Dark Life: Rip Tide (2 page)

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for your parents to get here?” Gemma asked as I used the cruiser’s extendable metal clippers to cut through the township’s anchor chains.

“Why?” I replied. “I’m doing exactly what they’d do.”

I shattered the last link, and as the final chain fell away, the township pulled free and began a lazy ascent to the surface. “I could tell it was built to float,” I explained. “The hydro-turbines under the ship are just for propulsion.”

We watched the township’s progress as it knocked into debris. Satisfied that nothing would stop its rise completely, I zoomed the cruiser toward the surface, passing the township, to crash through the waves.

The setting sun cast a pink glow over the wide-open expanse of ocean. There wasn’t a hint of land or a ship in sight. When Gemma threw open the hatch in the sub’s canopy roof, I braced myself for the blast of hot air. She hopped right out and slid down the hull onto one of the narrow runners along the cockpit.

I stayed put, needing longer to adjust. Even at this late hour, the light seared into me while the heat boiled my body into overcooked seaweed. Whenever I surfaced, all I could think about was diving back into the ocean. But after another deep breath, I forced myself up and out of the hatch.

Gemma leaned back on the sub’s canopy, one leg bent. She’d put on a diveskin to come out with me, even though she had no intention of getting in the water. With all the time she’d been spending at the Trade Station lately, her face had a permanent flush and her long brown hair was streakier than ever. The effects of UV exposure looked pretty on her, but I shifted my gaze to the patch of churning water where the township would surface. I knew that living subsea didn’t come naturally to some people. They couldn’t get past their terror of drowning or the wildlife or the black depths. I wasn’t sure which fear ended up being too much for Gemma after just three months of living with us. All she would say was that the ocean scared her and that she missed the sunlight and air. Still, I kept hoping that she’d give living subsea another chance.

Gulls screeched overhead and waves smacked against the hull, but we remained silent as the township emerged from the ocean, growing wider as it rose.

“It’s a spiral,” she said finally.

“A nautilus,” I agreed, spotting the pattern under the barnacles. “The windows are the stripes of the shell. The
flexiglass dome in front”—I pointed to the sloping section that ended in a point—“makes up the tentacles.”

“How do you see tentacles?”

“They’re bunched together.” I dropped back into the pilot seat. “Ready?”

Her nod was hesitant at best, but I went ahead and steered the cruiser alongside the township’s bumper. Then I turned on the autopilot and climbed out of the sub. The computer would keep her alongside the township. “I’m just going in for a moment. And I won’t touch anything. The Seaguard will want to see it as is.”

Gemma nodded. “I’ll help you open the hatch.”

It didn’t take long to cut through the chain that was strung from the wheel to a handgrip on the hull. But as I pulled open the hatch, I had the distinct feeling we were opening a tomb. Cold air hissed out of the air lock. Under other circumstances, I’d have welcomed the relief from the heat, but this chill settled into my gut. With one breath, I knew the oxygen was thin. Rather than risk getting dizzy, I inhaled Liquigen into my lungs.

Gemma scrambled back, her face pale under her freckles. “You’re sure about this?”

With a nod, I ventured into the air lock.

“I’ll be right here, guarding the cruiser,” she called after me.

The rear door of the air lock stood ajar, and I stepped through to find myself in a big open area. Probably the town
square. With the algae and sea life coating the flexidome, the sunlight that filtered through had a greenish tinge, which gave the space an eerie feel. Or maybe the twitchy sensation inside me wasn’t caused by the dim light, but by the sight of people curled up on the floor and bundled in blankets. I was glad for the Liquigen in my lungs that kept me from calling out “hello,” knowing that the reply would be icy silence.

Moving closer, I saw that under the blankets, they were wearing life preservers—had been waiting for a rescue that never came. I swallowed, trying to lose the feeling of something wedged in my windpipe, and turned away, wanting to leave before I got a look at any one person. I didn’t want to see that some were little kids, even though the logical part of my brain already knew it.

Shifting my gaze upward, I noticed that the flexidome folded down in layers, like a series of tentacles, which would open the town square to the sky. Not that the control panel would be working.

Careful to disturb nothing, I circled to the shallow pool that dominated the middle of the square. There was no water in it, only gleaming white crystals that encrusted the sides and bottom. Too chunky to be ice. I broke off a single crystal and tasted it. Salt.

A narrow channel fed into the pool, which I followed to where it spiraled up the township’s center, running alongside curving stairs. Most of the doors to the living quarters on the next level stood open, but I didn’t climb
the staircase. I didn’t need to look further. No one could have survived the deep freeze that had gripped this town and choked the life out of it.

I made my way back to the town square and found Gemma studying the empty pool in the center. She met my eyes. “No one?”

With both of the air lock’s hatches open, enough oxygen must have seeped in from outside. I inhaled to make the Liquigen in my lungs evaporate. “I don’t think so.”

She shivered slightly. After a moment she bent and touched the crystals in the pool. She seemed surprised at how easily a chunk broke off in her hand. When she held it up to catch the light, I realized the crystal reminded me of the shapes tattooed on the dead boy’s face.

“What is it?” Gemma asked.

“Nomad was a salt farm.”
The thin air must be dulling my senses,
I thought. Instead of horror or outrage, I felt only a creeping numbness.

“Nomad?”

I pointed to the word painted above the square. “The township’s name.”

“Why would someone do this to them?”

I shook my head, having no answer as to why. Nor did I have one for the question that had floated through my mind ever since seeing the chains across the hatches:
Who
would do it?

Within an hour, Pa, Ma, and I and a few of our neighbors had managed to tow the township to the Trade Station. We left it bobbing next to the Surface Deck, which was an enormous two-level ring floating on top of the ocean. The lower station lay hidden one hundred feet subsea, with an elevator cable connecting the two.

Given the late hour, the Surface Deck was deserted. The fish market that circled the promenade, fifteen feet above the waves, had closed hours ago. And only a few boats were hitched to the docking-ring at water level, illuminated by the lights of the promenade above.

“Heck of a find,” Raj said as he stood back, eyeing the township. Broad, bearded, and loud, he came off more like an outlaw than a pioneer. “Them being all dead”—he waved his seaweed cigar—“makes it your salvage, no debate.”

“Wonder why I’m not throwing a party?” I replied as I waited for Pa and Lars. They were inside, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with Nomad’s engines.

“’Cause you’re not counting up the subload of money you’ll make,” Raj said. As if I’d missed his point.

“It’s a chum deal for them, all right,” Jibby acknowledged, tipping his shaggy blond head toward the township. “But you do stand to make a small fortune off this.”

“Gemma and I found it together,” I corrected, since she’d ducked into the lounge to shed her diveskin the moment we’d docked.

“Even if the engines are fried, you can bust up this sucker and sell it for parts,” Jibby went on, ignoring my mention of Gemma. At twenty-three, he was too old for her—at least as far as I was concerned. She was only fifteen. But she was also the only girl in Benthic Territory anywhere near his age, and a pretty one at that, so Jibby had already proposed marriage twice. And though he’d been turned down both times, he wasn’t about to give up hope, which I found both funny and annoying.

Soon enough, Pa and Lars stumbled out of the township. Lars was big and pale on any given day, but now he’d out-blanch a spookfish as he leaned against the ladder that led up to the promenade. Slamming the hatch closed, Pa wedged a crowbar into the handle as extra measure. Then he dropped to a knee at the edge of the docking-ring and splashed seawater on his face. No one spoke, letting them regain their composure.

“The engine’s been disabled. Definitely sabotage,” Pa said in a hoarse voice. “But it looks like they got a backup generator going for a while at least. It put out enough power to get the blowers running, but not the heat. Those poor surfs died of hypothermia long before their air gave out.”

“Most of the equipment is close to fifty years old,” Lars added, still leaning against the ladder. “They were lucky to get the backup generator running at all.”

“Not lucky enough,” I muttered.

“They probably hoped someone would find them in time,” Jibby said sadly.

Lars grimaced. “But had no way to send out a distress signal.”

I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be, watching the people you love freeze to death.

“Who would do such a thing?” my mother asked. Arms crossed, she seemed to be holding her distress in check. “Anchor an entire township and chain the hatches?”

“No idea,” Pa said. He sounded riled, which was rare for him. “But since we’ve got no ranger, I’m calling the Seaguard.”

“Sure that’s smart?” Lars pushed off from the wall, his legs steadier now. “You’re meeting with the surfs from Drift tomorrow.”

“What does that have to do with it?” Ma asked. “Selling our crops isn’t illegal anymore.”

Representative Tupper had seemed so proud of himself when he’d passed on that nugget. The Assembly had denied our bid for statehood—said Benthic Territory wasn’t old enough, established enough, and didn’t have enough citizens. But as a small concession, they would allow us to pay our property taxes in cash instead of produce from then on. A step forward, for sure, but the government wanted to buy our goods for next to nothing. And we discovered that selling our produce leaf by leaf,
fish by fish, at the market was taking more time than any settler had to spare.

“You make this public knowledge”—Lars nodded at the derelict township—“by bringing in the Seaguard, the Drift surfs will hear about it.”

“So?” I asked as Gemma slipped past Raj to stand by me. She looked every bit the Topsider in a loose-falling green caftan, cinched at her waist with a tasseled rope. Remnants from her life in a stack-city.

“What if they blame you for what happened to Nomad?” Lars demanded. “Surfs are unreasonable on a good day. Just look at ’em wrong, and they turn savage. Which is why this plan of yours, John, selling in bulk to surf townships … Well, you know I think you’re crazy.” He paused as if he still couldn’t believe Pa was considering it. “I’m just saying, we should keep quiet about Nomad until after your deal is done.”

“Drift’s sachem isn’t looking for a onetime sale,” Pa said. “He wants to buy our greens every month. He’s not going to fly off the handle.”

“What’s a sachem?” Gemma whispered to me.

“A township’s leader.”

“You’re talking about
surfs
,” Raj said, prying his seaweed cigar from his mouth. “Lars is right. Their sun-baked brains could interpret this all manners of wrong. Leaving you facing the killing end of a trident.”

“Look,” Pa said, “we can’t depend on the Commonwealth anymore. They haven’t even sent us a new ranger. And if we try to go it alone, this settlement will never be anything but an isolated backwater town. To thrive, we need to make alliances out here on the ocean. So I’m calling the Seaguard now, because if they were settlers”—he pointed at Nomad—“we wouldn’t even be talking about this.” With that, he headed into the lounge to make the call.

“Because settlers don’t go around killing folk and turning their innards into clothes,” Raj shouted after him.

Gemma’s eyes grew wide. “Surfs do that?”

“No,” Ma said, glaring at Raj. “It’s a rumor passed on by people who should know better.”

“Hey, we’ve all seen them in their gut-skin raincoats,” he said, indicating the rest of us with a sweep of his cigar.

“Those see-through coats are made of human guts?” Jibby looked astounded. “I thought it was seal intestine.”

“It is,” Ma said firmly.

“How can you be sure?” Raj challenged.

Ma threw up a hand in exasperation.

“What’s the big deal?” Gemma asked me once the adults had dispersed. “So you’re selling some seaweed to a township.”

“It’s a first. That makes people nervous. Well, that and the fact the surfs raid each other and floaters for stuff
like freshwater. And they’ve been known to set sickly babies and old people adrift.”

“And you want to be friends with them?”

“‘Friends’ would be overstating it. We just want to do business.”

As I faced the lounge and she the ocean, I noticed that in the moonlight her freckled skin was glowing softly. She’d told me that she wanted a shine like mine, and she’d certainly eaten a lot of bioluminescent fish in the three months that she’d lived with us. But it usually took a new settler at least a year before his skin started to reflect his diet. Yet hers was luminous tonight.

“Are you getting a shine?” I asked, smashing down the impulse to touch her cheek.

“What? I don’t think—Ty, look at the water!”

Turning, I saw the adults had stopped in their tracks to stare at the ocean. With good reason—the water around Nomad was glowing with white light. The eerie light’s reflection had given Gemma’s skin the look of a shine.

She stumbled back. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

She pointed at the derelict township, now little more than a hulking silhouette against the night sky. “The ghosts we let out,” she whispered.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I assured her.

Still Gemma stared at the phosphorescent water as if it were going to well up and suck her under. “You also said there was no such thing as Dark Gifts,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, but this time I don’t have anything to hide. Look at that!”

The eerie light spread across the ocean in every direction, like molten metal of the purest white, all the way to the horizon. Shaken by the sight, Gemma backed into the wall of the lounge.

“That’s one heck of a big ghost,” I teased.

She shot me an evil look. “Ghosts are as real as Dark Gifts. I’ve seen them.”

“Them?” I asked with a straight face. “You mean different ghosts on different days or a whole bunch at once, darting around like a school of mackerel?”

She crossed her arms. At least she didn’t look scared anymore, just annoyed.

“Okay, you’ve seen ghosts. Plural,” I conceded as I settled on the edge of the docking-ring. “But this” —
I skimmed my dive boot across the water, producing silvery gleams and bluish spangles—“is totally natural. Sailors call it a milky sea.” I glanced back and saw that she’d relaxed a smidge. “We’re lucky to see it,” I continued. “Doesn’t happen very often.”

She slipped off her sandals. “When it does happen, is there usually a ship of dead people nearby?” she asked, settling in next to me.

“Not usually,” I replied, glad that her sense of humor was back.

We sat in silence for a while. Between the radiant water and soft breeze, it would have been a perfect moment to kiss her … if the last time hadn’t gone so badly. In fact, despite what she said, I suspected that our second kiss ever had brought on her first subsea panic attack. Or at least contributed to it. We’d been preparing to drop out of the cruiser with our spearguns to hunt for dinner when I’d stopped her from putting on her helmet. It hadn’t even been much of a kiss. Just a quick press of lips to gauge her reaction since I hadn’t so much as hugged her since she’d moved in with us. She’d smiled afterward—had even taken my hand as we slipped into the ocean. But two minutes later, she’d turned scary pale and shoved me away. Then came the sweating and shaking, which ended with her frenzied retreat back into the sub. By the time I’d climbed in, she’d drawn herself into a tight ball, and she refused to talk the whole way back to
the homestead. At first, it didn’t occur to me that my kiss might have unsettled her. That qualm came later, after I’d waited for some signal from her, encouragement to try again, and it never came. Within the month, she’d moved out.

I missed having her in our house. Missed exploring the ocean together. Missed
her.
Not that I’d ever said so out loud. The thought of saying it now sent a flame up my neck and roasted my cheeks. I ducked my face before Gemma noticed. She’d been the one to point out that instead of blushing like other people, I “glow”—which was an exaggeration. My skin just brightens a little; that’s all.

“Glacial,” she said, admiring the water. “It’s like the whole ocean has a shine.”

“Yeah. It’s bacteria.”

She wrinkled her nose as if I’d just ruined the view.

“It’s rare to see so much clumped together,” I said, trying to bring back her enjoyment of it. “Takes the right mix of oily surface scum for the bacteria to grow.”

“Can we just look at the pretty water without explaining it?”

I nodded, realizing that it
would
have been a good moment to tell her how much I missed her…. Except that now I didn’t want to talk, not when I knew for sure that I’d end up saying something stupid.

I was almost grateful when Pa called me over then to help secure the township.

When we finally got Nomad tied off, my parents headed home in one sub, while I was to return in the cruiser. But I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to Gemma. I found her by the door to the lounge, which wasn’t much of a lounge; really, it was just an empty locker room inside the Surface Deck.

She’d been out in the sub with me for a good portion of the day and hadn’t seemed nervous at all. Okay, subs weren’t the problem. Diving was. But still, I had hope. “Want to come back with me tonight?” I asked, trying to sound like it would be no big deal.

The question flustered her. “I do. Really. But it’s better if I stay here.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because you don’t want to swim in the ocean anymore? That doesn’t mean you have to stop living with us.”

“Your home is
in
the ocean. Makes it kind of hard.”

“And bunking under the promenade is easy?” I made no effort to hide my skepticism. “On a bench.”

“Come here.” She pulled me into the lounge. “I haven’t slept on a bench in weeks.” She lifted a chain from around her neck—one I hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing. A key dangled from it, which she used to unlock a
door in the back of the lounge that I’d never noticed, either. “Remember Mel, the bartender in the Saloon? She kept trying to get me to use one of the empty rooms on the Quarters Deck, where the staff lives. But that’s in the lower station and, well, I’d rather stay up here. So she found me a bed and gave me the key to this….” She pulled open the door as if unveiling a prize.

A storage closet. She was excited about a closet with a cot wedged inside, which took up most of the space. Her duffel bag ate up the rest.

I did remember Mel, the bartender with a shaved head. As tough as her exterior was, she’d certainly come to my defense when I’d gotten in over my head with the Seablite Gang. Of course she was looking out for Gemma now.

“I didn’t show you before,” she explained, “because I didn’t know if I was going to stay.”

“And now you know,” I managed to say, though my mouth had gone dry.

“Mel said no one uses this closet. That I can consider it my space.”

It didn’t surprise me that Gemma seemed to relish that phrase: “my space.” As an orphan, she’d grown up on the mainland as a ward of the Commonwealth in a boarding home. She’d moved constantly into whatever dormitory happened to have an empty bed, whether the other girls were her age or not. She’d never been allotted
so much as a corner to call her own, never mind a whole closet.

She pointed to a small porthole that looked onto the docking-ring. “It’s even got a window.”

All along she’d told me that living at the Trade Station wasn’t so bad. That she enjoyed working in the fish market on weekdays. Running errands for the merchants. I thought she’d been putting a good spin on it so that my parents wouldn’t worry. Now I realized that I’d read her wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. She liked living in a storage closet. Liked working for the fish vendors in the scalding sun. Probably even liked being surrounded by the hordes of shoppers. Crowds didn’t bother her. Not even when they were haggling and yelling and stank like hot, dead fish. She was never coming back to live with us. Not even if she completely conquered her fear of swimming in the ocean.

She watched me, surely catching every thought that passed through my head. That was another thing about her. She could read people with uncanny accuracy. A gift I didn’t possess.

“Guess you have everything you need,” I said.

“Not everything.”

She paused, but I said nothing. What was there to say?

“I miss being a part of your family,” she finished.

I nodded, not trusting my voice. She hadn’t said she missed being with
me.
“You’re always part of our family,” I finally managed to mumble. “No matter where you bunk.”

She flashed me a smile, wide and warm, but it just made me feel worse.

“Okay.” I headed for the door. “I should get going.”

“Ty, wait,” she called after me.

But I’d already stepped out. I saw that the ocean had lost its glow, which seemed fitting. She joined me on the docking-ring.

At that moment, Jibby clambered down a ladder from the promenade. “Oh, good,” he said, spotting Gemma. “I thought you’d left with John and Carolyn.”

“No,” she said, but didn’t mention that she was living here full-time now.

“I just wondered …” He shot me a guilty look.

“Ask her whatever you want,” I told him. “Has nothing to do with me.”

Relief swept over his features, though hers seemed to tighten.

“You want to see your brother?” Jibby asked her.

Of all the things I expected him to say—including proposing marriage again—that was not one of them. Gemma looked as surprised as I felt.

“I got two tickets to the bare-knuckle boxing match
at Rip Tide tomorrow night.” He held up a synthetic paper flyer. “Won them in a poker game. Then I saw who was fighting.”

“Richard?” she asked in amazement.

“Yeah, well, Shade,” Jibby said. Which was the name her brother went by ever since he’d become an outlaw and the leader of the notorious Seablite Gang.

“How do you know it’s the same Shade?” I asked.

He waved us under one of the lights that circled the edge of the promenade. “There can’t be two that look like that,” he said, handing her the flyer.

Standing in the pool of light, Gemma studied the flyer and smiled. Then she showed me the drawing of the two boxers. One of the men pictured was her brother, no question. The dark-skinned, tattooed version of him anyway. What the flyer didn’t mention was that Shade had a Dark Gift that let him change the color of his skin at whim like a squid.

“What’s Rip Tide?” Gemma asked as she read the flyer.

“An off-coast city south of here,” Jibby said. “Kinda like our Trade Station but for surfs.”

“Sounds great,” she said absently, her eyes on Shade’s picture. “Can I keep this?”

Her apparent longing for her brother had me worried. She hadn’t heard from him at all in the past four months.
Not since he took off with his gang after locking a group of us—her included—in the lower station when it disengaged from the Surface Deck and sank. To be fair, Shade hadn’t known the lower station had sprung a leak. But still, trapping us subsea without vehicles or Liquigen was just another item on a long list of his dangerous activities, which included deflating our neighbors’ house. Reckless, menacing, and vengeful—why would anyone miss him? But clearly, she did.

“Sure, keep it,” Jibby said. “So, does that mean you want to go?” When she didn’t answer him right off, he added, “We can get a note to Shade. Tell him that you’re ringside.”

Since she’d lit up at the mention of her brother, I didn’t understand her hesitation. Then I noticed her gaze had drifted to me. Did she think I’d judge her for wanting to see Shade? Just because I didn’t like him or his gang didn’t mean—

“I’d love to, Jibby,” she said abruptly. “I do want to see Richard. Shade,” she corrected.

I headed for the cruiser, desperate to submerge and let the ocean close over me. As I unhitched the tether line, they made their plans. A minute later Jibby strode toward his sub, and I couldn’t help but notice the extra bounce in his step.

Gemma joined me by the hitching post. It was time to say good night, but the thought of leaving her here all
alone stung like a cut rinsed in salt water. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me for the night? Zoe misses you more than you can imagine.”

When she hesitated, I saw my chance and grabbed it. I pointed at the derelict township that banged against the docking-ring with every swell. “It’s just that I worry about you, sleeping here, with a ghost town hitched right outside your window….”