AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1)

by Korn, Tracy

  "Wh—?" I say, double checking to make sure my foot isn't on the pedal.

  "I disabled your controls. I'm sorry, Jazz, but we have to go."

  CHAPTER 38

  Cave and Consequences

  "We can't leave them, Arco! Go back!" I yell, but he doesn't answer. "Jax, tell him!" I look at our console to make sure the green light is on. It is, but he still doesn't answer. "Jax!"

  "He's out of range—50 yards, remember?" The dull buzzing gets louder and louder until I can feel it in my teeth. I sink into my seat and close my eyes, focusing everything I can on Vox. I can't feel Fraya anymore.

  Vox, if you want to be an explorer that's on you, but Fraya doesn't know what she's doing. Bring her out! I yell in my mind, but she doesn't answer me, and now I can only see the undulating, shrinking mass in our rear display. If Vox can't hear me, maybe…Ms. Reynolt—Vox and Fraya are stuck...Ms. Reynolt! But there's no reply from her either. "Vox!!" I yell out loud.

  I never saw it coming...I hear in my head and begin to breathe a sigh of relief until I realize it's not Vox or Ms. Reynolt's voice. It's the marlin again—the exact same voice, the exact same fear from the port-festival, from my session with Ms. Plume. Dad?

  The Stingray jumps, and I jerk against my seatbelt.

  "Did you hear that?" Arco says, his face blanched as his eyebrows crash together.

  "You heard it too? The marlin?" I say, shocked. "That was the marlin! I think that was my dad, Arco! Turn my controls—!" I start to shout, but a distant squeal pierces my eardrum and cuts me off.

  Going down...try...code...I hear Vox in between the peals of high-pitched sound.

  Vox! I yell to her inside my head, but hear the marlin respond instead.

  I never saw it coming before…refused…Denison's...I squeeze my eyes shut to focus, but my concentration is broken at the sound of Liddick's voice flooding our Stingray.

  "Denison's what!?" he yells through the comms, and I press my ears closed as hard as I can.

  Vox! Going down to try what code? What code, Vox? I think.

  ...come back…maybe vent. I will se—transmiss—ook for Liam.

  Vox! I can't hear you.VOX!

  But she's gone, and so is the marlin's—my father's—message.

  "Spaulding, how far are you from the hatch?" Arco asks over the comms.

  "Closing in—10 yards."

  "Copy, right behind you," Arco says, then hits the comms light so it turns off. "Jazz, listen, we—"

  "Arco, it took them!" I yell. "It took them and it's your fault!" The words are out of my mouth before I realize I've said them, and Arco's eyebrows pull in as he sets his jaw before he talks again.

  "What took them? How do you know?"

  "She told me! They're going down in that cave!"

  "All right, all right, relax…she said the marlin took them?" he asks, taking a deep breath and holding one hand up in front of me.

  "No! Something about a code to come back, and she's going to do something with a transmission, and something about a vent. She said Liam's name."

  "She's with Liam?"

  "I don't know! That's all she said because you made us pull away," I say, my heart pounding against my ribs as the Leviathan ramp comes into sight.

  "OK, listen to me. Did Vox tell you they were going down a vent?" he asks, maneuvering the Stingray up the hatch.

  "I don't know!" I shout.

  "All right, all right. Let's just get inside. The buzzing is gone for me—is yours gone? Jazz?" I don't answer him as we launch our helmets and seal the control panel behind us before opening the Stingray hatch and jumping into the water. We swim to the floor door of the moon pool, which is filling with milky, shimmering water. I follow Arco up the stairs and climb out, retracting my helmet. "Hold your breath, and don't let the disinfectant get into your mouth," he says, gesturing to the opaque water in the moon pool. His hands grip my waist to help lift me out at the top of the steps, then he pulls me into him. I start to push against his chest, too angry for this, and feel his heart pounding against my hand as he suddenly jerks away from me. Jax has grabbed him, and before I can scream for him to stop, he rears back and punches Arco, who falls to the ground, completely taken off guard. Jax leans down and grabs the front of his dive suit and hauls him back to his feet only to punch him again.

  "Jax! Stop!" I yell, and rush to push him off.

  "Ripley!" Liddick yells at Jax and rushes over with Ellis, Tieg and Avis, and it takes all four of them to pull him from Arco. Myra rushes over to me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  "You left her there!" The words tear from Jax's throat as he breaks away from the other boys and rears back for another punch. Arco rolls out of the way before Jax can hit him again and sweeps Jax's legs, making him crash to the ground. Arco gets to his feet and wipes his bleeding mouth on the back of his hand as Jax springs up, but Liddick and Tieg lock up his arms and hold him back. In our entire lives, I have never seen him this angry.

  "I didn't have a choice!" Arco yells. "Did you want that thing to take Jazz too?"

  "Where are they? Where did it take her!" Jax yells, lunging toward Arco as Liddick and Tieg continue holding him back while Avis moves in front of him and pushes back on his chest. "Where did it take her!"

  "I don't know!" Arco yells back after wiping his mouth again.

  "Jazz, did you hear it? You heard what it said?" Liddick asks, the color high in his cheeks as he struggles against Jax.

  "We both heard it,"Arco answers, bracing his hands on his knees and closing his eyes.

  "Heard what? We didn't hear anything—Zone, man!" Tieg says, knocking hard against Jax's shoulder like an opposing G-ball lineman so he stops driving forward.

  "Get off me!" Jax says, shuffling out from Liddick's and Tieg's grip. "What did you hear?" he shouts, his chest heaving.

  "It's a long story," Arco says, spitting, then wiping his mouth on the back of his hand again.

  "You have about five seconds before I start beating it out of you," Jax replies, taking a step toward Arco. I cross in front of him and give him a hard look as I hold up my hands.

  "You need to take a breath," I say, watching the muscles in his jaw work and his dark eyes blaze, but he stops when he registers that I'm in front of him.

  "They're not coming up on the sonar," Ellis says, frantically switching from one screen on the wall panel to another as Tieg and Liddick walk Jax back by the shoulders to the wall.

  "Where did she go, Jazz? What did Vox say?" Liddick says over his shoulder, his palm now pressed flat to Jax's chest as Tieg brings a chair for him.

  "I told you we don't know. Just give everyone a minute," Arco replies, pushing off his knees and straightening up.

  "We don't have a minute, Hart. That thing said Denison's name," Liddick says, his voice straining with new effort to contain Jax, who throws the chair out from behind him.

  "Do I look like I want to sit down?" he snarls at Tieg, then pushes Liddick out from in front of him. "What are you talking about? What said something about Denison?" Jax asks Arco through clenched teeth.

  "What's going on?" Ellis asks as Tieg moves again to help Liddick with Jax, who has started advancing on Arco again. Myra wraps her arms around herself next to me, her fear crushing my chest. I put my arm around her and pull her in.

  Arco blows out a breath. "All right, but not here. Everyone else will be back any minute. Put these suits back in the bags, and we'll talk about all this in the Records room tonight."

  "If you think I'm just going to—" Jax yells, trying to push toward Arco again, but Tieg shoves a broad shoulder into his chest, knocking the wind out of him to hold him in place.

  "This isn't helping anything," Tieg says in a low voice close to Jax's ear, his patience fading. Jax is so angry his eyes fill with tears as he shoves Tieg with both hands, nearly knocking him down, then takes a few steps back until he turns to face the wall, bracing himself against it with his forearms as he lowers his head.

  "It's complicated,
and we don't have time right now. Just hang up your suit and meet in Records after dinner tonight, please," Arco says. Jax doesn't move at first, but then jerks the cord at his shoulder to release the torso closure of his suit. The back panel falls to his waist, and he stands upright, pushing his hands through his hair without turning around again as he pulls out of his sleeves. The other boys look at each other, then at Arco as they begin removing their suits, evidently having decided that Jax is no longer on a homicidal rampage. Arco turns back to me and raises his eyebrows, his eyes pleading. "Jazz…"

  "Don't," is all I say before I turn away from him and begin struggling to take off my own suit. Myra squeezes my shoulder with one hand, then crosses over to the suit wall with the others, giving them a wide berth. When she's clear, Arco walks up behind me and pulls the cord behind my neck, which makes the torso of my suit fall open in the back. Without turning around, I slide my arms out, letting the sleeves fall at my waist. My jumpsuit underneath is damp and sticking to me, but I don't care—my head is pounding, and I don't even know where to begin trying to understand everything that's just happened in the last hour.

  "Jazz, I'm sorry about the controls, but I couldn't risk it. I had to get you out of there," Arco says, but I'm still too angry with him to reply. "All right, well, if you're going to hate me over this, you're just going to have to hate me because I would do the same thing all over again. I'm not going to lose you out here," he says, and then, almost inaudibly, "not again…"

  I feel my chest squeeze so hard I can't get a breath. After a second, I turn around and see him walking over to the moon pool where he braces one hand on his hip as he brings the other to his bleeding mouth, then looks at his hand before wiping the blood on his pants. I look around for some kind of cloth, but don't see one before deciding to walk over to him.

  "It looks like it hurts a lot," I say, crossing to him and bringing my fingers to his bottom lip, which is split near the left corner. His eyes soften from the narrowed glare he'd just been holding.

  "I'm glad I got that kiss in when I did," he smiles, then winces.

  "We can call a medi-droid—that fixed my nose when Vox…" I say, then let the words trail off, remembering that she's gone.

  "We'll find them," Arco says, putting his hand on my shoulder. I meet his eyes, and see that his left cheekbone is starting to swell.

  "You need ice…how do I call the droid?" I ask out loud, trying to remember. Do I just tell my bracelet—no, there was a button in my room.

  "It's fine. I'll deal with it later," he says, smiling to the right, then pulls his arms out of his suit. It's off and back in the bag before I can even step out of the legs of mine, and I blink hard to make sure my eyes aren't playing tricks on me.

  "Is that all really part of your accelerated Coder/Navigator classification like they said earlier?" I ask, and gesture toward his bagged up suit as I hop on one leg trying to free my foot from the boot cover.

  "What? Changing out of gear?" he asks, daring to let the smile start in the corner of his mouth again.

  "Doing everything like you've done it a thousand times when you've only had 48 hours down here just like everyone else," I answer, finally freeing my foot and having a seat on the ground before starting on the other. "How do you just do it?"

  "I don't know," he says after a second, then bends down to pick up my suit that I've finally taken off. He puts it back in the bag, then hangs both his and mine up on the wall where we first got them, Jax and the others having taken seats along the perimeter of the room to wait for the rest of the teams to come in and for class to be dismissed. "It's just there…like an instinct I guess. Maybe the same way you can feel how someone else is feeling," he says, walking back over to me and extending his arm to help me up. His eyes fix on mine like he's waiting for me to register something, to respond, and while I know acknowledgment isn't all he wants, it's all I can give him right now. I nod my head.

  "Thanks," I say, taking his arm and getting to my feet, then I brush my hands over my jumpsuit pants to straighten them.

  "Meet me tonight—after all of this chaos is done for the day and we've figured out a plan," he says, catching my elbow as I start for the bench. "I just need to get my world right side up again. Just have five minutes of normal." I look at him for a second without saying anything, without really processing what he's said because everything is on this weird five-second delay, but then I agree and hear the other Stingrays beginning to dock.

  It soon becomes clear that even if we'd wanted to make something up about Vox and Fraya, there's no way Liddick, Myra, or I could have hidden it from Ms. Reynolt. Before she even has the chance to see the state of Arco's face, she knows the second she comes in the moon pool bay that something is wrong as she scans the room for input.

  What happened? Where are they? I hear her say in my head, and I know I have to tell her everything. I can't hide what I know from her, not even some of what I know—she'll be able to tell, and that will just make everything worse.

  Something took them—and they're not the first ones. Ms. Reynolt, we need your help. Her face goes white before she nods—not a nod indicating that she will help us, but that she doesn't need to hear anymore. She knows. I can only feel it for a second before she scrubs it—the guilt, the helplessness—and then any sense of her I had was gone. It's true then…everything with Liam and the others, and any lingering doubt I may have had slips away.

  I will inform Dr. Denison that Vox and Fraya did not return with your pod, and we will send a team after them. Do not tell anyone about this until I have a chance to debrief you—I'll send instructions to your bracelet.

  But Ms. Reynolt, we have to—

  You are dismissed to your stations. Since you are already aboard and unsuited, I will advise Dr. Denison that Mr. Spaulding and Mr. Ling will take the navigation stations, Mr. Wright will take over Vox's station, and your brother will run the core with Mr. Raj for our return trip. Myra will remain in the med-bay with Dame Mahgi. I'll be up shortly.

  She's cold and empty now. Can clones just turn on and turn off? Or maybe just Empath clones? She gives me a vacant look before turning to walk toward Dr. Denison. I don't know what she's telling him, and he doesn't react beyond a few nods of his own before punching something into the wall panel. Ms. Reynolt turns to look at me hard over her shoulder, and an urgency rushes over me. I take a few steps over to Arco, Avis, and Ellis. Liddick is already on his way to us with Myra, waving Jax and Tieg to him.

  "We need to go," I say. "Something is going on. Ms. Reynolt wants us out of here right now," I say, and Ellis narrows his eyes.

  "But what about telling Denison—" he starts to ask.

  "She said they're going to send a team after them. We just need to get out of here now. Avis and Tieg are supposed to run Navigations with Arco, and you're supposed to help Jax in the core with Myra in the med-bay. Liddick is with me on the back wall," I say, and we all head for the door as inconspicuously as possible while Dr. Denison instructs Joss and Pitt to reseal their helmets and route their group back to the Green team's Leviathan.

  "All right, after dinner in the Records room," Arco says to our group as we funnel out of the moon pool bay and down the corridor.

  "They're sending a team, though? Right now?" Jax asks, and I nod.

  "They'll find them," I say as he sets his jaw and swallows, then walks toward his station with Avis and Ellis following in his wake.

  Tieg looks hard at Arco for a long minute, then looks at me like he wants to ask a question, but doesn't. He opens his mouth, then closes it again and nods, turning to follow Ellis up the stairs. Myra starts to head toward the med-bay, but Liddick asks her to wait for him before leaning in conspiratorially to Arco and me, raising his eyebrows.

  "So, not to add to your problems Hart, but Mr. Universe may have caught me making out with his sister. What can I say, right?" Liddick raises his hands in feigned helplessness. I feel my eyes widen, then realize he's just trying to lighten the mood as my chest feel
s like it's filling with air. Arco chuckles.

  "You and Dez, then, huh? How is that adding to my problems?"

  "Well, it's just a casual thing, you know," Liddick says, leaning his head to one side and smirking, "but first seeing Dez and me earlier today, then seeing you two going at it by the moon pool a little while ago…he hasn't really had a good day."

  "What?" I ask, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. "People saw us?"

  "He saw you through the window when we were all pulling up in the Stingrays…you should have heard him grilling Jax about it over the comms he'd just turned on during his ops check," Liddick laughs. Arco folds his arms and covers his mouth.

  "Are you laughing? This isn't funny," I say, swatting Arco's arm. He moves his hand away from his bruised face and tries his best to roll in his lips, then shakes his head a few times. "It's not!" I insist.

  "Anyway, let's get back," Liddick says, turning around with a nod and offering his arm to Myra, but I can feel that he's not done talking. Then, I hear him, and know that this break for us to talk is why he started the conversation in the first place.

  Dez and me…that was just—I hear Liddick start in my head, then taper off. Anyway, steer clear of Spaulding for a while…I wasn't stretching about him being lit. You really had him going from what I could hear over the comms, and he wants to confront you. Jax had to stop him a few times.

  Are you kidding me? How did I have him going? I just met him, and we've had exactly two conversations! I shout in my head, not sure exactly why I feel embarrassed, but I do.

  You're concentrated potency, Riptide. He replies, and I can even hear his laughter in my head.

  Whatever. Stow it.

  Look, he just doesn't know what to do with disappointment, and he didn't plan for competition—it's nothing you did. He's a walking ego. Liddick says, and I'm starting to get angry at the idea that Tieg could possibly think I would turn into some kind of smitten lapdog just because we had a couple flirty moments. I need to change the subject back to what really matters.