by Gregory Mone
“Lower those weapons,” Kaya’s grandmother said.
Weed Chin kicked the cane out of her hands. Then he pointed his trumpet at Lewis and Hanna. “We’re taking these two invaders with us.”
Kaya stomped her foot and leaned forward. “You are not going to take them—”
“No,” Hanna said, interrupting her. “We’ll go with you.”
Lewis breathed in deeply. Was this what being brave felt like? He didn’t enjoy it. His stomach was sick. His hands were shaking. “That’s right,” he said. He pointed to Rian, Kaya, and her grandmother. “Just promise not to hurt them.”
“We promise,” Finkleman snarled.
This was just about the least believable promise he’d ever heard. Yet Lewis and Hanna stepped forward, and the Erasers grabbed them by the forearms and dragged them out the door.
13
Unusual Circumstances
Kaya just stood there, frozen, staring at the closed door. Her grandmother started moving toward the table. Rian grabbed her cane off the floor and handed it to her, then sat on the back of the couch.
“We have to do something,” Kaya said, starting toward the exit.
“They’ll blast us to the floor and take us with them, dear,” her grandmother replied.
“We need to get help,” Rian added.
He was right. Her grandmother was right. What was she thinking?
She was a kid. She couldn’t rescue the Sun People herself. But she couldn’t just sit there, either. Waiting, doing nothing. She tapped her earpiece. Still nothing from her dad. Where was he? She messaged him, begging him to respond as soon as possible. Then she noticed that her grandmother was watching her.
In all the madness, Kaya had forgotten that she had betrayed her trust. After guiding the Sun People across half of Atlantis, only to have the Erasers track them to her home, she hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse. But no—there was at least one more level of awful, and she sank there now. “I’m so sorry, Grandmother. I lied. I—”
“Yes,” her grandmother replied. “All these things and more.” She pointed her cane at the door. “But clearly these are unusual circumstances. Now, dear, before we determine what to do next, please sit down and tell us everything.”
Kaya hurried through the details of her trip to Edgeland, the deepwater dive, Naxos, Gogol, right down to the goat impressions and the boy’s odd dance routine. Her grandmother occasionally gazed at the ceiling as she spoke, as if she were trying to picture it all. Rian constantly jumped in with comments and exclamations. Kaya finished by saying that she still hadn’t been able to reach her father. Her grandmother nodded to herself, as if she were checking the narrative’s math.
“I was very worried, you know,” her grandmother said in a soft voice.
Someone knocked on their door.
“More Erasers?” her grandmother asked. “I’m not sure I can stand another encounter.”
Kaya searched for the bag with the two sonic blasters. She found it stuffed under the couch; Hanna must have kicked it there when the Erasers arrived. Kaya removed one of the weapons just as Rian opened the door. But the Erasers hadn’t come back.
Not exactly, anyway. Naxos stood in the doorway.
At first, she was surprised. Then anger raged inside her.
“How could you?” Kaya shouted. “You turned them in! That tracker—”
“He’s hurt,” her grandmother interrupted.
“He kind of smells, too,” Rian added.
Naxos’s face was bruised. A cut was swelling over his left eye. And Rian was right. He stank like old seaweed. Was she supposed to feel bad for him, though? He’d betrayed them. Plus, that cut could have been from anything. He could’ve been celebrating after turning them in. Dancing like Lewis. He could’ve slipped and fallen. She aimed his own blaster at him.
Her grandmother pointed the cane at her. “Kaya! Put that down!”
“He’s dangerous.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You do not point weapons at people!”
Kaya set the blaster on the table as Naxos stepped inside. “He’s the Eraser,” Kaya said. “The border guard I told you about.” Then, facing Naxos, she continued, “You said you implanted that tracking device so you could find us. But you told the Erasers. They took the professor in Edgeland, and now they’ve taken Lewis and Hanna!”
“They’re gone?” Naxos asked.
“They’re gone,” Rian confirmed. Then he held up his finger. “So, wait . . . are you really an Eraser? And why do you smell like garbage?”
Naxos pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “I snuck in through your garbage chute. As for your first question . . . am I an Eraser?” Naxos bit his lower lip. “Well, I mean, not in terms of what I believe, but technically? Yes. I suppose so. Still, Kaya, you have to trust me—I didn’t tell them anything! They had listening devices all around my lab. They knew all my codes. I didn’t tell them about the tracker. They found out by themselves. That must be how they chased down the professor in Edgeland. Ah, that reminds me . . .”
He pulled a small device out of his pocket and set it on the floor in the center of the room. Then he whistled. A low, horribly annoying buzz played through the speakers around the apartment.
“Cool,” Rian said.
“What is that?” Kaya asked.
“Sonic interference,” Rian replied. “Jams any listening devices in the area.”
“Now we can speak freely,” Naxos said.
A thin stream of blood trickled out of the cut above his eye. Fine. He was hurt. And it probably wasn’t from celebrating. Kaya tossed him a towel. “Right,” she said, her voice flat, “so how did they find us if the tracker didn’t lead them here?”
Naxos pressed the balled-up cloth to his cut and looked at Rian, then Kaya. “They must have heard the message you sent your friend from Edgeland,” Naxos explained. “The Erasers listen to everything. That’s how I found you. I was able to intercept the message.”
Kaya thought about this for a moment. Sure, she’d heard this was possible. Supposedly, the government could listen to every message drifting around Atlantis if they wanted. But had she really given up any important information? “I didn’t say where I lived.”
Rian was at the window, looking out over the city. He turned and winced as he looked at Kaya. “Yeah, but each earpiece has its own signature. So, with access to the communications system, they probably could’ve used the signatures to figure out our names, and if they knew our names—”
“Then they knew where we live,” Kaya finished.
“Precisely,” Naxos answered.
Kaya felt as if a powerful force were pulling her down, as if the strength of gravity had doubled. She held on to the back of the couch.
This meant Naxos wasn’t to blame.
She hadn’t protected her friends from the surface.
“This is all my fault. I led them here.”
Kaya had doomed them.
“There’s still hope,” Naxos said. “We can save them.”
We? Kaya glanced at the Atlantean Eraser, her undersized best friend, and her exhausted grandmother. Not exactly the ideal rescue squad.
“Don’t look at me, love,” her grandmother said. “I’m too old for adventures.”
Kaya turned back to Rian and Naxos. Her friend was bringing Naxos a glass of water.
“Why should we trust you?” Rian asked. “You’re one of them.”
As Rian moved back to one side of the window, looking out, Naxos shuffled painfully across the room and sat on the edge of the pool. He breathed deep. Then he looked up at them. “Yes, but I didn’t join them to . . . well . . . erase anyone. I just wanted to build.” He turned to Kaya’s grandmother. “I’m an engineer and inventor. I joined when I was just out of school. I grew up poor.” He waved his hand around the room. “Not like this. But I dreamed of building beautiful vehicles. The Erasers offered me the resources to turn my dreams into reality.”
“Like the shi
p in your lab?” Kaya asked.
“A minor plaything,” he said. “My crowning achievement is a new kind of transport, a beautiful vehicle that’s as comfortable in the deep ocean as it will be in the sky. My hope was that it would be used for exploration, to see the surface, but then I learned it was going to be transformed into a warship. I refused to work on it anymore and asked to be transferred. I’ll admit this wasn’t a powerful protest. The design was done. They could already build all the ships they wanted without my help. So they agreed to my request and sent me to the border. I was hoping to spend the rest of my career in peace. Then a few People of the Sun appeared on my scanner, invaders—an accidental invasion, as I’ve since learned—and some wildly adventurous girl . . . and everything changed.”
A fairly convincing story. Sure. But if he expected Kaya to feel sorry for him, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. The man was a coward. A liar. Kaya flopped down in a chair at the table. She glanced at her grandmother, who was stone-faced as she stared at Naxos, then Rian.
“Why are you even helping us?” Rian asked.
The inventor’s head jerked back slightly, as if the answer were obvious. “Because the People of the Sun are real!” He sprang to his feet, then winced slightly. He looked at each of them in turn. “In my childhood, I heard the stories. When I joined the Erasers, they confirmed that the rumors were true, but we were told the surface people were murderous barbarians determined to destroy Atlantis. Then your three friends appeared, and . . . well, they did not seem like barbarians.” He moved to the window and stared out at the city. “They should not be imprisoned.” He shrugged. “I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do. We need to free them.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Kaya asked.
Naxos sipped his water. “The professor is being held near the Erasers’ headquarters,” he started. His voice had new energy to it now, new life. “The tracking device is still active—or at least it was sending out signals until recently. The two kids . . . I don’t know. But I imagine they’ll be taken to the same place.”
Rian asked, “So what do we do?”
Naxos reached into one of his pockets. A half dozen writing instruments fell out. He grabbed one off the floor, then leaned over the table. “Would you mind?”
“Go ahead,” Kaya’s grandmother said. “Kaya used to draw all over that when she was young.” She joined them, leaning on her cane as Naxos sketched out a rough map of northern Atlantis. He actually wasn’t a bad artist; Kaya was impressed. “The headquarters of the Erasers lies far from Ridge City, in the Stone Barrens, along the western edge of Atlantis.”
“The Stone Barrens are abandoned,” Rian noted.
He was right; they’d learned about the area in school. All you’d find up there were the scattered remains of cities that had collapsed hundreds of years before. Maybe a few waterways and vacuum tunnels for people venturing to and from the far north, up near the Rift. But that was it. “There aren’t even any buildings there,” Kaya added.
“Not on any official map,” Naxos said. “But I can assure you that it’s far from abandoned.” He started adding details, marking out what looked like tunnels, and a series of buildings along the ridge.
“What’s that?” Kaya asked, pointing to one of the larger structures he’d outlined.
“The headquarters,” he explained. “I tracked the professor to this area here”—he pointed to a spot just south of the headquarters—”and I imagine the others will be taken there as well.”
Rian joined them around the table. “You’re sure of that?” he asked.
“Well, no, but—”
“Go on,” Kaya’s grandmother interjected. She tapped the map with the tip of her cane. “Once you find them, then what?”
“We’ll travel through the tunnels and take the shuttle across the seafloor”—he traced a line away from the edge of Atlantis, then pointed to a circle—”to this factory. There should be hundreds of ships inside. Maybe more. My understanding is that their factory machines have been building constantly, using my design, ever since I was stationed in Edgeland. We’ll take one of the ships and speed our friends to the surface.”
Proudly, he stood back, allowing them a closer look at his sketch.
“This sounds rather dangerous,” Kaya’s grandmother noted.
“Not too certain to work, either,” Rian added.
“But we have to do it,” Kaya declared. “Right?”
“The People of the Sun will never be safe here in Atlantis,” Naxos replied. “Not as long as the Erasers exist. We need to help them get home.”
Her grandmother tapped her cane on the floor. “You keep saying we. Does this mean you want these two to steal one of the vehicles with you?”
Naxos paused, then swallowed. “Yes?”
Kaya began, “Grandmother, I—”
A cough from the other side of the room. Rian was standing to one side of the window, looking down. “I’m not going,” he said.
“What? Why not?”
He pointed to the street. “Don’t look now, but two people have been hanging around in front of the building across the street, watching your wall the whole time we’ve been here.”
“Erasers,” Naxos guessed. “Naturally they’d station a few people here to make sure you don’t leave, Kaya.”
“How do we ditch them?” she asked.
“I’ll lead them away,” Rian said. “I’ve got an idea. Then you two can go.”
Kaya glanced at her grandmother. Did she need her permission? “I know what you’re going to say—”
“Do you?” her grandmother replied. “Young people always think they know everything, and I imagine you expect I’ll try to stop you. But it is quite clear to me that you would find a way to join this misguided inventor on his misguided mission whether I gave you my permission or not.”
What was she supposed to say? Kaya shrugged. “Sorry?”
“No, you’re not,” her grandmother said with a laugh. “Of course you’re going. You must go.”
Excited, Kaya added, “I’ll be safe.”
“Good,” her grandmother said. “And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Make me—and your mother—proud.”
Kaya rushed to hug her, and held the embrace longer than she’d planned. Her grandmother pushed her away, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands.
The mention of her mother reminded Kaya of her father. Was he really going to approve of this plan? Not a chance. She tapped her earpiece, checking her messages again. Nothing. “What about my dad?” she asked. “What will you tell him when he gets home?”
Her grandmother clasped the top of her cane with both hands. “That’s where we have a problem, Kaya.”
A problem? What problem? Her grandmother wasn’t even looking at her. “What do you mean?” Kaya asked. “Did something happen to him? Where is he?”
“A more appropriate question would be, ‘Who is he?’”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, Kaya, I’m not sure exactly how to tell you this, so I will simply tell you directly. Your father, my son-in-law, is a member of the Erasers.”
14
The Nature of War
What was wrong with these Atlanteans? First of all, they’d called him a monster, and Lewis wasn’t even close to being monstrous. If he was going to be a beast, he’d want to be at least nine feet tall. He’d want snake hair, too, like that woman in the myth. Spit that could melt through metal. Razor-sharp claws. Maybe a third eye in the middle of his forehead for seeing in the dark. Oh, and webbed hands and feet, too, since they were in Atlantis.
Actually, forget the extra eye. Forget all of it! He wasn’t monstrous at all. He was skinny. Clumsy. Freckled. He’d been in five fights in his life and lost them all. And Hanna? She wasn’t a monster, either. He’d never admit this to anyone, especially not her, but she was sort of pretty.
The Erasers were the monsters. After
dragging them out of Kaya’s home, they’d thrown them into the back of some weird floating van. Then they’d driven—or floated, or drifted, he wasn’t even sure anymore—for hours without stopping one single time to grab food or water. The trip did give them a chance to see more of Atlantis, or at least Ridge City. Down below them in the crowded streets, he saw kids his age playing some kind of ball game, laughing and joking like him and his friends. What would they do if they knew there was a whole world up on the surface?
When they arrived at their destination, Lewis and Hanna were dragged out of the cruiser and locked in a windowless room. Weed Chin and Mrs. Finkleman finally did bring them something to eat and drink, but the water was warm and minerally, and the bowl of mush looked like oatmeal but tasted kind of like celery. Not a good combo.
Mrs. Finkleman watched them with curiosity. She squinted at Lewis. “They don’t look like invaders,” she noted to Weed Chin.
“Because we’re not!” Lewis replied. “We’re more like tourists. And you’re not being very good hosts.”
Hanna held up her bowl. “This is vile,” she protested. “Why are you even locking us in here?”
Finkleman didn’t answer.
“It’s for your own good,” Weed Chin replied.
People only told you that when the opposite was true. Like when Mrs. Reilly gave Lewis a terrible grade at the end of the year because he’d forgotten to study for his math final and flunked. She said it was for his own good, but his mom and Roberts were furious with him, and decided not to get him a new wristpad as an end-of-the-year present. He had no choice but to give the thank-you gift card meant for Mrs. Reilly to Jeff, the school custodian. Everybody lost! Except Jeff.
“When are we getting out of here?” Lewis asked.
Neither of them answered.
Lewis pointed at Weed Chin. “What’s that stuff growing from your face?”
The man fingered the greenish hairs. His voice softened. “It’s my beard.”
“It looks like seaweed,” Lewis said.
“No it doesn’t.”
In the doorway, Finkleman shrugged. “It does a little.”
