Embers in the Sea

by Jennifer M. Eaton

  The roaring scream of the flood suddenly stopped, like someone turned off a faucet. The sound of my heartbeat seemed to echo within my mask. The water level remained at my chin. I took two breaths to calm myself in the reprieve.

  “David!”

  The silence tore through to the bottom of my soul. I’d seen grassen swim out in space. Edgar didn’t need to breathe very often, but David did. I willed my panicked gasps to a steady, quiet pace. The sea swirled around me. Not cold, but temperate, like Bell’s Lake in August. Comfortable. At least I wasn’t going to freeze to death. Settled, I relaxed my mind and closed my eyes, opening myself up to the resonance of the world around me.

  David, where are you? The grip of our tether grappled around my spine and yanked me under. I swam back up, gasping. The draw of our connection dissipated as if brushed away. Erased.

  Oh, God! David!

  I gasped again and plunged my face beneath the water. Near the bottom, David struggled in his chair, trying to swim up. He’d been beside me the entire time!

  Heart thumping, I kicked off the rear wall and swam down to him. He wrestled with his ankles, as if something held him to the chair, but the only thing near him were a few floating instruments from the ship. I slipped my hands under his arms and pulled, but he barely budged. He shoved me away and pointed up. He knew I needed air. But I couldn’t leave him there.

  Dammit! Think, Jess!

  My lungs screamed and I pushed off from the bottom. My mask stayed glued to my face as I broke into the air. I treaded, shaking as the soft fabric filled. Tiny lights sparkled in my line of sight, but disappeared as I inhaled. Oxygen never tasted so sweet. But I wasn’t the only one who needed to breathe.

  David thrashed beneath me. I needed to get him air. Dozens of movie scenarios flooded my mind. I could help him, but not with this mask. I clawed the plastic’s edge and ripped the fabric away from my face. Soaked, it hung from my skin before I got the material completely off. I took in a deep breath. No rotten egg smell. Hopefully that meant the noxious fumes had cleared.

  I took in two more mouthfuls of air, and plunged beneath the surge. The salinity stung my eyes. I scrunched them shut and stroked four times through the warm water until our bond told me I’d reached David. I cracked my eyelids, allowing the salt to burn as I reached for him.

  David splayed his palms. Stop. Get back to the surface. You need to breathe.

  I gripped his wrists, immobilizing him. So do you.

  Violet tones pulsed through David’s artificial human skin. The transparent mask skewed his features, except for a wide gaze betraying fear far deeper than the twisted, panicked emotion flooding through our bond.

  I snatched his mask. The fabric squished in my hand and floated away. His expression slackened. His lips formed a straight line. You need air. Just leave me.

  No way.

  I cradled his face and brought my mouth to his; forcing what little breath I had into his lungs.

  He struggled against me before his muscles relaxed. I grew dizzy. He grabbed my waist and heaved, shooting me back toward the surface.

  Breaking into the air, I took a huge gulp for myself, and expelled it. The next one I held.

  I swam back down. David reached for me, and accepted my gift.

  With each rise to the surface and dive below, the link between us strengthened. Each time our lips met, a renewed energy surged through the contact. Not just air, but life. Love. Connection. I finally understood. We weren’t two people anymore. We hadn’t been for some time. That’s why I’d been so lost for the past two years. Half of me was on Earth, and the other half had been on Mars. I wasn’t just breathing life into David, I was breathing life into me, into my own soul.

  But I couldn’t do this forever. With the next gasp, I swam past him to the floor. I clutched his ankle and strained against a force I couldn’t see. His foot barely moved. But why? There was nothing holding him. I gave him the rest of the air in my lungs. He grasped my waist and throttled me back up.

  I gave myself two breaths and swam back down. His other foot was just as stuck. Did Erescopians sink or something?

  Edgar floated beside me, his spindly legs kicking a mile a minute. He bit and gnashed at unseen objects around David. I shot back up.

  When I returned, Edgar was spinning around David’s right foot, chewing at the chair David seemed attached to.

  Keep trying, buddy.

  I released my air into David’s lungs. Edgar swished up from the bottom and grappled with the sea as if the translucent fluids attacked him. Had the salinity driven him insane?

  Then I felt it—the overbearing sense of a thousand eyes focused on me, scrutinizing, judging.

  I reached for David, but the presence surged against me. The clear water turned red again and gelled. I held up my hands, but all I could see was deep, encompassing crimson. Something clicked in the back of my neck, and the red deepened, coating my eyes. I sunk toward the window, gently swaying in the passing tide … basking in the embrace of—nothing.

  I tried to move, but the goo squished past my arms. David’s eyes widened before he spiraled upward, dragged by something I couldn’t see, and disappeared.

  “David!” Thick goo invaded my mouth as I screamed. A rope tangled around my right ankle. Then my left. I tumbled back and smashed my skull as someone or something drew me out of the ship and into the sea.

  11

  I squinted and sat up, sliding my blankets down to my waist. Sunlight trickled through my bedroom curtains, casting a brilliant sheen over the cover of this month’s National Geographic.

  Wait. Why did I wake up at home?

  “David!”

  Unease crept up my spine. My mother’s old wind-up clock ticked three times from the top of my dresser. I jumped out of bed. My feet squished when I hit the carpet.

  Eww. Why was I sleeping in soaking wet sneakers? I kicked off my Nikes and massaged the raised, red welts on my feet. Ouch. What the hell was going on?

  “David!” I steadied myself as my head swam. The room shifted, rolling before becoming solid again. What was wrong with me?

  My pink sweater lay across the chair by my desk, and the mug I forgot to wash still sat atop my desk blotter. Just as I’d left it, but just as I’d left it eons ago. The room faded into a haze and refocused. A deep hum vibrated through my mind.

  I tried to shake away my fogginess. I’d been somewhere. College. When did I get home?

  “Dad!” I called.

  Not that I expected an answer. He’d be at work during the day.

  No, wait.

  David.

  David had picked me up at college. We were under water—at the bottom of the ocean. Something attacked us.

  “David!”

  The handle on my door jiggled and swung open. Matt walked in.

  “Matt? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” He closed the door behind him. “You’ve been asleep since you got home.”

  “Since I got home? What are you talking about? Where’s David? What’s going on?”

  He splayed his hands. “It’s okay. They said you might be a little disoriented.”

  I pushed him away. “Screw disoriented. This isn’t real. This isn’t my room.” But then again, it was.

  A sweet smell wafted in the window. Peanut butter.

  Peanut butter?

  The room swam again. I grabbed the edge of the bed as I lost my balance. The nutty smell intensified causing my head to throb before the pain began to fade away.

  Home. I was home. Everything was fine.

  Matt gripped my shoulders. “Let me help you sit back down.”

  I blinked until my eyes refocused on Matt’s broad smile. “M-Matt? What are you doing here?”

  “Your dad asked me to watch over you.” He fluffed the pillows behind me and helped me to lie back on the bed. “Take it easy, Slugger. You’ve been through a lot.”

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bsp; “I have?”

  His smile warmed me. “That’s what they tell me. So, how was it?”

  “How was what?”

  “You know, the whole ocean thing.”

  Ocean? I straightened. David … we’d been in the ocean. It was real.

  “Everyone’s talking about what you found. But I can’t figure out what it was. Everyone is being so secretive.”

  Mariana’s Trench. We dove, looking for … “We found it?” I blinked the sting from my eyes. “That means David is okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine. He seems happy about it all.”

  Of course he’d be happy. He’d saved the world. Again. And now he was probably off and away to Mars. “Did he ask for me?”

  “No. He’s too busy with what you brought back.”

  Of course he wouldn’t ask for me. Duty first, Jess second. But what was it that we’d found? I cuddled in to my pillows. Why couldn’t I remember?

  Matt kneeled beside the bed and leaned his elbows on my mattress. “What is it, anyway?”

  Good question. “I guess we found whatever it is that makes rain.”

  “You want to make it rain? It rains all the time.”

  “Not on Mars. They don’t have the same kinetic energy Earth does.”

  He looked to the side. His bangs shifted across his brow. “He seeks the source?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what it is. I can’t even remember finding it, or how I got home.”

  “He wants to bring the source to another planet?” Matt fingered his chin.

  “Umm, if we took it with us, then, yeah, I guess so. I don’t really know.” I rubbed my temples. “How long have I been asleep?”

  Matt’s lips twisted into a sneer. “It doesn’t matter what planet a land-dweller comes from. They are all the same.”

  Huh? “What are you talking about?”

  “You take with no intention of giving in return.”

  Whoa. Hold the farm.

  On top of my desk—the National Geographic—it was a few months old. Dad would have piled three or four more issues on top of it by now. And he never would have left that mug there if he saw it. Come to think of it, everything seemed the same. Exactly the same. This wasn’t my room. It was the memory of my room.

  I stood. “Who are you? Where am I?”

  A smile crossed his lips. The same cheesy smile from Matt’s senior-year portraits. “This is where you sleep, isn’t it?”

  I reeled in the desire to slap the smile from that fake face. “Where. Am. I? And where’s David?”

  “Demanding. Unreasonable.” His eyes darkened. “You should be released into the sea. Exterminated.”

  A mound formed in my chest and hung inside me as Not-Matt backed to the door and opened it.

  “Wait!” I ran for him as he stepped out, but Not-Matt slammed the door in my face. I banged on the frame. “Where am I? What did you do to David?”

  The tangy twist of grape jelly added to the peanut-buttery smell hanging in the air, so thick the stench clogged my lungs. I choked, slipping to the floor. Mom’s clock ticked, the sound echoing between my ears. Tired. So tired.

  My vision blurred as I leaned my head back.

  Jess!

  The door behind me buckled. Invisible hands fisted my insides and pulled me toward the bowed woodwork. The tether!

  “David!” I scrabbled to my feet. Another slam bent the frame. “I’m here!”

  The pull inside me slipped away as the wood arched and cracked before shattering. The pieces dissipated in the air like a fog.

  David stepped through, huffing.

  I jumped into his arms. “I can’t believe it! When I saw you dragging through the water I thought you were dead.”

  “It’s me, but we’re not alone. Anyone else you see is a mirage.”

  I nodded. “I saw Matt Samuels.”

  “I saw my father.” David grimaced as the door reappeared behind him. “That was a little too real. I thought I was home.”

  The silence seeping through my replicated walls pressed in on us. How could they have built these rooms so quickly? How long had we been unconscious?

  “The last thing I remember was … ” I shivered, recounting David trapped beneath the water, and our little ten-legged friend struggling to help him “Edgar! Have you seen him?”

  “I only saw the creature who I thought was my father.” Worry lines creased his brow before he turned his face away.

  For some reason I didn’t think he was concerned about Edgar. Something trickled across our bond—a feeling between shame and terror. The resonance of Sabbotaruo hung in the air between us, as if seeing someone disguised as his father had dredged up feelings he’d managed to keep down. Until now.

  But as far as I knew everything was okay between them. Something must have happened between him and his dad while David was on Mars. Something horrible.

  David returned his gaze to mine. “The man who came to my living space was trying to get information—find out why we were here. I did admit we were searching for something before I realized it wasn’t really Sabbotaruo.”

  I gulped. “I kinda spilled the beans. I told him about the source and needing rain on Mars. He didn’t sound all that happy with the idea.”

  David eased me into the crook of his neck and stroked the back of my hair. “It’s all right. I don’t think them knowing what’s going on is going to change our situation.”

  “Do you think Edgar is walled up in a room like this somewhere, thinking he’s home?”

  “Doubtful. With his sensory perception he’d have to know something wasn’t right.”

  “Do you think he’s okay?”

  “If anyone can take care of themselves, he can.”

  The curtains shifted as if taken by a soft breeze, even though there was nothing on the other side. It all looked so real. The technology behind all this might even match David’s.

  “Do you think these are the people Silver warned us about?”

  “Yes, but I’m not so sure they are as terrible as he made them out to be.” He waved his hand around my room. “Why would someone who wanted to kill us recreate all this?”

  He had a point, but a creeping sensation slithered up my spine. “Wait, why are you so calm? And why do you seem so ready to trust someone who’s lying and pumping us for information?” Please tell me I didn’t just hug a big jellyfish in disguise!

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to figure things out. We shouldn’t blindly trust Silver just because we met him first.”

  Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I took a step back. I’d felt the tether when he was breaking down the door, but it had stopped suddenly, as if erased, only seconds before he broke through.

  David’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  I hugged my shoulders. All of it—everything around me, it was way too real. It smelled real. Felt real. Too good to be true.

  This wasn’t home. I knew that, despite my surroundings. I couldn’t trust anything I saw.

  My gaze dropped over David. Perfect as always. Maybe too perfect.

  I pointed to his feet. “You’re still wearing your shoes.”

  “What?”

  “You have to be just as soaked as I was. Why don’t your feet hurt?”

  His brow twisted before he pulled off his sneakers and socks. Eight perfect, bronzed toes settled into my carpeting. Not a mark on him.

  David perused my fetid feet. “Your toes are all pink.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Why aren’t yours?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not real skin, remember?”

  I resisted the urge to tear out my hair and scream. “How do I know you’re really David?”

  “Can’t you feel me?” The colors lightened in his eyes. “I knew it was you the second I passed through the door.”

  I hugged my waist. “Yeah, well, I’m a little confused right now, and I’m not really sure of anything.”

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nbsp; David leaned down, bringing his lips to mine. Heat tingled my skin. I drank him in, allowing the essence of everything that was David to infuse me, soften me from the inside out. Tiny, loving fingers breezed through every cell, seeking out my fears and whisking them away, then infusing me with certainty. Strength. Love.

  A sigh drifted from my lips as I cuddled to his chest. Whoever created this place may be able to look like anyone they chose, but I doubted they’d be able to replicate that. My guard retreated, and I allowed my skin the luxury of his touch. But only for a moment. We were still trapped in some sort of imaginary world, and the real world still needed saving.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just scared.”

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  I leaned away from him. “So where do you think we really are?”

  “Still eight hundred-plus feet below the bottom of the trench, I’d imagine.” He picked up a magazine. “They went through a lot of trouble to make us think we weren’t at the bottom of the sea.”

  David walked to my window and tapped on the frame. “It’s sealed.”

  I opened my closet. A smile crossed my face as the heater fell out, along with the sleeping bag David had rolled himself up in the night he hid in my room. That was years ago, but I still thought of him every time I went near that closet.

  “I guess there’s no way out of here.” I turned and faced the door. Could it be as simple as just walking out? “Is it safe to assume my upstairs hallway is not on the other side?”

  “I walked right out of my own living space into yours. When I first woke up I thought I was back on my father’s military cruiser.”

  I inched toward the door. “Do you think your room is still there?” How idiotic was it that I wanted to see his home when we were trapped at the bottom of the ocean with God knows what going on between the humans and Erescopians up above? But I knew so little about David. How did he live? What was his life like before he came to Earth?

  David turned the handle. The door opened, just like it would have in my real room. He stuck his head out. “It’s still there. Do you want to see?”