Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  Maya still hadn’t called her parents. She looked down and realized she was blending into the clothing rack again, and made herself go back to normal.

  “Yeah, no, totally,” Hawk said, stammering a little. “I just . . . I always like to sit facing the exit, you know? So if tomorrow goes wrong . . .”

  “If we do not find what we seek tomorrow, I will ensure you get home,” Iara said, and smiled up at him, her hair tumbling down to frame her face. “But for now, let us hope for good things instead.”

  Hawk blushed and grinned, and Maya smiled to herself. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the full-blitz sundress tomorrow.

  LAKE

  Tia Lake, a tall woman with perfectly curled dark hair falling to the neck of her black silk blouse, sat in a black leather office chair and tapped at the polished mahogany desk with nails painted the same blood red as her lips.

  “Four of them escaped,” she said.

  Tap, tap, tap went her nails on the hardwood.

  “They haven’t returned to their rooms at the office,” she said, “and it’s doubtful that they will. They’re smarter than that.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Give me what you remember for their contact information,” she said, smiling gently.

  On the ground next to the desk, what was left of Diane Tucker twitched. She didn’t do much more than that—nobody with that many eels attached to them could do much more than that—and her eyes were glazed, but there was enough of her left in there to twitch, still.

  “This is just for information, Diane. You’d be surprised what can happen when it’s for punishment.”

  Tap, tap, tap. Her nails gouged little crescents of white into the desk.

  “Ah, there we go,” she said a moment later, and the pile of eels flexed and writhed and bit in and took the right parts out. “Thanks so much, Diane. Now how about that thing calling itself a girl who worked for Angler Consulting? How did you get ahold of that number?”

  Diane twitched again. This time her eyes darted to the ceiling. Diane had been a feisty one.

  Tia let out a long sigh, and a pair of eels wriggled toward Diane Tucker’s eyes.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Finally Tia smiled. “You really don’t remember, do you, Diane? Oh, that’s helpful, even so. Here’s why you don’t remember, right here, and . . . ah yes, what a clever thing. So gentle.” The eels began to take out what they needed, carefully this time, since Tia would want a closer look.

  “The payment information is probably fake, but we should follow up just to be sure, don’t you think, Diane?”

  No twitch from under the eels this time.

  “Diane?”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Tia Lake cocked her head. “I guess I took out your name with that last bit. You don’t even remember yourself, do you?” She smiled down fondly at the pile. “Lucky thing.”

  She sent out her orders from her phone while the eels finished what was left.

  TUESDAY

  04

  MAYA

  Maya wasn’t expecting to have to be the motivating force getting everyone outside PortManta at five thirty in the morning. In Maya’s experience, timeliness was something that happened to other people. Her dad had always gotten her up for morning football practice. He’d even woken her for swim practice after she left football, and he wouldn’t talk to her much beyond that.

  So when Tapper banged on the door to her hotel room at four forty-five (once she had looked through the peephole to verify that it was him and not some kind of horrible monster like the ones she’d been dreaming about all night, and then opened the door with the locking chain still on just in case it was a monster that could disguise itself) and said, “Nobody else is up. We can’t be late on this,” she was somewhat confused.

  “Wurrrwha?” Maya said, squinting and blinking at the greasy light in the hallway. “It’s not even five yet.”

  “Thought you’d wanna shower,” Tapper said. He was wearing the new outfit that Iara had gotten—well, stolen—for him, black cargo pants and a dark red sweater. “Girls take longer to shower. Before you hop in, get the other two up.”

  Maya started to wake up a little. “Why do I have to do that? You’re already awake.”

  “I don’t motivate,” Tapper said. “When I talk, it just pisses people off.”

  “You’re talking to me, though.”

  “Offending you is like punching a pillow.” Tapper turned away. “I’m gonna break into the snack machine down the hall. Get Pint-Size and the Girl from Ipanema up.”

  And so Maya motivated Iara into wakefulness and pounded on Hawk’s door until the half-asleep “Dude” responses turned to begrudgingly awake “Dude” responses. Then, because she was one of the girls who took longer showers, she hopped in and got cleaned up.

  Forty-five minutes later, they stood outside the coffee-and-juice place, waiting in the darkness.

  “It is way too early to be awake,” Hawk muttered. He wore baggy board shorts and a gray button-up shirt left open to show a thin white T-shirt underneath, an outfit that would have probably left him cold in the chilly pre-dawn wind had he not been immune to everything except electricity. He was eating one of the snack bars Tapper had stolen.

  “Today we take the fight to our enemies,” Iara said. Her hair still somehow managed to look vibrant and bouncy (and green) despite it being way too early, and she rocked her chair back and forth. “Today the Lake Foundation learns to fear us!” She wore a nice black leather jacket, because she probably would be cold just wearing a long blue sundress with little purple flowers on it.

  Maya was starting to think she’d played it a little safe with the green shirt with the smiley face, but she had at least gone for the skinny jeans Iara had picked out.

  She watched the few ferries pass by in the canals, the gentle hum and the rushing of the water so much quieter than the gasoline-powered cars that were still all over the place back home in Nebraska. “Maybe the Lake Foundation could just forget us instead?”

  “She said she’d be here at five thirty.” Tapper glared at his cracked phone.

  “She is,” came a voice, and everyone looked as Lori came around the corner. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans today. It made her look much more like someone Maya’s age. “Sorry. Had to get a sitter for my brother. Come on, let’s grab a ferry.”

  LORI

  At five forty-five, they stood outside the Lake Foundation’s main headquarters, a tall building whose windowed walls gleamed in the predawn half-light, looking at the well-lit front lobby and the security guards inside.

  “I thought they’d be closed,” Maya said. “I mean, I thought we might have to sneak past janitors or something, but I didn’t think we’d have to deal with security guys, and do they have guns?”

  “Yes,” Tapper said. He glanced over at Lori, his eyes shining. “You’re Miss B and E. What do we do?”

  Lori glared at him. “We don’t stand out here looking suspicious. Come on.”

  She started walking, and they fell in behind her, giving her time to think. Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it with the sudden thought that something had happened with Ben, that Jenn needed Lori to come back home.

  Handler: Circle the building. Gotta be some better way inside.

  “I don’t break into places,” Lori said. The Lake Foundation headquarters took up the whole block, and she started down the sidewalk, glancing up from time to time at the chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that seemed to ring the entire place.

  “Did you not break into the docks?” Iara asked as she wheeled herself along with them. Lori had expected her to need help getting her chair onto the ferry, but she’d navigated the narrow gangplank with amazing ease.

  “I was invited to the docks,” Lori said. “People hire me to hunt feeders.” They don’t remember how they found me, she didn’t add, and they probably don’t remember me after I’m gone, because the thin
g that uses me alters their minds, just like every other feeder.

  “You know much about these feeders,” Iara said, and smiled. “This is good. I look forward to destroying whatever commands these eels.”

  “Hey, why did we go with eels?” Hawk asked. “I mean, are they eels or snakes or . . . ?”

  “No idea,” Maya said, “but Iara lived near rivers, so she probably knows what eels look like better than we do.”

  “Also Ursula’s minions in The Little Mermaid,” Iara added.

  “The eels,” Lori went on doggedly, “are little bits that the bigger feeders have. Sometimes they’re like larvae—its children. Sometimes they’re more like extensions of the feeder, like it’s . . . like it’s this thing sitting in another dimension, and it just kind of pokes part of itself in, right?”

  “Like space?” Hawk asked.

  “No. Like . . .” She looked back and saw everyone staring at her. “So say we’re all fish in a lake, and some guy is looking down into the lake, and none of us can see him, because we’re the fish, and we never think to look up. He puts his fingers into the water, and we all look up, and as far as we can tell, it’s like ten different creatures, like little worms, just came into the water, but really it’s all one creature. You see?”

  They continued to look at her blankly.

  Lori looked away and kept walking. “Anyway, that’s how it works.”

  “And the man whose fingers are the eels,” Iara said, “he is the creature that killed Shawn.” She was still rolling beside Lori, her hands flicking the wheels with tireless strength. “And he uses the Lake Foundation as his villainous lair?”

  “Maybe. Tia Lake isn’t human. Whatever the feeder is, it’s using her and her company.” Lori kept walking. As they reached a corner, it became clear that the Lake Foundation was more of a complex than a single building, large enough to fill most of the block with shiny gray structures.

  “If this were Austin,” Hawk said, “I’d say we try the parking lot. Tech companies always have weaker security by the parking lot, because that’s where most of the normal folks come in.”

  “No parking lots in a canal city.” Tapper ran fingers through his dreadlocks.

  “Are they a tech company?” Maya asked. “I didn’t really look at their website when they offered the scholarship. I mostly just went, ‘Oooh, cool!’ because when I switched to swim team, there weren’t a whole lot of scholarships for that.”

  “They are the ones who harnessed the power of the miracoral,” Iara said, and made a clicking noise. Lori looked over and saw that Iara’s phone, sitting faceup in her lap, was loading a page. “They learned to extract oil from the reef, and they learned how to capture the electrical discharges the coral generates.”

  “You can make your phone work by clicking at it?” Maya asked, eyes wide. “That is supercool.”

  Iara shrugged and continued wheeling herself forward along with the rest of them. “I needed my hands free.” As her phone loaded its page, she added, “I have their office map.”

  “Nice job, Oracle,” Tapper said.

  Iara made a face. “I liked that she got to punch villains even in her chair, but then they made her get better for no reason. The office has no parking lot, but one of their buildings faces out onto the generator pool.” She clicked at her phone again.

  “The what now?” Maya asked.

  “Big shallow pool with a bunch of miracoral growing along the bottom that supplies electrical power, like a wind or solar farm,” Tapper snapped. “Did you do any homework in school?”

  “The pool is open to viewing from the other side.” Lori chewed on her lip, thinking. “I’ve been. The building side didn’t look guarded, or at least not as heavily. People wouldn’t expect anyone to swim across.”

  “Right, ’cause anyone who jumps into the water gets electrocuted,” Hawk pointed out. “And guys, I’m pretty tough, but I hate getting electrocuted.”

  “You will not be in danger just from swimming,” Iara said, smiling and shaking her head. “I have swum near little reefs in my home. The miracoral only shocks fish that get close enough to touch it.”

  “It could work,” Lori said, and nodded to Iara. “Good thinking.”

  “Spent most of yesterday sloshing around,” Hawk said, “and now the new outfit’s gonna get wet too.”

  “I will get you more,” Iara said, and smiled at him. “Perhaps a nice jacket. You need a nice jacket.” Hawk grinned back and swaggered a bit as he walked.

  They turned the corner and started down the sidewalk. The canal traffic on their left was light, just sporadic personal boats passing by quietly and the occasional ferry chugging from one stop to the next. The cool morning air smelled of diesel and vanilla.

  On their right, the huge generator pool caught the streetlights and cast them back as pale orange reflections, while below, the miracoral’s own natural radiance lit the water with gold. Locked off from the canals, the surface was smooth as a mirror, a massive stillness that had always seemed strange to Lori in the middle of the canal city. A ten-foot chain-link fence ran the length of the pool, with razor wire at the top to stop anyone dumb enough to try to climb over. On the far side of the pool, there was only a waist-high railing, and the Lake Foundation had a little patio with tables and chairs.

  “Bet it was the parking lot before the water rose,” Hawk said.

  Tapper was glaring at the pool. “Problem. They’ve got motion sensors on the pool. We swim across, we’ll trip an alarm.”

  “Where are the sensors?” Iara asked. Tapper pointed, and Iara squinted, then shut her eyes and cocked her head. “Ah, there they are,” she said a moment later. “How did you know where they were?”

  Tapper looked over at the rest of them, his eyes sparkling in the predawn twilight. “I can see the beams.”

  Lori’s phone buzzed, and she looked down at it.

  Handler: If he can see the beams, maybe we can avoid them?

  “Yes,” Lori muttered, “I was getting there.”

  A moment later, she became aware of everyone looking at her.

  “Tapper,” she said, trying to ignore the looks, “if you can see the beams, can you tell us how to avoid them?”

  He jerked his head back to the pool. “Yeah. It’s a grid. None near the wall on either side. If we go in without a big splash, we could swim across.” He looked back at all of them, glaring a challenge. “Can you all hold your breath that long?”

  “No,” said Maya, “but I can breathe underwater, if that works?” Tapper rolled his eyes.

  “That’s even better, Maya,” Hawk said. “I can do it for about an hour. How about you, Iara?”

  She smiled. “Fifteen or twenty minutes. That should be enough time.” She held up her phone. “It is good I got the waterproofing package for the phones, yes?”

  “Pretty much a necessity in Santa Dymphna,” Lori said, smiling back at her.

  “How about you, Lori?” Maya asked. “Do you breathe underwater, or can you hold your breath, or are you gonna just teleport across?”

  “It’s probably best if I . . .” Lori’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it.

  Handler: You can breathe underwater.

  “. . . swim with you,” she finished. “I can breathe underwater.” Apparently, she added in the silence of her mind.

  “Great!” Maya beamed. “So you and me are water-breathing partners, and Iara and Hawk can be breath-holding partners, and Tapper can show us where to go.” She looked over at the chain-link fence. “Once we figure out how to get through that.”

  “Any motion sensors or beams or anything on it?” Hawk asked Tapper. Tapper shook his head. “Sweet.”

  He stepped over, looked either way down the sidewalk, grabbed the chain-link fence with both hands, and pulled without any appreciable effort. With a squeal of protesting metal, the links tore apart in his grasp, and in moments, he had a gap large enough for a person to fit through at about waist height. “All right, that should . . .
” He paused, looked over at Iara in her wheelchair, and then frowned back at the fence. “Hang on.” He tore down and opened the gap to the ground, then pulled the edges away and curled them back gently. “That gonna be okay for you?”

  “Let us find out.” Iara smiled at him and held out her phone. “Do you mind? This dress does not have pockets.” As Hawk took it, she wheeled forward to the gap Hawk had torn, shrugged out of her leather jacket to reveal deeply tanned shoulders left bare by her sundress, and then hunched forward and dove cleanly through the gap and into the pool, knifing into the water with barely a ripple.

  In the light cast by the miracoral below, Iara was a dark silhouette twisting nimbly until she was looking back at them from under the water. She waved, her green hair fanning out like a halo around her head, and then tumbled back around and darted through the water with long powerful strokes of her arms.

  “Daaang,” Hawk said, watching her go.

  “Right?” Maya said beside him. “I mean, I’ve liked mermaids ever since Ariel looked sad doing the song where she didn’t know what forks were, but—”

  “Can we go?” Tapper muttered.

  “You guys first. I’ll pull the chain links back together once we’re through, so it’s less obvious.” Hawk gestured for them to go ahead.

  Tapper went first, shoving the links aside and dropping into the water quietly. He hovered under the water and pointed at where they should drop in to avoid the beams. Maya followed a moment later, slipping through the gap in the fence with a twist of her shoulders that didn’t seem entirely natural to Lori.

  Lori slipped through the fence, then looked down at her phone. “I can breathe underwater?”

  Handler: Yyyyyyup.

  Lori: Since when?

  Handler: Ever since we started working together.

  Handler: Fringe benefit.

  Lori: Were you ever going to mention this to me?

  Handler: Hey jsyk, you’re amphibious.

  Handler: See how that doesn’t come up naturally in conversation?

  Lori: It would have been useful to know.