Flood City

by Daniel José Older

  “Hey, little man,” Dr. Sarita said. She was smiling, but her face told of another exhausting night at the hospital.

  “You almost done with your shift?”

  “Twenty more minutes. Where’s your sister?”

  “She hasn’t shown up yet?” Max tried not to look panicked.

  “Uh-uh. What happened?”

  What didn’t happen? It’d been a perilous morning, even by Flood City standards. But the main thing was that something had been following them, according to Yala, and she’d insisted they split up. Max tried to explain as briefly as possible.

  “She didn’t say what it was following you?” Dr. Sarita, her eyebrows arched, had entered commando mom mode, there was no doubt about it.

  Max shook his head.

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  One of the other doctors, a tall, happy fellow named Sebastian, poked his head around the corner. “Bed three is calling for you, Dr. S. Hey, Mr. Max.” Sebastian grinned. “Come to visit us?”

  “Seb,” Dr. Sarita cut in before Max could answer. “Watch my patients for a sec. I gotta make a holocall.” She stormed down the hallway, Max scurrying along behind her, and ducked into a wooden booth. Inside, a holodeck blinked to life as she tapped a few numbers into its keypad. Blue light spread across the circular deck and then a tiny 3-D image of Old Man Cortinas materialized.

  “What’s goin’ on, Doc?” the shuddering hologram asked.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. C,” Dr. Sarita said. Max could hear his mom straining to calm her voice just as he had earlier. “You haven’t seen Yala by any chance, have you?”

  “Earlier today she sped past with Max, but not since then. She gone missing?”

  Dr. Sarita nodded.

  “Not like her,” Mr. C grumbled. “I’ll send Mateo to see what he can find.”

  “Thank you, Mr. C.”

  The old man turned to something that wasn’t being transmitted over the holodeck and waved his arm. Then the call was cut off and he blipped out of existence completely.

  “Where’s Tinibu?” Dr. Sarita asked, turning to Max.

  “He zipped off too.”

  Dr. Sarita exhaled sharply, rolling her eyes. “What’s the use of having a hunterfly around if they just disappear when you need them most?”

  They were heading quickly down the corridor again. “Now what?” Max asked.

  “We’re leaving.” They slid between stretchers, ducked around IV lines, and avoided a passing X-ray machine. “Just gotta make one quick stop.” They reached the far side of the emergency hold. Dr. Sarita tapped once on a doorway and then cracked it open. Max glimpsed the sullen face of Dr. Niska, the hospital supervisor, looking up from his desk.

  “Yes, Dr. Sarita?” Dr. Niska did not look thrilled about being interrupted.

  “I have to leave a little early.”

  “Getting ready for tonight’s festivities?”

  “No.” Dr. Sarita’s words were sharp. “Yala’s missing and Max and I are going to look for her. The paperwork will be on your desk tomorrow.”

  “And your patients?”

  Max recognized the expression his mom made when she was about to unload a bucket of curses, but instead she took a deep breath and said, “Seb will manage for the last twenty minutes of my shift.”

  Niska grunted, but Dr. Sarita had already turned and headed off across the emergency hold. Max rushed after her.

  Ato walked quickly through the main corridor of the cloud cruiser, past the cramped living quarters to the engine room. Inside, Tog Apix was hunched over some contraption that sent up occasional spark bursts and clicked and clattered.

  “What are you doing?” Ato asked, trying to sound casual.

  Tog raised his old, gnarly face from the table and squinted at Ato. “Repairs. What’dya want?”

  “The … um … iguanagull body, the one that ArchBaron Mephim …”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you incinerate it?”

  “’Bout to. It’s in the trash canister.”

  Ato felt a little thrill of excitement as he hurried toward the large metal bin.

  “Why you want it?” Tog said. He waddled over to a drawer, fiddled with some wires inside it, and then returned to his project.

  “No reason. Just curious.” Ato removed the lid and immediately wished he hadn’t. The stench of several days’ worth of cloud cruiser refuse wafted directly into his face.

  Tog slammed down his wrench. “Ay! Some of us are trying to work here!” He stood.

  Ato gazed into the pile of food peelings, crumpled plastic containers, slop scrapings, and shiny mulch lumps. “Ugh!”

  “Shut that lid!” Tog started across the room, scowling.

  Ato held his breath and reached his hand into the muck. Nothing that felt like an iguanagull. He pushed some blue-gray stained rags over to one side, trying to ignore the lurching feeling in his stomach.

  “Shut it, I said!” Tog hollered.

  “Just … one …” Ato threw his hand in deeper, all the way to the elbow, grasping frantically for anything solid, anything that might be … There! His fingers closed around a cool, scaly shape. He pulled and out came the headless iguanagull corpse. “Got it!” Ato yelled. He grabbed a plastic bag from the top and then jumped away from the trash bin just as Tog reached it and slammed the lid closed.

  “Get outta my engine room!”

  Ato was already gone.

  “Where we going, Mom?”

  They’d just rocketed over the stretch of ocean from Saint Solomon’s, and Dr. Sarita had veered sharply off toward the far edge of town. Max hurried after her, blasting with awkward little jolts to stay on course. “Yala was heading downtown when we separated.”

  “C’mon,” Dr. Sarita said sharply. “There’s a better way to find her.”

  There wasn’t much on this side of Flood City: crumpled old warehouses huddled together, lurching in odd directions from sea-soaked piles of debris. It was so close to the edge of the ocean that when the tide came in, foamy waves would flood the abandoned buildings up to the roofs. The air was always wet and misty, like a low-hanging rain cloud that would never leave. Because of all this, virtually the only building that was inhabited at all was the ancient church steeple that shot up into the sky, the tallest structure around by far.

  Max gasped. “The holographer’s tower! Brilliant, Mom!”

  Dr. Sarita turned her head just enough to show a satisfied grin and then zipped off between the crumbling buildings and crashing waves.

  Max’s excitement turned sharply into dread. If they were going to the holographer’s tower, it meant they would probably see the holographer’s daughter, Djinna, and that was enough to make Max slow his jetboots and hover awkwardly in the air for a few seconds.

  “You comin’?”

  Max gave a half-hearted push on his foot pedal, thrusting himself toward the tower, which now seemed even taller than he remembered it. All his worries about Yala now had the company of all his terror at seeing Djinna.

  It wasn’t enough to say that the holographer’s daughter played in the drum squad of the Flood City Orchestra. She was the drum squad. Max still remembered the first day she showed up at practice. He’d seen her before at school of course, but she was just another girl who didn’t seem to notice him. Then she stepped up in front of the class on that first day, took a deep breath, and unleashed an astonishing barrage of sharp, rhythmic clacks against her snare drum. Everyone in the room perked up. When she brought in the gigantic booming balooga drum with a few reverberating smacks, people were transfixed. The rhythm swam along wildly for a few measures, the snare cracking at breathtaking speed, and then suddenly the whole thing just glided effortlessly into some kind of easy swing. Djinna hadn’t even broken a sweat, just stood there with a slight frown on her face like she was trying to work out a complicated math problem. She rounded the whole thing off with a crescendo of balooga smashes and some final clacks on the snare. The ent
ire room jumped to their feet to applaud when she was done.

  Max couldn’t move. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. Everything had changed from that moment on. He suddenly was so very happy that he played the horn; not just played it, in fact, that sometimes it was the only thing that made sense to him. That he spoke that language. A language not so far removed from the one Djinna had just serenaded his ears with. Music. Max spoke music, with his hands, his lungs, his whole body. It made sense to him. And so did Djinna. She was speaking to him right then and there. And he was understanding. It wasn’t anything he could ever translate into words, but that was the whole point.

  Then of course Splink had said, “That was pretty cool,” and blown the whole moment to shreds. Splink, who was tall, skinny, and ridiculously outgoing, always managed to mess up important moments with some wisecrack or pointless summary. He wasn’t even in the band, just happened to be sitting in on the session, and still he felt the need to jump in.

  Djinna joined the orchestra but try though he might, Max had never been able to work out the right words to say to her. He eventually gave up, tired of his lurchy stomach and sweaty palms. He’d just speak to her with the notes he played, and one day she’d get the message. Then he could stop worrying.

  But now … now he was about to be in her house. With his mom. Without any time to prepare, to overthink things, to worry. That wouldn’t do at all.

  “Max.” Dr. Sarita hovered outside the entrance window of the holographer’s tower, her finger on the buzzer.

  “Maybe I’ll just wait outside,” Max mumbled.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s wet out here. And besides, don’t you go to school with Dr. Maceo’s daughter?”

  Max gulped hard and nodded.

  “Well, perfect, see? You two can hang out while we look at the holomap.” She turned back to the window and pushed the buzzer. A tiny version of Djinna materialized in front of the panel, startling Max half to death.

  “Hello?” The mini-Djinna looked curiously into what must’ve been a holodeck somewhere inside. “Oh, hey, Dr. Salazar!” She waved at the camera, her face breaking into a wide smile. Max realized he’d never seen her smile before. It wasn’t that she walked around glowering all the time; she just didn’t throw her grin out first. Even through the staticky hologram, Max could tell it was a big smile, free and uninhibited. A smile that meant it. He sighed.

  “Max with you?” Djinna’s tinny voice said.

  “He is,” replied Dr. Sarita. “And we need to trouble your father for a moment, if that’s alright. I’ll explain upstairs.”

  “Here, lemme buzz you in.”

  Djinna pushed a button. The door growled mechanically and then swung open.

  Just before they walked in, Max heard another voice over the intercom. “Who is it, Djinna?” He stopped short in his tracks, staring at the little 3-D Djinna. He knew that voice. Then a tiny Splink appeared behind Djinna, his hands grabbing her shoulders, his face squinting down toward the monitor. “Oh, hey, Max!”

  Dr. Sarita and Max powered down their jetboots and started up the winding staircase that disappeared into the darkness. “So, Max,” Dr. Sarita said. Max didn’t have to see his mom’s face to know she had on that mischievous grin of hers. “Djinna.”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it, Mom. Seriously.”

  “Okay.”

  “Obviously it doesn’t matter anyway,” he mumbled. Actually, he really did want to talk about it, but not right then and definitely not right there and definitely not with his mom.

  “Okay, Max.”

  “All I’m saying is …” A tiny fizzling shape was floating toward them from the darkness. “Um …”

  Dr. Sarita looked up. “Oh!” As it got closer, the shape turned out to be a very small woman, or was it a bird? Some kind of birdwoman with brightly colored feathers and a shimmering glow around her. She was sending off sparks in all directions like an angry firecracker. And she was smiling. “Must be …”

  “Welcome to the tower of Dr. Maceo, Flood City holographer extraordinaire.” The sparkling birdlady curtsied. “I’ll escort you to the doctor.”

  “Must be one of his holograms,” Dr. Sarita whispered.

  Max nodded, his eyes wide in the shimmering light. It looked so real, nothing like the fuzzy projections he was used to.

  They followed her up the winding stairwell and then stopped suddenly when a horrible growling sound burst out from somewhere above. The whole tower trembled and then something green and gigantic plunged toward them. It’s just a hologram, Max told himself. It’s just a hologram! But somehow he didn’t believe it. It was so alive, this monster plummeting at full speed down the empty column in the middle of the tower. Don’t run!

  Max watched in horror as the thing opened its mouth wide. He saw speckles of bloody saliva glinting on its razor-sharp teeth. It growled again, just a few feet away now, and Max could feel its rage reverberate through his whole body. He nearly toppled over backward as the creature whisked past and evaporated into thin air.

  “Helloooo? Dr. Sarita?” called a timid voice from the top of the stairs. “Sorry ’bout that! Security system acts up sometimes, you know!”

  Yala had taken a few steps backward into the crawl space when it occurred to her that the vapor had called her by her name. He simply floated there grinning while she scrambled to get as far away as she could without taking her eyes off him. It wasn’t going well. The jagged tunnel was tighter than she’d thought, and while she would have probably been able to squeeze through if she was going headfirst, backing in was more of a problem.

  “Yala,” the vapor said. “Let’s get this over with …”

  How would you even go about attacking such a thing? Yala wondered. The only solid part seemed to be the mouth and eyes, and that didn’t leave much to go on.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.” The smile dissipated into thoughtfully pursed lips. “Or Max, for that matter.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Of course not. I’m a vapor. Probably the first one you’ve seen.”

  Yala nodded, still racking her brain for some kind of attack but coming up short again and again.

  “I know about your plan.”

  That’s when everything stopped. Yala hadn’t told a single person about leaving tomorrow. Not a soul. She’d tumbled it through her mind a hundred thousand times, sitting alone in the tunnel outside their house or lying in bed while Max snored loudly nearby. She’d held raging arguments with herself about it. Gone back and forth until she was dizzy, but she’d never spoken a word of it out loud. “How?”

  “We vapors have a way of keeping our ears to the ground.”

  “That’s not a good enough answer.”

  “It’s all you’re gonna get. For now, anyway.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just a word with you, Yala. You can stay where you are if you feel safer.”

  Yala allowed her body to untense a tiny little bit. The vapor was creepy, but somehow, he seemed to be genuinely uninterested in hurting her. “I don’t like being followed.”

  “Understood. My apologies. The work I do requires a certain amount of … discretion.” A slight bow. “My name is Biaque.”

  “You can’t stop me from …” He had said he knew her plan, but he hadn’t said what it was. Yala wasn’t about to be bluffed into giving it up. She let her voice trail off.

  “I have no intention of convincing you not to join the Star Guard,” Biaque said. “In fact, I’m here to ask you to do exactly that.”

  Yala raised an eyebrow at the vapor. “Really?” She was about to ask why when she noticed Tinibu flashing toward them. Perhaps she was saved, although she wasn’t sure from what yet. Biaque saw her gaze and, rather than turn around, his eyes and mouth simply vanished into the cloudy form and, presumably, materialized on the other side. Yala shuddered.

  The tiny hunterfly slowed to a glide a few feet in front of Biaque and nodded at him. Yala gazed in
amazement. They knew each other. Biaque nodded back and then his features surfaced toward Yala again.

  “You know Tinibu?” she gasped.

  Biaque smiled. “We go way back.”

  Tinibu hopped into the crevice, nuzzled Yala a few times, and then perched happily on a jagged rock ledge. He pulled a greasy paper bag full of dougies out of his little satchel and started munching away, not bothering to take them out of the bag first. “Then I guess you can’t be altogether evil,” Yala muttered. She was dying to get out of that uncomfortable position anyway. If the vapor had wanted to hurt her, he’d already had plenty of opportunities. She crawled out and stood beside where Biaque hovered, looking him up and down suspiciously.

  The vapor smiled. “Let’s take a stroll.”

  Finally alone in his room, Ato laid the plastic bag on his desk with a heavy thud. He reached in, grabbed a handful of cold, scaly flesh, and pulled out the iguanagull’s headless body. The thick dark blood had congealed in dry clumps around the hole at the end of its neck. It wasn’t too gooey, but a horrendous odor issued out as soon as it was free of the bag.

  Ato spread the plastic out and laid the creature flat on its belly. The muscular arms and legs had already begun to stiffen some, and they stuck out at odd angles. Tremendous white feathers sprouted thickly from a membrane stretched from the forearms to the pelvis. The long arms ended in three curved claws, and Ato could see instantly how they’d be sharp enough to cut through steel. A spiky ridge ran the length of the iguanagull’s spine, sharp waves that peaked midway down its back and shrank toward the tail.

  Iguanagulls. Ato squinted to remember his bio textbook’s exact phrasing. A regressive mutation resulting from the quickening caused by environmental changes in the atmosphere. Something like that. The combining of two or more once-related species into a brand-new one.

  A ferocious one at that, Ato thought. But what on earth could Mephim have wanted with its head?

  He ran his fingers idly along the scaly back, feeling the ridges of its muscles and the gentle protrusions where its ribs were. Then he grabbed it with both hands and, with some effort, flipped the creature onto its back. The underside was smoother and a lighter shade of green. Being as careful as possible, Ato held the iguanagull’s arm with one hand and uncurled one of its claws with the other. Something was odd about the inner edge of those sword-like talons. He ever-so-carefully stuck his finger into the curve of one and then pulled it back out. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open.