The Accidental Invasion (Atlantis Book #1)

by Gregory Mone

  Now Hanna jumped into the debate. “And if we all stay together?” she asked.

  “I told you—we’ll be too slow with the added mass. They’ll catch us. They’ll be everywhere soon.”

  “We are not leaving my dad.”

  Hanna pointed her pistol at the closed door, in the direction of the control room and the pool beyond. “Then we’ll all spend the rest of our lives in that watery prison,” she said. “I’m sorry, Lewis. But Naxos is right. This is the best plan. This is our only chance.”

  “We can’t leave him, Hanna,” Lewis replied, his voice shaking. “We can’t.”

  The girl from the surface placed her arm around his shoulder.

  Lewis looked at Hanna, waiting for a reply.

  Her silence said everything.

  “I’m sorry, Lewis,” Naxos said, “but the Erasers will never stop searching for you as long as you’re in Atlantis. If we split now, we all have a better chance of surviving, including your father. I’ve given Kaya instructions on how to get you safely to the surface. The tunnels leading to the factory are just below us—”

  “What factory?” Hanna asked.

  “I’ll explain on the way,” Kaya said.

  “Here,” Naxos said, handing Kaya his tablet. “All the information you need is in this—maps, instructions, controls, everything.”

  The tablet felt suddenly heavy in her hands. During the trip from Ridge City, when Kaya had talked about this plan with Naxos, she’d imagined him leading. He knew the ships, the factory. He knew his way around headquarters. Now everything was her responsibility?

  She’d let the Sun People down once before.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  The door started to open.

  The four of them turned and stared.

  “We need to go. Now,” Hanna insisted.

  Lewis crouched by his father. “I’m not going anywhere without him,” he said.

  The door opened, and Hanna raised a sonic pistol.

  “Wait!” Kaya shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

  An old woman stood in the doorway. Elida.

  The pistol aimed at her chest clearly didn’t bother the storyteller. She hardly even noticed. Her eyes darted back and forth between Hanna and Lewis and the fallen professor. “I knew it!” Elida exclaimed. “They are real.” She pointed to Kaya. “You’re the girl from the theater. What are you doing here? Who are they?”

  “Long story,” Kaya replied.

  “I’m accustomed to long stories,” Elida said.

  “Yeah, well, you’re not getting one now,” Hanna added. She stepped around Elida, leaned through the opening, then jerked back and closed the door behind the storyteller. “A half dozen more of them are rushing back into that control room. Our friends in the hall will wake up soon, too. Or someone will find them. Either way, we don’t have long. This woman is a friend of yours?” Kaya nodded. Hanna eyed Elida for a moment, then held up the pistol. “Ever used one of these?”

  “Once or twice,” the storyteller said, “in my youth.”

  Hanna tossed her the sonic weapon. She caught it with one hand. Once or twice? She held it like it was an extension of her arm, Kaya thought.

  “Okay,” Hanna continued, “here’s the deal: Anyone tries to come through that door, you knock them out. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Maybe this wasn’t the first time Elida had held a pistol, but she was old, frail. She’d just been in prison! “We can’t just leave her—”

  “I’ll be perfectly fine,” Elida said, interrupting her. “Besides,” she added, nodding to the professor, “it seems you have more important matters to attend to.”

  Kaya moved back to Lewis’s side. He was whispering to his father. “Come on, Dad. You can’t give up. Not now. You finally did it! You proved everyone wrong. We have to get you back home. We’ll get you better, and you’ll be able to tell everyone . . .”

  The words stopped coming out, and he leaned over the side of the cruiser, placed his head against his father’s cold, wet chest, and started crying. A huge drop of water fell from the ceiling and splattered on the boy’s back. He didn’t react. Kaya watched as Lewis’s dad pulled his hand away.

  Wait.

  He moved.

  The professor moved.

  Hanna grabbed Kaya’s shoulder. They stared at the professor as he brought his hand up to his face and wiped his eyes. Lewis backed away, startled, too nervous to hope. The professor waved for his son to come closer. When he finally spoke, his words were low and weak, but Kaya could hear him clearly enough. “I’m proud of you, son, and I love you. But you can’t stay here with me. Promise me that you’ll let them help you get home. You and Hanna . . . you both need to get home. Promise me, son.”

  “I . . .”

  “Please, Lewis.

  He hesitated. “I promise.”

  The professor closed his eyes and smiled. Then he pulled off his wristpad, placed it in his son’s hand, and closed his fist around it. “Take this with you. My Atlantis journals—everything is in here. All the proof anyone will ever need.”

  “But Dad—”

  “No, let me finish,” he continued, speaking with his eyes closed, as if he was devoting every bit of energy in his body to forcing out his whispered words. “I heard what you said earlier about finally finding this place. But it wasn’t just me who found Atlantis, son. We discovered her together. The three of us.” He reached up and held his hand to the side of his son’s face. “Meriwether Lewis Gates, you truly are a great explorer.”

  18

  Suddenly Powerless

  The lights of the cruiser faded into the dark tunnel as Naxos sped away. Lewis’s dad was gone, rushed off to some mystery doctor somewhere in Atlantis. Would he ever see him again? Would his dad even survive? Lewis shook his head. He had to stop thinking that way. He promised his dad he’d get home. He promised him he’d survive. That’s what he was going to do.

  The wristpad was warm against his skin.

  Hanna tightened the straps of her backpack.

  Kaya finally pulled her hand off the tablet Naxos had given her and hurried them away from the entrance to the prison. She looked back at the old woman. “You’ll be okay?” she asked.

  “I’ve swum through far rougher waters in my life, child,” the woman answered. “Hurry, now. I can hear them in the halls.”

  They raced only a short way down the tunnel before Kaya crouched over a metal grate set into the stone floor, gripped it with both hands, and pulled it open. “Let’s go,” she said. “Quickly.”

  Water was rushing below them.

  “More sewers, huh?” Hanna asked.

  “This is the safest and fastest way.”

  Hanna dropped through first.

  “You’re not going to get us lost again?” Lewis asked.

  “No,” Kaya said, “I’m going to get you home.”

  She climbed down, and Lewis lowered himself through after her, hung from the opening with both hands, then dropped to the floor. But what about the grate? If the Erasers got past the old woman, they’d see it and know where they had gone. And the old woman would never be able to move the thing. He started to climb back up the ladder when the grate was thrown over the opening. The old woman peered through the holes. “Well, are you going?”

  Okay. Lewis made a mental note never to arm wrestle her. Or anyone in Atlantis, really.

  The cold, ankle-deep water smelled like a pond. He splashed ahead.

  Kaya pressed her hand to her tablet and marched on. They were moving at a near run. She asked about what had happened to them since the Erasers had grabbed them from her house. Hanna encouraged Lewis to tell the story. She was probably doing it to get his mind off his dad, he realized. But he didn’t complain. Talking helped, and Kaya listened quietly. The only time she asked a question was when he talked about the man who had interrogated them. She wanted to know exactly what he looked like, and she seemed relieved when Lewis described
him.

  Once Lewis finished recounting their adventures, Kaya told them all about her meeting with Naxos, her grandmother, and her friend Rian. When Hanna asked about her dad, though, she changed the subject. Neither she nor Lewis pressed.

  The prison, Kaya explained as they walked, was near the Erasers’ headquarters, a series of offices, labs, and a factory all at the edge of the Atlantis, where the hidden world met the deep sea. At the factory, she said, they’d steal a warship and speed to the surface.

  Hanna stopped. “That’s the plan?” she asked.

  “That’s the plan,” Kaya said.

  “What about guards? Erasers?”

  They started moving again, increasing their pace.

  “Hopefully, they’ll all be rushing to the prison,” Kaya said. Or chasing his dad, Lewis thought. “Plus, it’s the middle of the night, so most of them won’t be here—”

  “It’s the middle of the night?” Lewis asked.

  “Yes,” Kaya replied. “The workday doesn’t start for another few hours. We’ll go inside, switch off the sentry system so they can’t track us, and jump into a warship. By the time the engineers get to the factory, we’ll be free and clear on the surface. Naxos even gave me the tones to control the vehicles.”

  Hanna stopped again. “How does he know so much about these warships?”

  “Well, he kind of designed them.”

  If Naxos had designed the ships, that meant—

  “He’s one of the Erasers?” Hanna asked.

  That information would have been super valuable to Lewis a few minutes earlier. “We just trusted him with my dad’s life!”

  “Kaya, you should have told us.”

  Kaya stopped and stared back at them. Seconds passed in silence. “You’re right,” she said at last. “I’m sorry. But he’s trying to help us. I swear.”

  Maybe Lewis was putting too much faith in someone he’d just met. Someone from a completely different world. But he did trust her. “Then let’s go,” Lewis said. “Let’s get home.”

  After winding through the darkness, stopping often so Kaya could check the map on her tablet—a super weird map that she read with her fingers, not her eyes, which Lewis still couldn’t get used to—they came to a narrow, rusted ladder leading up into a hole in the rock overhead. They climbed into a dark, deserted hallway. Kaya felt the pad, then whistled. Blue-green light shined from the ceiling. What was this place? The headquarters of the Erasers reminded Lewis more of an alien spaceship than the caves and tunnels that shaped the rest of Atlantis. The walls were metal, but curved, and without the blinking lights and screens you’d see in a movie spacecraft. Okay, so it wasn’t really space-like at all.

  Kaya held her hand to her tablet and then pointed. “Just ahead. It shouldn’t be far.”

  Her voice was quieter than usual. Nervous, almost.

  Lewis didn’t like this change. His heart was beating faster. He moved closer to Hanna. She glanced over at him, eyes scrunched, as if she was expecting him to say something. But he just wanted to be next to her. She switched the pistol to her other side and took his hand.

  At a black glass door, Kaya stopped. She knelt, and Lewis thought he heard her whispering something about Naxos. Then the tablet played a six-note tune. A bolt slid back into the wall, and the door sprang open. They stepped through into a large room marked by a tall window that had to be ten or twenty long steps wide. The lights inside brightened automatically. On the other side of the glass stretched the darkness of the deep ocean.

  Hanna gasped. “Whoa.”

  Lewis hurried over and pressed his palm to the window.

  The lights in the room were a magnet for sea life, and soon the water was crowded with creatures. A long, wormlike fish floated into view. Tendrils hung from its body like tassels, and it glowed pink. Lewis could see its insides—its spine and organs. He bumped his forehead on the glass as he leaned forward for a closer look. “Whoops.”

  Hanna elbowed him and pointed to his wrist. Right. He might as well continue his father’s work. He aimed the wristpad and recorded the scene.

  “Follow me,” Kaya said. She led them down a stairwell.

  At the base of the stairs, they stopped in front of what looked like a train car, only way, way more awesome. The vehicle was identically curved at the front and back, like a giant glass vitamin. Hanna was studying the track below. “Magnetic levitation?” she asked.

  Kaya shrugged. “I think so.”

  Once they were on the train, Kaya whistled six brief notes.

  Immediately, the doors shut and the train began moving.

  Lewis breathed out. Their plan was working.

  He couldn’t believe their plan was actually working.

  Hanna stood and held one of the railings. “I can’t sit,” she said. “These Erasers need to be better about security. The same tune? That’s like using the same password for every device.”

  Didn’t everyone use the same password? His started with the word chicken and ended with one that rhymed with nut. He laughed quietly as he thought of it.

  Hanna was switching the sonic pistol from her right hand to her left. “Kaya, can you make this fish swim any faster?”

  The train quickly accelerated from a slow creep to a mad sprint through the tunnel. Lewis stared down at the wristpad. He couldn’t help thinking of his father. Where was he? Had Naxos gotten him to the doctor yet? Was he even still alive? He gritted his teeth. If he could have crumpled up that thought like a piece of paper and tossed it down the aisle, he would have. But his brain wasn’t made of paper, and it would probably hurt to reach inside his mind and—

  Kaya stretched across the aisle and kicked him gently in the shin, then pointed up toward the ceiling. He tilted back his head. The roof of the shuttle was all windows. Glass stretched between the steel ribs of the tunnel, too, so they could see right up into the sea. The lights along the track shined out into the water, attracting all kinds of strange and wondrous creatures. They were brightly colored, transparent, slow-moving, like beautiful seaweed come to life, and as fluid as the water itself. He aimed the wristpad, recording it all, and watched the scene through his dad’s eyes. Now, despite everything, he couldn’t help smiling.

  The shuttle slowed, and they lurched forward, holding tight to the rails and handles to keep from falling. Then the train stopped and dropped ever so slightly. The lighting inside the miniature station brightened. They hurried out, the doors closed behind them, and the train immediately took off toward its starting place.

  Hanna scanned the room as she led the way inside.

  Odd uniforms were hanging on the wall. No, not uniforms. They looked more like space suits. Kaya eyed them, and through a glass door, Lewis saw a small room with a dark pool.

  “That’s probably a way out to the ocean,” Kaya explained. “We call them darkwater pools. Those dive suits look super advanced, too. They’re built to hold up against the pressure of the deep, and they have really cool propulsion systems on the back. You can swim as fast as—”

  “Believe me, I’m fascinated, and normally I’d be the last person to stop you from talking about tech,” Hanna said, “but are we getting out of here or what?”

  “Yes, sorry,” Kaya answered.

  She led them forward into the most spectacular room Lewis had ever seen. The factory was beneath a gigantic dome, the ceiling hundreds of feet above them. All the surfaces—the walls, the floors, the great dome that arched overhead—were made of glass, and the dark ocean surrounded them.

  Almost everything here was built from glass, so they could see into the depths of the factory, built into some kind of giant trench on in the bottom of the ocean. A ramp in the center of the floor spiraled down as far as Lewis could see. The space below was divided into at least ten or twenty levels, and on each level there were hundreds of shining, silvery warships. They looked like teardrops. They were both beautiful and frightening.

  “He was telling the truth,” Kaya said.

  �
��Who?”

  “Naxos,” she said. “Those are his ships. They’re exactly as he described them.”

  “There are hundreds of them,” Lewis said.

  Hanna corrected him. “Thousands.”

  “Which means they probably won’t even notice if we borrow one,” Lewis noted.

  “We’re going home,” Hanna whispered, almost to herself. “Kaya, you’re going to be amazed! We’ll show you everything. Mountains, valleys, cities—”

  “And cows and chickens and goats, and chocolate, too,” Lewis added. “You’re really going to like chocolate.”

  The girl from Atlantis closed her eyes, as if she were trying to picture the mountains and valleys—and maybe even the chocolate. Hanna bit one corner of her lower lip. They were here. They’d made it. The ships were all around them, and the factory was empty. They hadn’t seen or heard a single person.

  They really were going home.

  Overwhelmed, Lewis went to hug Kaya.

  She pushed him away. Did he smell that bad? No. She was looking over his shoulder.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Hanna reached into her backpack for a deadly trumpet. “The train. Someone’s coming.”

  “I thought you said they wouldn’t get to work until later,” Lewis said.

  “We did kind of break out of their prison,” Hanna noted.

  The shuttle doors opened.

  Half a dozen Atlanteans sprinted toward them across the huge space.

  Hanna practically threw Lewis behind a workstation, then crouched in front of him, holding out her weapons. “Kaya, come on! Get behind me!”

  The girl from Atlantis didn’t move.

  Lewis recognized one of the Erasers immediately. “Weed Chin.”

  The man with the seaweed-colored beard growled in their direction. Mrs. Finkleman was beside him. Two other women, both dressed like Kaya in warlike yoga clothes, aimed weapons the size and shape of trombones, only without the slidey things.

  The creepy old Demos guy was there, too, and another man. One Lewis didn’t recognize.

  This stranger pushed to the front of the group.

  “Kaya? What in the world are you doing here?”

  He knew her? How did he know her?