by Matt London
“Fishies, right.” Evie swallowed hard.
They neared Doctor Grant’s lab at the end of the corridor. The glass windows were shattered and the door was jammed open.
Niels Bohr hissed, glaring at the lab.
“Well, come on, kitty,” Evie said, waving him on.
The cat hissed again.
Evie sighed. “Fine. Why don’t you go hide somewhere safe? We’ll find you before we head back to the surface.”
Niels Bohr mewled and swam away from the laboratory.
Sprout and Evie went inside. It looked different flooded. Clipboards and other bits of trash floated in the water: an empty tuna fish can, a moldy bag of trash, test tubes, and a gel-screen tablet covered in sickly green algae. There was an enormous hole in the wall, a perfect circle that opened to the outside of the submarine. She remembered when that hole got made.
Evie swam over to Doctor Grant’s computer terminal. With the bottom of her fist she rubbed some of the algae off the monitor. The screen was blank. She had to turn the computer on. Any data from their experiments on the Eden Compound would be on this system. Evie searched around for the power button and found it on the back of the terminal. She pushed the button a few times, but nothing happened.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. Most computers couldn’t handle a juice box being spilled on them, let alone the whole ocean. But then Evie got an idea. Sitting beside the computer keyboard was an external hard drive in an airtight waterproof enclosure. If Doctor Grant backed up his data, it would still be safe and accessible on the hard drive. She disconnected the drive and put it in her satchel.
“Hey, Evie, check this out.”
Sprout had found the mixing vat where Evie and Rick had combined the ingredients to make the Eden Compound.
“Is there any left?” Evie asked, peering inside the large bell-shaped container.
Sprout shrugged. A stream of bubbles gurgled from his oxygen tank. “There might have been at some point, but any residue is gone now. Mixed in with the ocean water.”
“Oh,” Evie said, disappointed. “Well, I found this hard drive. There’s not much else here. We should head back to the surface, see what we can learn from it.”
Before Sprout could reply, something struck the side of the sub. Everything shook. The mixing vat wobbled on its narrow base.
“What was that?” Evie asked. She turned to Sprout, but saw that his face was frozen in a frightened expression. She followed his terrified gaze to the circular hole in the wall of the sub.
A giant eye was staring at them through the hole.
The robotic eye blinked. Evie paddled backward, trying to put distance between herself and the hole. The eye darted away, revealing that it was attached to a giant pink robot shark.
Chompedo was back.
Vesuvia’s favorite murderous machine had seen better days. Chompedo’s other eye was smashed. Dents covered his hard hull. His chainsaw teeth were chipped, broken, and mangled. His left jaw joint was stretched out of place, so his mouth hung at a gruesome angle.
Evie figured that after they had rooted the eighth continent and Vesuvia had gone to work for Mastercorp, everyone had forgotten about Chompedo. He returned to his last issued programming: destroy the Cichlid, destroy the Lanes.
The shark gnashed his chainsaw teeth and swam through the hole in the wall. Sprout and Evie had seconds to act. Evie kicked off the floor and swam for the door. Sprout took cover behind the mixing vat just as Chompedo crashed into it. The vat snapped off at its base and toppled over, landing on Sprout.
“Sprout!” Evie screamed over the comm.
“Evie, I’m stuck. Help!” She could see him squirming under the mixing vat.
“Hey, ya big guppy!” Evie waved her arms at Chompedo, trying to look tough. “Over here! Bet you can’t eat me.”
Chompedo spun his bulky pink body around and swam toward her like a bullet. Evie paddled into the hall, looking for a place to hide.
Wham! Chompedo smashed into the wall, crunching the metal partition with the blunt tip of his nose. Evie swam up through the circular hatch in the ceiling. Below her, Chompedo wormed through the broken barrier.
Evie turned to the front of the submarine. The wall ahead had buckled under the weight of the sinking sub. It looked like two pieces of paper crumpled together. There was no way through.
The harsh whine of metal on metal drew Evie’s attention downward, where Chompedo thrust his mangled teeth against the circular hatch. He sliced through the metal floor, widening the hole. In a panic, Evie swam to the rear of the ship. She found an open door and ducked inside.
Evie stared in shock at the room around her. Metal girders supported glass walls around a set of chambers. Above each was a valve capable of expelling fire and death. Evie remembered that all too well. She was back in the volcano engine room.
The glass walls were cracked and the girders mangled. Scrap metal was strewn about the charred floor. On the far side of the room, she could see the exit.
Behind her, Chompedo crashed into the door. One of his teeth poked the back of Evie’s wetsuit. She pulled away, and the razor-sharp blade cut a long slit up through the fabric. A wash of icy water flooded the inside of Evie’s suit. She gasped and swam through gaps in the walls of each chamber, making her way across.
She was through the second chamber when Chompedo broke the doorway apart. He thudded against the wall of the first chamber, splitting the glass like thin ice before propelling his body through it.
Evie entered the third chamber, where Doctor Grant had sacrificed himself to save Evie. Not a trace remained of their encounter here. The room was completely empty. Evie swam for the exit, but stopped short. Chompedo slammed against the wall of the second chamber, and it shattered after a single strike.
He was never going to relent, Evie realized. No matter how fast she swam, no matter how quickly she evaded him, Chompedo’s predatory robot brain would make him chase her until he caught her. Then he would go after Sprout.
She had to end this, now.
But how? Think, Evie. Think! She looked around at the empty chamber, at the broken glass and crooked metal. The robot shark was too strong. What would Rick do?
Chompedo smashed into the wall of the third chamber. A series of cracks bloomed through the glass where Chompedo struck the enclosure.
Setting her jaw, Evie swam to the top of the chamber. She inspected the nozzle at the end of the release valve of the lava dispenser. It appeared to be working. The control panel next to the nozzle was dark. Evie pushed buttons on the panel frantically. The display screen brightened as the lights blinked on. The nozzle moved lazily like an eel.
Calibration . . . Increase velocity . . . Adjust angle fifteen degrees. Evie usually relied on Rick for this technology stuff, but she was alone. She had to rely on herself.
Chompedo broke through the wall and swam across the floor of the chamber. Evie knew she only had seconds. She pushed the button to fire the blast of thermal energy.
Charging . . . The screen blinked, the energy bar crept across the screen.
“No!” Evie wailed as Chompedo turned his head up toward her. She tucked her knees into her chest, so her dangling legs wouldn’t look so scrumptious. He opened his great mouth.
The valve released, flooding the chamber with bright orange heat. The beam of hot magma struck Chompedo full in the face. Everything hissed as the water surrounding the molten rock boiled.
The blast coated Chompedo, smothering him in liquid fire. He crumpled as it coated his body, melting his metal shell. The shark shriveled under the heat and weight of the blast, disintegrating the chainsaw teeth. His face caved in and his interior flooded with magma. The shark sank to the floor and was still. The magma spilled over the wreckage, encasing the shark in a charred shell of hardened lava.
Trying to catch her breath, Evie swam down
to the wreckage and inspected the molten rock. The water around Chompedo was as warm as a piping hot bath. Evie sighed with relief. The shark was in pieces, totally destroyed.
Evie took a final glance around the volcano engine room before swimming back to the lab to find Sprout.
THE LINE FOR WORK ASSIGNMENTS WORMED THROUGH THE TUNNELS OF THE WINTERPOLE cave system on the eighth continent. Diana could not see the front of the line, nor the back. She couldn’t remember how long she had been waiting for her work assignment, but her stomach rumbled with hunger and she really had to pee.
Diana had established a program that passed out work assignments, saving Winterpole agents from waiting for hours in lines like this. But her mother had wiped the program, and now the whole contingent of agents at the outpost wasted hours every morning.
Diana refused to stand in line for another minute. She stepped out of line and hurried through the icy corridors to an elevator tube. Maybe if she could explain to her mother why her way worked better, with solid evidence to back up her point, the older Maple would recognize her error.
The doors of the elevator tube opened and Diana stepped out onto the launchpad. Whoosh! A boy with wings zipped overhead. He raised a silver slingshot and snapped a stone at Diana. She ducked and the rock hit her in the shoulder, leaving a welt and a sharp pain.
Across the launchpad, a trio of Winterpole agents fired their icetinguishers at a boy with a huge hermit crab shell on his back. The boy slammed his shell against the ground, shattering the ice that had coated his armor. He swung his shell at the nearest agent, sending him careening back into the others.
Diana spotted her mother across the launchpad, crouched behind a stack of shipping containers. She had removed her earpiece and was screaming into it. “Take forms 32-A and 14-B down to the labor office. Have them evaluate agents standing by with the usual questionnaire and ask the high scorers to fill out overtime request sheets for additional payment and work hours. Then send them up to the launchpad. We are under fire!”
“Mom! What’s going on?” Diana slid across the icy launchpad and stopped next to her mother behind the containers.
“Mastercorp!” her mother said. “We’re under attack.”
“So send out an emergency order to get all the agents to the surface. We have to fight them off. There are dozens of agents standing around down in the compound not doing anything.”
“That goes against our protocols, Diana! This is exactly why you’re in so much trouble with Winterpole. Why can’t you understand that rules must always be followed, with no exceptions?”
The roar of hover engines drew Diana’s gaze to the sky. A humanoid robot, or android, floated a dozen feet over their heads. The bottom of the robot’s feet glowed red as the hoverboots pulsed. The robot looked a lot like her former fellow junior agent Benjamin Nagg.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my moronic old Winterpole colleagues. Ah, it’s good to be back.” The metal boy’s voice sounded like a mix between Benjamin and an electric can opener. “I’ll be taking control of the eighth continent now. ‘Kay, thanks.”
Diana pointed a finger at him. “You’re not getting anything, Benjamin. So call off your freaky cyborg animal-people, or whatever they are.”
“You mean Aniarmament?” Benjamin’s red eye lights flashed brightly. “They’re my Brat Brigade now, and they’ll do whatever I tell them. Brat Brigade! Fall in!”
The three robotically enhanced kids quickly ended their fights and rushed over to Benjamin. They stood in a line beneath him, looking angry and dangerous enough to defeat every Winterpole agent, and then some.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Maple asked, sounding even more disapproving than usual.
“I don’t want anything,” Benjamin said, settling his metal boots on the ground with a loud clang. “I have everything I could ever want—because of this!” He presented a piece of cyberpaper to them. Diana read the familiar paper with disgust.
By every island and isthmus, by every archipelago, whosoever holds this document shall possess full ownership of THE 8TH CONTINENT.
“The Ultimate Continent Ownership Form.” Diana’s mother scoffed. “How do we know it’s real? You expect us to recognize your authority as the absolute ruler of the continent?”
The razor-sharp teeth in Benjamin’s metal jaw curved into a wicked smile. “Let’s go ask the Director. See what he thinks about my ownership of the continent.”
Diana watched nervously as her mother shouted, “Do you have any idea how many permission slips you need to have a direct audience with the Director of Winterpole? Your digitized cashew of a brain could not even comprehend the number. Guards! Detain this law-breaking loon.”
As two Winterpole agents approached Benjamin, he said, “I have all the permission I need right here. Gregory?”
The shortest of the Brat Brigade pushed a button on his belt and a hatch popped open in the enormous hermit crab shell on his back. A black metal nozzle poked out and pointed at the guards. A stream of flame burst from the nozzle. The guards’ business suits caught fire. They screamed in terror and ran away, stopping several yards away to blast each other with their icetinguishers. When the blue mist cleared, the guards were encased in ice.
A shiver went up Diana’s back. Shaken, Mrs. Maple led the group to the deepest levels of the compound, where the Director of Winterpole had been in seclusion since his arrival.
The room was wide and round and dark. Diana and her mother led Benjamin and the Brat Brigade inside. At the center stood a dome, with tubes curling up from the dome to the walls and ceiling. A layer of mist covered the floor. At the center was a dome crowned with a thicket of metal tubes that curled up the walls to the ceiling. Through the tubes an enormous video screen was visible. A representation of the Director’s face covered the vast monitor, a mosaic of code, text, and symbols that swirled with each facial expression.
The Director bellowed, “What is the meaning of this disturbance?”
Benjamin raised the Ultimate Continent Ownership Form. “As you can see, I possess your precious UCOF. As such, I am entitled to all the rights and benefits of the supreme ruler of the eighth continent, no additional permission slips required! You work for me, Mister Director.”
Diana’s mother stepped forward. “Director, please explain to this freak how foolish he has been, and grant me verbal permission to arrest him and his accomplices.”
The room thundered with overcranked volume as the Director said, “Physical possession is all the Ultimate Continent Ownership Form requires. It is binding. Whosoever holds the form is the supreme ruler of the eighth continent, and all Winterpole agents must follow the supreme ruler’s instructions to the letter, as stated in our company handbook. The Director has spoken. End of memo.”
Diana looked at the vague, emotionless face on the screen. How could this be happening? Her mother dropped her arms to her sides. Diana had never seen her look so disheartened.
The Brat Brigade snickered and gave each other high fives. Benjamin stuck the Ultimate Continent Ownership Form back into the storage compartment in his leg, then turned to face Diana’s mother. “Mrs. Maple. I order you to arrest yourself.”
Shaking her head in disgust, Diana’s mother approached a Winterpole guard and took his handcuffs, then clasped them around her own wrists.
Benjamin watched the spectacle with a sharp grin on his face. “Mrs. Maple, I order you to flap around and cluck like a chicken.”
Mrs. Maple glared. “You’re joking.”
“DO I LOOK LIKE I’M JOKING?!” Benjamin’s eyes flared bright red.
With a sigh, Mrs. Maple flapped her arms and walked in a circle. She looked like she was trying not to cry.
“Bok. Bok. Cluck. Bok.”
“Oh, this is fantastic! This is too good!” Benjamin’s jaw clacked when he spoke.
The Brat Brigade watched uncomfor
tably as Benjamin applauded the woman’s humiliation.
“Stop it! Leave her alone!” Diana screamed.
Benjamin turned to her. “What’s the matter, Diana? You know your mother detests you. Why do you sound so upset?”
“Shut up, Benjamin,” Diana said.
“That’s not true!” Mrs. Maple cried, still flapping her arms.
“Oh, but it is if I say it is. Tell her, Mrs. Maple.” Benjamin grabbed her by the back of the neck. “Nod your head if you hate your daughter.” He shook Mrs. Maple like a doll so she nodded her head. He gasped in mock surprise. “What a terrible thing to confess. So come on, Diana. What should I do with her?”
“Let her go!” Diana shouted.
With a heavily modulated sigh, Benjamin released his grip on Mrs. Maple’s neck. She collapsed to the floor, gasping for air. He walked away, saying, “As usual, you’re no fun at all, Diana.”
“At least I’m not a robot,” Diana snapped. Her words hung in the misty air, but only for a second.
Fast as a rocket, Benjamin was in her face, gnashing his bladed teeth inches from her nose. “Oh, but you are, Diana. You most certainly are a robot. Beep boop. Always following orders. First Vesuvia, then your mother, now the Lanes. That Rick Lane, he programmed you so well, didn’t he? Just like one of his computers.”
Diana stumbled back, speechless.
Benjamin snapped his metal fingers. “Buzz, Kitty, lock her up in a holding cell. Mrs. Maple, order any agents who might be loyal to your lame daughter to lock themselves up as well. Loyalists only, from this moment forward! Winterpole has a big mission ahead of them. Kill the Lane family.” Metal clanged as he clapped his hands together. “Ooh hoo hoo. This is going to be fun.”
RICK DUCKED UNDER A LOW-HANGING BRANCH. ALL THE TREES IN THE DENSE JUNGLE WERE blurring together, but Rick did not relent. He had a mission. He had to keep moving.
After several more minutes he came upon a large tree with a rock beside it. The rock was shaped like an old TV set. He dragged the rock across the ground, exposing the secret passage into the Winterpole complex that Diana had showed him months before. He let out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness the entrance was still here. Step one of his plan depended on him sneaking into the Winterpole compound.
