Raging Sea

by Michael Buckley

  Bex pushes through the crowd and grabs me by the wrist.

  “I have your phone. I was trying to locate the camp for you so you could see how dangerous it is. I wanted you to be prepared. I wanted to make sure you would survive because, you see, that’s what I do. I’m Bex, the best friend. But you don’t need me now, do you? You’ve got your magic mitten and you can move a mud puddle, so who needs Bex?”

  “That’s not true!” I cry.

  Arcade grabs my hand and yanks me away. “Come, she is human. She does not understand.”

  “I’m human!” I shout at her.

  “No, you are not,” Arcade snaps. “You are Alpha. Your mother is Sirena. You have never been human, Lyric Walker. You have only pretended. Your real people need you, and it is time to embrace your blood.”

  Arcade storms off backstage. I hear her snap the lock off the grate and lift the lid that leads to the drainage pipe. Bex and I stare at each other the whole time. I know she wants me to tell Arcade she’s full of crap, but I can’t. Part of what she is saying about me is true. I am not human, entirely. There are Alpha and half-human children locked in Tempest, too. They are my responsibility. Arcade is right. Bex can’t understand and she can’t help.

  Something in her eyes shuts down, replaced with what I used to call “the hand grenade,” that moment when Bex Conrad stops playing nice. I’ve never had it hurled at me, but I’ve seen it explode in other people’s faces. Now the pin has been pulled.

  Out of her pocket comes my phone.

  “I’m doing this for your own good,” she says, aiming her eyes and words right at my face. “Tell Arcade why the phone is so important to you.”

  Tick. She’s talking about the picture of Fathom.

  “Bex, no,” I whisper.

  “Tell her what you’ve been hiding from her!” she shouts.

  Tick. She’s going to do it. She’s going to bust me.

  “Arcade, Lyric has a photograph of your dead fiancé!” she shouts.

  Arcade comes around the curtain.

  “A photograph?”

  “A picture,” Bex explains. “Her phone can capture images of other people and save them even when the person is gone.”

  Tick. She’s flipping through the files.

  “Bex, don’t,” I beg.

  But she won’t listen. She’s hands the phone to Arcade, then crosses her arms in defiance.

  “I can’t believe you were going to abandon me,” she whispers.

  Tick. Arcade takes the phone and looks down into the screen. For a long time her face is stone, frozen by confusion, but then her features give way to real emotions: pain, grief, and despair. I see feelings slamming into one another, and the destruction is too great to hide behind her steely Triton demeanor.

  She turns her attention to me, and everything gets hot, like she can start fires with her eyes. “He was my selfsame,” she says.

  “And the second he died, you moved on!” I shout, surprised by my own fury. “Why do you suddenly care about some picture? You had a whole lifetime with him, and you tossed him out with the trash. I only had him for two weeks. I loved him!”

  “You did not have him then . . .”

  In one effortless movement, she snaps my phone in half. The broken pieces fall to the ground. Her boot heel grinds them into the pavement. Glass and chemicals and hardware spread like the guts of some electronic insect.

  “ . . . and you do not have him now.”

  I look down at the mess on the floor. I’m no longer embarrassed by what I hid, or ashamed of how important it was to me. I don’t feel sympathy for her or sadness. All I feel is anger. My glove glows blue, and I aim it right at her. She does the same to me.

  “All right, stop it,” Bex says, suddenly the peacemaker. I almost laugh.

  Arcade lunges at me, and in my shock I fall backwards onto the hardwood floor, a happy accident as I watch her blades slice the air mere inches from my face. The mob shrieks, and suddenly they are racing back the way they came, trampling the slow ones in their paths.

  “Leave her alone, Arcade!” Bex shouts.

  I force a waterspout up through the antique floorboards, and it catches Arcade so hard, her body is flung toward the ceiling. She slams into it with a sickening smack, then falls back down, crashing through the stage and creating a massive hole. I hear pipes bursting, and more crashes come from below.

  I barely have time to stand when Arcade leaps up through the hole and lands on the balls of her feet.

  “You are a vile, selfish parasite, Lyric Walker. My life has become a whirlpool of indignities ever since I encountered you. You have been scheming behind my back, disrespecting my role as his future queen. You think of no one but yourself.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, either of you,” I say, looking back and forth from Arcade to Bex.

  “We part ways here, filth,” she says through heavy breaths. “I will not dishonor myself by fighting at your side. I will go to Tempest alone. Do not follow me, or I will kill you.”

  “We need each other,” I argue.

  “I will never need you,” she says.

  There’s a whipping sound outside, followed by a loud crash coming toward the lobby. I hear a bang, and something gets tossed through the lobby doors. It bounces down the aisle and lands right in front of the stage. It’s a metal canister leaking a thick, ghostly gas that makes my eyes and throat burn. A moment later there are two, three, four more canisters flying into the auditorium, followed by a squadron of men in black riot gear and gas masks. All of them have the same white tower logo sewn into their clothes that I saw on the belly of the helicopter that killed the police officer.

  “Put your hands on your heads! If you fail to follow instructions, we are authorized to open fire.”

  “Run!” Malik shouts.

  “No!” I shout, but it’s too late. The Coasters scatter like mice. There are popping sounds, and more canisters crash onto the ground. People fall left and right, overcome by the fumes. Children sob as they run through the chaos. Duck charges into the room, playing the hero, only to succumb as well. He coughs and clutches his throat and then passes out.

  My first thought is Bex, even if she hates me. I have to get her out of here. I stumble through the haze and find her standing dumbfounded against a wall.

  “Bex!” I shout, only to watch a soldier rush forward and shoot her with a Taser. She lets out a howl and falls to the floor, her body seized by pain and violent spasms. I am going to hurt this man. It will only take a single thought, but before I can break him in half, Arcade leaps into his path. She knocks his weapon out of his arms, then slices him across the chest with her blades. He lets out a terrible shriek and falls to the floor.

  There’s a ZAP. Arcade cries out in agony, struggling to yank out a collection of wires impaled in her back. I’m helpless to free her. Ozone and smoke are in my nose and eyes. I can barely breathe or see, but I can hear her agonizing cries.

  Someone clamps a hand on my arm. I turn, prepared to break a few important bones in his body, only to discover it is Lucas.

  “Come with me!” he shouts.

  “I can’t!” I cry, as guards haul my friends out of the theater.

  There’s another pop, and another canister lands at my feet. This time the smoke has a smell and a taste. It makes me dizzy.

  Lucas lifts his shirt up over his nose.

  “You can’t do anything for them right now,” he cries, then pulls me backstage.

  “No, that’s not true!” I shout, but my voice sounds like someone has turned the speed down on my mom’s record player. Even the voice of the water sounds odd and distant.

  Unleash us, it begs in a warbled whisper.

  The floor buckles, and water spirals skyward. It breaks into a dozen tendrils, a multiheaded hydra that snatches soldiers off the floor and tosses them against walls. There are so many targets that it’s hard to keep all of them straight, or maybe that’s the gas. Are there suddenly more soldiers? Are they ru
nning down the aisles toward me?

  I feel something stab my thigh. I look down and see several pointy darts attached to wires sticking out of my leg. A soldier is nearby with another of those weird guns they used to shock Bex. There’s no way to brace for the pain, even though I know it’s coming. A zap pushes me into a bonfire. My arms and legs are no longer mine to control, and they flail around like saplings in a hurricane. My head snaps up, and a scream boils over in my voice box. I fall hard, my face crashing into floor.

  “You have to get up,” Lucas demands, dragging me to my feet. He reaches down and pulls the wires out of my leg, then pulls me farther backstage and lays me down by the grate. Malik is there, and the two boys argue while I beg them to go back for my friends. Whatever I’ve been shot with has made me weak and confused. Everything seems to swirl before my eyes.

  Malik gets the gate open and is nearly down the steps when Lucas begs for his help. The boy reluctantly takes my arm, and together they lower me into the tunnel, where we plunge back into the darkness. Lucas closes the trapdoor, and then he and Malik drag me through the irrigation tunnel.

  “Why are you helping her?” Malik cries. “She’s one of them.”

  “She’s not what you think she is,” Lucas cries.

  “I can’t leave them,” I say, but it comes out like nonsense.

  “You can’t help,” Lucas argues, but then I realize he’s talking to Malik.

  “I have to try. I’m going back.”

  “I’ll come back once she’s safe,” Lucas promises.

  Malik shakes his head. “That’s the dumbest idea ever. I’m sorry, man. This is over. Go live your life. Get to California like your mom wanted. Go find that aunt.”

  He runs back the way we came, leaving Lucas to help me along by himself. He ignores my cries and pleading, and soon we come out into the bright sun under the bridge we first entered. I’m blinded by the light, dizzy and off-kilter.

  “My truck is right up this hill,” he says, nodding toward the embankment. He fishes a set of keys out of his pocket and then looks at me again. “Can you pull yourself together?”

  “I’m not going,” I garble, finding it difficult to raise my head so he can see my determination. The world feels like it crested the highest hill on the Cyclone and now it’s roaring toward the bottom. The next things that happen appear only as small snippets, like YouTube videos edited together into something that barely makes sense. My feet stumble on pebbles in the street, sirens, more helicopters, a red pickup truck with black tires, keys in a truck door, the squeak of it swinging open, Lucas shoving me into the seat, the click of a seat belt, my hot-dog fingers struggling to free me.

  “No! We can’t leave them. I need them.”

  There’s a sound by Lucas’s door. An arm covered in tattoos reaches in and takes the keys. Lucas is dragged out, and several men lead him away. My door won’t open. A man in sunglasses stands by my window.

  “Doyle?”

  “Hello, Lyric. We need to have a talk,” he says. His shirt has a logo. It’s a white tower on a black background.

  My head spins, and then everything goes away.

  Chapter Ten

  I’M SITTING IN A BOOTH IN A LITTLE RESTAURANT THAT HAS gone way overboard on the pastels and florals. Doyle sits across from me, sipping from a mug of coffee. He smiles.

  “Where am I?” I ask.

  “Menard, Texas.”

  I’m still loopy, and the black swirl in his cup hypnotizes me. I feel disconnected from my thoughts, like someone has cut the cord that connects communication between the two sides of my brain. Still, there is a feeling that something is really, really wrong. A little voice calls out from the fog. It tells me to run.

  “You have had a rough two weeks,” he says, eyeballing my outfit.

  “Where’s Lucas?”

  “Lucas is fine, Lyric. I’m sure you have a million questions, but first, I’m very glad to see you, very glad that you survived the tidal wave. Better yet, I’m thrilled you found your way here. You are an incredibly resourceful young woman. Of course, you had a little help from me—”

  “You’re with Tempest?”

  He nods his head, and I feel bile rise up in my throat.

  “I’m what you would call an independent contractor. My job title is Combat Trainer and Strategic Engineer. In layman’s terms, I train soldiers and plan security details for high-risk clients. I’m also an expert in crowd control.”

  “You took Bex and Arcade!”

  He nods. “It was important to separate the three of you so we could have this conversation. I didn’t want the others to sway—”

  “You killed that cop.”

  “No, I wasn’t there,” he says as he gives me the “just a minute” sign. “And that wasn’t how the operation was planned. The three of you were supposed to run, and my team would catch you one by one. It was regrettable, a breakdown in the command structure. The company has offered to pay for her funeral expenses and set up a college fund for her son—”

  Before he can finish, I lean forward and slap him so hard, it’s a wonder his nose doesn’t come off and land on the table. I don’t know if the noise attracted the waitress, but one comes strolling out from the kitchen with a pen and pad in her hands. She’s a stout woman with hair braided so thick and long that it touches her belt. It’s also streaked with gray and brown.

  “It’s hot out there today,” she says, easy with the small talk. She sizes us up, and I can see we’re not what she was expecting. A middle-aged guy in a black jumpsuit and a filthy teenager with murder in her eyes.

  “Do you have any pie?” Doyle says as casually as he can. There’s a growing red welt on his right cheek that she can’t see, but it might as well be flashing a beacon into space, it’s so bright.

  “Absolutely. We’ve got apple and blueberry.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any cherry, would you?”

  “I can check.”

  Doyle smiles wide and winks. “I would love you for it.”

  The waitress smiles warily. On her way to the back, Doyle begs her to turn on the television mounted on the ceiling. She obliges, and all at once, the screen is full of Coney Island. Soldiers are fighting Rusalka, who keep leaping out of the water. They fire M-16s and rocket launchers at everything as a reporter on the scene hyperventilates while trying to tell us that most of the military’s efforts are having little effect.

  “Oh, I hate watching this,” the waitress says, but before she can change the channel, Doyle stops her.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Leave it.”

  “Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug, then wanders off in search of his dessert.

  “I don’t want any more people to die while I work to keep you safe and alive.”

  “Nothing you say makes any sense, Doyle,” I growl. “You and your company kidnapped my parents. You’ve got Alpha in a torture camp. You’re experimenting on them. Now you’re here to tell me you’re trying to protect me.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” Doyle says. “Lyric, you’re the most important person in the world.”

  “Me?”

  “You can put an end to the fighting, Lyric,” he says.

  “It has nothing to do with me,” I say.

  “It has everything to do with you,” he argues.

  “No! You know what could have helped stop the fighting? Thirty thousand Alpha living in a tent city in Coney Island. Maybe if people like you hadn’t harassed them, they might have been willing to fight those things for us.”

  “I completely agree, and when this is all said and done, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs and go to jail, but right now pointing fingers doesn’t solve the crisis.”

  “And exactly why am I supposed to care?”

  He takes a deep breath, fighting the urge to continue the pointless debate.

  “I need you to come with me, Lyric. I will take you somewhere you can do some actual good with that weapon on your hand. You can
help me save the world,” he says. “Look, there’s the Secretary of Defense. You should listen to this.”

  Reporters gather in a room decorated with an American flag, blue curtain, and a podium with the government’s official seal. Front and center is a gray-haired man. He looks tired and grim.

  “Secretary of Defense Harris Abramson admitted to reporters today what political pundits have been saying for days, that the U.S. military is not trained to handle an amphibious threat like the Alpha,” a reporter says.

  “Navy SEALS have been working closely with National Guard and Marine command, but many of their efforts are stymied by the flooding and the tidal wave attacks on East Coast military bases.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” a reporter shouts over the din of other questions.

  “The enemy operate in relatively shallow waters that a submarine cannot reach,” Abramson says. “Or they move into depths no human being has ever attempted. The Alpha have lived their whole lives underwater, and their bodies are suited for high pressures, frigid temperatures, and strong currents. They’re physically more powerful and faster than human beings, even more so when submerged. Some, like the creatures with the teeth you’ve seen and read about, are particularly savage.”

  “Are there fears that there might be other things in the water? Reports coming out of the United Kingdom talk about a gigantic creature surfacing near Scotland,” a reporter asks.

  The secretary looks down at his notes, then wipes his brow.

  “At this time, we have no information that would lead us to that conclusion.”

  “He’s lying, Lyric,” Doyle says. “There are other things. He’s afraid of causing a panic.”

  “Sir, you keep referring to these creatures as ‘Alpha,’ and I’m wondering if there is a distinction? Is there no difference between the community who lived on the beach in Coney Island and these monsters who don’t appear to be as intelligent? Can you please clear that up for us?”