AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1)

by Korn, Tracy

  "Nanotechnics!" Ellis jabs Avis in the arm in his excitement. "Stabilizers are just one class down from hemo-rovers." Avis raises an eyebrow under a wing of blue-edged black hair.

  "Huh?"

  "Blood bots. Crite, don't you read?" Ellis rolls his eyes.

  "I don't read about blood bots. What are you talking about?" Avis answers, weaving in his seat and starting to look a little green.

  Exasperated, Ellis sighs in disgust and begins sawing the air with his hands as he explains. "They repair your cells, change them. The State just released clinical trial results of a woman in a Gaia homestead who is 106 years old and looks 30—feels 30, and do you know why?" Ellis bounces his knees as my ears begin to pop. "Because all of her cells are 30, or at least, they've been repaired to that point." Avis looks on, chewing his lip as the hydraulics stop humming. We must be in the water now.

  "So when an organ wears out, they synth it; what's new about that?" Avis asks.

  "It's not just synthesizing organs that give out. Rovers create A-sym patches." Sarin closes her eyes and leans her head against the back of her seat while Fraya and Avis stare blankly at Ellis. He shakes his head and continues. "OK, look, these nanotechnic cells read the compromised cells around them—cancers, viruses, damaged, whatever, then mask themselves to look the same so they can get close enough to—are you ready for this?" he says, holding his palms out. "They hunt down, then consume the cells that are compromised, and then, then..." he straightens his arms as if to hold off someone rushing him. "They extrapolate the DNA from what's left of the cells and use it to regenerate healthy new cells that then bridge the hole they've just made in the organ, bone, muscle...whatever, all by cannibalizing the corrupted ones! Isn't that fierce?" Ellis sucks in the breath he's been delaying with the deluge of information he's just spilled all over everyone. Avis raises his chin, juts out his lower lip, and nods his approval.

  "Cannibalize?" Myra asks, raising her eyebrows. "So those things are inside of us right now? Little machines eating our blood cells? We're full of little machines right now?"

  "I'm sure they're just helpers," Joss says, trying to comfort her.

  "Right, they can't hurt us. They fix us, and anyway they didn't inject us with Rovers. The announcement said stabilizers. Those just read the air pressure in nasal cavities, lungs, eardrums, and basically adjust it to meet what's pressing in on us from outside," Ellis replies, rolling his eyes again at everyone else's general lack of understanding.

  "That's disgusting," Sarin cuts in, her eyes open now. "How do we get them out of us?"

  "Aren't you listening? They're stabilizers. Do you want your insides to implode down here?" Ellis asks, and Sarin goes a little green again.

  "What?" Myra's eyes manage to open even wider at Ellis, but Joss says something into her ear, which seems to help.

  "Nothing is imploding, don't worry," Ellis says to her, but she doesn't seem any more relaxed. "Sarin, they just put them in. They're not coming out. Done deal," he says as Sarin lowers her chin, narrowing her eyes at him.

  "I mean how do we get them out eventually," she speaks slowly and overly enunciates like Ellis needs time to reprocess the question. It's a good thing for her face that I'm strapped into this chair.

  "Do you think we're going on vacation or something? We're probably never coming back, Sarin. Ever," I say, and notice that my hands are gripping the straps of my seatbelt.

  "Mind your own business, chutz," she sneers again, this time at me, and the seatbelt edges bite into my palms.

  "Why don't you tell me that again when we're not strapped down," I say, pressing into the restraints.

  "Somebody's ready for a fight," Avis beams, the rising color in his cheeks now starting to push back the green. I clench my jaw and cut him a look. "Hey, innocent bystander here!" he says, holding up both of his hands.

  "It's just the nanites; they can cause irritability. Did anyone listen to the announcement?" Ellis helpfully reminds everyone as Sarin and I both glare at him.

  "I don't feel right," Fraya says, and lets her head fall back against her seat. My own head starts to spin, then feels heavy in the base of my skull. I lean back and close my eyes, waiting for the sensation to pass, but it doesn't.

  "And the bots are off to work," Ellis says. His voice is slower and quieter now. I open one eye to look at the people nearest to me, who are all leaning their heads back, all except one who is awake, yellow eyes wide open and staring at me…Vox?

  ***

  I wake up to the female voice on the intercom, but can't make out what she's saying because my head not only seems heavy now, but also muffled. It feels like there's a weight on my chest when I try to breathe, and when I turn to look around, my eyes have to catch up with the motion. I rub them to try to wake up more, but it doesn't help.

  "Don't bother with all that," Ellis says. "The lag feeling will go away once you get used to it. It's the pressurization. It's the same for breathing. Heavy, isn't it?"

  "Why?" Myra asks."Did she say we can unclip?"

  "The air pressure in your lungs, nasal cavities, and ear canals has been adjusted to the same pressure at this depth. We'll probably all have headaches for the next few days," Ellis says.

  "This trip just keeps getting better and better," Sarin adds, and I don't even have the energy to roll my eyes at her.

  Ms. Rheen, Mr. Styx, and Ms. Plume enter from the long corridor and smile at everyone.

  "We trust you have had a pleasant trip. If you will please finish detaching from your seats and follow us, we will get you settled in," Ms. Rheen says, and I look around for Vox, but she's no longer there.

  CHAPTER 15

  Arrival

  My legs feel like they are filled with sand as I try to shuffle out with the rest of our group. Vox has disappeared again, and I hope that means they either pulled her off the sub, or she's somewhere far ahead because I don't trust her behind us after that stunt with the matter board.

  "You OK?" Jax says, now at my side.

  "Yeah, just groggy," I answer, rubbing my eyes with my knuckles. "What do you think the malfunction is with Vox?" I ask. He shakes his head like he's just smelled something bad.

  "She's just unstable. She can't be stupid, or she wouldn't be here."

  "Liddick thinks she was trying to impress you."

  "Me? Why?" he says, his dark brows shooting up.

  "Because she's into you."

  "I've barely talked to her!" he laughs.

  "Must be all your animal magnetism shining through," I say, nudging him in the ribs with my shoulder.

  "Well, you know..." he says, thumbing lapels he doesn't have as a grin spreads across his face. Fraya falls in behind us, and he straightens up. I sigh audibly as he narrows his eyes at me.

  "You're such a reed," I whisper, and shake my head at him bending himself into a coil as he shoos me ahead.

  The corridor spills into the galley, and my eyes go straight to the matter board. The mess we left in here has been cleaned, but I can't stop scanning the group for Vox. I finally see her rivers of arm tattoos first, then the bold lines on her throat near the back of the room where she's walking by herself. Everyone gives her plenty of space, and I don't blame them. It won't be long before people at this new school know about her, and if the students at Gaia are anything like the rest of us, it's going to be a lonely life for Vox.

  As if she hears this thought in my head, she looks up and scowls at me. The bridge of her tattooed nose wrinkling like a wolf about to snap, and I turn around as fast as I can. Crite, please don't order up some kind of nitrogen bomb or biotoxin in the eight seconds it's going to take us to get up these stairs and off this sub.

  The top of the narrow stairwell is a wash of hazy white emanating from the banked lights near the molding around the ceiling. When we're all through the connecting corridor, we are directed to sit on a long, metallic bench that wraps along the edge of a softly lit gray room that bows out to the left before us. A cylindrical metal lectern faces the
bench, and we stare down three hallways that branch out on the other side of it.

  "Cadets! Welcome to Gaia. Please, take a seat," Ms. Rheen says coming through one of the hallways on the other side of the lectern in a blinding glare of white jumpsuit instead of her uniform, the short sheath of hair skimming her cheekbones in stark contrast as she raises her arms to us and takes a position behind the lectern.

  The bench isn't cold like I expect when I run my hand over the smooth seat and up the wall, which, at my touch, suddenly fades end to end to reveal a window that stretches the length of the room. My breath catches in my throat when I see that it's water on the other side, top to bottom and as far as forever. Strange tube-like fish startle, then begin floating in different directions in the diffused midnight blue light, the source of which seems to be coming from the building we're in. Can I even call it a building? Are we in another vessel, or is this a fixed place? I wonder.

  While everyone filters in around me, more quickly now that I've somehow tripped the window covering, I look down and see perimeter lights on the ocean floor, which is several feet below us. Pillars of jagged rock form a small wall about 30 feet from the base of the structure we're in, and beyond that I see the outline of a tall column that stretches up and up, a continuous strip of seamless windows running the length of the building, which is dark in some places and translucent in others. I can't see with any detail into the translucent areas, only that there is light coming from inside. Beyond this the thickening haze of the water conceals the details of another column structure like the one in the foreground, and in the middle, a smaller cylindrical structure built up on long, thin beams, is also surrounded by lights. This must be a similar building to the one we are in now, based on what I can see outside of ours.

  The noise level in the room rises with everyone at the window chattering, but then we hear the timber of a single bell toll. We turn and see Ms. Rheen smiling, waiting for our attention at the lectern. She's a tall, spindly woman now that I get a good look at her standing, especially next to the stocky, hawk-faced older woman also dressed in white with her black hair pulled into a Sarin-like bun who has now joined her. Ms. Rheen clears her throat a few times, and we start to quiet down.

  "On behalf of the entire Gaia Sur staff, we welcome you to the matriculation wing of the campus. I'm sure that you are curious about the community here, the architecture, and of course, the security," Rheen says, sliding her long, slim, red-tipped fingers along the side of the lectern as she talks. "You and the other nearly 3,000 students on campus at any given time are the next phase of societal evolution. As your history tablets have told you, the Gaia Sur campuses, our homestead initiative, as well as the global relocation of government buildings to the ocean floor have been instrumental in combating the air quality and overcrowding issues faced by topside citizens in just the last 80 years."

  "Combating it for them," Vox says under her breath, and I glare at her.

  "Please also know that you are completely safe here. Thanks to port-cloud technology, our buildings have been printed with Carboderm synthetics right onto the seafloor, and are therefore pressure sound. We have never lost a student to environmental hazards in our nearly eight decades of operation," Rheen adds. A few people exhale and begin to murmur, but Rheen doesn't pause long enough for it to get beyond that before motioning to the sharp faced older woman standing beside her. "This is Ms. Karo, our chief medical consult. At the conclusion of this welcome address, you will follow her to the medical bay for screening, processing, and if needed, inoculations. From there, you will be shown to your new facilities. Are there any questions?" She pauses, and I look around the room. No hands raise, which I can't believe. Why does anyone need to be inoculated down here? I put my hand in the air to find out. "Yes, Miss Ripley," Rheen says, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that she knows my name.

  "Why do we need to be inoculated? Can't these nano-things we were just given kill anything we contract?"

  She gives me a long stare, long enough that I notice she hasn't blinked, and then draws in a breath before answering.

  "I'm sure you will understand, Miss Ripley, that we must be diligent in maintaining equilibrium to the best of our ability here at Gaia. Foreign contaminants are a preventable threat, and we find it is more efficient to be proactive rather than reactive," she says, her tone flat and rehearsed as she drums her red nails gently on the side of the lectern.

  "Are those our dorms?" Myra asks, twisting in her seat to look out the window.

  "Yes. The tall structures you see outside are the dormitories, and the smaller structures in between these areas are the classrooms and the commons areas," she says, as more people begin taking seats along the wrapping bench. "We are located approximately 5,000 meters beneath the surface, just beyond the continental shelf—the edge of the Abyssal Plain. There are no regular shuttles from the Gaia campus to the surface, but as many of you are aware, you may schedule port-calls with your family and friends six times per year once your three-month matriculation period is complete. Now, if you will all please follow Ms. Karo to our med-bay."

  Rheen steps out from behind the podium and extends an open palmed hand in the direction of Ms. Karo, whose face is expressionless as she turns and walks toward a lighted room just beyond the wall of windows and toward the hazy column of buildings that jut out from the ocean floor.

  ***

  The med-bay is a deceptively small room with three beds along the wall closest to the entry on our right. A long metal table with a panel hovering next to it sits in the middle of the room, and next to this, a standalone white archway to the left.

  "Please walk single file through the arch and stop when the light turns green," Ms. Karo says to Ellis, who is first in line. He passes through the arch, and stops as directed when it lights up. The green light travels in a beam from the floor up to his head and then back down again as a screen with a keyboard and several buttons appears in the air. Ms. Karo taps something into it, and as soon as she stops, a syringe extends from a section of the arch to connect with Ellis's arm.

  "What's in that?" He asks as he flinches.

  "Please remain still. These are standard medical nanotechnics and inoculations. You will feel a slightly cold sensation at the vaccine's point of entry," Ms. Karo purses her lips as he winces silently in the wake of compressed air being released and hydraulics pulling back the arm of the syringe. When the green light turns off, Ellis looks at Ms. Karo, who nods at him.

  "Thank you. You may wait outside until you are escorted to your dorm," she says. Ellis exits, rubbing his upper arm.

  "This shouldn't take too long," I say to Jax, who stands behind me. "And it doesn't look too painful."

  "No, seems routine enough," he studies the scanning machine as Vox passes through the arch. The green light stops at her neck and turns red, and Ms. Karo taps at the floating panel. The robotic syringe deploys and injects something into Vox's arm with a small explosion of air. The light turns green again and finishes its pass downward, then back to the top of her head. She receives another injection just as Ellis had before Ms. Karo waves her on.

  "Thank you. You may wait outside until you are escorted to your dorm," she says, and Vox turns to exit. Her eyes meet mine as if she's been searching for me, but I refuse to look away from that wolf-like face again. As she gets closer to me she narrows her eyes. I narrow mine back at her, but still, she doesn't turn away.

  "Dog, what is wrong with you anyway?" Sarin's voice leaps over my shoulder and spins me around to see that she's standing just a few feet back. Vox's eyes rip away from mine and fix on Sarin.

  "Did you just call me dog?" Vox's words are slow and sharpened at the corners. She stops walking and squares off in front of Sarin.

  "I did, but apparently I was wrong since dogs have excellent hearing. Haven't you caused enough trouble for one day? Just move on and stop eye-jacking everyone in line. In case you haven't noticed, you're not making friends here, Fringe."


  Sarin's voice is a needle threading through each word, fixing it in place. Vox's mouth smears to one side as she lowers her chin and looks up at Sarin from behind those arrows down the bridge of her nose. I can almost hear the growling.

  "Move on," Jax says to her from behind me, and her expression changes from one where I half expect her to bare her teeth to one of shock. "No one wants anymore trouble today; we're tired. Aren't you tired?"

  We haven't been at Gaia long, so I am surprised to notice that I am actually tired. It must have something to do with the nanotechnics in our blood messing with the oxygen. That, or possibly almost being disintegrated by an animal that only exists in virtuo-reality cines, and let's not forget being knocked unconscious for a handful of hours while simultaneously being sucked into the belly of the ocean. I suppose that will put you on your butt.

  Vox doesn't look at Sarin again before she makes her way to the door, and I hope this is the last I'll ever have to see of her. My scan comes through clean, no red flags for an extra injection of anything, and I breathe a sigh of relief. The injection actually doesn't hurt so much as it sends a cold blast through my arm, then a prickling sensation.

  "Thank you, please step outside and receive your room assignment," Ms. Karo says through lips that wrinkle along the edges, and I turn to walk back through the door.

  "Name, please?" A blue disc hovers in the air and speaks to me as I pass.

  "What?" I say more in disbelief than actual inquiry.

  "Please tell me your name, cadet," the disc says again.

  "Oh, Jazwyn Ripley." I say, but can't believe I'm talking to a floating light circle. I reach out to touch it and am startled back when it suddenly speaks again.