by Andy Marino
“Oh yeah?” Nancy took off the belt and tossed it, still looped, over the corner of the screen. “Well you’ll never guess what I found out, either.”
“You first,” Hannah said.
“The Institute doctors —”
“Technicians,” Eri corrected.
“Whatever — these people who dressed like doctors examined me. Wanna know what I am?” Nancy was practically beaming. “Foundation! I’m made out of Foundation. Pretty weird, right?”
Hannah’s mouth dropped open. She looked from Stefan to Eri, who seemed to be waiting for her reaction. “How?” she managed to say. And then: “Who made you?”
Hannah knew the answer. But Nancy said it out loud, anyway.
“You did, genius.”
Hannah shook her head. “But I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”
Nancy joined Hannah on the cot. She nearly said something, then started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Hannah asked, thinking: If somebody told me I was made of dead city powder, I wouldn’t be laughing.
“Nothing,” Nancy said. “Everything. I don’t know. It’s just nice to finally know what I am, I guess. It doesn’t really change anything, when you think about it. I’m still me, no matter what. I can still do whatever I want.” She slapped Hannah’s knee. “So what’s your big news?”
I saw my father at Jaretsai Station, with Kyle.
Now that it was her turn to share, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to say it. She closed her eyes and dismissed the thought. She told herself that she never even knew the man — it was no different than if Kyle had been standing next to a complete stranger. Because that’s what her father was to her, anyway. A box of guitar picks, a Slinky, some old photographs.
“Hannah?” Nancy gave her a nudge. “You’re spacing out again.”
Hannah thought of the Memory Keeper’s words. This ain’t your first trip to the city. What did that mean? She had certainly never been here before. It didn’t make any sense. All these distractions, when she finally had the tools to find her mother. She resolved to focus on the task at hand.
“I remember everything,” Hannah said finally. She stood up. “I can help program the map, or whatever we need to do. So let’s get back to it.”
Stefan shifted his weight on the stool. “I might sit this one out, if it’s all the same to you. I’m still feeling a little dizzy.”
“Porcelain,” Nancy said.
Eri pinched the cloth between her thumb and forefinger to clean the edge of the blade. At the same time, she stared at Hannah without blinking.
She knows there’s something I’m not saying, Hannah thought.
Eri propelled herself to her feet and sheathed her sword. “I have been instructed to notify Sergeant Throckmorton as soon as you recover.”
“That sounds like a bloody awful idea, don’t you agree, my little beagle nose?” Nancy batted her eyes at Stefan.
“Ugh,” he said.
Hannah’s mother loomed so large in her mind now, she couldn’t wait to get back to her clamshell. “Eri, would you mind taking me to the map first?”
“To defy orders from my superior is unacceptable,” Eri said. “My allegiance is to the Institute.”
“Fine.” Hannah sighed. “But didn’t you already defy orders when you took me here instead of to the infirmary?”
For the first time, Eri’s movements betrayed a hint of uncertainty. She ground her toe into the carpet, wiggled her heel. “Perhaps, if you were to stop hiding things from me, I would be more inclined to —”
Nancy snickered. “Unpledge your allegiance?”
Eri’s icy glare sent Nancy scurrying off the cot. “Hey, I get it,” Nancy said from behind the screen. “We have to be more fun to hang out with than Urvashi and the Sarge.”
“I do not ‘hang out,’ ” Eri said. Then, to Hannah: “My superiors want to keep you here. Something they have discovered about you intrigues them. They will not let you leave. If you tell me what the Memory Keeper told you, then perhaps I can continue to help you.”
“And if I tell you, we can go straight to the map?”
“Yes.”
“The Memory Keeper told me I’ve been to the dead city before. I don’t know what that means or how it’s possible. Happy?”
Eri nodded. “Yes.”
Hannah almost burst out laughing. “So that’s it? Now we’re friends and I can trust you?”
“Allegiance is not the same thing as honor, Hannah Silver. My sword is my own. These are lessons my father taught me, and I visit the Memory Keeper to remember them.”
“Great,” Hannah said. “Then let’s hang out. Also” — she nodded toward the low table — “can I try on that watch?”
* * *
When Hannah turned down the corridor that led to the map room, she nearly smashed into Urvashi. Only the glittering of the woman’s jeweled fingers caused her to stop short. Behind Urvashi, several more Institute members — including the man in the safari hat — waited impassively.
“You feeling better, love?” Urvashi said gently, leaning forward so that Hannah was forced to take a step back or risk bumping noses.
“Eri,” Hannah said, but the girl was no longer at her side. Throckmorton came out of nowhere to rest a hand on Hannah’s shoulder, studying her face, smiling his implacable smile. She ducked away and found herself backed up against the wall.
Urvashi’s teeth were blindingly white. “Off to search for your mother, then, dear?”
“Oh yes, my cozy hearth rug,” Throckmorton said. “I believe she’s looking for her old mum. You remember your old mum better now, do you, Hannah?” Throckmorton’s grin stretched into a sick exaggeration of itself. “Eri wasn’t taking you to the map room without coming to us first, was she?”
“That she was, feather pillow.” Urvashi shook her head. “That she was. Naughty, naughty.”
Throckmorton winked. “Sneaky, sneaky. You’ll be a good girl from now on, won’t you, Hannah? The Institute is very interested in you, and I’m going to have to ask you to extend your visit. You wouldn’t mind taking a bit of a holiday here, would you?”
“I do hope she’ll stay, calamine lotion,” Urvashi said. “It would be a shame for such a nice, interesting girl to —”
SHNK!
At the familiar sound, Hannah slid down the wall. Crawling between Throckmorton’s pressed uniform pants and Urvashi’s brightly patterned sari, she found herself face-to-face with the man in the safari hat, who’d knelt to intercept her. His sprites zipped out from his collar and all at once the telescope and the lobster were swarming her face. She fell sideways and clawed madly, trying to pull herself from the forest of legs. A hand locked onto her forearm and she flailed, but a moment later Nancy was dragging her free.
In the center of the hallway, Eri was half-crouched in her fighting stance. Stefan was at her side, paintbrush sparkling with a dab of digitally enhanced skin from Charlemagne, who slunk about the floor with an arched back like a jungle cat poised for battle.
“You are a member in good standing with a high probability of Ascension!” barked Throckmorton, fearlessly confronting Eri’s sword. “Cease this mutiny, and I will see that your punishment is lenient.”
“I am bound by law to Hannah Silver,” Eri said calmly. Her sprites blazed from underneath her hair and menaced Urvashi, who swatted at them.
Throckmorton blinked in confusion. “Bound by what law?”
“The law of hanging out,” Eri said.
Stefan began to paint and Throckmorton tapped his wristwatch. “I know your tricks, lad.” A sprinkler in the ceiling above Stefan doused his brush with water. Instead of splashing to the floor, the water congealed into a tendril, globbed over the paintbrush, and covered Stefan’s entire hand in a sticky film.
Urvashi’s own sprites — five angry buzzards — blazed up from her sandals to confront Eri’s charms. The man in the safari hat brandished a pair of silver revolvers with oversized barrels.
; “Come on,” hissed Nancy. But Hannah shook her head. She wasn’t about to let Eri and Stefan create a diversion while she ran. They would go together, or not at all. She pulled Eri’s extra wristwatch from her pocket and held it so that Throckmorton could see it.
“Eri showed me how to program this,” Hannah lied. “Back away or I’ll open the floodgates and fill this place with lake water.”
Throckmorton frowned. “What floodgates?”
That split-second distraction was just long enough. With a sideswipe, Eri sliced the tendril in half and, with the flat of her blade, flicked the rubbery thing into Throckmorton’s face. Charlemagne launched himself in the air just as Stefan freed his hand, and the paint-lizard swiped a generous helping of himself onto the bristles.
With a few deft slashes, Stefan painted them all into the eye of an electrical surge, sparkling and crackling with bursts of heat lightning. It was a cosmic data-storm, a digital cloud shot through with swirls of ash that bloomed into complex snowflakes before dispersing.
“Lemme see that watch,” Nancy said, tugging Hannah’s sleeve.
“No way!” Hannah shoved it back in her pocket. The four of them began to move down the hallway as one, with Eri calling out directions and striking out from the center of the cloud whenever an Institute member got too close.
“The law of hanging out?” Hannah asked.
Eri’s sword flashed. “Floodgates?”
Stefan held out his arm like a falconer for Charlemagne to perch. “Just get us to the smokestack where the giant fish docked.”
“That is far too dangerous. It will be locked down. There are other ways out.”
Eri tapped her watch and her sprites performed a quick dance around her forehead before vanishing. All around them, the smoke began to clear. Grime-encrusted figures stumbled about as Throckmorton barked orders and Urvashi repeated them.
“I’d rather swim out of here than listen to those two for another second,” Stefan said. He was covered in soot, as if he’d just survived a volcanic eruption.
Turning to the wall, Eri spun the lock on a small door. “Let us hope it does not come to that. The lake is very old.”
Hannah didn’t ask what she meant. When they had all followed Eri through the door, the girl closed it, spun the lock, and ordered them to stand back. With a single downward blow she sliced the wheel-lock from its shaft and nodded to Stefan, who slapped a messy coat of paint over the metal, sealing the door shut.
Eri led them down a narrow passage and into a workshop strewn with rusty scrap metal. A bench shoved against the wall held several empty bins labeled FOUNDATION FOR SUBMERSIBLE REPAIR ONLY. In the center of the room was a vessel propped up on a lift like a car in a mechanic’s garage. It was a steel contraption shaped like a two-liter bottle of soda.
There was a muffled explosion down the hall, followed by the resounding crash of metal on metal. Eri and Stefan performed their door-sealing trick on the entrance to the workshop. Hannah discovered a ladder up the middle of the lift and began to climb.
“This thing looks pretty leaky,” Nancy said.
Hannah reached the submersible’s rust-flecked hatch. “At least it’s not a fish.”
The interior of the ship was a cramped mess.
“I think this heap of junk belongs out with the wrecks,” Stefan complained, picking up a tarnished pipe that had been severed by what appeared to be blows from a hatchet. There were no seats, just leather straps dangling in loops from the ceiling. In the front, where the cap of the soda bottle would be, was a single porthole. Hannah lit the submersible’s only light source, a lantern that sent shadows flickering across a control panel full of surprisingly shiny brass fixtures in the shape of skulls, dice, and guitars. It occurred to her that this old ship might be someone’s hobby, and she hoped it actually worked.
“How do we get it in the water?” Stefan asked, peering out the porthole, through the thick glass wall of the workshop, into the murky lake where the ghost ships rotted. Hannah watched Charlemagne chase a cockroach into a pile of magazines.
She thought quickly. “Maybe if you let me have your brush —”
Whatever she was about to say — she wasn’t exactly sure, herself — was interrupted by a thunderous BOOM. She watched in amazement as the workshop’s door went sailing past the porthole, propelled by a fiery explosion, spinning into the glass of the chamber’s large window like a hundred-pound Frisbee. The submersible shuddered on its lift. Hannah heard footsteps in the room as the Institute members surrounded the ship. Their voices dragged her spirits down. Maybe she should have allowed Throckmorton and Urvashi to keep her without putting up a fight. Maybe she could have found a way to use the map, then made her escape.
Too late now.
“Look!” Nancy said. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed across the window.
Throckmorton’s voice screamed, “Back down the hallway! Get back, all of you!”
The cracks gained velocity. Oddly beautiful, they raced outward from the collision point, unfurling like thin ribbons of white against the murk. A jet of water the width of a pin came spitting through the glass and splattered against the submersible.
“Perhaps we should steady ourselves,” Eri said, reaching up for a leather strap. Hannah did the same, just as the workshop’s window gave way in a maelstrom of jagged glass. The submersible was ripped from its mechanic’s lift almost as soon as Hannah’s fingers closed around the strap, twisting her shoulder. She gripped with all her might as the lake rushed in with the full force of the deep behind it. The workshop was swamped in seconds, the submersible tossed and spun like clothes in a dryer, and Hannah prepared to be knocked senseless. But before she knew it, the ship was floating gently along. The silence outside was total except for the muffled and distant clanks of the settling wrecks. The workshop had been claimed by the lake.
“Everybody okay?” Hannah took inventory. Eri was standing as if they had barely moved. Nancy had flipped her legs up, wrapped both feet around her strap, and was swinging like a pendulum. Stefan was upright but his eyes were closed. Charlemagne had emerged from behind the magazines, a pair of long feelers waving atop his head.
They all gazed out the front porthole as the submersible drifted out into the lake. Hannah was struck by the size of the Institute’s complex. They had been confined to a small section, no bigger than a freighter. How many chambers were hidden down here, how much strange technology? The sub slid lazily past the ruins of a magnificent clipper ship. A faded sign proclaimed HONEYMOON CRUISES.
Eri and Stefan went straight to the control panel. Hannah and Nancy moved to the back of the ship, where the wall was decorated with carefully arranged discs about the size of dinner plates. It took Hannah a moment to realize that they were old vinyl records. Whoever was restoring the submersible was like one of the antique car guys who hung out in the parking lot of the Carbine Pass Diner.
Nancy squinted at one of the labels. “Killian Porterhouse and the Kresh Monsters.”
“This one doesn’t have a name,” Hannah said, reaching for a blank record. It slid aside, revealing a porthole that looked backward at the now-open wall of the workshop. A glint of silver floated between the submersible and its former home: the round door, destined to float aimlessly until it joined some other piece of wreckage.
“What’s that?” Nancy pointed above a ruined battleship’s conning tower, where the glow from the Institute faded. In that dark place, a blubbery shape rose from the deep. It took a moment to lock onto its target, then jetted across the bow of the battleship, heading straight for them. An undertow, soft at first, swiped the submersible, upsetting its balance. Hannah couldn’t tear her gaze from the pursuing horror: lips curling back, jaws opening. Teeth of glass, teeth of steel.
“Big fish,” she said, wondering if it would chomp them in half or return them to the Institute in its belly. Then, over her shoulder at Eri and Stefan, who were carefully matching the brass fixtures of the control panel to a scribbled chart they’d discover
ed tacked on the wall, she screamed, “Big fish!”
“It’s coming up fast,” Nancy said.
“This is the auxiliary thruster,” Stefan said, wiggling a fixture in the shape of a polished top hat. He tapped the chart. “It says so right here.”
With a groan, the submersible began to shake and rattle its way forward.
“I will drive,” Eri said, elbowing him out of the way.
Hannah watched out the back. Headlamps buried in the big fish’s eye sockets pierced the murk. Wrecked ships moved in and out of inky pools of shadow.
“Acceleration should be the skull,” Stefan said to Eri. “The skull!”
Eri calmly eased the skull fixture up on the panel. The ship registered its protest with an irate clatter. A gasket blew beneath the floor and Charlemagne lost himself in a mist of hot steam.
“Do not panic,” Eri said. “I will deliver us.”
Hannah stared at the back of Eri’s head and wondered, Who is this girl, really? Eri’s behavior — turning her back on the Institute, sacrificing her shot at Ascension for the sake of Hannah’s quest — suddenly felt like the cold, calculating moves of a politician rather than a girl who just wanted to hang out.
“My sword is my own.”
Hannah flinched — she had been thinking out loud. “Sorry, Eri, I didn’t mean —”
Eri shot a fierce look at Hannah over her shoulder. “I did not say anything.”
At the same time, Eri’s voice chimed in from elsewhere in the ship: “My sword is my own.”
Stefan was struggling to remove Charlemagne from his shoulder. The paint-lizard hopped down to the control panel and slithered to the floor.
“My sword is my own,” Charlemagne said, in a perfect imitation of Eri’s voice.
“Wow.” Stefan tried to be casual. “I guess he’s doing that now.”
“The demon mocks me,” Eri said.
“He’s not a demon!” said Stefan and Hannah in unison.
“Hey!” Nancy slapped her hand against the inside of the hull. A metallic thud echoed. “The fish is changing.”
