to go to the mountains. He was going to get new shoes. Hiking boots. The plan was to swim during the day and camp and cook soup over a fire at night. Delicious soup. Instead, he was inside a tsunami. And he was alive. Lewis had read stories about people who were found miles out to sea, clinging to boats or debris after a wave had struck. But he’d never heard of anyone riding out a wave on purpose. Most boating wasn’t even legal anymore. Roberts talked about how you practically needed twenty different permits just to take out a kayak. They barely even let people fish anymore.
So this was good.
No, better than good.
This was amazing.
Hanna was still waiting for his answer. “Well?” she asked.
It turned out his dad’s lab was a submarine.
A submarine built to ride a tsunami.
This was bigger, better, stranger than anything he could’ve imagined. He breathed out slowly and let himself smile. “It’s awesome,” he said at last. “Absolutely awesome.”
“You’re enjoying this?” his father asked.
“Sure.” He breathed, swallowed, breathed again. The fear faded. His brain loosened up. Suddenly he had questions. “So where are we going? What’s that grinding noise? And what’s the point of all this? What are we actually doing?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” Hanna said.
“Also, is there a bathroom?”
“Yes,” his dad said, “but you’ll have to wait for that.”
“Is this thing safe?”
“Probably,” Hanna answered.
“Probably?”
“Since we’re asking questions, why is it that you’re wearing one shoe?” Hanna asked.
“It’s a trend,” Lewis answered. And maybe it would be, if he said it enough. Maybe celebrities and pop superstars would start going to parties wearing only one shoe. Sneaker companies wouldn’t even bother making left shoes anymore. No one would want them. Everyone would go right.
“Whatever,” Hanna replied. “As for the grinding, each time a wave rushes forward, we drop a few anchors, which aren’t really exactly like anchors—”
“That’s the noise,” his dad added.
“—and we kind of tie ourselves to the seafloor as the wave rolls past. Then, when the water retreats from the coast, we release the anchors and—”
“We ride the water out to sea?”
“Exactly!” she said.
Lewis’s grip on the armrests loosened. He could feel the blood rushing through his neck. How long was he going to have to wait to use the bathroom?
“You’re okay?” his father asked. “No injuries?”
“I’m good,” Lewis said. Mostly. He could last for another few minutes at least. “What’s the point of it?”
“Of what?”
“Of all of it. This thing, the trip.”
“The subsphere,” Hanna said.
“What?”
“It’s not a thing. It’s a subsphere. Because it’s a spherical, or ball-shaped, submarine.”
“Okay, but what is it for?” Lewis thought of Roberts and the Coastal Patrol again. People actually got thrown in jail for illegal ocean travel. “You could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Right,” Hanna replied. “The subsphere allows us to sneak out into the deep ocean, past the Coastal Patrol radars, under the cover of the tsunami. We wouldn’t get half a mile if we just drove.”
That made sense. But she still hadn’t really answered his question. “Right, but why? Are you studying tsunamis?”
His father coughed. “Sort of,” he mumbled. The water slowed. The anchors slammed into the seafloor as the next wave rolled past. This one had only a fraction of the power of the first few. “Throughout the majority of recorded history, major tsunamis only happened once a century,” his dad continued. “At most! But when you were younger, Lewis, there was an average of twenty a year, all around the world. All the oceans, all the coasts. That number has gone down a little, but even now, these waves are unnaturally frequent. Yet most of the scientific community insists that the waves happen because of natural processes.”
“Your father here has a different theory about the source of the waves.” Hanna motioned to Lewis’s dad. “Do you want to explain it, Professor? Or should I?”
“Does she need to explain, Lewis?”
No. No, she did not. He knew. His dad believed that something else was creating the waves. A new kind of technology developed by a civilization hidden deep beneath the ocean. A lost world waging war against the people on dry land by sending giant tsunamis crashing into their coasts.
“Atlantis,” Lewis said. “You’re talking about Atlantis.”
For a moment, they were silent.
His father sighed. “You’re probably sick of Atlantis, like your mom. You probably don’t believe me, either.”
At first, Lewis didn’t answer. He couldn’t even say the word around his mom, let alone ask any questions. And she totally had her reasons. When his dad had begun working on his Atlantis idea, he was a professor, and Lewis’s parents were happily married. As the waves pounded the coast, though, and his dad developed his theory, he became obsessed. He wrote articles and essays. He spoke with news reporters and politicians. A film company made a short documentary about his work. He was kind of famous—for a scientist, anyway. He even had some evidence, or what he thought was evidence. At one point, Lewis’s dad had stores of strange, almost alien-looking tools and artifacts. Texts in ancient languages mentioning an advanced race of so-called sea people. Old newspaper articles about fishermen and others who claimed to have seen visitors from Atlantis. He had scientific data, too—something about links between gravity and the huge waves that Lewis had never quite understood.
Unfortunately, most of the physical evidence was lost in a fire at his old lab. But even when he had all that material, his ideas were rejected. People wanted real solutions to the wave problem, not strange theories about lost civilizations.
His dad lost his reputation first.
Then his job.
And, finally, his family.
But Lewis never gave up on him. No matter what his mother or Roberts or everyone at school said. This was his dad. His big, brilliant, strange father. If his dad said Atlantis was real, then it was real. “I still believe you, Dad.”
“You do?” Hanna asked, her tone skeptical.
“Wait, you don’t?” Lewis asked.
“No,” Hanna answered. “Not entirely.”
His dad slumped in his chair. This was not a surprise to him.
“Then what are you doing here?” Lewis asked.
She patted the control panel. “I liked the engineering challenge,” she sa
id. “Plus, your dad here doesn’t need believers. He needs proof, and if he’s right, I’ll help him find it. See, I do think someone could be making these waves. I’m just not sure it’s a bunch of fish people.”
“You’re not even supposed to be here,” his father said. “Either of you!”
“I thought she was part of this—”
“I am,” Hanna snapped. “I’m essential! But your father thought this trip was too risky, so he tried to go without me.”
“It is very dangerous—”
“Which is why I designed an impenetrable submarine,” Hanna replied.
“Your parents will sue me, I’m sure,” his dad added.
“We’ll be back before they even notice I’m gone,” she insisted. “Mom’s in China, and Dad’s in London, and they programmed the house AI to babysit me.”
Wait. She had a house AI? Those were ridiculously expensive. They could help you with your homework. They cleaned your room. If Hanna had one, she probably had a robotic kitchen, too. One smart enough to actually make a rat taco. Which wouldn’t really be a good thing and would definitely be difficult, since the AI would have to find and catch a rodent, but still . . . Lewis really, really wanted one. The house AI with the robotic kitchen, that is. Not the taco.
“What if your parents try to message you?” his dad replied.
“I reprogrammed the AI and uploaded some videos of myself saying everything’s fine in case they try to check in. Don’t worry, Professor, I’m good for at least a week. What about you, Lewis?”
He thought about his mom. She was probably panicking. Roberts, too. And Michael would be wondering about his twenty bucks. “We have to tell them we’re okay,” Lewis said.
“Your mother will be worried sick,” his father replied, “but I can’t send a message. There’s a risk the Patrol could track us and prevent us from traveling any farther. They can’t know what we’re doing, or they’ll bring us back and impound our ship. After all, this is slightly illegal.”
“Slightly?” Lewis asked.
“Entirely,” Hanna said.
“Then what are we going to do?” Lewis asked.
Hanna replied directly to his dad. “We could use the escape pod and send him to the surface for the Patrol to pick up. The water’s still shallow enough.”
“Too risky,” his dad said. “I can’t leave my son drifting out there on the open sea.”
That was encouraging, at least. His dad did care about him. Besides, Lewis didn’t want to get ejected from the subsphere like some unwanted human turd. “So, what are we going to do?” he asked.
His father stared out through the window and into the endless dark water. “We’re going to Atlantis,” he said, “and you’re coming with us.”
5
Darkwater Trading Company
Yes, she’d been forced to wait a few days, but now the timing was perfect. Kaya’s father was away for work, thanks to the project that never ended, and her grandmother was staying with her. Kaya loved her grandmother. Totally. The lady was funny and smart. She told great stories, too, and always spiced them with little lessons. Oh, and she also slept a ton and let Kaya do whatever she wanted. Her grandmother didn’t ask where Kaya went or what she did because, she said, her parents never bothered her when she was young. Be home for dinner. That was the only rule. Normally Kaya didn’t abuse this freedom. She used the time to listen to stories at the library or dive and swim in the deepwater pools. Today? Well, today she was going to stretch the rules a little.
Okay, more than a little.
She chowed down on a plate of spicy kelp and stewed fish for breakfast. Stuffed her backpack with her gravity gear, spare batteries, food, her water bottle and tablet, and the last of her money. The deepwater dive suit was rolled up, jammed into her helmet, and crammed in there on top of everything else. She checked through her list in her head for the fiftieth time. Then she said goodbye to her grandmother and dropped a quick kiss on her forehead.
“Don’t forget to be home by dinner,” her grandmother said.
“I won’t.”
“You won’t forget, or you won’t be home?”
Interesting question. “I won’t forget,” Kaya said with a smile.
She had ten hours.
Ten hours to ride out to Edgeland.
Find her way to one of the darkwater pools.
Slip into her suit.
Speed to the surface.
See the glittering palaces of the People of the Sun.
Swim back down to Atlantis.
And hurry home in time for dinner.
Rian had said it was impossible. Edgeland was almost five hundred miles from Ridge City. A normal transport along the waterways would take a full day. Even an antigravity cruiser would take six or seven hours. But Kaya had thought it all through. On the vacuum train, the trip was thirty minutes at most. Sure, you had to pay for that speed, but she’d been saving her babysitting money. Thanks to the Murakis, she had the coins.
Once in Edgeland, she’d need an hour or so to find a pool. Then she’d get in the water and rise. Her suit was absurdly fast—she knew from testing it in the local pools. According to her calculations, she’d blast from the ridge to the surface in less than an hour. Spend a little time looking around, do a quick search for signs of life, for those floating palaces, and then race back to Atlantis and the vacuum train home. Ten hours? Plenty of time.
She might even be able to do it in eight.
She grabbed all her things and rushed down to the street.
Rian was waiting for her. She should have expected that. Kaya hadn’t actually told him her plan, but he had a way of unraveling her secrets. “Do I get your gravity gear if you don’t return?” he asked.
“No, but there’s a Narwhals flag in my bedroom. That’s all yours.”
Rian smiled. He hated them, too. “So, what’s the schedule?” he asked.
There was no point in lying. “Walk with me,” she said, and along the way, she told him.
“I figured.”
“Figured what? That I was going?”
“No, that you hadn’t thought it all through. Do you even know how to find a darkwater pool?”
“No, but I can ask around—”
“You don’t ask around in Edgeland. You don’t talk to anyone at all.”
Suddenly he was the expert? Annoying. “Just because you listened to some stories about the place doesn’t mean you know it any better than I do,” she said.
He pointed to her backpack. “Check your tablet. I sent you directions.”
“To what?”
“To a darkwater pool in Edgeland.”
Okay. This was not annoying. This was . . . unexpected. And super cool of him. “Really?”
“The water takes you outside the ridge, into the ocean. Then I guess you just go . . . up.”
She smiled. “How did you get the directions?”
“One of my uncles.”
Rian’s family was enormous. He had several odd uncles. “The one your dad doesn’t talk to? The guy who’s been to jail?”
“That’s the one. He says this pool is out of the way and never too crowded, so someone would probably be able to slip in unnoticed.”
“Did you tell him who I—”
“No, and he didn’t ask. Well, he asked for money, but . . .”
Rian shrugged, and his words trailed off. They stared at each other. They’d been friends pretty much since they were born. But it was a little weird at times, her best friend being a boy at their age. Especially at moments like this one. If Rian were a girl, Kaya would’ve hugged him. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her and bowed slightly. “Thank you.”
“What was that?” he asked.
She blushed. “I don’t know.”
“Kaya?”
“Yes?”
“Just be careful, okay? Really?”
“I’ll be careful. Really.”
She waited. Was there more to say?
Her f
riend flicked his hand forward. “Go. You’re on a schedule.”
The city was divided into quarters, and the nearest entrance to the vacuum train was in a new neighborhood, one that had been hollowed out of the stone only a few years before. Here the buildings were not carved into the walls; this section of the undersea mountains was wide open. The homes were towering palaces of multicolored crystal and glass. Light bounced and glittered off the walls and windows. The streets were paved with stones that were scrubbed nightly. The whole neighborhood gleamed, and the shops carried only the most expensive fashions and technology. Clothes and jewelry, of course. But gadgets, too. In the window of one store, Kaya spotted the latest gravity suit. The beauty supposedly worked for a full day on a single charge. She could drift halfway across Atlantis in one of those!
The entrance to the train platform was several levels below the surface. She was early, but the train floated up from the main tunnel below before too long. Only a few other passengers were waiting. Not many people made the trip from Ridge City to Edgeland. Not on the vacuum train, anyway. Rian was kind of a history expert, and he had explained that the Atlantean government had extended the tunnel out to Edgeland in hopes of reviving the city. Years earlier, it had been a busy seaport. Some of the wealthiest merchants and traders in Atlantis had called Edgeland their home. Then two nearby cities collapsed under the weight of the water above, and Edgeland was cut off for years—the only way to travel there was through the deep sea. This tunnel was an attempt to reconnect the city to the rest of Atlantis and restore its trade. But by the time it was built, Rian said, the battle to save Edgeland was already lost. The city had become a magnet for criminals. No high-speed train was going to change that.
But Kaya would be fine, she reminded herself.
She had a plan.
The doors opened. Her heart started beating faster. Was this fear? Or excitement? She stepped aside as the passengers rushed out, then found her seat quickly. The train drifted down into a connecting tunnel, bobbing slightly as it hovered. Kaya strapped herself in. Once all the air was sucked out of this section of the tunnel, another door would open, and the train would drop into the main tunnel. Then it would shoot forward.
