AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1)

by Korn, Tracy

  "I never saw it coming…" it says in a low, singular male voice that becomes more shrill with each repeat. "I never saw it coming! I never saw it coming!"

  Its tail fin lifts, then slaps the platter beneath it, and I drop my plate to catch the scream that now spills free. I back away from the table holding my hands over my mouth to stop anymore sound, but it doesn't matter. Everyone in the line is staring at me, the marlin's eye looking again at the ceiling, cold and silent, but the voice is still loud and clear in my head.

  I never saw it coming! I never saw it coming!

  "Jazz?" At the far end of the last table, Jax's eyes flash to mine, then shoot behind me as he starts nodding. I feel hands on my shoulders steering me away from the table toward the door and jerk around to see that it's Liddick.

  "No, no...you did…you saw that. Did you hear it?" I say to him in one, heaving breath.

  "It's gone now, Jazz. It's gone," he says to me in an oddly loud voice, and then to the people staring at us at the tables as we walk past, "Tunnel rat, just nipped at her under the table and then shot out the door…" he snaps his fingers for everyone, "…eel-quick." I suck in a breath to protest, but he pulls me into him hard and fast by my ribs, and the air is forced out of me. "Didn't even make a hole in your shoe, see? It's gone, let's just get some air, Jazz," he says too loudly, and pushes the wide screen doors open when we get to them. The rush of cool sea air hits me, and the hollow tinkling of the shells at the entryway muffles behind me as the surf grows louder the closer we get to it. At the water's edge, I shake loose from his grip, which I realize has been holding me up as my knees buckle under me. I catch myself and round on him.

  "Wait, stop," he says, holding up his hand, then takes a quick step toward me and grips my shoulder. "We have exactly eight seconds before your brother and Hart get out here, so listen. I saw it too—the marlin. I heard it too."

  "Then wh—"

  "Because no one else did, Jazz, think. You were the only one who tweaked in there. If anyone else saw that don't you think they'd be screaming too?" he asks, and after a second to process, I nod. "So it's something else, and we can figure out what that is later tonight, but for now you have to tell them you saw a rat and go back in there so everyone can get through this night, do you understand?" he says, gripping both my shoulders now until I nod again.

  "We need to talk about this," I insist, and now it's his turn to nod. He looks over his shoulder at the sound of the community center doors closing behind Arco, who is making his way toward us with Jax.

  "Meet me in front of your complex at eleven, when the dome light changes to blue, all right? They're coming. Rub your leg or something." Liddick loosens his grip as I kick off my shoe and bend down, pretending to examine my foot. Jax reaches us first with Arco just a few steps behind.

  "What was that? Nann won't get off her chair now," Jax says. Arco pushes past him and steps in front of Liddick, forcing him back. He's a few inches taller, but Liddick matches his broad, lean build and wouldn't have been so easily displaced if he didn't want to be. I straighten up and scrub my hands over my face, then take the deepest breath I can.

  "Here, sip this," Arco says, holding a cup of something pink in front of me.

  "I'm fine, it was just a rat. It bit my foot," I say, taking the cup. "Thanks."

  "Bit you? Do you need the medi-droid?" Arco says, taking another step toward me trying to look for damage.

  "No, it's fine. It didn't break through my shoe." I slide my foot back in and shake out the sand through the slats in the side.

  "You wouldn't have tweaked like that over a tunnel rat. What really happened?" Jax says, looking up from under his dark, drawn brows from me to Liddick.

  "It was a big, scrappy, black tunnel rat, chief. Crite, even I almost screamed," Liddick laughs. "Can we go eat now?"

  "Yeah, let's go in. Everyone is waiting in there for us, and we just have tonight," I say, but Arco and Jax don't move. I try not to look them in the eye because I'm no good at hiding anything, especially from them. For the first time in my life, I wish I were more like Liddick, who can adapt to any situation.

  Jax gives me a hard look, and I know that if I stay out here much longer, he'll figure out for sure there was no rat, so I just start walking back toward the door to the community center. Liddick falls in behind me, cutting off Arco and Jax. They both catch up in a few strides, and we all walk in together to find everyone talking and eating again. Only a few people look up at us as Jax and Arco maneuver to our table around people returning with plates of food to their own, and Arco takes hold of my elbow as Liddick leans in and whispers quickly to me.

  "Ask Hart to get you a plate or something, and then go sit with your brother. Stay away from the marlin." He starts walking in the opposite direction, then looks back over his shoulder to make sure I've heard. I nod. "Eleven," he mouths, and disappears into the crowd as Arco, Jax, and I sit down with Ellis, Avis, Quinn, and Fraya.

  "I'll be right back," Arco says, and heads up to the food tables before I can ask him anything with everyone fawning all over me. He returns with a plate of pear slices and soup for me, but I'm not even hungry anymore. Jax has somehow already managed to eat half the food on his plate, and as my mind settles back into reality, the thought of him exploding six kinds of fish all over everyone makes a bubble of laughter start in my stomach.

  "Are you sure the rat didn't bite through your shoe? You look beached," Fraya says to me from across the table, her wide blue eyes scanning my face from under her mane of auburn hair.

  "No, it didn't. I'm fine," I say, and force a smile. She smiles back, but her forehead wrinkles in concern.

  "You are pretty pasty, though," Avis says, swallowing a bite of pie.

  "Just hungry," I say, then feel ice in my veins as I see Vox Dyer's yellow eyes on me from across the room.

  CHAPTER 10

  Last Sunset

  Everyone disperses just before the sun sets, all the hugs and congratulations well distributed, and we all begin walking along the beach to our complex, my mother and Jax a few steps ahead of me with Nann fast asleep in Jax's arms and Fraya at his side with her family. I look around for Vox again, having lost sight of her just minutes after I caught her staring at me at the table. I exhale and listen to the surf hitting the beach rhythmically, making me yawn, but refuse to let my eyes close because I don't want to miss any of this last sunset. I wrap my arms around myself against the breeze and try to sort everything out—what it means to be leaving in the morning, and whatever that was back there with the fish…

  "Hope that yawn doesn't mean you're planning to stand me up tonight," Liddick says, appearing at my shoulder. I jump, and a burst of adrenaline hits my bloodstream.

  "Safe to say I'm awake now," I say, smiling. "Liddick, what was—" I start, but he interrupts me, angling his head back at Arco, who is right behind us listening to Avis yammer on about something with both of their families surrounding them.

  "This is the last one of these we'll see," Liddick says, tilting his head toward the sunset once he realizes I understand. I take a deep breath, resigned to wait until later to talk about what happened back there.

  "I've been trying to tell people that all day," I say.

  "You know there's only one script today, Rip," he says, lowering his voice and eyes to the sand beneath our feet. "You know the world would come apart otherwise." He smiles to one side, and I sigh.

  "I know."

  We walk silently like this for several more yards watching the sun slide down the sky, and we eventually slow to a stop at the edge of the saw grass that lines the winding path to my complex as my mother, Jax, and Nann head inside.

  "So, I'll see you in an hour?" I ask as we stand watching the horizon.

  "If you can manage to stay awake." Liddick slips his hands into his pockets and shoots me a grin.

  "I'll be there," I say, neither of us quite ready to tear our gaze from the setting sun.

  ***

  Liddick leaves not lo
ng after Arco approaches with Avis and their families, and Arco lingers as the others go inside.

  "Staying out here awhile?" he asks. "It's an early morning tomorrow."

  "No, I'm coming in. Last night with everyone and all," I answer. He nods, then turns to head inside.

  "See you in the morning then," he says with a half smile, then abruptly turns back around. "Jazz—" he starts, but then changes his mind about whatever he was going to say, opting instead just to raise his eyebrows and nod. "It really will be OK."

  "I know. Thanks, Arco."

  He nods one more time before heading through the door, and I watch him disappear up the flight of stairs that leads to his family's habitat. I turn back around just in time to see the last of the sun disappear into the water, the orange and pink sky fading to purple.

  When I come in, my mother has already put Nann to bed. She hugs Jax and me through a yawn, and quietly tells us again how proud she is before heading to bed herself. She looks exhausted, and I wonder if she slept at all last night in anticipation of today. Jax has eaten so much that it doesn't take long for him to fall asleep, and I'm left with the sound of the waves for company as I stare out my bedroom window and wait for the dome light of Gaia to change from red, signifying high tide, to blue, the beginning of the water's recession. When we all head to the shuttle in the morning, we'll be able to see the whole brilliantly lit dome again instead of just that light, and it's hard to believe it was just this morning when I saw it last.

  After I'm sure everyone is asleep, I slip out the door and head down to the shore in front of the complex. I look down the beach and see that it's dark, not even one of the fires that usually light the Fisher clan's docks is lit, and I wonder if they are all gathered somewhere for a separate, additional ceremony or sendoff for Joss, who will board the shuttle with the rest of us in the morning. The red light on the water dims for a second, then begins to glow again as blue, and I look around for Liddick. He is nowhere to be found until he is right behind me, and I nearly swallow my tongue on the gasp, having no idea where he came from.

  "What are you, a selkie?" I ask, only halfway kidding that he's one of the Fisher's sneaky myths.

  "Too blond for that," he smirks, and tries to skip a stone over the black water that we can only see in sparkles against the backdrop of the starry sky, which makes it look like we're floating in outer space. I pick up a stone and try to skip it, but it just hits the water with a plunk.

  "Liddick, what happened tonight? How did that fish move and talk like that, and why are we the only ones who saw it?" I ask, feeling as if I've been holding my breath all day.

  "Slow down, Riptide," he laughs, using the nickname he's called me since we were kids again, and throws another stone on the water. "Come on," he says, turning to walk toward the dune just up the beach.

  "So start with one question then—why just us?" I ask as we walk.

  His hands dive into his pockets as he looks down at the sand and takes a deep breath, then blows it out. The breeze coming off the water sweeps up in a gust and sends his wavy, sun-streaked hair off his forehead. He lifts his chin against the gale, and for a second, I get the impression he's actually trying to see which of them will back down first.

  "It's not the first time I've heard something like that," he says. "And it's not the first time I've seen something come to life like that to tell it to me," he continues, still staring down the wind. In a few steps we reach the foot of the small dune and start climbing to the top.

  "What? How long?" I ask between steps.

  "It started happening about a year after Liam left for Gaia—whenever I'd jack into a virtuo-cine after that, I'd get something. At first, these random objects or people would tell me names, coordinates, phrases like 'don't go,' 'no more water,' just things that didn't make sense in the plot, but then I started to put it together," he says, extending his hand down to me from the top of the dune.

  "Wait, that would have been years ago. This has been happening to you for years, and you've never said anything about it? I can't close my eyes and not see that fish all over again."

  "Wouldn't have done any good to say anything—no one else ever saw or heard it," he says, sitting down and resting his forearms on his knees after he picks a long, narrow blade of sawgrass. "So, I started trying to talk back to it, and when that didn't do anything, I started looking for some people who could help me figure out what it was."

  "But you just said you wouldn't tell anyone because no one else could see or hear it," I say, bringing my knees up to my chest against the wind.

  "Well, I figured out that if you pay someone enough, it doesn't matter if they believe you—they'll help you."

  "It couldn't have been anyone around here who helped you—everyone else would have found out in a minute."

  "No, it was at Skyboard, at least at first," he says, and I nod, not surprised that he has connections as often as he's been up there the last several years. "I started talking to the cinematics crews, story-boarders mainly, and got some names that led to other names, and eventually found a guy who had the tech to help."

  "What did he do?"

  "Got me a frequency meter," he says. "That picked up the separate transmission waves and confirmed I wasn't losing my mind, and once I knew that…" he tosses the blade of saw grass and shrugs. "I was just angry. What kind of prank was someone playing, you know? I've made a lot of important friends, but I've made enemies too."

  "So if it's someone's idea of a joke on you, why am I seeing and hearing it now too?"

  "I never said that someone was playing a joke, Rip. It's just the possibility that made me angry enough to find out."

  "Did you find out?"

  "Yeah," he says, and looks down at the sand. "It's Liam."

  "Liam? Why would he play a joke on you like that?"

  "It's not a joke," he adds, turning to look at me now. "He's gone, Jazz."

  "What do you mean gone? He just started as a biodesigner in Skyboard. See all those lights up there?" I say, pointing to the twinkling mountain in the distance.

  "That's not my brother," he says, looking out onto the water toward a horizon that we can't see.

  "Who then?"

  "I don't know." He picks another piece of saw grass, then suddenly chuckles to himself. "Once he chased me up this dune when we were playing as kids. I fell and clipped a rock on the way down, gouged my eye right here," he says, pushing back his hair to reveal a thin white scar line running through his left eyebrow. "I was only nine and he was 13. It wouldn't stop bleeding, and pretty soon I got so scared I started tweaking and telling him I was going to bleed to death," he says around another laugh. "The only way he could get me to stop was to go pick up another rock and cut his own eyebrow in the same place," he adds, looking sideways at me, wide-eyed. "He just held his hair back with one hand and cut his eyebrow with the other; can you believe that? And then he just said, 'See, I'm not going to bleed to death, and neither are you, so let's just hold it together until we get home.'" Liddick tosses the other piece of shredded saw grass away, then continues, "So he pinched his eyebrow closed, and I pinched mine the way he showed me, and we walked home like that. The medi-droid came as soon as our mom sent for it, it sewed us both up, and we had this matching scar after that. It was like this thing for us, you know? Just hold it together until we get home."

  "Liddick…"

  "Anyway, so the first time I saw him in person after we were told they stationed him in Skyboard last month, his scar was gone."

  "But he's in biodesign now; he probably just fixed it."

  "No, he wouldn't have fixed that scar," he says, looking back down to the sand, then shaking his head a second later as if he'd asked himself one more time if it could have been possible. "I don't know who that is, but it's not Liam. He wouldn't see me anymore after that first time I went up—too busy, out on remote call—it all made sense then."

  "Do you know where he really is?"

  "Not yet. But I have people working
on it."

  "I just can't believe it," I say, stunned as I lean into him, shuddering a little at the sudden gust of wind. He puts his arm around me, and this heavy feeling I've had for days starts to feel a little lighter.

  "I'll figure it out one way or another," he says in the face of another gust of wind, then turns to me over his shoulder and motions with his chin for us to walk. We get up and dust off, then head down the hill.

  "You know, you never really told me about your interview," I call after him, and once we clear the foot of the hill without any new facial trauma, he starts talking again.

  "I said they were like my people, Styx, Plume, and the dragon lady, but it's like they just wanted me to feel like that. They kept making these little comments about people not trying, about being comfortable in mediocrity, then asked me if I had any attachments, about my brothers, about what I thought about going to Gaia. I told them what they wanted to hear: that Seaboard North wasn't really my scene, and they seemed interested in that, especially that sally with the hair."

  "Rheen?"

  "That's her," he said, and raised his wrist. "We talked about what was my scene—getting out in the world, seeing different places and meeting new people, doing something that changes how everyone thinks, you know? She cuffed this on me then, and that was it."

  "That sounds just like my interview, but everyone else had some kind of situational test—everyone I've talked to anyway, except maybe Jax. I can't believe I haven't talked to him about his interview yet," I say, mainly to myself. "I'll have to ask him about his on the shuttle tomorrow."

  "His was rough, and almost the same as Ellis's. Sarin's and Myra's were similar, too, just like yours and mine," Liddick says, bending down to scoop up another stone to throw. "I talked to him on the walk back from the shuttle. There was a hospital where some patients had lost limbs and were being fitted with repros that had been grown from their own cells. He had to mix their biotechnics so their bodies wouldn't reject them."