Raging Sea

by Michael Buckley

  When I get to the catwalk, I’m sure we’re making a mistake.

  “Where’s Doyle?” I ask the guards.

  They call for him on their radios, but he doesn’t respond.

  I try to be cool about it, but the old panic returns. Spangler knows the plan. He’s already killed Doyle. He’s up in my room slaughtering my friends and my parents. He’s putting Arcade in the tank with the squid creature so he can watch her die.

  “Can you let Spangler know I need him to turn off the EMP? The kids can’t practice with the Oracles when it’s still on,” I ask Darren just as the kids enter.

  “You okay?” Riley asks, giving me a little nudge on the shoulder.

  I nod, but I’m not really listening to anything he’s saying.

  Spangler enters with a bright smile.

  “I love the dedication, kids,” he says as he activates the machine that reveals the pool. “Show me what you can do! We don’t have a lot of time left, so do your best.”

  My insides clench with how much I hate him. He needs to go away. I wasn’t sure about it until right now. I’m going to help Doyle end this man.

  The children line up to demonstrate the extent of their skills. Some are impressive, but all of them are good. Riley is still the best, then Geno and Georgia, but Cole, Breanne, Alexa, and Danny have all made dramatic overnight improvements. Tess, Emma, and Jane, as well as William, freshly wounded by the deaths of their parents, are not far behind. Even Chloe, with her tiny little body, makes a sword as big as a rowboat.

  While the kids applaud, my eyes find Doyle on the catwalk high above. He paces, agitated. He checks his watch and disappears. The plan has started.

  “Lyric, I did it,” Chloe says proudly.

  “That’s great news,” I say, leaning down to hold her hands. “Chloe, I want you to stay very close to Riley tonight. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

  She nods.

  “Good. Riley, don’t let her out of your sight. Keep her close.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “Lyric, you’re not looking,” Chloe scolds when she creates a dolphin that leaps into the sky.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say, then scan the room for the other kids. I want to know where they are when the system crashes so I don’t accidentally hurt anybody.

  There’s a piercing alarm, and lights go out. The ceiling glows with red emergency lights, and backup illumination appears above the exit doors. The children cry out, but Spangler and the guards urge them to stay calm.

  “What’s going on?” Breanne cries.

  Spangler taps his screen, then does it again. He looks up at me, and suddenly his concerned face changes to one of understanding.

  “This was a very dumb move, Lyric,” Spangler says, then taps on his tablet and races off as soldiers rush into the room. Half attempt to corral the children, while the other half aim their guns at me.

  “Lyric, what is happening?” Tess cries.

  “Stick together!” I shout.

  It’s time to do my part. I power up my glove, and it burns brighter than I have ever seen it.

  What would you have us do?

  “Help me put a stop to this place,” I whisper back.

  The pool comes alive, bubbling and spilling over its sides. The water reaches up and snatches the armed guards nearby, violently jerking them off the ground like dolls and pulling them under. More soldiers charge through the doors, shouting orders, but I send a lightning-fast whip that smacks them across the room. With my path clear, I sprint forward, only to be clobbered from behind by a wall of salty liquid. I tumble to the grass, end over end, and land flat on my back. When my head stops ringing, I find Riley and his glove glowing in my face.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening, but you can’t—”

  This is exactly what I feared. Riley and the other kids are siding with Spangler. I yank half the water out of the pool and throw it at Riley. He slides across the lawn as scales appear on forearms and neck, fiery red with confusion and anger.

  “I’m sorry too,” I say as I scamper back to my feet. “I’m bringing this place down right now. If you’re smart, you won’t try to stop me. Get away from here and take whoever you can with you.”

  “I thought you were one of us,” he cries.

  I dart through the double doors and into the hall as soldiers pop up in my way. I cause the pipes to burst on either side of them, and they fall over like chess pieces. I leap over their unconscious bodies and continue onward, racing up a flight of stairs to the cells, just like Doyle and I planned.

  Bullets skitter on the floor near my feet. I turn and bring geysers up to destroy the flooring behind me. I watch several men topple into the massive hole I’ve created. That will buy me a little time.

  “Lyric?”

  I turn to see familiar faces. These are the parents of the children I’ve been training. They are filthy and bewildered but free from their cells; shorting out the system has released them. They take tentative steps into the hall.

  “There’s a flight of steps behind that exit door!” I shout, pointing across the hall. “Take them up until you find the surface. Get as far away as you can. I want to help you all, but there are so many others to save. Run. Don’t stop!”

  At the end of the hall is another door, and I slam through it to find another flight of steps. Once I reach the top, I’m in an identical situation as on the floor below—faced with dozens of scrawny, starving people who are afraid of what has happened. I tell them pretty much what I told the others, but this time a group of heavily armed soldiers storms into the hall. They open fire. People scream and fall to the ground. I see blood, but I can’t tell who it belongs to. The water in the pipes along the ceiling shouts to me, and I free it. It’s boiling hot and it burns the guards, but it avoids the prisoners completely. The soldiers scream, trying to get away from the attack. One hits the ground near me, and his rifle falls out of his hands. I snatch it off the floor and shove it into the hands of a tiny Asian woman who looks like she’s been locked up for years. I don’t stop to ask her if she knows how to use the weapon. If not, I hope she’s a fast learner.

  I race onward, up another stairwell, into a hallway where I find the elevator. I also find Fathom blocking my way.

  “Lyric Walker, whatever you are doing must stop,” he says.

  I could stand here and let him try to explain why he’s done me wrong. I could give him a chance to persuade me that Spangler’s plans are good for us all, but I’m sort of sick of this kid’s face. I have never turned my power on another person the way I do Fathom. Water hits him from every side, like four tractor-trailers crashing through an intersection and he’s caught in the middle. It sends him crashing through the adjacent wall and out of my path.

  I jam the elevator button, but nothing happens. I jam it again and notice the sensor pad. I’m so stupid! I need a passkey!

  I use some water on the floor to help me pry the doors open and look down into the blackness of the elevator shaft. Up is no more inviting. There’s just no way I can climb it. I’m sure I’d fall to my death the second I tried. I’m going to have to get creative. I’m unsure how far the shaft goes down, but if there’s water at the bottom, I need it. I extend my hand into the void and bear down with my mind. What was it the preacher said about this valley? The mountains block the moisture. It’s the driest place in the country. Still, there has to be some, maybe down in the bedrock below us, hundreds of feet deep. I feel some wetness on my lip. The nosebleed has started, and I’m beginning to feel a dull headache from trying so hard. Things are getting a little fuzzy, and then—

  We are here, Lyric.

  “Come,” I whisper.

  There’s a rumbling from far below, an explosion, and whoosh! I watch the liquid blast up through the shaft, filling the space and rising higher. My hand gets whipped upward from the gushing water. I’ve made my own elevator.

  I have no idea why I hold my breath. Maybe it’s an old hab
it dying hard, but I do, and then I leap. The current rockets my body upward, higher and higher. My scales appear, and my gills take over for my lungs. The whole experience is . . . magical. I’m about to reach the very top floor, and with a sweep of my arm, the doors fly off. It’s pretty badass, if I do say so myself. They crash into the laboratory, and water spills onto the floor, flooding everything. Unfortunately, I go with it. It’s not the most elegant entrance. I flop around like a crab in a net, but it certainly gets everyone’s attention. Spangler’s science staff stands around me, gaping and dumbfounded. That is, until I stand, and they fall over themselves to get out of my way.

  “How do you let them out of the tanks?” I shout. No one answers. I should have grabbed one of those nerds and forced them to help me.

  “Lyric!”

  I turn, half expecting Fathom, only to find Riley stepping out of my water elevator. He’s dripping wet, breathless, and his eyes are wild and troubled. He’s also got his weapon ready.

  “Riley, please don’t try to stop me,” I beg. “I only have a little time to get this done.”

  “Get what done? What is this place?” he asks, staring hard at the tanks.

  “This is where they keep the Alpha parents,” I explain.

  “You lie!” he shouts angrily.

  “Riley, Tempest is the lie. Everything Spangler and Doyle and the guards have told you about this place is a lie. Your human parents aren’t sick. They’ve been prisoners locked up in this building, and your Alpha parents are in these tanks.”

  “That’s not true!” he shouts.

  Water seeps out of the elevator and wraps itself around a chair. Suddenly, it’s off the floor and sailing right at my head. I manage to command it to slam into a wall before it clobbers me, but it was close.

  “It is! I’ve seen it all. I was locked away myself. Spangler only let me out when I promised to train you with the gloves.”

  Another chair soars across the room. A leg clips me in the side, and my ribs burn.

  “Riley, I don’t want to fight you, but I will, and I’m a lot better with this thing than you are, so do yourself a favor and just look around!” I scream.

  He stops his assault and does as I ask, his head whipping from one end of the room to the other. Suddenly, he’s running at me and I’m sure he’s going to attack again, but then he sails past me to one of the tanks. It has an unconscious Selkie floating in it, most likely unaware of what is happening around him. Riley stumbles to the next tank and the next, and I hear him gasp when he comes across one filled with Rusalka hands. He turns and sees another with human body parts, and finally he comes across a Sirena whose chest cavity has been opened wide so that we can see her beating heart.

  “My father? Is he here too?”

  I nod.

  “You can help me rescue him and all the others.”

  “What’s real?” he shouts. “Is the plague real?”

  “No!” I shout to him as I plant myself in front of a computer. I search the screen, looking for a button that might say OPEN TANKS or STOP BEING EVIL. I quickly realize I’m wasting my time. I press a few buttons, hoping to get lucky, but nothing happens. All I know about computers is how to make a Vine.

  “Then the parents didn’t die?”

  “He killed them!” I shout. “He needs all of you to be as good with the gloves as you can be, and giving you something traumatic and worth fighting for did the trick.”

  “Coney Island?”

  “That’s real. He’s sending you to fight the Rusalka, but none of you are ready. Riley, I know you have a million questions, but right now we have a very limited amount of time. We have to get these people out of these tanks.”

  I hear a crash and then the sound of sloshing water. I turn to find one of the tanks has cracked, and a man tumbles out onto the floor. Riley scoops him up and pats his face, trying to wake him up.

  “Dad, I need you to get up and walk.”

  I wasn’t prepared for the Alpha to be drugged, but there’s no going back now. I turn and find a Ceto sinking in its tank. A sign has been taped onto the glass that reads CETO NAME: BUMPER.

  “Bumper!” I cry, remembering her from school. I concentrate on the water behind the glass. There’s a crack and then another gush of water onto the floor. Bumper falls out with it and flops about as she morphs into her more human form. I take her squishy hand and lock eyes with hers. She recognizes me.

  “It appears that I have missed some important events,” she says.

  “Riley, get to work on the others!” I shout.

  He’s reluctant to leave his father, but he does what I tell him. Soon another tank is shattering next to us, releasing a Sirena. I do the same to Nathan, the pufferfish man. When he spills out of the tank, he nearly knocks me down.

  Riley rushes to another tank and is about to break it when I stop him. Inside is the squid creature Spangler warned me about. Its hundreds of tentacles slam against its tank. I don’t believe much of what Spangler has said, but when it comes to this thing, I think he was telling the truth.

  “Not this one. And skip the Rusalka, too.”

  “What about these people who are torn open?” Riley cries.

  I shake my head, though it hurts my heart.

  “We can’t help them. If we open their tanks, they could die. It might be cruel to leave them here, but if they’re alive, they still have a chance at rescue.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Lyric?”

  “Spangler threatened the people I love, Riley,” I explain as I free an adult Triton I’ve never seen before.

  “Is Uncle David part of this?”

  I groan. “Yes! Doyle is part of this. He still might be, but right now he’s trying to do the right thing.”

  The lights dim and flicker.

  “What was that?” Riley asks.

  “I don’t know, but it would suck if that’s the system rebooting,” I say. “Listen, we need to break open all these tanks at once, but again, keep the ugly ones in time-out.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Riley says.

  I take his hand, and we turn our gloves on the tanks. I watch them rattle and shake. There’s an ear-jamming crash and then the sound of gallons of water spilling everywhere. It rushes at us, and I’m so focused on freeing everyone, I’m not ready for it. Both of us are pulled under and slammed around. I bang the back of my head on something, and the pain is searing. All the time, Riley holds my hand. He never lets me go, and eventually he gets me to my feet.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “I’ll survive,” I say.

  “What now?”

  “The rest is up to Doyle,” I explain.

  “Lyric?” Spangler’s voice broadcasts through speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling. I hear it echo outside, too, and in the halls. It’s everywhere. “Lyric, it’s Donovan. David and I are outside, and we need to have a chat.”

  “Riley, stay here and help everyone you can,” I say.

  “No way!” he cries. “I’m not letting you go out there alone, not after what you told me about him.”

  “Lyyyyrrrriiccc,” Spangler sings. “Come on out.”

  “Riley, please,” I say. “These are our people, and they need you more than I do right now.”

  I walk past all the tanks to the elevator. The water has sunk back down, but it’s a simple thing to recall it. I leap into the shaft, and it rises to catch me. I go down one floor, force the doors open, and then race down a hall until I find an emergency exit door. I push it open and find myself outside in the chilly Texas night. My wet skin and clothes make it even worse, but I have to keep going. I race around the building’s perimeter with only the moon to light my way until I find Spangler and Doyle. Both men are aiming guns at each other.

  “Lyric, it’s over,” Spangler says.

  “All the Alpha and the human parents are free. Soon the kids will know about your lies,” Doyle says to him.

  Spangler smiles like he’s being patient wit
h a small child.

  “That’s going to be tedious to clean up, but it’s not unmanageable. I’m willing to let this go, but you have to power down now, Lyric. I’m going to reset the EMP’s console, and then we’re all going to go back inside and go to bed. We have a big mission soon.”

  “Put the gun down, Spangler. I’m not going to tell you again,” Doyle demands.

  “I’ve got this,” I say. I call two waterspouts from deep in the earth. They shoot out of the ground and collect in a puddle at Spangler’s feet.

  “I have to say I’m impressed by this act of teamwork. The thing is, we’re all on the same team. It’s true, Lyric. Down deep, both you and David understand what’s at stake. We’re all trying to save the world.”

  What happens next, I might truly never understand. It all seems to happen at once, yet I witness everything as if it is its own exclusive event. Spangler spins and slams his free hand on a button inside the door of the electrical shed, and all at once I don’t feel the connection anymore. Doyle fires his gun. Spangler’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls to the ground. He stares up at the stars and dies.

  “It’s over,” Doyle says.

  There’s another gunshot, and Doyle falls. His body lies next to Spangler’s, and the two of them leave this world together. I turn to find a wheelchair rolling into the light. Calvin is pushing it along, and in the seat is Governor Bachman, her hand wrapped around a pistol. Her body leans sharply to the left, as if her spine has been cracked and put back together by a child. Her face is marred by a jagged purple scar that cuts a wide canal from the corner of her mouth up to her dead white eye. Despite it all, she’s got the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen.

  I can’t believe she’s alive. When the Rusalka arrived on our shore, the Navy sent ships to intercept them, but the creatures used their gloves to lift a battleship out of the water and hurl it onshore. Bachman was in its path. The fact that she’s breathing is a miracle.

  Her eyes hold me in place and burn with hostility. Her hands tremble as they lift a red, white, and blue megaphone to her mouth. Then an ear-piercing feedback whine stabs my ears, and a series of ugly barks and mumbling moans flies into the desert. I have no idea what she actually said, but the tone is crystal clear. She hates me.