Raging Sea (27 page)

“Riley, I don’t want to fight you, but I will, and I’m a lot better with this thing than you are, so do yourself a favor and just look around!” I scream.

He stops his assault and does as I ask, his head whipping from one end of the room to the other. Suddenly, he’s running at me and I’m sure he’s going to attack again, but then he sails past me to one of the tanks. It has an unconscious Selkie floating in it, most likely unaware of what is happening around him. Riley stumbles to the next tank and the next, and I hear him gasp when he comes across one filled with Rusalka hands. He turns and sees another with human body parts, and finally he comes across a Sirena whose chest cavity has been opened wide so that we can see her beating heart.

“My father? Is he here too?”

I nod.

“You can help me rescue him and all the others.”

“What’s real?” he shouts. “Is the plague real?”

“No!” I shout to him as I plant myself in front of a computer. I search the screen, looking for a button that might say
OPEN TANKS
or
STOP BEING EVIL
. I quickly realize I’m wasting my time. I press a few buttons, hoping to get lucky, but nothing happens. All I know about computers is how to make a Vine.

“Then the parents didn’t die?”

“He killed them!” I shout. “He needs all of you to be as good with the gloves as you can be, and giving you something traumatic and worth fighting for did the trick.”

“Coney Island?”

“That’s real. He’s sending you to fight the Rusalka, but none of you are ready. Riley, I know you have a million questions, but right now we have a very limited amount of time. We have to get these people out of these tanks.”

I hear a crash and then the sound of sloshing water. I turn to find one of the tanks has cracked, and a man tumbles out onto the floor. Riley scoops him up and pats his face, trying to wake him up.

“Dad, I need you to get up and walk.”

I wasn’t prepared for the Alpha to be drugged, but there’s no going back now. I turn and find a Ceto sinking in its tank. A sign has been taped onto the glass that reads
CETO NAME: BUMPER
.

“Bumper!” I cry, remembering her from school. I concentrate on the water behind the glass. There’s a crack and then another gush of water onto the floor. Bumper falls out with it and flops about as she morphs into her more human form. I take her squishy hand and lock eyes with hers. She recognizes me.

“It appears that I have missed some important events,” she says.

“Riley, get to work on the others!” I shout.

He’s reluctant to leave his father, but he does what I tell him. Soon another tank is shattering next to us, releasing a Sirena. I do the same to Nathan, the pufferfish man. When he spills out of the tank, he nearly knocks me down.

Riley rushes to another tank and is about to break it when I stop him. Inside is the squid creature Spangler warned me about. Its hundreds of tentacles slam against its tank. I don’t believe much of what Spangler has said, but when it comes to this thing, I think he was telling the truth.

“Not this one. And skip the Rusalka, too.”

“What about these people who are torn open?” Riley cries.

I shake my head, though it hurts my heart.

“We can’t help them. If we open their tanks, they could die. It might be cruel to leave them here, but if they’re alive, they still have a chance at rescue.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Lyric?”

“Spangler threatened the people I love, Riley,” I explain as I free an adult Triton I’ve never seen before.

“Is Uncle David part of this?”

I groan. “Yes!
Doyle
is part of this. He still might be, but right now he’s trying to do the right thing.”

The lights dim and flicker.

“What was that?” Riley asks.

“I don’t know, but it would suck if that’s the system rebooting,” I say. “Listen, we need to break open all these tanks at once, but again, keep the ugly ones in time-out.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Riley says.

I take his hand, and we turn our gloves on the tanks. I watch them rattle and shake. There’s an ear-jamming crash and then the sound of gallons of water spilling everywhere. It rushes at us, and I’m so focused on freeing everyone, I’m not ready for it. Both of us are pulled under and slammed around. I bang the back of my head on something, and the pain is searing. All the time, Riley holds my hand. He never lets me go, and eventually he gets me to my feet.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I’ll survive,” I say.

“What now?”

“The rest is up to Doyle,” I explain.

“Lyric?” Spangler’s voice broadcasts through speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling. I hear it echo outside, too, and in the halls. It’s everywhere. “Lyric, it’s Donovan. David and I are outside, and we need to have a chat.”

“Riley, stay here and help everyone you can,” I say.

“No way!” he cries. “I’m not letting you go out there alone, not after what you told me about him.”

“Lyyyyrrrriiccc,”
Spangler sings. “Come on out.”

“Riley, please,” I say. “These are our people, and they need you more than I do right now.”

I walk past all the tanks to the elevator. The water has sunk back down, but it’s a simple thing to recall it. I leap into the shaft, and it rises to catch me. I go down one floor, force the doors open, and then race down a hall until I find an emergency exit door. I push it open and find myself outside in the chilly Texas night. My wet skin and clothes make it even worse, but I have to keep going. I race around the building’s perimeter with only the moon to light my way until I find Spangler and Doyle. Both men are aiming guns at each other.

“Lyric, it’s over,” Spangler says.

“All the Alpha and the human parents are free. Soon the kids will know about your lies,” Doyle says to him.

Spangler smiles like he’s being patient with a small child.

“That’s going to be tedious to clean up, but it’s not unmanageable. I’m willing to let this go, but you have to power down now, Lyric. I’m going to reset the EMP’s console, and then we’re all going to go back inside and go to bed. We have a big mission soon.”

“Put the gun down, Spangler. I’m not going to tell you again,” Doyle demands.

“I’ve got this,” I say. I call two waterspouts from deep in the earth. They shoot out of the ground and collect in a puddle at Spangler’s feet.

“I have to say I’m impressed by this act of teamwork. The thing is, we’re all on the same team. It’s true, Lyric. Down deep, both you and David understand what’s at stake. We’re all trying to save the world.”

What happens next, I might truly never understand. It all seems to happen at once, yet I witness everything as if it is its own exclusive event. Spangler spins and slams his free hand on a button inside the door of the electrical shed, and all at once I don’t feel the connection anymore. Doyle fires his gun. Spangler’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls to the ground. He stares up at the stars and dies.

“It’s over,” Doyle says.

There’s another gunshot, and Doyle falls. His body lies next to Spangler’s, and the two of them leave this world together. I turn to find a wheelchair rolling into the light. Calvin is pushing it along, and in the seat is Governor Bachman, her hand wrapped around a pistol. Her body leans sharply to the left, as if her spine has been cracked and put back together by a child. Her face is marred by a jagged purple scar that cuts a wide canal from the corner of her mouth up to her dead white eye. Despite it all, she’s got the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen.

I can’t believe she’s alive. When the Rusalka arrived on our shore, the Navy sent ships to intercept them, but the creatures used their gloves to lift a battleship out of the water and hurl it onshore. Bachman was in its path. The fact that she’s breathing is a miracle.

Her eyes hold me in place and burn with hostility. Her hands tremble as they lift a red, white, and blue megaphone to her mouth. Then an ear-piercing feedback whine stabs my ears, and a series of ugly barks and mumbling moans flies into the desert. I have no idea what she actually said, but the tone is crystal clear. She hates me.

She gestures to the guard, and Calvin jumps into action, walking over to Spangler’s body and taking his tablet. He hands it to the governor, who trades him the gun. She taps on the screen and hands it back to Calvin.

“‘I’m the client,’” he reads. “‘If you understand that, then we can move on. We’ve got a lot of packing to do.’”

I
SIT IN THE CAFETERIA, SHAKING UNCONTROLLABLY.
Riley sits next to me, with my hand in his. He’s trying to comfort me, but I need more than a hand to feel better now.

The governor sits at our table in her chair while Calvin empties the contents of a plastic bag into a cup. It’s a murky green substance that smells both sweet and foul at the same time. Calvin inserts a straw, and she slurps it. Most of it dribbles down her chin, and Calvin is there to wipe her clean after every attempt. All the while, she taps on her machine.

“Everyone was captured and placed back into holding cells for their safekeeping,” Calvin explains.

“What about my family and friends?” I ask.

Bachman shakes her head.

“She still needs you to live up to your commitment and suspects that taking them from you would only cause delays,” Calvin says. “The Rusalka attacks have escalated, and we no longer have time for a battle of wills. We’re leaving today.”

“Today?” Riley cries.

“What do you mean ‘escalated’?” I demand.

Bachman presses some buttons and then spins her tablet so we can see. What appears are images of the prime walking onshore while hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Rusalka swarm behind him.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Riley says, exasperated. “Who is telling the truth? Is any of this real? Are we really under attack?”

Calvin nods. “The governor and I, along with several of our intelligence agents, will escort you to the front, where you will be placed under the command of Major Tom Kita of Marine Special Operations Forces.”

“What about the others? What about our families?” Riley cries.

Calvin takes Bachman’s tablet after she taps into it, then reads her response.

“‘Your parents, along with Lyric’s, will accompany you. As will Ms. Conrad, the Triton prince, and the Triton girl. Everyone else stays.’”

“No way!” Riley shouts. “Everyone goes free.”

“Here is the deal on the table,” Calvin says. “You fight. You kill the monsters. Your Alpha and human parents go free. Everyone else stays. If you tell the other children any of this, we will kill all of the human parents. They are expensive to the bottom line of this company anyway.”

“We can’t win!” I say.

Bachman taps on her tablet.

“‘I know,’” Calvin reads. “‘You are grotesque to me and the rest of America, but you may kill a few of them before they kill you.’”

I stand up and lean over Bachman. “What did you do with Doyle?”

She shifts uncomfortably.

“If you bury him—all of him—then I’ll go,” I say. “He was a soldier. He deserves a burial.”

She shrugs.

“You got it,” Calvin says.

“I’ve got your back,” Riley says as they escort us to our rooms.

I lean in and kiss him. Maybe it’s inappropriate. Maybe it’s sending the wrong signals. Maybe I’m not thinking straight and I’m scared and in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Or maybe I just want to kiss somebody who wants to kiss me, somebody who’s not in a loser triangle. It’s a nice kiss. It doesn’t pull me into an undertow, but it’s got potential. It’s probably the last one I’ll ever have.

The story Calvin tells the children is that Mr. Spangler and Mr. Doyle have the sickness and, during the crisis, Riley and I raced to get them to the infirmary. Only a moron would believe that story. It makes zero sense, but the kids don’t question it. Their blind acceptance makes me fear for them all the more.

We gather in the park. The children, Riley’s family, my own, Bex, and Arcade. Fathom hovers in the shadows. Everyone is looking at me. I suspect they are holding their breath until I give them permission to breathe.

“You need to say something to them,” Riley whispers to me. “They’re all afraid.”

“They should be afraid,” I whisper back.

“They don’t need to know that,” he says. “Give them some hope. Who knows what could happen? You survived the first attack, didn’t you? You didn’t think you’d survive this place, but you did. Miracles happen. I just had one happen to me.”

He gives me that smile again, and I take it.

“You’re that boy who pushes people to do things they’re not comfortable with, right?”

He nods earnestly. “Talk to them.”

I turn and look out on their faces. They stare back at me, waiting for some kind of guidance, but I have no idea what to say. I bet my dad would nail a speech like the one they need. Even Bex would be good at it. But it’s me.

Breathe, Lyric.

“Today is the day,” I stammer. “We’ve been training for it and now it’s here, and we’re going to save the world. I’m not going to lie and I’m not going to candy-coat it like Spangler and Doyle did. Some of us may die today. We are children going off to face monsters. There are only thirty-three of us. There are thousands of them. We are saddled with human feelings like mercy and fear and kindness. They make us weak. Our enemies aren’t burdened with things like that. They only know revenge and bloodlust.

“So why send us? The answer is simple. We are special. We can do things that a normal person cannot, and we’re fighting something the world cannot deal with on its own. So it’s up to us. That’s a lot to put on our shoulders. But like I said, we’re special. We can breathe underwater. We have weapons that can break the ocean apart. And we’ve been trained to fight. But that’s not why we’re going to win. We’re going to beat those things because we have each other. Look around you. Look into the faces of your friends. We aren’t just a group of people thrown together to fight for a good cause. We’re family. In fact, we are related by blood now. We are our own Alpha clan.”