Dead Water Zone

by Kenneth Oppel

  “Sked must have told them.”

  “No, not enough time. No one could have done all this in fifteen minutes.”

  “Decks.”

  She shook her head as if in a daze.

  “Why not? Maybe they paid him off, too, just like Sked. He could have called them. He had plenty of time!”

  “Shut up,” she said sharply. “Just shut up for a second, would you! I’ve got to think!”

  “They were obviously looking for something,” Paul persisted, gesturing wildly around the ravaged room. He yanked the diskette from his pocket and shook it in the air. “And Decks was the only person we told about this!”

  “They were in my house, Paul! Can you understand what that feels like?”

  He was startled by the anguish in her eyes. This was his fault. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

  “Sorry is a very overrated word.”

  “I’ll pay for it,” he blurted. “I’ll get everything fixed or replaced.”

  “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Out of your allowance, or will Mom and Dad put a check in the mail?”

  He had stooped over to right a set of shelves and was now picking things off the floor at random.

  “We were broken into once, in Governor’s Hill.” He knew it was a ridiculous comparison, but he wanted to make her feel better, and it was all that came to mind. “You feel violated, dirty.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly, “you do. Look, just don’t touch anything, okay? Not right now.” She took a deep breath.

  “Decks didn’t tip them off. He wouldn’t do that. They must have been keeping an eye on us all along—maybe even as far back as the boathouse. Must have known we had the diskette.”

  She snatched the diskette from Paul and waved it in front of his face. “What’s on here, Paul?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I should smash this thing!”

  She made as if to crack the plastic casing, and Paul lunged forward to stop her. They tumbled to the floor, wrestling, and the diskette skittered across the planking. Paul pulled back from her, breathing hard. Her eyes shone with tears.

  “Damn it,” she said darkly, “you build a gate and you figure you can keep people out, keep them from screwing up your life! I made a promise after Mom disappeared. Everything under control. No craziness. Just perfect order.”

  Paul wanted to say he was sorry, wanted to repeat it a hundred times. But she was right: words wouldn’t undo what had happened. He’d been so consumed with finding Sam that he hadn’t given much thought to the risks she was taking for him. She kept her pain so hidden away—all that strength in such a frail-looking body.

  She sat up. “Armitage is back.”

  Paul listened and a few moments later heard the motorboat pulling under the stilt house. He pushed the diskette back into his pocket. The door creaked as Armitage entered. Paul heard him swear softly under his breath before he came into view around the corner, a look of blank amazement on his face.

  “It turns out there’s some people looking for his brother,” Monica said.

  “Yeah,” Armitage replied softly, “I know. I was picking up rumors all around the docklands. I think it’s Cityweb.”

  “Who?” Paul asked, nervous.

  “They don’t have badges or uniforms; they don’t even have names half the time. They do the stuff that even the police would rather not know about.”

  “Sked and some of his nice friends attacked us on the way back from Decks’s place. They’d been paid off. Wanted to know where Paul’s brother was.”

  “So,” began Armitage, looking at Paul, “why all this special treatment for your brother?”

  “He’s not a runaway,” Paul answered. “He came down here to do some tests on the dead water zone. He told me he’d found something weird.”

  Armitage looked at his sister for a long time before turning back to face Paul. “This is all you know, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You stupid bastard!” Armitage exploded, grabbing him by the shirt. “Look at this place!”

  “Leave him alone, Armitage,” said Monica.

  “Don’t stick up for him!”

  “The helicopters aren’t anything to worry about.’ Who said that? Remind me! Who invited him to move in?”

  “I didn’t know about any of this other stuff!”

  “Did you get the computer?” she asked.

  Armitage looked at her in confusion. “In the boat, why?”

  “Bring it up. Let’s see what’s on this diskette.”

  Paul thought the last thing she’d want to do was help him.

  “Forget it,” said Armitage. “We wash our hands right now.”

  “Come on, Armitage. They already know we’re involved. Best thing we can do is find his brother and clear them both out of here.”

  “Maybe we should just hand over the diskette,” Armitage suggested.

  “What?” Paul was incredulous.

  “It’s like this, Paul. Some of my docklands partners are getting edgy—they think these Cityweb goons are trying to shut me down. I will not have someone screwing up my business, know what I’m saying?”

  “Look what they did to this place!” Monica shouted. “They’re paying morons like Sked to hunt people down! Let him read the diskette.”

  She paused, looking hard into her brother’s eyes. “Cityweb can’t get that diskette, Armitage. You know that.”

  Armitage nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Grab the computer and take it out on the cabin cruiser, then. Tie up off Ganymede Reach. I’ll come out later when I have a better idea what’s going on. Hope you know what you’re doing, Monica.”

  7

  THE BOAT’S ANCIENT engine gushed heat and noise into the cabin. He glanced out one of the portholes. Monica was steering them away from the pier, heading for the farthest reaches of Watertown. It was safest there, she’d said.

  He hit the computer’s power switch and the screen glowed amber. He had to concentrate to remember the right commands. He wasn’t particularly talented with computers, nothing like Sam, but he knew enough to get by at school. He booted up a word-processing program and gently shoved his brother’s diskette into the drive.

  There were only two files on the diskette. He tried to call up the first, and an error message flashed at the bottom of the screen. Sam had locked his files.

  Paul’s heart sank. It was hopeless. Think, think! There was a trick to this. Sam had shown him a few years ago. He used it to copy protected software. But how did it work? He felt a sliver of anger, as if Sam was taunting him: “It’s not some great secret, Paul; somewhere in there, the computer knows the code.”

  His hands felt clumsy against the keyboard. He got into the computer’s main operating system and waded into the electronic morass. A daunting matrix of symbols glittered on the monitor: weird arrangements of numbers and letters, exotic flourishes and occult scribbles.

  So what’s the code, Sam?

  His eyes were fixed on the screen. When his memory flagged, he willed his hands to remember the steps for him. The symbols seemed to waver, leap toward him. Perspiration dampened the fringes of his hair. He was rushing through electronic doors, gazing into the labyrinthine innards of the computer. And there it was—Sam’s code.

  Da Vinci.

  The engine cut out as he finished reading the first file. He hadn’t understood most of it. There were formulas and molecular models, references to chemical compounds he’d probably never hear about in school. But Sam had added comments and observations in log form, and that part at least, Paul had understood.

  Monica’s footsteps sounded in the gangway, and he furtively switched off the computer, the text swirling out of sight. He watched her coming into view down the stairs, the scissoring of her legs beneath the bulky pants, the weightless swing of her arms, her thin, pale face.

  Why hadn’t he suspected? It seemed so obvious now. He’d sensed all along she was different: such power in her frail body, the unnatural speed, the
way she always saw and heard things before him. Sked’s voice slurred through his head. Toxic freak. Health hazard.

  “We’re tied up off the reach,” she said, hesitating on the last step. “What was on the diskette?”

  “You drink the water, don’t you?”

  She looked back at him, silent.

  “You drink it, and it changes you.” Dead water zone. How could she do that?

  “No,” she replied, shaking her head. Then again, more firmly, “No!”

  He laughed hoarsely, waving his hand at the computer. It was all there.

  “No one drinks the water,” she insisted, “not anymore. About twenty years ago, everybody did. But it wasn’t so polluted then—that’s what my mother said, anyway. Anything bad in it, the Watertowners were immune to, they’d been drinking it for so long. But then the water turned.”

  “Turned?”

  “Changed. People suddenly started getting sick from it, losing weight. Some went crazy, a few died. Almost everyone stopped then. But people who kept drinking it said it wasn’t hurting them.”

  “But it was changing them.”

  Monica nodded. “Mom said they got real thin, but they got stronger, faster. She was a Waterdrinker.”

  Paul shook his head in confusion. “But how—”

  “I must have got it through Mom, before I was born. Like Armitage. But she wouldn’t let us drink it.” Her voice suddenly hardened with anger. “Didn’t stop her though. Even if it didn’t make her sick, it made her go funny. I think that’s why she was always wandering off, like she was looking for something. A lot of the other Waterdrinkers disappeared, too. A few of them died, real sudden, all shriveled up, like skeletons—horrible. Anyway, they’re all gone now. The kids—most of us banded together on our pier.”

  “And built a gate to keep people out.”

  She shrugged. “They hate us, the other Watertowners. A lot of them don’t even know about the dead water, but they can all tell we’re different. Freaks.”

  “Not Decks.”

  “No, Decks is different. He’s an old family friend. He never drank the water, but he doesn’t hate the people who did. Most Watertowners are more like Sked.”

  “He seemed almost jealous.” Paul remembered the twisted look on the spider boy’s face. Maybe if I had what you all had.

  “I heard he tried to drink the water, but it didn’t work for him. Nearly killed him. That’s the thing—some people can take it, others can’t.”

  “You never wanted to?” he asked cautiously, remembering her crouched on the pier, the water cupped in her hands.

  “No. I told you!” she replied—too loudly, Paul thought. “Anyway, I’ve got it in me already. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “What does it feel like?” Paul felt rather in awe of her and a little envious, too. She had all the things he’d worked so hard for: speed, strength, agility. He must seem ridiculous, with his heavy, pumped-up muscles.

  She shrugged. “It’d be like you trying to describe, say, how your legs feel. This is all I know. I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

  She placed her hand on Paul’s bare forearm. “I feel cold to you?”

  Paul nodded, taken aback but strangely excited by this sudden contact.

  “You’re scalding,” she said, puzzled. She brushed her thumb across the underside of his wrist. “Your heart is blasting away.” Then she maneuvered his fingers onto her pulse. “Here.”

  Paul concentrated but felt nothing. A cold prickle moved across his neck. Did she have a pulse at all? But she smiled and pressed his fingers tighter against her skin. He felt something now—not distinct beats, more like a continuous purr.

  Paul swallowed. “Yeah, I feel it now.”

  “We run pretty fast.”

  He realized he was still holding her wrist and abruptly let go.

  “Does it scare you?”

  “I don’t—no. Is that why you’re so pale?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And light?”

  “I suppose we don’t weigh much, do we? Nothing like you, anyway.”

  “It makes you tired,” he said. “Like after we ran away from Sked.”

  “Yeah, sometimes it’s as if all your energy burns away. But it comes back after a while.”

  He was trying not to believe any of it—to just stay calm. But Sam had written it all down.

  “You knew what would be on the diskette.”

  “I had an idea.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing we’d tell strangers, is it?”

  “Is that why Armitage didn’t want me to read it?”

  “One of the reasons. He doesn’t want anyone to know about us, especially people from the City. He’d do anything to get the water out of him. He hates it.”

  “So why did you let me read the diskette?”

  “Better you than Cityweb. And,” she added with sudden intensity, “I want to know what your brother found. None of the Waterdrinkers ever knew how the dead water worked. They thought it was magic.”

  “Sam thinks it’s some kind of microorganism in the water. He calls it a metabolic accelerator.”

  “A what?”

  “It speeds up the way your body works. It takes over your system.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “He doesn’t know, never saw anything like it. He thinks it might be some kind of mutation, but he couldn’t find it on any of his identification tables.”

  “So it’s not magic,” she said sadly. She looked at him defiantly. “You must think I’m some kind of freak.”

  “No,” he said truthfully.

  “I wonder. Still, it was only a matter of time before someone found out. Surprised it didn’t happen sooner. I don’t know what’s worse: Cityweb getting hold of it or your brother. What do you think he’s going to do with his great discovery?”

  Paul felt an icy contraction of fear in his guts. He knew exactly what Sam was planning.

  Da Vinci.

  The perfect man.

  8

  SOMETHING WONDERFUL is going to happen. His brother’s fevered words sounded in his head as he typed in the code word, calling up the second file. Monica crouched beside him and together they watched as the screen filled with light.

  Day 1

  I’ve decided that this is the only way to understand the effects of the dead water on human beings. No amount of computer-simulated modeling can match it. And I want to know. I want to experience it firsthand.

  I’ve screened out all tramp elements and toxic traces from the samples I’ve collected. I took the first dose at 0800, the second at 1400, and will continue at eight-hour intervals.

  No discernible symptoms or observations so far.

  “When I first saw him around the old boathouse, I didn’t think he was a stranger,” said Monica quietly. “I thought he must have been a Waterdrinker—some crazy who didn’t know better. You still see them around sometimes.”

  Paul nodded, mute.

  Day 2

  Muscle pain. I’m assuming it’s an initial reaction to the dead water. Slight fever. Heart rate up. Am continuing the dosage. I’m frightened—should I stop, do more tests, take my data back to the university before going any further?

  Some people could take the water, others couldn’t—that’s what Monica had told him. Which way would it go for his brother? Didn’t he know how dangerous it could be?

  Day 3

  I lifted things today I couldn’t have lifted before. At first, the objects seemed too heavy. But then, with some effort, it was possible. I felt as if I was able to instruct my body what to do, redirect all my strength to the active muscles.

  Paul thought of his nightmare—Sam, curling barbells, mysteriously strong.

  Afterward, fatigue. I slept deeply for two hours. This is in accordance with my theory that the dead water acts as a metabolic accelerator, which fuels the body faster but also exhausts its energy
reserves faster.

  I continue to take samples from various regions of Watertown in the hopes of learning more about the dead water. Is there a source? What is its exact nature?

  Day 4

  A thrum. A buzz in my head. It’s always there in the background. It changes when you move, altering pitch with every motion of your body. It is sensitive to other things, too: when something enters your field of vision, when an object moves around you.

  A bird flew into the boathouse through a window and panicked, swooping madly through the air. I watched until it flew close to me, and then my hands darted out with perfect timing and caught it gently. I don’t know who was more surprised—the bird or me.

  “Do you have that?” Paul asked. “A sound in your head?”

  “I’d never thought of it like that before. There’s a part of me that can tell when something’s going to happen. Say I step on a rotten piece of wood. I can feel it start to give before it actually does. Or when I pickpocket someone, I can tell when the person’s body has noticed, even before his brain has. But it always comes like a sound in my head.”

  My eyesight has also improved dramatically. With my glasses on, things seemed slightly skewed at first; now everything is distorted. The lenses are overcompensating. I don’t need them.

  You just left them behind, thought Paul. Nobody abducted you. You just discarded what you didn’t need. But your clothes, what about them?

  I feel as if I’m being recalibrated, remade. I’ve been losing weight. My clothes barely fit. At first, this upset me, but now I can’t help finding it exhilarating and liberating! When I was younger, I thought what I wanted was to be bigger, heavier, with more muscle and fat to insulate me against the world. But now I see that weight works against you, pulls you down to the earth. Refined to the bare essentials, with less weight, you can see, hear, feel things more intensely!

  What was he doing to himself? Paul touched the keys, and more text climbed the screen.

  Day 5

  Waking, I was aware of my body as never before. I could feel every artery pumping blood out of my heart, every vein bringing it back. In my mind’s eye, I saw the configuration of my tissue and muscle, sinew and bone. With concentration I could sense my cells dividing, multiplying, feel the work going on within me, like a piece of miraculous machinery! Just lying still, listening to my body, I’m learning things—things no textbook or lab experiment could teach.