Above World

by Jenn Reese

  He stared at her while her words penetrated the dark thoughts in his head.

  “Wait a minute.”

  He stood up so abruptly that the girl scrambled backward to get out of his way.

  “You’re going to let my people die? You were created to protect me and this dome and all the Kampii. And now you’re going to let us all die?”

  The girl looked at him with lidless black eyes. “It’s not my fault!”

  “You’d rather fix a stupid clog in a drain than try to save us.”

  “If I help, I will be shut down,” she said. “My dreams are so empty. I’m scared of the darkness. I don’t want to be trapped there forever!”

  He hadn’t thought of that. Now he felt bad for trying to guilt her into helping. For better or for worse, Aluna had rubbed off on him. All he cared about was his own mission. He kept forgetting that other people had lives, too.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Technician one-zero-zero-seven-seven-one,” she said. “But at one time, I was also Liu.”

  “Liu,” he said. It was a pretty name, much nicer than a string of numbers. “I’m Hoku. How can we — how can I help you?”

  Liu stared up at the ceiling while she thought. Eventually, she said, “I wouldn’t mind going back to sleep if I had something pleasant to dream about. . . .” She hooked her hands together behind her back. Her cheeks blushed pale pink.

  Hoku narrowed his eyes. Where was she going with this?

  “I’ll take you to the control center, if you give me something in return.” She took four skittering steps closer. “My price is a kiss.”

  Now it was Hoku’s turn to blush.

  “But I have a . . .” Was Calli really a girlfriend? “And Aluna would . . .” Would probably laugh. “And I don’t know how . . .” But he did know how to kiss, sort of. “And you . . .” Are a crab-girl, he wanted to say, but wasn’t Calli a bird-girl? That certainly hadn’t stopped them from kissing.

  “Enough!”

  Dash shoved aside the swimming clothes he’d been hiding behind and strode over to where they were standing. He turned to the crab-girl.

  “Beautiful lady, I am Dashiyn,” he said, touching two fingers to his heart and bowing his head. “I am honored to meet you. If you deem me a suitable substitute for our Kampii friend, I would be happy to render the requested price.”

  The crab-girl clapped her hands with glee. “Why, yes!” she said. “You will do nicely —”

  Before she could finish speaking, Dash slid his good arm behind her back, looked into her eyes for several long moments, and then kissed her.

  Even though he wasn’t playing a part in it, Hoku could tell it was a good kiss. Both Dash and Liu had their eyes closed. Their faces pressed together firmly, but not awkwardly. He and Calli hadn’t had a chance to work on that part yet. But the biggest reason he could tell it was good was because both of them seemed to forget he was even in the room.

  When it was over, Dash stared into the girl’s eyes for another long moment, then pulled one of her hands to his mouth.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, then kissed her knuckles. His eyes never left hers.

  Liu bobbed a curtsy, her face more flushed than ever.

  “No, thank you,” she said in the same hushed tone he had used. “Now I won’t be afraid to go back to sleep.”

  They smiled at each other, and Dash gently released her hand.

  The girl turned to Hoku, her eyes suddenly full of life. “We’d better hurry,” she said. “The control center isn’t far, but I probably don’t have much time.” She turned and scuttled out the hatch.

  He looked at Dash. For the first time, Hoku didn’t see the horse-boy’s broken arm or his claustrophobia or his fear of being underwater. He saw a boy who already knew who he was and what he was capable of. He saw a leader.

  Then Dash turned to him and, with panic in his voice, said, “Please don’t tell Aluna.”

  Hoku laughed.

  THE DOG TOOK OFF down the street, weaving between two buildings at a fast trot. Luckily his legs were short. Aluna jogged after him and managed to keep up.

  “Who lives here?” she asked. The tall silvery buildings were etched with waves and glinted in the sunlight.

  “Dogs and Gizmos and Meks,” the dog said. “Cats and rats and Mess-ups.”

  “That’s not very helpful,” she said. Gizmos were probably Upgraders. Whatever a Mess-up was, she didn’t want to meet one.

  The dog ignored her. “Middle Green is where Fathom keeps his toys,” the dog continued. “Those that don’t become Gizmos or Meks or Mess-ups. Faster now,” he said. “Run run run.”

  The mangy four-legged thing burst into a full-out gallop. She had no idea something so little could run so fast. She pumped her legs to keep up.

  They wove through the HydroTek dome. She barely had time to absorb all the wonders. Even covered in garbage, the city gleamed and sparkled. It reminded her of the story of Atlantis, a floating city out of legend. Supposedly, the Atlantis Kampii tribe grew too curious about the Above World. They sailed their city closer and closer until one day Atlantis beached itself on the shore and was overrun by Humans. HydroTek was too beautiful to be the creation of savages. She saw the stamp of Kampii craftspeople everywhere.

  The dog zigged and zagged through tiny streets, under arches, and around glorious statues and defunct fountains. She wanted to slow down and examine everything, but sightseeing would have to wait.

  They were heading toward the heart of HydroTek. Or, if it didn’t have a heart, they were heading toward the center. “Middle Green,” the dog had called it. The animal seemed to know the way well, and she was happy to let him lead.

  She wondered what Dash and Hoku were doing. Maybe she should have brought them along. She could picture Hoku leaning against one of the buildings, panting and begging her to take a break. And Dash. He would have run and said nothing. She wanted to know his story, but she respected him too much to ask. If he wanted to tell her, he would.

  Calli was out there somewhere, too. If anything happened to her, so soon after the girl had embarked on her first adventure, Aluna would never forgive herself.

  “Birds!” the dog said, and darted for an alcove in one of the buildings. “Find shadows! Take cover!”

  She followed him into a shadowy indent and pressed her back against the cool stone.

  “I don’t hear —”

  “Shhh,” the dog warned.

  She clamped her mouth shut and listened. A moment later, she heard the flapping of hundreds of tiny wings.

  The birds flew like a school of fish, darting out of the street they’d been heading for in tight formation. When one bobbed in the air, they all did. When one cut a sharp left, the others followed so fast it seemed as if they were operating with a single brain.

  “Beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Deadly,” the dog said quietly. His whispery voice was a soft, low grumble. “Rip you to shreds while you scream scream scream. Saw them take down a Gizmo once. We go now,” the dog said, and slipped around the corner, away from the flock. She followed quietly, stealing one last look over her shoulder to watch the birds careen up toward the sun.

  The buildings grew taller as they approached the center, where the dome was highest. Aluna craned her neck up but couldn’t see all the way to the top. There was nothing so big back at the colony. She didn’t even see how buildings could stand so tall without collapsing. Hoku would probably know.

  The dog slowed to a trot. “Gizmo guard soon,” he said. “Let me talk.”

  “You got it, friend,” she said. “I’d rather kill an Upgrader than talk to it.”

  The dog nodded. “Talk easier than kill. At least now.”

  Suddenly the street ended and the buildings gave way to great green trees and grass and bushes. This is what the dog meant by Middle Green.

  They headed to an opening in the foliage — and to the Upgrader who seemed to be guarding it.

  The
man was tall, but his body was short. He would have been exactly Aluna’s height if his head hadn’t been detached and mounted on a metal shaft that raised it up a meter higher. When his disembodied head swiveled around and saw them, he said, “Yo, stop, yo!”

  “Sure, yeah, Giraffe,” the dog said. “Let us in. Going to see him.” The dog pointed his snout toward Aluna.

  Giraffe looked down his nose at her. She didn’t particularly enjoy her view up his very wide nostrils. Only when she lowered her gaze did she see the evil-looking gun that had replaced his left arm.

  “Master Fathom don’t need no more Humans, Barko,” the Gizmo said. “You should know that.”

  She started to say, “Oh, I’m not —” but the dog interrupted her.

  “My problem, not yours,” he said with a growl. “Let me in in in.”

  “Easy, easy,” Giraffe said. His gun arm lowered and pointed toward the ground. “But I warned you, Barko. You come out with a second butt instead of a head, you remember that I warned you.”

  “Sure, yeah,” said the dog.

  Giraffe shuffled to the side. His head bobbled a bit but stayed in place. Aluna couldn’t understand how he was even alive.

  The dog nosed her in the back of the knee. She took the hint and walked quickly into the tree-lined path that Giraffe had been guarding. Barko stayed on her heels.

  Middle Green seemed like a beautiful forest. The trees were lush and green and swayed as if there were a breeze. Hidden birds chirped from the branches. She even caught a glimpse of a tiny puffed tail. She wondered how bad Fathom could be if he lived in a place so wondrous.

  And then she saw the cages.

  DOZENS OF LARGE plastic cubes, each bigger than her nest back home, lined the widening dirt path. Aluna stumbled to the first cage and saw a Deepfell floating inside. She recognized the slave collar around his neck and the dead look in his eyes.

  The second held a young man that looked like a Kampii, except he had a long, sinuous snake body where his fish tail should have been. His tail coiled around and around. Gold hoops hung from his ears, and half of his long, dark hair had been shaved to stubble. His eyes were bloodshot, but there was still intelligence in them, still some spark of life.

  She walked over and put her hands against his cell.

  Suddenly, he pounded his fist against the plastic and shouted. She jumped back. His words were muffled by the cage.

  “I don’t understand,” she called back.

  “Shhh!” Barko said. “No yelling. No yelling!” He danced around nervously and looked up the path. “Faster now, mermaid. No time for the Mess-ups!” He bolted forward, and she had to follow.

  She wanted to stop and talk to all the creatures trapped in the cages. They passed a dolphin and a baby shark, a huge white bird and a striped cat so big that Aluna’s whole body could have fit inside her mouth.

  Another cage held a creature that was Human from her head to her waist and horse below that. An Equian! Her back left leg had been replaced with a metal blade that sparked as she stomped. Deep red gashes and scars ringed the metal where it connected to the horse-woman’s flesh.

  The dog pulled Aluna along. Her stomach knotted tighter and tighter as they wove quickly through the captives. So many had been altered. She saw metal tusks added to a deer and a huge tortoise with jagged razors attached to the rim of his shell and some sort of saddle mounted on his back.

  So much suffering, so much loneliness, so much pain and loss. Sadness rolled from the cages in waves, suffocating her heart. What kind of person could do this? What kind of monster? She couldn’t save only Daphine, not anymore. Now she had to save them all.

  Barko bounded down the path, ignoring all the cries and dead eyes of the captured creatures. Aluna felt tears well in her eyes and trail down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. There was only forward.

  The path emptied them into a bright clearing surrounded by cages, some occupied, some empty. She didn’t have time to study their occupants. They had arrived at the very center of Middle Green, at the very center of HydroTek. And the man — the thing — crouched by the last cage with his back toward them could only be Fathom, so-called Master of the Sea.

  He likes parts, the dog had said, and Aluna finally understood what he’d meant. Maybe Fathom had looked Human once, but now he was a patchwork monster. Two dorsal fins jutted from his shoulders, fins that must have belonged to Deepfell before they were ripped off and reattached. His left arm had been split into two. One limb ended in a mechanical hand, and the other had some sort of artifact control pad screwed onto the end. The bottoms of Fathom’s legs had been extended to twice their normal height, with dull-black metal bars wrapped in wires and tubes.

  She couldn’t even identify the other bits of flesh and metal stitched and embedded all over his body. Some oozed blood as she watched. Worst of all, the back of his skull had been replaced by some glasslike material. She could see right into his brain.

  When he turned and rose, Aluna gasped. Not only was Fathom’s face still fully Human, but she recognized his tousled brown hair and glasses from the photo Hoku had pulled from Sarah Jennings’s water safe.

  Fathom was Karl Strand.

  But how? That letter was written hundreds of years ago! Karl and Sarah were together before the Kampii even existed. How could he still be alive?

  Fathom smiled, looking even more like the man from the photo. But when he spoke, it wasn’t to her.

  “Well, dog,” he said. “What have you brought me today?”

  The dog sketched a nervous doggy bow and said, “A mermaid, master! A mermaid for your collection!”

  Aluna looked at Barko, surprised at his betrayal, but the dog ignored her gaze.

  “Pity, dog, but there will be no reward for you today,” he said. “You see, I already have a mermaid.”

  Fathom motioned to the water-filled tank he had been inspecting when they arrived. Aluna had assumed it was empty, but it wasn’t. The occupant had been cowering in the far corner, curled into a ball. When Fathom activated the control device in his double arm, the creature yelped and swam obediently to the front of her enclosure.

  Fathom’s mermaid was Daphine.

  “DAPHINE!” Aluna yelled, and bolted for her sister’s cage. Daphine had a slave collar around her neck and an ugly metal scope sticking out from her face where her left eye had once been.

  Her face, her beautiful face. Aluna would smash the cage to pieces with her bare hands if she had to.

  “Stop her,” Fathom said simply, and pressed a sequence of buttons on his arm device. A dozen Upgraders swarmed into the clearing. Aluna recognized Giraffe, his head wobbling as he ran.

  They were too close, too fast.

  A man with thick muscles and bright-red skin leaped at her, but Aluna ducked and the man sailed over her head. She rolled forward and unclipped Spirit and Spite, her talons. They were already spinning by the time she vaulted to her feet. The three closest Upgraders took a step back, apparently uncertain how to handle the whirring weapons.

  A woman wearing bulky goggles raised a harpoon gun. Before she could fire, Aluna sliced Spirit across her face. The Upgrader yelped and fell back, clutching at her eyes. Aluna dodged and headed for Fathom. She could fight his minions forever, but he was the one she needed to destroy.

  Spirit and Spite sang in her hands, cutting the air and creating a whirlwind of slashes and cuts. She yanked Giraffe’s legs out from under him and jumped over another Upgrader’s knee spike. Still, her enemies were coming too fast, too strong. She couldn’t even recognize some of their weapons, let alone determine how best to disable them.

  “Let her be,” Fathom said. “Let me see what this child can do.”

  Instantly, the Upgraders lowered their weapons and backed away. Some were bleeding or holding wounds, but not enough of them.

  Aluna wasted no time. She screamed and ran straight for Fathom, talons spinning. She whipped Spite at his head, aiming for his bespectacled eyes. He blocked
the talon with one flick of his hand. The sharp metal weapon bounced off his arm with a spark and sailed back toward Aluna’s head. She changed the direction of her swing and diverted it toward one of Fathom’s legs, intending to yank it out from under him. Again, her talon sparked off the unnatural metal and bounced back toward her.

  Fathom laughed.

  She circled him, striking with her weapons again and again. She spun to get more speed and power with her attacks, but they glanced off him each time. Finally, the talons moved too fast, even for her. She failed to redirect Spirit and the talon’s point clipped her across the forehead. She felt a slow trickle of warmth slide down the side of her face.

  Fathom punched at her with one of his metal hands. His fist slammed into her chest. In the next flash she was flying backward through the air, gasping for air. She crashed into Daphine’s cage and dropped to the ground. Luckily, she’d tucked her chin to her chest and managed to take the brunt of the hit with her shoulder, not her skull.

  “Not a bad showing for such a small unadorned creature,” Fathom said. He rubbed his chin with four slender metallic fingers. “I wonder what you could do with longer legs? Or perhaps some horned implants on that thick head of yours? Such a nice blank canvas!”

  “Aluna, is that you?” Daphine said in her ear.

  Aluna groaned. She could see her sister floating in the cage behind her, but couldn’t find the air to speak. Black spots zigzagged in front of her eyes.

  “You see, my father taught me that there is always room for improvement,” Fathom continued. “For a long time, he has looked for ways to preserve the flesh, to make it impervious to disease, famine, and even the humiliation of aging. But my goal is somewhat grander. I want to improve life, to combine the best of every life-form into one perfect example of superhumanity.”

  He turned to Daphine and pointed to the scope that had replaced her eye. “Is she not far more beautiful now that she has been improved?”

  Daphine shrank away from him. “Swim, Aluna,” she said. “Go! Warn the others!”