The Secret Sea

by Barry Lyga

A scream that never came.

  The light swallowed what was left of Godfrey without a sound, and then everything went black.

  * * *

  Through the blackness, Zak discerned a wave of light coming toward him, flashing multicolored and kaleidoscopic. Tommy was suddenly before him, drifting and whole.

  “We did it,” he said, and Zak wept at the sound of his twin’s voice.

  He extended his hand. “Come on. Come with me.”

  Tommy shook his head. Zak’s hand passed through him.

  Which one of us is the ghost now?

  “I can’t,” Tommy said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “But why not?” Zak whined. “After everything we went through—”

  “After everything we went through,” Tommy said, “I’m still dead. That’s forever.”

  “But it isn’t. Dr. Bookman’s cockroaches—”

  “—prove nothing. Do you really think it’s the same thing, animating a bug and reviving a person? I died, Zak. Years ago. And you don’t get to turn that back. No one does. Not Godfrey. Not me. Not you.”

  “After all this?” Zak’s incredulity was a living thing, and it squirmed and wailed on its way out of him. “I go through all this and I can’t have you back?”

  “Tell Mom and Dad I love them,” Tommy said. “And don’t be too hard on them. You forgave Godfrey; you can forgive them.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know. It’s easier to be angry. Do the hard part, Zak. I was there, always. Against the ceiling, along the sky. On the ground. In the air you breathed. I saw them when you didn’t, when you couldn’t. They were trying their best for you.”

  “But, Tommy—”

  “The Secret Sea is the sum total of everything that lives. I don’t belong there anymore. Good-bye, Zak. I love you, brother. And I’m glad I got to know you.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to miss you,” Tommy said, tears clustering and dropping. “I’m going to miss you like that dish you forgot to go back for, the one that would be perfect for guests right now.”

  Zak wept, his arms outstretched. “We don’t have to let it happen! You can come to me! Come to me, Tommy! Come to me!”

  And the light consumed Tommy from behind, first reducing him to shadow, then burning him away, burning him through a million pinpoint holes that merged into a single Tommy-shaped outline for an instant before vanishing into the eternal glow.

  Zak screamed until he could hear himself no more, screamed until his voice bled itself to death. Even with his eyes shut, he could still see the light, pulsating through his eyelids in a red-white rhythm, a discolored chiaroscuro. The light crashed into him, and the light was water, a tidal wave of it, a tsunami, a monsoon, smashing against him like the fist of God.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  And Zak was in the water and then he soared above it, rising into a dead black sky. Below him was the ocean.

  No, not the ocean. The sea. The Secret Sea.

  He was above it. In what Tommy had called the no-space. The place near death.

  The whole of creation spiraled and spun and thrashed below him. In an instant, Zak saw and comprehended the entirety of it, the crash and wave of the quantum foam, the mingling of realities, possibilities, potentialities. It was an infinite wellspring, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. It was that which preceded the alpha and succeeded the omega.

  TOMMY! he screamed into the nothingness.

  He looked up—there was only darkness.

  He looked down—the world and the worlds spun in eddies beneath him, here swallowed, there revealed by the roaring waves of the Secret Sea. It was vaster than anything he could imagine. The universe was a pinprick within it, tossed and lost on the foam.

  He looked all around—the empty blank of the no-space, the limbo between the life of the Secret Sea and the release of death.

  He had nothing left in him. No screams, no cries. He hung in the non-air, suspended, watching the play of universes.

  This was the Secret Sea, a secret witnessed by Godfrey and maybe by Tommy. And now by Zak. He wondered if to espy this, to perceive the true nature of reality, was to die, like the others. His parents had never forced religion on him, but La-La had told him stories from the Bible, and he thought now of Adam and Eve, of how their sin had been to eat from the tree of knowledge. Their sin had been to know, and now Zak knew something no one else knew.

  He knew the shape of God. He knew the curve of the unending universe, its warp and its weft.

  He cried, his saltwater tears running down his cheeks and then dropping off his jaw to plummet an infinity below into the brine of creation.

  And then he dropped downxs

  down

  down

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  down

  down

  down

  down

  SEVENTY-NINE

  ever down

  until

  EIGHTY

  IMPACT

  EIGHTY-ONE

  The shock of water erupted from nowhere and forced Moira’s eyes open. She still clung to Khalid’s hand with both of her own. Where had all this water come from?

  Walls breached in the facility. Zak did something or Godfrey did something or something else caught fire and blew up and now we’re drowning.

  The water was dirty, briny, and she could barely make out Khalid, reaching for her with his other hand.

  His free hand.

  The one that had been holding Zak.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Khalid didn’t know where the water had come from. And, truthfully, he was damn sick and tired of being dunked without warning.

  He knew only that he was still connected to Moira.

  He knew only that Zak’s hand had vanished from his own with the impact of the water.

  And that he would drown soon. He knew that, too.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Moira thrashed against the current. The water raged all around her, knocking her away from Khalid as she released him. She needed both hands to swim.

  But which direction to swim? The murky water made any sort of reckoning almost impossible. She’d been knocked off-balance, and the fluid buoyancy made it difficult to tell which way was up.

  Then she felt a current pass her and a hand brush against her. Khalid. He was swimming past her, headed toward something. She didn’t know what, but she was almost out of air.

  Her glasses had been blasted off her face by the force of the water. She could barely make out his shape through the murk.

  It was difficult to move in her waterlogged coverall, but—kicking her feet—she followed him.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Khalid was a middling swimmer. It was probably fair to say he excelled at not drowning, more than to say he was a good swimmer. But right now, not drowning sounded pretty good.

  Zak was gone. One minute, he’d been there, the next …

  The water shoved at Khalid, commanding his attention. He thought it seemed lighter off to one side. He karate-chopped the water furiously and kicked his feet, propelling himself in that direction.

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  Moira touched concrete just as Khalid caught up to her. She was faster in the water, and he’d fallen behind. She pressed her palms against the wall and shoved herself in the direction she now knew to be straight up. Khalid followed right behind, breaking the surface of the water an instant after her.

  The first thing Moira noticed—other than Khalid’s enormous inhaled breath at her side—was the screaming. Lit by flickering lights, people were yelling and crying out. Then came the sound of feet pounding on pavement.

  It took her a few seconds to become acclimated to what she was seeing. She was floating in a filthy body of water just off of a concrete platform. The platform was in a tunnel, and people on it ran toward a flight of stairs. Disoriented, Moira blinked grungy water out of her eyes, trying to clear her vision. Without her glasses, everything blurred and smeared
and collided into a chaos of indistinct shapes and shadows.

  And then someone—a woman—shouted, “Wait! There are kids in there!”

  Moira grabbed onto the platform as the current buffeted her. Khalid missed it, slipped past her, then grabbed hold on the other side. Trying to hoist herself out of the water, which rose rapidly to spill onto the platform, Moira suddenly realized that hands were on her, arms straining to pull her out. To her left, Khalid was being helped, too.

  After being hauled onto the platform, Moira allowed herself a moment to catch her breath as the water lapped around her.

  “You have to get up and run, honey!” the woman shouted, pulling at her.

  Moira allowed herself to be tugged onto her feet. On the way up, she couldn’t help looking at the woman’s legs. They were close enough to snap into focus.

  Moira laughed what must have seemed an insane laugh.

  The woman was wearing shorts.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  Khalid heard Moira’s laugh and shook his head fiercely, throwing off droplets. “Zak,” he rasped. “Zak!”

  Nothing. The sound of panicked feet. Cries of alarm.

  Water, rushing.

  “Zak!”

  Down on all fours on the concrete, Khalid looked right and left. Where was Zak? What had happened to him? Khalid had managed to hold on to Moira, but he’d lost Zak. Somehow, he’d lost Zak.

  As his vision cleared, he could read a sign above him:

  EXIT TO

  WORLD TRADE CENTER

  & 9/11 MEMORIAL

  With an arrow pointing toward the stairs. And a familiar capital E in a blue circle. For the E subway line.

  “What the—”

  “Come on, man.” The guy who’d helped him out of the water hoisted him to his feet and shoved him forward. “Water’s still rising. Gotta get out of here. Now!”

  Khalid coughed up some salty water. Moira was being led away toward the stairs by a woman. Other people were crushing their way up and out.

  He turned. The subway platform was flooding rapidly as the water filling the tunnel rose higher. Just like Zak’s vision way back—

  “Come on!” the man yelled, pushing him again. “Move it, kid!”

  Khalid broke away from him and ran toward the track. “Zak!” he screamed. “Zak! Where are you?”

  The water roared and spumed a sick greenish white, like grassy foam on a dog’s lips. Darkness whirled in its depths, but nothing that looked human.

  “Zak!” he cried again. “Zak!”

  It couldn’t be. They couldn’t be here, home, without him. Not after everything they’d gone through. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t supposed to work like that. Moira could have said it better, but even Khalid knew: In a story, when the good guys win, they get to go home. All of them.

  If I hadn’t let go … I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have held his hand tighter.

  “Zak!” Khalid’s throat burned; he coughed up more salt water, and then the man who’d hauled him from the water grabbed him bodily from behind, lifting him off his feet. “Come on, kid! We can’t mess around!”

  “No! No!” Khalid kicked and struggled against the man’s too-strong arms. “No! My friend is in there!”

  “No one’s in there, kid!” Moving toward the stairs.

  “We have to save him! He’s in there! He’s in there somewhere!”

  Implacably, resolutely, the man slogged through the rising water to the stairs.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” Khalid started sobbing. He beat his fists against his rescuer’s back, but the man was solidly built and did not stagger or slow. “Let me go! You don’t understand!”

  “I understand we’re both gonna drown if I don’t get us out of here!”

  “But I let go of him!” He had to make the man understand. “I was holding his hand and I let go! I have to find him! Please let me find him!”

  But the man bore him relentlessly to the stairs as Khalid screamed “Zak!” over and over until his throat felt as if it had ripped in two.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Outside, Moira blinked against the harsh sunlight. She smelled car exhaust for the first time in two days, realizing only now that she’d missed the familiar stench while in the other New York.

  Above her, the Freedom Tower soared, a needle against the sky.

  She broke away from her rescuer, who rushed over to a man—husband? boyfriend? brother?—and hugged him tightly. All around her a mob was milling about, people rushing into the street to get away from the subway, cabs honking their horns. All the delirious, delicious chaos of home.

  And not a frau to be seen.

  Moira climbed onto the hood of a parked car, her body exhausted, her mind whirling. Something in the electroleum … There had been a chance it would rip a hole between realities, and now it had. Their best efforts to the contrary, they’d torn through one of the walls separating worlds. On one side, the World Trade Center subway stop in lower Manhattan. On the other side …

  The Houston Conflux and untold millions of gallons of water, now pouring in.

  Who knew how long it would last? Was the rip permanent? The electroleum could have caused something so much worse. Why did …

  But she knew. Deep down, she knew.

  Psychoreactive. The electroleum picked up on their emotions.

  And it took them home.

  Them. It was no good to come home if her friends drowned. She cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted, “Khalid! Zak!”

  She peered around, shading her eyes. Nothing. Cupped her hands again. Shouted for them again.

  Still nothing.

  Then she saw a man emerge from the subway, carrying a very still, soaked form that looked familiar. She leaped off the hood of the car, scattering fleeing commuters, and bulled her way through the crowd. The man took a few more steps and then, exhausted, set his burden down on a low concrete parapet.

  Before Moira could speak, before she could even think, Khalid charged up the steps, right behind the man. “Is he okay?” he asked. “Is he okay?”

  Zak lay on the parapet, frighteningly still.

  “Damnedest thing ever,” the man said, catching his breath. He gestured to Khalid. “This one just kept fighting me. And thank God, because if he hadn’t made me go back, this one…” He looked down at Zak and shook his head. “Never would have seen him on my own.”

  Sirens wailed. Police and fire vehicles and ambulances clotted the street as the crowd, still in a panic, thinned, spilling away from the tower and up along Fulton and Church Streets. Khalid and Moira took each other’s hands and stood over Zak.

  Who groaned.

  And turned.

  And vomited a truly epic amount of seawater.

  “Gross,” said the man who’d rescued Khalid and Zak.

  “That,” Khalid said with authority, “is the most awesome, best puke I’ve ever seen.”

  Moira couldn’t help but agree.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  The Shamoons, the O’Gradys, and Zak’s parents found them at a hastily erected aid station two blocks from the Freedom Tower, with at least a hundred other refugees of the subway station.

  Zak’s mother threw her arms around him and sobbed right in his ear. His dad crouched down next to them and grasped one of Zak’s hands in both of his, squeezing too hard. Zak didn’t have the energy to tell him to let go, especially when he saw the tears in his father’s eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Dad cry before. But of course, Dad had.

  Everyone cried.

  Dad had probably cried when Tommy died.

  And the thought of it made Zak break down, and he convulsed with sobs against his mother, like a baby, and for a little while, at least, he was just a kid again, just their child, and he was glad to be home.

  EIGHTY-NINE

  Eventually the water stopped, but not before completely flooding the World Trade Center subway station and more than a mile of track and tunnel in multiple directions. According to the news, th
e MTA believed some kind of leak was responsible for the sudden onrush of water. It would take weeks to pump out the area, and then the search for the rupture would begin.

  Zak knew they would never find the leak. Because it wasn’t there.

  At least, it wasn’t rooted in concrete or steel or earth. Moira and Khalid had cobbled together a theory, based on what Dr. Bookman had said: The leak was in the fabric of reality, where they had used the power of the electroleum to tear through from one world to another, at the spot Godfrey had weakened. And now, thankfully, it had closed, the universe healing itself.

  “Universes aren’t supposed to interact like that,” Moira said. “It’s finding its balance, repairing itself.”

  “We got lucky,” said Khalid.

  “I don’t think so,” Moira replied, and Zak agreed. If he hadn’t chosen to forgive Godfrey, if he’d combined his anger at Godfrey with Godfrey’s fear and rage … who knew how the electroleum might have reacted?

  But it was over now. No need to speculate. The MTA and the Army Corps of Engineers could look and look and look for their “leak” all they wanted, but without a guide like Tommy, they would never find it, for the water came from the Houston Conflux. Or maybe from the Secret Sea itself.

  One more mystery in the City That Never Sleeps.

  Maybe it never slept because it was afraid of nightmares.

  Zak wondered what kind of bad dreams cities would have. He imagined they would involve being uprooted, tenuous and off-kilter.

  Like being on a ship at sea, in a storm, with no solid ground for miles in every direction.

  PART FOUR

  ZAK

  NINETY

  Zak’s parents—like Khalid’s and Moira’s—were so overjoyed to see their child back safe and sound after having been missing for two days that it took a good week before they asked any serious questions. By then, the Basketeers had already agreed to a short, simple lie. Easier to remember, harder to disprove.