Firebreak, p.27
Firebreak, page 27
The croon of “Little girls” swelled and multiplied, echoing from other perfectly sculpted, motionless mouths.
“Little girls, so soft, so sweet, water’s warm, come swim, come swim with us—”
“—be our delicious treat, we’ll hold you so gently between our teeth—”
Amy and Vail rounded a bend where the light began to fail, the farthest corners of the sea cave shrouded in shadow. And at the heart of it all, attached by rusted bolts and girders to the lip of the platform, was a dock.
And a submarine.
It was the size of a city bus, long and bulbous and sleek, its silvery hull etched with a web of faded warding-glyphs that looked, to Amy’s eyes, like the patterns of a circuit board. New ones, cruder ones, had been chiseled over the old, carved into the steel in vast, jagged lines.
Elmer’s work, Amy thought. He built himself a perfect hiding place, right in the middle of Hell.
The mermaids slapped their tails against the water, rolling and thrashing, filling the air with coos and sighs. Amy felt magic in the air, and she could see, as they walked closer to the sub, the hard, invisible line in the pool. The mermaids couldn’t come within ten feet of the submarine. They wanted to, their susurrations becoming frustrated moans as Amy and Vail slipped further from their claws, but Elmer knew his craft. They couldn’t break through the bubble of force.
Amy had tied the grip of her hand mirror to her belt with a twist of twine. Now that she finally had some room to move and didn’t have to cling to the wall, Amy raised it so she and Vail could both see — and so they could show their friends what they’d discovered.
“Give the distress signal and let’s get out of here,” Vail whispered, the cavern walls throwing her voice back at them. “We can hold the line at the forest’s edge while they run and call the cavalry.”
Someone was already giving it. Bahati was flicking her fingers in the mirror, alarm in her eyes. When she caught Amy’s reflection in the black mirror, she quickly turned her glass to show her what she’d spotted.
A lone figure marched up the beach, headed straight for the sea cave. Not the traitor. Elmer was coming home.
“He’s too close,” Vail hissed. “If we leave now, we’ll run into him on the rocks outside. Not a good place to fight, especially now that he’s dropped the ‘feeble old man’ act. The guy moves like a ninja, and that’s without factoring magic in.”
“We have to hide,” Amy said.
Vail spread her hands. “Where?”
As she followed Amy’s gaze, she already knew the answer. There was only one place to go.
The wheel lock on the submarine hatch groaned, fighting them, as Amy and Vail both grabbed tight and pulled. It slowly began to rotate, smoother now, the squeal of metal on metal echoing off the cavern walls. Come on, come on, Amy thought, staring at the ledge where they’d come in, watching for Elmer’s shadow.
Finally, the hatch swung up. The rungs of a ladder led down into a cold, scarlet glow. Vail went first. Amy scrambled right behind her, pulling the hatch shut and spinning the wheel on the other side. Her soles touched down on a black rubber floor, the mat flecked with beaded water and textured for a better grip.
The blood-red light that bathed the interior glowed from the front console of the sub, a wall of screens and banks and levers that made the conductor’s booth look like a pile of children’s toys. The walls were cluttered with stacked, strapped-down crates, along with a suite of chairs fitted with nylon safety harnesses like military-grade jumpseats. No sign of a Resonator, though, even an incomplete one. As Amy’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she looked back and spotted a bulkhead door at the rear of the sub.
She nodded, silent, still wary. They’d only seen Elmer coming, which meant either Mr. Shaddock was somewhere out there on his own errand…or he was in here, with them.
The wheel on the door spun easily, freshly oiled and silent. It whistled open onto a tiny private compartment with a pair of narrow bunks built into the wall, jutting out like prison beds. The air down here stank, a mélange of sweat and wet fur, and the rubber mats were smeared with dried mud, but they were all alone.
“Where would he put it?” Amy whispered. “In one of these crates? We know he’s trying to build a Resonator, so where is the thing?”
No time to check. From above, the hatch began to groan. Vail grabbed Amy’s hand and yanked her into the back compartment, pulling the bulkhead shut just as footsteps rang out on the steel ladder.
“Yes, obviously,” they heard Elmer snap. Amy pushed the bulkhead door, the brushed steel rough and cold against her palm, opening it just a tiny crack. They watched his shadow pass on the way to the sub’s helm. “No. Unacceptable.”
Vail turned to Amy in the darkness of the cramped cabin and spun a finger around her ear. Is he losing it? Amy shook her head as she figured it out.
“He’s talking to Shaddock, long-range,” she whispered. “Psychic bubble, like we had with Colin.”
“What do you mean, the little fool didn’t show up?” he demanded. “We went out of our way to lay the perfect distraction, scrubbed our tracks for miles, orchestrated— yes, yes, a likely excuse. Shows the caliber of recruits I have to work with these days. Set a new meeting for tonight. South side of the island, by the old submarine pens. No, I’ll come to you. It’s time to relocate the sub, anyway. It’s nearly spawning season, and while I’m confident my wards will hold against mere mermaids, I’m not so bold to think they can hold up against a full-grown bull. Not so bold I want to trust them with my life, anyway. In the meantime, keep working on the Resonator, assuming you can follow the instructions I left you.”
Engines thrummed under Amy’s feet, turbines whirring to life. The submarine gave a tiny shudder, a lurch…and then it slowly inched forward, skimming the surface of the sea grotto as Elmer took the helm.
“What was that? Doesn’t matter. Moot point after tonight anyway, if we get the final pieces we need. My ride out of here will arrive before sunrise, and then this whole sad mess is—” Elmer paused. “Our ride. That’s what I said. What did you think I said? Yes, yes, for the hundredth time, you will receive your contract payment in full as soon as we arrive, plus compensation for the months you spent stranded here. You will be made whole.”
Probably more like made full of holes, Amy suspected, but the rat-man’s problems were the least of her concerns. She wondered what had stopped the thief from delivering the goods, but again, a puzzle for another time. If they rode all the way to the sub pens with Elmer, Mr. Shaddock would be waiting outside the hatch. They barely had a prayer of taking on Elmer alone. With his pet monster at his side, Amy and Vail were dead women walking.
“We’ve got to jump him,” Vail whispered, her breath hot against Amy’s ear. “We’re only going to get one chance.”
Amy flashed back to her vision in Mallory’s class: the sub ruptured, bleeding saltwater, crushed in massive tentacles. Vail unconscious or dead at her feet. Not the future, she reminded herself, one possible future.
In her vision, the Resonator had been here, on the sub. It wasn’t. Something they’d done, something they’d interfered with, some tiny tweak in the thread of time, had stopped that from coming to pass. Which meant it was simply down by the old sub pens, relocated but not destroyed, but still…it was proof.
Proof that this story is still being written. Proof that I can change the ending.
“On three?” Vail breathed.
Two outcomes left. Either they’d take him down, or he’d kill them both. And then build his Resonator, call in an army and lay the Saunders Academy and all their friends to waste.
There was one last thing they could do to even the odds. Amy turned, slid her hands around Vail’s waist, and pulled her close in the dark. Vail blinked, uncertain. Amy lowered her head to Vail’s neck, nuzzling against her, feeling Vail’s pulse against her skin.
It was a soft, steady drumbeat. One of Amy’s hands slid upward, to the small of Vail’s back. She began to sway, serpentine, moving in time to the rhythm of their blood as her own heartbeat fell into sync. Vail understood, and swayed with her.
Chapter forty
Water lapped against the hull of the submarine as it cruised, shallow and slow, a shark among leviathans. The engine was a purring tiger, vibrating up through the rubber mats, through their feet, up their legs, and through their bones until it reached their spines and then spread out in all directions. Amy and Vail slow-danced in the cramped, dark cabin, skin to skin, breath to breath, heartbeats slowing as their pulses began to beat in time. It was all the music they needed.
Amy felt her mind unfolding like the petals of a tulip in the sunrise. Vail’s did the same, and their spirits twined, twirled around one another, delicately brushed. Amy felt a quiver, a tremor of fear and—
Don’t be afraid, she thought. I’m not afraid. I’ll give you all that I am, if you share yourself with me.
The Serpent Rhythm sang.
In a flood, Amy felt it all, everything Vail had held back. The desperation, the fear, the self-loathing — so much of it, a torrent of hatred for herself that she still dragged behind her like heavy chains. Sensations of vibrating on raw chemical bliss, transcendent, and then the pain of going without, veins like stripped electrical wires sparking under her tight pale skin. Getting into a car with a man old enough to be her father, wondering if this would be the one who pulled a knife or a gun and some part of her said that would be fine, it would be over at least. More Ink after, to dull the pain.
You survived. Amy’s thoughts seeped into her. You SURVIVED.
Vail’s fingers traced Amy’s jaw as tears rolled down her cheeks.
So did you.
A thought resonated between them
You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen
and Amy wasn’t sure if she thought it or Vail did but their souls thrummed in agreement. In unity. Then, one last shared thought, and Amy knew it was Vail’s.
Let’s kick his ass.
They burst from the bulkhead door, hand in hand, sprinting through the belly of the sub with Elmer locked in their sights. He had just enough time to spin around, face pale with shock, before Vail leaped into the air. Amy swung her by the hand, spinning her like a dancer, and Vail’s heel drove into Elmer’s belly. He wheezed and doubled over, but he barely missed a beat as his eyes crackled with amber lightning. Suddenly Amy flipped off her feet and fell, her legs swept out from under her by a spinning kick, and she hit the wet rubber floor hard on her back.
Vail charged at him, but he deflected her punches one after another, the air snapping and blurring around them. He caught her fist in the V of his crossed forearms and twisted her around, hard, throwing her against a stack of crates. The back of her head cracked against the hard plastic. Amy felt it, a bone-rattling jolt that left them both seeing stars, but Vail was still on her feet. She gritted her teeth, glaring, trying to find a breath to rally.
Amy pointed at Elmer. A gout of blue fire lanced from her fingertip — her finger, Vail’s magic — and splashed across the shoulders of his ragged, filthy robe, making him howl as he frantically patted the fire out with his fist. He was too slow to meet Vail’s charge this time: she barreled into him like a linebacker, tackling him against the helm. One of his hands slapped the control panel and the submarine groaned, the floor sliding out from under them as it suddenly lurched.
It was diving.
Elmer hit the floor, landing breathless, and Vail stood over him with her fist cocked back. He held up his hands, waving frantically.
“Truce! Truce!”
Vail staggered back a few steps. Not because of his words, but because the Serpent Rhythm had run its course, the last sands in the magical hourglass slithering away. A wave of raw fatigue washed over Amy, flooding her quivering muscles like she’d just finished running a marathon in the space of less than half a minute, and from the glazed look in her eyes, Vail felt the same. Vail plopped onto the deck beside her, the two of them staring Elmer down, all three of them sweaty and gasping and spent.
“Surrender,” he told them. “You just lost.”
“Doesn’t look that way from here,” Vail panted.
“It would if you were smart like me.” He pointed a shaky finger at the helm. “I just hit the auto-return. Preprogrammed route to deliver this submarine to its old home at the bottom of the ocean.”
“The lab,” Amy said.
“The ruined lab. Not much left of it. But oh, so many fascinating life-forms down in the lightless deep. We’re safe from the mermaids, but they are, I promise you, the least of this world’s terrors.”
“Like the Corpse.”
“Is that what you people call it? Oh, yes. You know, it doesn’t just devour your body. It takes your soul. And it eats…so very slowly. So slow you cannot imagine. That monster’s victims yearn for the fires of Hell. And you don’t know how to pilot this sub. Without me, your fate is sealed.” Elmer curled his thin lips in a sickly smile. “But I’ll make you a deal: surrender, and I’ll turn it around. You’ll live. As my hostages, of course, but that’s a far better choice than the alternative.”
He nodded toward the stack of strapped-down crates.
“There are some manacles in the top crate,” he said, locking eyes with Amy. “Bind your athletic friend’s wrists, then your own.”
If they did that, they were dead. He’d either kill them once they were helpless, or they’d die when the invasion began, along with everyone they knew and loved. On the other hand, he was right. They had no idea how to make the sub reverse course, and they were locked on a countdown toward the inevitable. A binary choice, two ways to die.
No, Amy realized. Her fingers traced her hip pocket, feeling her precious cargo. There’s a third way.
She looked over at Vail and whispered, “Do you trust me?”
“Always,” Vail said.
Amy turned back to Elmer. “You’re like…Network elite, right?”
He couldn’t resist preening a little.
“I am the chosen emissary of the King of Worms, child. A legion trembles at my command. Well…it did, once. I’ve had a few minor setbacks. But once I serve up the Saunders Academy to my lord on a platter, I’ll be given an entire world as my palace and playground.”
“Gosh, Vail,” Amy deadpanned. “I think we’re going to have to kill this guy.”
“Yup,” she agreed.
Elmer’s eyes widened. “Excuse me? Did…did you take an extra-hard bump to the head? This sub is going down. Straight into the coils of the Corpse. I’ve shielded myself from its influence, and I can feel that you have as well, but your little friend here isn’t so lucky. It will pick up our psychic scent, soon enough. And it will come for us all.”
“We’re dead either way,” Amy said. “But if we go out like this, all three of us together, it means taking a major Network agent off the table and saving countless lives. I’m willing to die for that. But…I don’t think you are.”
“We’re calling your bluff,” Vail told him. “What do you think, Amy? Good day to die?”
“Good as any.”
“No. No,” Elmer snapped, his face turning pale. “You’re not that crazy. I don’t believe that for a second.”
His words said one thing, the panicked-animal look in his eyes said something else. Come on, Amy thought, back down before it’s too late. They were playing chicken, but they were all in one car together, racing toward certain death.
“You backed us into a corner,” Amy said. “Gave us nothing but a choice of two unhappy endings. But in one of those endings, you win, and in the other, you lose. So tell me, Mr. Genius…why shouldn’t we make you die with us, right here and now? It’s the only move you left us. Checkmate. Game over.”
His gaze flicked to the helm. He was bending, buckling, but still clinging to his conviction that they didn’t really want to die like this — true enough, Amy thought — and it was staying his trembling hand. She needed to give him one push, good and hard.
She rose on shaky feet, standing over him. She gave Vail her hand, pulling her up.
“You don’t think we’re crazy enough to do it, huh?” Amy asked Elmer. “Let me show you what crazy really looks like.”
She dropped her shields.
She opened her mind to the world, to the water and the depths, exposing the psychic light she’d worked for a year to muffle. It blazed from her, a clarion call to the hungry fiends of the trench.
And inside her mind, the Corpse opened one vast, yellow, hateful eye.
Elmer sensed it, his jaw dropping.
“Hear that?” Amy murmured. “Sounds like the dinner bell.”
The submarine jolted, almost throwing them off their feet. The engines began to squeal, turbines whirring harder, faster, as heavy thumps — the thrumming of vast tentacles lashing around the hull — echoed through the heavy steel.
“Sweet King,” Elmer whispered, his face a waxy, bloodless mask of terror. “It’s too late. You just killed us all.”
Not yet, Amy thought. She had one more move to play.
“Something you’ll learn about me,” she said, parroting his own words back at him from the last time they’d faced off, “is that I always have a backup plan.”
The hull let out a tortured squeal as the walls began to bend and buckle, struts snapping and bolts popping loose under the crushing strength of the Corpse’s rubbery arms. The engine flared out and died with the sound of a muffled eruption, geysering out into the depths.
“Vail,” Amy shouted, “grab him!”
He tried to get his hands up, too late — Vail’s foot snapped out, cracking him across the jaw hard enough to knock a tooth loose, leaving him stunned and drooling blood. She hauled him onto his belly and wrenched one arm behind his back. Amy was already moving, racing to the back of the sub. She hauled the bulkhead door shut.
