The Fog Diver

by Joel Ross

  She reached toward me and brushed my hood back a few inches before I knocked her hand away. The younger foghead gasped at my roughness, but I didn’t care. At least he hadn’t seen my eye . . . or so I’d thought.

  “We’re nobody,” Hazel had said, and led me away.

  As I swooped through the Fog, I somersaulted at the end of my tether until I felt the ground nearing. I slowed suddenly and dangled in midair as a line of metal spears came into focus five feet below. Any one of them would’ve skewered me like a kabob.

  “Ha!” I said, though the thick mist swallowed my voice. “Direct hit, Hazel.”

  She’d dropped me right over the iron gate I’d spotted the previous evening, even without a buoy.

  Except . . . where was the buoy? If Bea wasn’t wrong—and she never was, about mechanical things—then some airship had stolen it. Hopefully not the roof-troopers, who’d sink us on suspicion of trying to escape the Rooftop. Of course, the muties were just as deadly, even if all they cared about was protecting Port Oro.

  I unspooled my tether until I landed on the ground, then wiped my goggles and got to work. First I cleared the shrubs twining through the rusting gateposts, enjoying the rich scent of greenery, so unlike the stink of the slum. Then I pulled my hacksaw and started cutting the gate from the earth. Still spooked by the missing buoy, I stopped to peer into the Fog every few minutes, but after an hour the gate finally toppled.

  I attached a cargo tether, then squeezed the hand brake on my harness, telling the raft to raise the cargo.

  Nothing happened for a few seconds; then I felt four jerks on the hand brake. It was Hazel, asking me to confirm. When I repeated the message, the gate lifted into the air and winched toward the raft, tilting and swaying.

  In a minute, it was ten feet above me, out of sight.

  I squeezed the hand brake, telling them I was safe and wanted to scout for more salvage. The iron would pay for food, but we needed a big score. So big that even after the bosses took most of the money, we’d still have enough to hire “coyotes”—smugglers who secretly transported people from the Rooftop to Port Oro. That was our plan. Dive like maniacs in uncharted Fog until we raised enough money to pay for coyotes, then dodge roof-trooper warships and angry mutineers to sneak onto Port Oro and cure Mrs. E.

  “Easy as falling off a pie,” as they used to say. Which didn’t make any sense to me, but they also used to say “May the horse be with you,” so as far as I could tell, they talked gibberish pretty much all the time.

  When Hazel signaled that it was okay, I followed the crumbling asphalt uphill, and a sudden humming sounded through the muffled quiet. A flowering bush loomed into view, covered in bees. Even insects thrived in the Fog—it was only the humans who died.

  Sometimes fogsickness struck a few days after contact with the Fog, or sometimes it took a few weeks or months. Sometimes nothing happened for over a decade. Like with Mrs. E: she was dying now because she’d braved the Fog to save my life, thirteen years ago.

  Most people got fogsick if they spent even a few hours in the white. Only tetherkids built up resistance as little kids, so we could dive all day and stay healthy for years—though we didn’t usually live that long. Of course I’d been diving over three years and still hadn’t gotten sick, but I was born in the Fog itself, with nanites in my brain.

  When I stepped closer to the bush, dozens of peach-colored roses came into view. I stood there for a moment, clearing my mind. I loved diving, and I loved this: exploring the Fog-hidden Earth. Nobody in the slum ever saw roses or deer tracks or moss-covered rocks in burbling streams. Heck, none of them even saw trees.

  Humming to myself, I snipped a big blossom for Bea.

  I tucked the flower in my pocket, sat down on a pile of stones, and ate a snack of dried locusts. I didn’t like eating bugs, but a swarm had flown over the slum a few weeks back, and food was scarce. One thing every slumkid knew was hunger, the kind of hunger that made you dizzy and desperate.

  When I started off again, a slithery motion caught my eye. I lifted my head and saw a swirl of Fog thickening in the air as the nanites formed dense white cords above me. My breath caught and my mind blanked with terror: a driftshark.

  8

  I STARED INTO THE whiteness, eyes wide and heart pounding. Horror tightened my throat and terrifying images rose in my mind—memories of a tetherboy, limp in his harness.

  Last year, we’d teamed with another crew to salvage a load of broken glass I’d found in a half-buried truck. I worked alongside a tetherkid named Bilal, a scrawny boy with a goofy smile. We didn’t say much at first, because silence felt natural in the Fog. At the end of the second day, though, he grabbed my arm.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

  I gulped, worried that he’d seen my eye. “You mean other than my personality?”

  “No, I mean . . . you’re not afraid.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m scared of everything. I’m even scared of butterflies.” I shuddered. “With their creepy wings.”

  Bilal smiled but somehow still looked serious. “You’re not scared in the Fog, Chess. I know you’re not.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, ducking my head. “I don’t know.”

  “And you’re . . .” He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re too good at this. You like it.”

  “Right,” I scoffed. “I’m a huge fan of broken glass.”

  He didn’t mention it again, and by the end of the week we’d become friends. Spending days in the Fog forged a special bond. Nobody else knew the muffled quiet of that whiteblind world.

  Then early one day, after we’d loaded the cargo crate, Bilal stretched his arms overhead. “Almost done.”

  “Two more loads,” I said.

  “Maybe we can keep diving together,” he said almost shyly. “I mean, when we’re done with this. If you want.”

  “That sounds cool,” I said. “If our crews are okay with it—”

  A driftshark lashed forward from the mist, thick cords of nanites forming a sleek fishlike body with wispy fins and foggy jaws that opened way too wide. Trillions of tiny mindless machines acting in unison—but it looked like a fraying, hazy shark diving through the Fog.

  As I shouted a warning, the knot of whiteness closed around Bilal’s head, the nanites invading his brain. There wasn’t a crunch of bones or splatter of blood. Just one thin scream, and Bilal sagged in his tether. By the time his crew winched him back to his raft, he was dead without a mark on him, except for his flat, white pupils.

  I’d watched helplessly from only a few feet away as the driftshark had twirled into the distance, leaving me limp with grief and guilt. The same Fog that had killed my friend swirled inside my own eye.

  The memory faded as the haze of nanites above me dwindled into nothing. Just another puff of Fog. Not a shark at all. I exhaled in relief. I should’ve known better. Driftsharks usually appeared only in ruined cities and towns, and I was in the middle of nowhere.

  After catching my breath, I headed uphill . . . and almost fell in a ditch.

  Instead, I sprang upward, spinning in midair. I landed in a crouch on the other side of a wide rectangular hole that looked like what Mrs. E called a “swimming pool.” She said that people used to swim for fun, but c’mon: even in the old days nobody would waste good drinking water like that. A huge puddle in the yard, just to splash around in? The whole idea was ridiculous.

  When I searched the hole, I found pillbugs and black ants and beetle shells. And then, finally, a scattering of broken blue-and-white tiles.

  “Nice,” I said.

  I stuffed the tiles into my bag, jumped from the pool, and caught sight of a dark doorway half covered with thick green ivy.

  I frowned. I hated untethering in the Fog, because if things went wrong I’d never get back to the raft. Not unless I learned to fly. But searching inside a building was tough with a tether, and this site looked worth the risk.

  So I squeezed my hand brake, telling Hazel I was unt
ethering and going inside the house.

  The hand brake jerked twice, giving me the answer: No.

  “Thinks she’s an admiral,” I muttered, and sent the same message again. I’m going inside.

  Nothing happened for a while, and I pictured them as they argued on the raft above. Then, finally: Okay.

  “Ha,” I said, and sent another message: I’m detaching my tether.

  The reply came immediately. No.

  I grumbled and sent the message again.

  No. No. No. NO!

  Okay, I told her, and muttered aloud, “Hazel Garbo.”

  I pushed aside the curtain of ivy. My tether scraped against the doorway for a second; then the Fog muffled the sound as I stepped inside.

  The darkness smelled of rust and mud and hungry wolves. I mean, I wasn’t sure what hungry wolves smelled like, but the shadowy gloom looked like the perfect den for something with fangs and claws. I stood very still, trying not to look tasty, until I was able to make out a small room, with rotting leaves carpeting the floor.

  Completely empty. No fangs or claws. Just how I liked my shadowy dens.

  Another misty doorframe led me into a room with the remains of an altar, what Mrs. E called a “teevee,” a screen that told everyone what to wear and eat, and showed them pictures of royalty like the Burger King and Dairy Queen. The teevee itself lay on the floor, a shattered shell of plastic, with wires and circuit boards inside. Not worth much, except as building material.

  Down a hallway, the Fog glowed brighter, like the house was missing a wall or part of the roof, letting sunlight in. I clambered over the rubble toward a staircase that rose into the white—and something fast and gray blurred through the mist.

  I jumped backward, my heart pounding. I didn’t carry a weapon, because if you fought anything in the Fog, you lost. Instead, you ran: you tugged on your tether and rose into the sky. Unless of course you were trapped inside a building with a hungry wolf pack.

  Holding my breath, I scanned the misty whiteness. A scrabbling sounded behind me and I sprang upward until I was jerked back down—my tether snagged in the other room.

  The tether jerked tight, but I kept moving, like a ball at the end of a chain, and smashed straight into a crumbling brick chimney.

  Pain burst in my side, and the bricks collapsed around me. I moaned, half covered in rubble. I should’ve untethered, no matter what Hazel told me. Now I was trapped, dazed and defenseless, while the wolves prowled closer—

  A gray squirrel dashed across the stairs.

  Oh. Not wolves. I’d almost killed myself running from a squirrel. Maybe I wouldn’t mention that to the others, especially after yesterday’s epic goose failure.

  With a groan, I began pushing the bricks aside. Then a glint of metal caught my eye, a dented box that must’ve been hidden in the fireplace. Still half covered in rubble, I grabbed the box and opened the lid.

  “Nice!” I said when I saw a stack of what Mrs. E called “cash,” faded green rectangles with weird faces printed on them.

  And numbers, too. Most of this cash said “100,” though some said “1000.” But that didn’t really matter. What mattered was that cash made excellent toilet paper—the best in the Rooftop. The 1000s weren’t any softer than the 100s, though.

  I shoved the “cash” into my pocket, and saw the second box. Smaller, and almost cube shaped, with a tattered felt cover. Inside, I found a ring nestled on a puff of discolored satin.

  A gold ring with a sparkly stone. A diamond.

  My breath caught in my throat. “No way.”

  Impossible. We’d spent weeks diving for a jackpot in uncharted Fog, and it was a squirrel that finally led me to the biggest haul ever? Completely impossible. I mean, I’d never seen a diamond, but this looked exactly like one of the pictures in Hazel’s books.

  And the Rooftop paid huge for diamonds. Heck, only members of the Five Families were even allowed to own them. They were illegal for slum-dwellers and lower slope crafters and even for the merchants on the middle slopes. In fact, I’d heard that if you got caught keeping a diamond for yourself, Lord Kodoc would personally cut off your hand.

  But that didn’t mean you couldn’t sell them.

  I closed my eyes for a second, then peered again at the ring. Still there.

  “You’re not dreaming,” I told myself. “You’re not fogsick. That is one big honking diamond.”

  I was grinning like a garbo as I tucked the ring into my belt pouch. I wanted to shout and sing, but I dug myself out of the bricks instead. I almost scrambled outside to return to the raft, because we didn’t need any more salvage, not with a diamond like this in my pouch. But I’d been a tetherboy for too long, and I couldn’t leave good salvage behind. So I filled the bag with bricks from the chimney, smiling the whole time.

  I couldn’t wait to see everyone’s faces when I showed them the diamond. Bea would jump up and down, Swedish would spin his bootball on his finger, and Hazel would make a triumphant speech. And to think we’d been worried about today’s dive! No driftsharks, no accidents—no problems at all.

  All our work, rewarded. All our troubles, solved.

  Port Oro, here we come.

  9

  AS THE CARGO TETHER rose, I gazed into the Fog, daydreaming about life on Port Oro. Imagining a place without hunger, without Kodoc, without junkyard bosses or roving gangs. Imagining a cure for fogsickness.

  Chewing my lip in excitement, I squeezed the hand brake. A moment later, my harness yanked me upward. My boots left the ground and the whiteness blurred around my face as I rose toward the clear world above.

  I laughed as I passed through the highest fringes of the Fog, eager to show everyone what I’d found. When the blue sky burst into sight and my full weight returned, it felt like I was carrying a fifty-pound backpack, but for once I didn’t mind.

  Twirling toward the underside of the raft, I saw pistons chugging and vapor hissing from valves. Before I reached the boarding ladder, Bea’s face popped over the side.

  Her leather cap was askew and her green eyes were wide. She gestured wildly toward a peak of Fog.

  “What?” I called.

  She raised a finger to her lips, shushing me, then disappeared from view.

  I almost yelled, Don’t shush me—I found a diamond!

  The winch stopped suddenly, with me still dangling twenty feet below the deck. The propellers whirled and the raft jerked forward.

  I yelped as I trailed behind the speeding raft, dragged along by my tether.

  What was going on? Were we running? From what?

  I climbed my tether, hand over hand, swinging sideways as the raft turned in crazy angles. I reached the deck just in time to catch a glimpse of Bea vanishing into a hatch. At the wheel, Swedish handled the lumbering three-ballooned raft like a racing thopper, playing hide-and-seek behind white waves of Fog.

  I climbed toward the crow’s nest. “What’s going—”

  “Mutineers,” Hazel said without lowering her spyglass.

  Above us, the middle balloon creaked in protest as Swedish veered suddenly to the left.

  “What?” I shivered in the sunlight. Not now, not with a diamond in my belt pouch. “Where?”

  She nodded at the Fog. “On the far side of that peak.”

  “Did they see us?”

  “I don’t know. They came into sight a mile away and turned toward us. Maybe a coincidence, but . . .”

  “They’ll leave us alone, right?” I patted my pouch nervously. “I mean, mutineers hardly ever bother salvage rafts.”

  “Hardly ever,” Hazel said.

  When the mutineers revolted, they’d taken over the most distant mountaintop that belonged to the Rooftop. Port Oro was less than a quarter of the size of the Rooftop, but they’d beaten back every attack for decades. That was the good news. The bad news was that being outnumbered made the muties defensive and quick-tempered, so sometimes they shot first and asked questions later.

  And by “sometimes,�
� I meant “usually.”

  “Bring her lower,” Hazel called to Swedish. “Along that ravine.”

  Swedish scowled at the wide, wispy crack in the Fog. “That’s a tight fit.”

  I swallowed nervously. The raft was fueled by refined Fog, called “foggium,” which didn’t work inside the Fog itself. That’s why machinery didn’t run in the white. If the engine dipped below the surface, we’d lose power immediately. The foggium would stop heating the air inside the balloons, and we’d tumble hundreds of feet and crash.

  “You’ve got a foot on either side,” Hazel told him. “You can do this.”

  “I can kiss my butt good-bye,” Swedish muttered, plunging the raft into the ravine.

  The deck jerked as the middle balloon groaned, then hissed like an angry cat: the sound of a balloon about to pop.

  I froze, straining to hear. Wind whistled through the rigging, and a valve released pressure with a click-shhhht-click. Nothing more from the middle balloon.

  After a few seconds, I unclenched my hands from the rail. “The cargo netting’s inside the Fog, Hazel. If it snags anything, we’re dead.”

  “I know that,” she snapped.

  “Then why are we—”

  “Mutineers never come this close to the Rooftop, Chess. Something’s not right. I don’t know why they’re here, but if they don’t see us, they won’t sink us, so—”

  A shadow fell over us from behind.

  I turned and saw an airship with a zeppelin—a long cigar-shaped balloon—that dwarfed our three patched balloons completely. Whirling fans droned on cranes that sprouted from the airship like a water bug’s legs, and runoff pipes spat clouds of exhaust.

  It was a mutineer ship, with dull brass and predatory fins, her name gleaming on the prow: Night Tide.

  A warship. We were so dead.

  10

  A VOICE BOOMED FROM the mutineer ship. “Stop your props or we’ll blow you from the sky!”

  Hazel swung down from the rigging. “Do as he says, Swedish.”

  “Muties,” Swedish mumbled as he slowed the raft to a halt. “Now they’re after salvage rafts?”