Above World (28 page)

She walked over and put her hands against his cell.

Suddenly, he pounded his fist against the plastic and shouted. She jumped back. His words were muffled by the cage.

“I don’t understand,” she called back.

“Shhh!” Barko said. “No yelling. No yelling!” He danced around nervously and looked up the path. “Faster now, mermaid. No time for the Mess-ups!” He bolted forward, and she had to follow.

She wanted to stop and talk to all the creatures trapped in the cages. They passed a dolphin and a baby shark, a huge white bird and a striped cat so big that Aluna’s whole body could have fit inside her mouth.

Another cage held a creature that was Human from her head to her waist and horse below that. An Equian! Her back left leg had been replaced with a metal blade that sparked as she stomped. Deep red gashes and scars ringed the metal where it connected to the horse-woman’s flesh.

The dog pulled Aluna along. Her stomach knotted tighter and tighter as they wove quickly through the captives. So many had been altered. She saw metal tusks added to a deer and a huge tortoise with jagged razors attached to the rim of his shell and some sort of saddle mounted on his back.

So much suffering, so much loneliness, so much pain and loss. Sadness rolled from the cages in waves, suffocating her heart. What kind of person could do this? What kind of monster? She couldn’t save only Daphine, not anymore. Now she had to save them all.

Barko bounded down the path, ignoring all the cries and dead eyes of the captured creatures. Aluna felt tears well in her eyes and trail down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. There was only forward.

The path emptied them into a bright clearing surrounded by cages, some occupied, some empty. She didn’t have time to study their occupants. They had arrived at the very center of Middle Green, at the very center of HydroTek. And the man — the
thin
g — crouched by the last cage with his back toward them could only be Fathom, so-called Master of the Sea.

He likes parts,
the dog had said, and Aluna finally understood what he’d meant. Maybe Fathom had looked Human once, but now he was a patchwork monster. Two dorsal fins jutted from his shoulders, fins that must have belonged to Deepfell before they were ripped off and reattached. His left arm had been split into two. One limb ended in a mechanical hand, and the other had some sort of artifact control pad screwed onto the end. The bottoms of Fathom’s legs had been extended to twice their normal height, with dull-black metal bars wrapped in wires and tubes.

She couldn’t even identify the other bits of flesh and metal stitched and embedded all over his body. Some oozed blood as she watched. Worst of all, the back of his skull had been replaced by some glasslike material. She could see right into his brain.

When he turned and rose, Aluna gasped. Not only was Fathom’s face still fully Human, but she recognized his tousled brown hair and glasses from the photo Hoku had pulled from Sarah Jennings’s water safe.

Fathom was Karl Strand.

But how? That letter was written hundreds of years ago! Karl and Sarah were together before the Kampii even existed. How could he still be alive?

Fathom smiled, looking even more like the man from the photo. But when he spoke, it wasn’t to her.

“Well, dog,” he said. “What have you brought me today?”

The dog sketched a nervous doggy bow and said, “A mermaid, master! A mermaid for your collection!”

Aluna looked at Barko, surprised at his betrayal, but the dog ignored her gaze.

“Pity, dog, but there will be no reward for you today,” he said. “You see, I already have a mermaid.”

Fathom motioned to the water-filled tank he had been inspecting when they arrived. Aluna had assumed it was empty, but it wasn’t. The occupant had been cowering in the far corner, curled into a ball. When Fathom activated the control device in his double arm, the creature yelped and swam obediently to the front of her enclosure.

Fathom’s mermaid was Daphine.

“D
APHINE!”
Aluna yelled, and bolted for her sister’s cage. Daphine had a slave collar around her neck and an ugly metal scope sticking out from her face where her left eye had once been.

Her face, her beautiful face.
Aluna would smash the cage to pieces with her bare hands if she had to.

“Stop her,” Fathom said simply, and pressed a sequence of buttons on his arm device. A dozen Upgraders swarmed into the clearing. Aluna recognized Giraffe, his head wobbling as he ran.

They were too close, too fast.

A man with thick muscles and bright-red skin leaped at her, but Aluna ducked and the man sailed over her head. She rolled forward and unclipped Spirit and Spite, her talons. They were already spinning by the time she vaulted to her feet. The three closest Upgraders took a step back, apparently uncertain how to handle the whirring weapons.

A woman wearing bulky goggles raised a harpoon gun. Before she could fire, Aluna sliced Spirit across her face. The Upgrader yelped and fell back, clutching at her eyes. Aluna dodged and headed for Fathom. She could fight his minions forever, but he was the one she needed to destroy.

Spirit and Spite sang in her hands, cutting the air and creating a whirlwind of slashes and cuts. She yanked Giraffe’s legs out from under him and jumped over another Upgrader’s knee spike. Still, her enemies were coming too fast, too strong. She couldn’t even recognize some of their weapons, let alone determine how best to disable them.

“Let her be,” Fathom said. “Let me see what this child can do.”

Instantly, the Upgraders lowered their weapons and backed away. Some were bleeding or holding wounds, but not enough of them.

Aluna wasted no time. She screamed and ran straight for Fathom, talons spinning. She whipped Spite at his head, aiming for his bespectacled eyes. He blocked the talon with one flick of his hand. The sharp metal weapon bounced off his arm with a spark and sailed back toward Aluna’s head. She changed the direction of her swing and diverted it toward one of Fathom’s legs, intending to yank it out from under him. Again, her talon sparked off the unnatural metal and bounced back toward her.

Fathom laughed.

She circled him, striking with her weapons again and again. She spun to get more speed and power with her attacks, but they glanced off him each time. Finally, the talons moved too fast, even for her. She failed to redirect Spirit and the talon’s point clipped her across the forehead. She felt a slow trickle of warmth slide down the side of her face.

Fathom punched at her with one of his metal hands. His fist slammed into her chest. In the next flash she was flying backward through the air, gasping for air. She crashed into Daphine’s cage and dropped to the ground. Luckily, she’d tucked her chin to her chest and managed to take the brunt of the hit with her shoulder, not her skull.

“Not a bad showing for such a small unadorned creature,” Fathom said. He rubbed his chin with four slender metallic fingers. “I wonder what you could do with longer legs? Or perhaps some horned implants on that thick head of yours? Such a nice blank canvas!”

“Aluna, is that you?” Daphine said in her ear.

Aluna groaned. She could see her sister floating in the cage behind her, but couldn’t find the air to speak. Black spots zigzagged in front of her eyes.

“You see, my father taught me that there is always room for improvement,” Fathom continued. “For a long time, he has looked for ways to preserve the flesh, to make it impervious to disease, famine, and even the humiliation of aging. But my goal is somewhat grander. I want to improve life, to combine the best of every life-form into one perfect example of superhumanity.”

He turned to Daphine and pointed to the scope that had replaced her eye. “Is she not far more beautiful now that she has been improved?”

Daphine shrank away from him. “Swim, Aluna,” she said. “Go! Warn the others!”

“Oh, does my mermaid pet know this little intruder?” Fathom said.

Aluna struggled to her feet. Fathom walked closer, moving gracefully on his bizarre extended legs. He punched more buttons on the artifact attached to his arm.

“Aaaah,” he said, staring at the device. “I thought I recognized you, girl. One of my recon sharks got a scan of you a few months ago.”

Aluna thought back to her days at the colony, to the day before the ceremony. The day she’d found Makina dead in the kelp, Great White had cast a glowing green net out of its eyes. The shark had been taking her picture.

“Is that how you found my”— she stopped herself before she said
sister.
Fathom didn’t need any more weapons —“that mermaid?”

“Why, yes!” he said jovially. “I thought at first you were merely a silly Human child, but the way you swam and the way your breathing device glowed, I knew I had finally found the elusive Kampii! I knew sabotaging your breathing necklaces would drive you out of hiding when they eventually started to fail. I did not predict that my first catch would be such an incredible beauty. How fortunate that she was traveling with only one guard!”

Fathom put his hand on Daphine’s cage. “Sadly the male escaped, but I cannot regret letting him go. Not when we came home with this prize,” he said. Then, quietly he added, “I will enjoy fixing her many flaws and weaknesses. Then, when she is truly perfect, she will take me to the fabled City of Shifting Tides, so that I may improve all of her people. Yes, yes. My own army of mermaid-Meks!”

Daphine retreated to the corner farthest away from him, a wild look in her eye.

“Now, now, my pretty,” he said to her. “No need to fear.” But all Aluna could see was terror on her sister’s face. All she could hear were Daphine’s whimpers in her ears.

“Please, let her go,” Aluna said. She pushed herself up against the cage, aware that Fathom and his Upgraders could kill her within seconds. “Take me instead.”

Fathom stared at her. Aluna’s heart thundered in her chest, wave after wave crashing against her ribs.

“Take you?” he said with a harsh laugh. “Why would I want to take you, little girl? You don’t even have a tail! You have no beauty upon which to build.”

Tides’ teeth!
Of course Fathom wouldn’t want her. She wasn’t even good enough to be a slave.

Unless . . .

She fumbled with the pouch hanging from her neck. Her fingers felt stupidly thick. The Upgraders raised their weapons, but Fathom waved them off. Finally, she managed to untie the drawstring. Two items dropped to the ground: her mother’s ring and the Ocean Seed. Aluna shoved the ring back into her pouch as fast as she could, then lifted the seed and held it out for him to see.

“The seed of transformation,” Aluna said quickly, holding up the dull-brown Ocean Seed. It was cool and soft between her fingertips. “If I eat it, I’ll grow a tail.”

She thought about swallowing the seed, about losing her legs forever. She would lose the Above World, too — from Skyfeather’s Landing to the distant desert where Dash’s people lived. She’d lose the trees and the campfires and the feel of wind running past her face.

And she’d be Fathom’s slave — his
possession
— so she’d lose the ocean, too.

She gritted her teeth and said, “I’ll get a tail, and you can watch it grow.”

L
IU LED
Hoku and Dash and Zorro on a wild run through a dozen white corridors. Hoku would have sworn they were all identical if not for the different patterns etched into the surfaces: starfish, dolphin, Big Blue, sunfish, kelp, wave. When they reached the section marked with the City of Shifting Tides’ seahorse design, he knew they were getting close.

The control room door stood out from the others. Instead of a little pad of numbers next to the handle, there was a huge artifact mounted on the wall. The door itself was ink black and imposing and looked thoroughly impenetrable.

Liu scuttled up to the device and stuck her face against it.

“Retinal scanner,” she said simply, as if Hoku would understand. But he almost did understand. The machine was scanning her eyes! There must have been some form of identification hidden in them.

The red light over the door turned green with a loud buzz, and a mechanism inside the door shifted.