Max

“No, no, Max, I couldn’t ask that of you,” he said. “I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch like that. I just wish – well, I wish life was perfect and love was easy.” He sighed.

“Me too, Total. Me too.” I was already old enough to know that neither option was possible. Not for Total and not for me.

51

IT TOOK TWELVE HOURS to go a distance that we could have flown in about six minutes. Let’s stop for a second and give thanks that the mad scientists decided to graft us with bird DNA instead of, say, the DNA of a clam or a squid.

Our sub went between the islands of Maui and Hawaii and then surfaced, right offshore from the Haleakala National Park. Of course, as soon as I heard the sub-wide command of “Surfacing!” I dashed up to the ladder that led to the upper hatch. I was the second one out, gulping in lungfuls of fresh, balmy salt air.

I turned to Captain Perry, who had joined me up on deck, along with John Abate and Brigid Dwyer. “So how come we’re here?” I asked him.

“We’re picking up a marine biologist,” Captain Perry explained.

“A colleague of ours,” said John. “She specializes in bony fish, which are mostly what the dead groups have consisted of. Ah, here she comes now.”

A short, tan woman with gray hair in a long braid came hurrying down the dock. In the distance, I could a bunch of kids, who’d just disembarked from a school bus with FREMONT MIDDLE SCHOOL on the side, gaping at the nuclear sub that had suddenly surfaced so near the entrance to a national park.

“Hello!” the woman called cheerfully. “Aloha!”

“Aloha,” said Captain Perry respectfully.

“Noelani! It’s good to see you again,” said John, giving her a hug. He turned to me. “Max, this is Doctor Noelani Akana. She knows these waters like you know junk food, and she can help us.”

“Hi,” I said, deciding whether to be offended by the junk-food comment.

“Ah, Max,” she said, in a pretty, singsong voice. I guessed she was a native Hawaiian. Her bright, black eyes looked me over shrewdly but not in an unfriendly way. “Max, the miracle bird girl.”

“Uh, that’s one name for me,” I said awkwardly.

Dr. Akana broke into a su

“How about I just fly overhead and meet you there?” I said.

“Okay,” the captain said easily, surprising me. “How long can you hover without landing on anything?”

“Uh, I guess about eight hours,” I said, knowing it would be a stretch and that I’d be totally starving and exhausted by the end of it.

Captain Perry waited.

“Okay, fine,” I said, heading toward the hatch. I hate it when a grown-up actually calls my bluff. Of course, this was pretty much the first time, so I don’t have to deal with it too often.

“You know, we can get you some Valium or something,” he offered, following me.

“No!” I gritted my teeth and began to climb down the ladder. “Why does everyone keep wanting to drug a child?”

Dr. Akana was waiting at the bottom of the ladder, and she clapped her hands as if organizing a party game. “Okay! We’re going closer to where the attacks took place, then stop at about sixty meters deep. Then we’ll go on a field trip. Let me put my stuff down, and I’ll get ready.” She headed off to the quarters she’d share with the female crew members.

I felt a surge of excitement. At last, we were on our way. I had to get into battle mode, make sure the others were ready for the traditional fight-to-the-death scenario. The navy wanted to make sure we could defend ourselves, but they’d never really seen us in action.

For the first time ever, I wondered if we had what it would take – Mr. Chu and his dumb-bots I was pretty sure we could handle. But sea monsters? Mountains that came out of the water to kill a hundred thousand fish? That was a completely different picture. I needed a plan B.

Frowning, I made my way into the belly of the ship to find Gazzy.

52

“THERE’S ONLY ROOM for three,” I told Angel, who was getting that mutinous look on her face.

“I should go, because I might hear something,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

By “hear,” I knew she meant telepathically pick up on something, like the fish thinking little bubbly fish thoughts (“Ooh! Plankton!”) or whatever. “It’s too dangerous,” I said firmly, which was pretty much the lamest argument I could have come up with, given the sheer amount of completely death-defying stuff we did on a routine basis.

“Max.” She looked at me, and I remembered that she could also put thoughts into people’s heads.

“Don’t make me wish I was wearing a foil hat,” I warned her. “Look, the crewman has to go, because he knows how to drive the little sub, and Dr. Akana has to go because she knows what the heck we’ll be looking at, and I have to go because (a) I’m the leader, right? And (b) it’s my mom we’re looking for, and (c) because I said so. You dig?”

I crossed my arms too and frowned down at her, something that’s always worked in the past, but I doubted it would for much longer.

“Angel, dear, you’re only six,” Dr. Akana said kindly.

“Seven,” Angel said obstinately.

“When did you turn seven? Oh, never mind,” I said, getting exasperated. None of us knows when our actual birthdays are, so we each made up one for ourselves. Years ago I’d had to put my foot down about getting only one birthday a year, because Gazzy was trying to capitalize on presents. But, actually, we don’t really keep track of them too well.

“I’m seven.” Angel looked like a bulldozer wouldn’t budge her.

“Fine, then, I’m – seventeen!” I said. “You’re not going.”

The little sub in question was a three-person thingy that looked kind of like a large pool float with a bubble on top. It could go down to one hundred meters (about three hundred feet – our Big Daddy sub could go down about one thousand meters), and I practically expected to see foot pedals sticking out the bottom.

The only reason I was willing to get in it was because of the Plexiglas dome on top that you could see out of. Our current sub had no windows. I repeat, no windows. Zero. Zip. Nada. That was because the space between the outer hull and the i

But now I had a chance to be in a big bubble and see what was going on. Anything would be better than being stuck in here.

I rubbed my hands together. “Let’s do it.”

Ten minutes later, a bottom hatch slowly opened, and we dropped down into the deep ocean. There wasn’t much light, but because the water around Hawaii is so clear, it wasn’t totally pitch dark, even at sixty meters deep.

Then the crewman turned on the headlights. It was amazing – our own underwater show. Above us was the enormous U.S.S. Mi