Above World

by Jenn Reese

  Zorro’s eyes glowed green.

  Liu stirred. When the first Upgrader made it past Dash and charged toward him, the Mek girl scuttled across the room, raised one mighty claw, and bashed the Upgrader in the head.

  Hoku didn’t watch. He couldn’t. He had work to do.

  “DO YOU FEEL anything yet?” Fathom asked. “Pain? Discomfort? The subtle shifting of your genetic code?”

  Aluna felt the Ocean Seed inside her, but as far as she could tell, it was just sitting there in her gut doing nothing. Why wasn’t the seed working? The transformation was supposed to begin immediately. Back in the City of Shifting Tides, the Elders carried the young Kampii from the ritual dome to the medic dome as soon as they swallowed their seeds. It was an essential part of the ceremony, both symbolically and out of necessity.

  Fathom wanted a show, and since Aluna wanted him to release Daphine, she had to give him one.

  She faked a wince and dropped to one knee, trying to remember the time Anadar had walloped her in the stomach with the flat of his spearhead. “Barnacles,” she hissed. That sentiment, at least, did not require much acting.

  “Excellent,” Fathom said, and tapped some buttons on the device attached to his arm. “Now, how would you rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst?”

  “Five,” Aluna said through gritted teeth.

  “Hm,” he said, twisting his mouth into a frown. “There should be more pain. I have read all the research. Perhaps this will help.”

  He pulled back one of his extended metal legs and kicked her in the gut.

  Aluna tumbled across the grass, over and over, and landed on her stomach.

  “Now?” Fathom asked.

  “Eight,” she coughed into the ground.

  “Don’t lie to me,” he said. “I may decide that I prefer my other mermaid after all. She already has a tail. It won’t be difficult to remove.”

  “I’m not lying,” Aluna said quickly, and she wasn’t. She stayed on the ground and crushed her cheek against the cool earth, wondering if he had cracked any of her ribs. She tried to breathe through the pain, but breathing only made it worse.

  “Aluna? Are you there?” Hoku’s voice sounded in her ear like whale song in the empty ocean. A beacon. “I’m using the computer to project my signal as far as I can. I won’t be able to hear you.”

  “I’m here,” she whispered into the grass. “I’m here!”

  “Tides’ teeth, I hope you’re alive,” said Hoku’s voice. “If you’re out there, please listen. I’ve almost got it figured out. Zorro and I will — watch out!”

  Was he talking to Dash? He had to be. They were both alive, and they were both in the dome!

  “Sorry, they’re coming too fast,” Hoku said. “But we’re sending help. Hang on, Aluna. Stay alive. Wherever you are, whatever’s happening to you, you’re not alone. Do you hear me? You’re not — no! Stop!”

  His voice cut off abruptly.

  “Hoku!” Aluna’s heart beat wildly.

  In three strides, Fathom was hovering above her. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

  Up close, she could see spikes and scales on his belly, could smell oil and burned flesh. His so-called upgrades had ceased being functional ages ago. What he had done to himself had no reasonable explanation.

  “No one,” she said, trying to scramble out of his kicking range. “I’m not talking to anyone.”

  Stay alive, Hoku had said. She had no idea where he was or what he was doing, but she trusted him. Deep down, she trusted him more than she trusted anyone in the world.

  “Ah, it’s your aural communicators!” Fathom said, clearly pleased with himself. “I saw them in the schematics. I should have known you wouldn’t be so stupid as to come here alone.” He looked around the clearing. “Where are they? The range is only a few dozen meters, if I remember correctly.” He motioned to some of his waiting Upgraders. “You four. Fan out and search the woods. Kill every intruder you find.”

  The Upgraders grunted and started to jog for the trees. Aluna used the distraction to maneuver into a crouch.

  “Wait!” Fathom said. He turned to look at Aluna but spoke to his minions. “When you find the other mermaids, make sure they scream before you kill them. I want this one to hear every second of their suffering.”

  “No!” Aluna yelled.

  Her friends were somewhere in the dome, trying to save her because she was ridiculous and swam off without them. Her father had been right. In so many ways, she was still a child. Well, it was time to grow up and take responsibility for her bad decisions.

  Aluna unclipped her talons and charged.

  HOKU HAD TOLD ALUNA they were sending help. He’d told her she wasn’t alone. Now he had to prove it.

  Liu swung her wrench, her claws, and even her legs. Somehow Dash was still up, fighting by her side with just one good hand. Even so, the number of Upgraders crowded around the control center door never lessened.

  They needed more help than just Liu. They needed an army.

  “Zorro, wake more Meks.”

  Yellow.

  “Zorro, retrieve the names of all HydroTek Dome Meks and wake them up. Wake them all up!”

  Yellow.

  Glowing words pulsed on the display screen in front of him. At the same time, an inhuman voice spoke them aloud: “Current password grants insufficient security clearance to complete that action. Level Seahorse access required.”

  “Hoku,” Dash yelled. “We are losing ground. I cannot —”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hoku saw Dash crumple. Liu stepped in to cover his spot, protecting his body with her six remaining legs.

  “Passwords,” Hoku muttered, and pulled out the device he’d found in the water safe. He pressed the power button, and a spinning seahorse floated into view. Sarah Jennings said she’d stored forbidden information inside the tiny box — all of HydroTek’s secrets. Well, right now, he only wanted one.

  “Zorro, disconnect from the computer.”

  The raccoon pulled its tail off the magnetic port and scampered out of the way. Hoku held the device over the spot and felt the familiar tug of the magnet pulling the artifact into place.

  The screen glowed and the computer’s voice spoke. “Device detected. Accessing password. . . .”

  Hoku held his breath. Metal clattered on metal behind him. The screen went blank.

  “Password accepted. Clearance Level Seahorse. Proceeding with command.”

  Lines of tiny words streamed up the screen — so many he couldn’t read them nearly fast enough:

  The list went on and on and on.

  ALUNA CHARGED, her talons spinning in tight whirls around her body.

  Fathom hopped back impossibly fast on his metal legs, and Aluna heard a snick from behind her. Upgraders! She dodged too late. A blazing harpoon grazed her thigh and she screamed. The wound wasn’t deep, but it stung.

  “Catch her!” Fathom yelled. “Damage her arms if you have to, but leave her legs intact!”

  The Upgraders charged. Some headed for her, and some ran to protect their master. If Fathom hadn’t sent so many to the woods, she would have been dead in one flash of a tail. Now she had a chance.

  She spun her talons faster as the Upgraders circled her. Good. They wouldn’t be able to use their missiles and their flamethrowers now, not without the risk of hitting one another. A man with a silver head stepped in swinging a glowing red sword. She sent her talon Spite to disarm him, but with a twitch, the Upgrader sliced through Spite’s chain. The tip of the talon flew off and landed out of sight. Aluna’s heart thudded faster. The man grinned. She feigned fear to lure him into a lunge, then sidestepped, letting the Upgrader behind her figure out how to deal with the tip of his blade.

  A woman with spikes growing out of her arm attacked next. Aluna dodged the swing, then jumped up on the woman’s arm and vaulted over her head. The Upgraders were used to dealing with front and back, left and right. But Aluna learned to fight in the sea. She
also knew how to use up and down.

  She landed hard behind the woman and yelped. Her wounded thigh burned.

  Sound erupted in her ear: Hoku screaming.

  “No!” she yelled. The Upgraders must have found him!

  “I did it! I did it!” his voice echoed in her ear.

  And that’s when she saw them. A stream of people with bodies shaped like crabs and lobsters, with wrenches and pipes and bits of metal gripped in their human hands. They swarmed into Middle Green and threw themselves at the Upgraders, weapons and claws swinging.

  Aluna yelled again, this time in triumph.

  Cones of flame shot across the sky. Metal clanked against metal. Men and women screamed. A snake-man — the one she had seen earlier in the cage — slithered past her and struck at the Upgrader named Giraffe with fists so fast that they blurred together in the air.

  The Upgraders she had been fighting were now struggling against dozens of the newcomers. Aluna limped through the chaos, dodging blades and poison needles. She found a long metal spike and hefted it like a spear. The air smelled of smoke and oil, of sweat and ocean salt.

  An Upgrader with spinning blades instead of hands charged her. She stepped quickly to the side and batted him from the air with her spear, shark-style. Fast and quick. He landed on the ground with a thud and a howl as one of his circular blades cut into the flesh of his other arm.

  Where was Fathom? She hadn’t been so far from him when the fight started, but now she couldn’t find him. If only she were taller! In the ocean, height never mattered. In the Above World, she felt like she was always standing on her toes in order to see. Maybe she understood Giraffe a little bit after all.

  “Aluna! Help!”

  Daphine’s words screeched inside her ears.

  “I’m coming!” she yelled, her heart stuttering in her chest. She ran for Daphine’s cage, ignoring the pain in her leg, ignoring the splashes of blood and screams surrounding her from every side.

  When she found Daphine, Fathom was standing over her with a long jagged blade in his hand. Her sister’s cage had been shattered. Daphine struggled in a pool of water two meters from Fathom’s feet, trying to pull herself away from him on shaking arms.

  “Leave her alone!” Aluna said, spinning her makeshift spear.

  Fathom looked over his shoulder at her, a small twisted smile on his lips. “You will not play fair while this one lives,” he said. “Without hope, you will truly be my slave.”

  He raised his sword.

  Aluna was too far away. She’d never make it in time. Daphine, sweet Daphine!

  And that’s when a brown-haired girl with wings dropped out of the sky, landed right between Daphine and Fathom, and pointed her spear at the Sea Master’s heart.

  CALLI!

  Aluna was relieved to see the girl was holding her spear properly for a change. But it wouldn’t matter, not if Fathom attacked her. Calli was no match for him.

  Aluna kept running. She was still too far away, but Calli was giving her time. Brave, foolish, wonderful girl!

  “Stand back,” Calli said grimly.

  “Aviar!” Fathom hissed, but surprisingly, he did as she said and took a step away from her. Away from Daphine. “I’ve long wanted to catch one of you alive. There’s so much I could do with a pair of wings. As homage to my brother, of course.”

  “My mother killed him, you know,” Calli said. She sounded strong, but Aluna could hear the waver in her voice, could see the tip of her spear beginning to quiver. “She ran her spear right through Tempest’s throat.”

  One of Fathom’s hands went to his neck.

  “All the more reason for me to kill you, Aviar,” he said, and lifted his sword arm to strike.

  But Calli had done her job. She’d distracted Fathom long enough. Aluna yelled and swung her metal spike like a spear. It smashed into Fathom’s sword and bent it nearly in two. She stopped running and dug her toes into the mud that the water from Daphine’s cage had created.

  “Fight me,” she said, panting.

  Fathom dropped his mangled sword and turned on her. Behind him, Calli pulled Daphine out of danger. More winged women fell from the skies and entered the fray. Aluna thought she recognized High Senator Electra’s distinctive hawk wings only a dozen meters away.

  While she was distracted, Fathom struck. Two of his arms punched out. One sparked against her metal spike, and the other slammed into her shoulder. She’d seen them coming and fell back to absorb the blows. But he was faster, so fast. Her left arm went numb from the force of the impact.

  Aluna shifted her spear to her good hand and adjusted to a single-arm grip. When Fathom punched with his third arm, she knocked his fist to the side and swept her spear into a spin. Spinning protected her body and disguised her attacks.

  “This world doesn’t need you, or your father,” she said. “We don’t need to be ‘protected.’ We don’t need to be ‘improved.’” Her left arm started to tingle as feeling returned.

  “It doesn’t matter what you need,” Fathom sneered. “You are parts, nothing more. We will control the whole.”

  He twisted and kicked at her face. She blocked with her heavy spear and sidestepped. Fathom hopped and swung the other leg out in an arc toward her face. She dropped her spear, ducked, and grabbed his foot as it passed over her head. She shoved straight up, trying to push Fathom off balance. The technique would never work underwater, where your enemy could just somersault away.

  But Aluna was an Above World fighter now. There were new rules. Fathom flailed his arms and crashed onto his back. He twisted onto his stomach and tried to regain his feet, but his extra-long legs kept slipping in the mud.

  Aluna vaulted onto his back and tried to pin him, but he was too strong. He bucked and she grabbed the dorsal fins jutting out of his shoulders to keep her seat. If only she were heavier or stronger! If only she weren’t alone.

  But wait: she wasn’t alone. Calli and the Aviars were here. Daphine was here. The crab people were fighting all around her, along with the freed prisoners. And somewhere out there, Hoku and Dash were here, too.

  “Help!” she yelled. Her voice sounded impossibly quiet in the din of battle, but got louder and louder with every word. “Help me! Help me keep him down!”

  Fathom wriggled beneath her, his multiple limbs sinking into the ground as he tried to push himself up. Aluna clung to him with her weak hand and tried to slam the bottom of her spike into the back of his skull, where only glass protected his brain. One of his elbows jerked back and struck her in the temple. Her head pulsed with pain. Her vision clouded. She lost her grip on the spike.

  She cringed, expecting another blow, but it didn’t come. When her vision cleared, she saw Daphine clinging to one of Fathom’s arms and Calli to another. The snake-man prisoner had wound his long tail around a leg. Even Barko the dog was there, bloodied but determined, his jaws around one of Fathom’s ankles.

  “Get off me!” Fathom screamed. “I’ll harvest you all for parts! Karl Strand will hear of this!”

  “Well, if he does, you won’t be the one to tell him,” a familiar voice said. Aluna looked up and saw High Senator Electra, her face cut and bleeding, her wing scorched, her eyes fierce. The Aviar lifted her spear in both hands, clearly intending to drive it into the back of Fathom’s skull.

  “No!” Aluna said. “The device on his arm — it controls everything!”

  Electra began her swing but changed the direction at the last moment. Her spear point smashed into the muddy earth, piercing the artifact on Fathom’s arm.

  Sea Master Fathom screamed.

  “Alive,” Aluna said, to herself as much as to the people around her. “We can take him alive.”

  High Senator Electra spat. “This is your fight,” she said. “We’ll do it your way.” She flipped her spear over and smacked the butt into the side of Fathom’s head. Aluna felt his body relax.

  “You did it,” Daphine said in her ear. “Aluna, my sweet, sweet sister. You did it.”r />
  “He’s out!” Calli yelled with a whoop.

  Aluna’s head felt as if it were barely attached. Her stomach lurched and she wondered, idly, if she might pass out. All around, the sounds of battle clanged in her ears. Several nearby Upgraders surrendered as soon as their leader fell.

  “Sharks,” Aluna mumbled as she fell into darkness. “They never expect you to fight back.”

  ALUNA SAT on the edge of a pool at HydroTek’s rim and toyed with the bandage on her leg. Just beyond the clear slope of the dome wall, the ocean spread blue and glittering to the horizon. Somewhere out there, the City of Shifting Tides was waiting.

  “You’re keeping the scope?” Aluna asked. She already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Daphine’s lips.

  Her sister surfaced, water cascading off the glinting metal scope that had replaced her eye. Daphine’s long hair lay sleek and perfect against her head and neck, except where Fathom had shaved it off for his operation.

  “Hoku has restored the power to our breathing shells, so the Elders will be tempted to continue their hiding,” Daphine said.

  “But Fathom and Karl Strand know where the Seahorse Alpha outpost is. And the Trade Rock. It won’t be long before they find the City of Shifting Tides itself,” Aluna said.

  “Exactly,” her sister said. “As the Voice of the Kampii, I will be a daily reminder of the cost of turning too far inward and ignoring the Above World. Karl Strand will find us. And if we’re not ready when he does, then my fate — or worse — awaits all Kampii. Hiding is no longer an option.”

  “We need allies, not isolation. We’re at war,” Aluna said. “Not even Father will be able to deny that when he sees what happened to his favorite child.”

  Daphine stuck her tongue out and swam closer. Aluna fought an urge to recoil. She still wasn’t used to her sister’s mutilated face. Daphine relaxed against the pool wall and splashed her tail in the water.

  “He’ll be happy to see you, you know,” Daphine said. “He was angry, of course, but only until he realized you were gone.”