Max

“Close the hatch!” I commanded. The hatch doors closed beneath us, and lights flashed as the hydraulic pumps began to force water out of the chamber. Another twenty seconds, and we popped the Triton’s hatch, breathing in the damp air. Gazzy and I quickly jumped out, and I grabbed Angel, who was sopping wet and shivering. Holding her tightly, I stroked her hair.

“What happened with the M-Geeks?” I asked.

“I just asked them to go away,” she said. “They said okay.”

“O-kaaaay,” I said. “And what was the swimming mountain?”

Big troubled eyes met mine. “I don’t know, Max. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before – not like a person or an alien or a mutant. But – it was thinking. It has thoughts. It’s intelligent. And it wanted to kill. It wanted to kill everything.”

Just then something hit the sub hard, knocking us off balance. More alarms blared, and we heard shouting. There was a gut-wrenching grinding, the sound of screeching metal, then the sub went silent, tilted on its side.

We were dead in the water.

58

BITTER IRONY crushed me: we’d escaped death so many times on land and in the air, only to be doomed to die in the ocean.

I’d read news reports about a hundred Russian sailors who had all died trapped in their sub in less than two hundred feet of water. We were in much worse shape. I didn’t know if the sea monster would be back, or if the M-Geeks had really gone away. I didn’t know if we were sinking slowly into the darker, colder depths of the ocean, never to rise again. With the power gone, we couldn’t even limp back to the base. And at this depth, the water pressure was so great that the hatches couldn’t be opened. There was no way out.

But a leader can’t dwell on stuff like that. A leader has to lead.

“Okay, guys,” I said, cha

The chamber door opened, and Total peeped in, the flashing red emergency lights highlighting his fur every couple seconds

“Yo,” he said. “Sub’s in trouble. Climb out here – we’re doing an emergency surface.”

“An emergency surface?” Quickly we scrambled up the slanted floor to the open doorway. Fang was standing behind Total, followed by Nudge and Iggy. My flock was together, and they’d come to find us.

“Yeah,” said Fang, giving Gazzy a hand up. “There’s all sorts of backup systems. Apparently. We’re dumping ballast and pumping in air and should be at the surface in about half an hour.”

Well. Let’s hear it for those thoughtful sub designers, eh?

We ended up feeling our way to the front of the sub and were among the first off when it finally reached the surface. They popped the hatch and deployed inflatable life rafts. I’ve never been so thankful to breathe fresh air.

We bobbed around in the ocean in six-foot waves until navy choppers came. They lowered a long rope ladder, and some Navy SEALs jumped down into the water to help. It was all very controlled and orderly, which is, I gather, how the navy likes it.

“Children first!” shouted a SEAL, holding the ladder. “Let’s go!”

There were eighteen sailors with us in our raft, all waiting for us to go first.

“Can we just meet you guys somewhere?” I asked John Abate. “We don’t need to take up space in a chopper.” Plus I’m dying to stretch my wings and get up in the fresh air, where I feel normal.

John nodded and quickly gave me directions to a marine research station about thirty miles away, where we’d meet.

I clapped once to get the flock’s attention. “Okay, guys,” I said. “Ready to do an up and away?”

They cheered and stood up.

“Please get on the ladder!” the SEAL barked.

“We’re not getting on the ladder,” I said firmly. “Thanks anyway. I really think you’re being all you can be. But we’re out of here.”

It was hard to jump up into the air from an inflatable raft, but we managed, though we sank about a foot into the water before we were aloft. But finally there we were: moving our wings strongly, feeling the air blowing against our faces, our hair streaming back. It was heaven.

Below us, stu

“Thank God!” I said, climbing high above the ocean. We soared until the rafts were tiny dots on the dark, gray blue water.

Angel was peering downward. “I’m trying to see that big thing,” she said. “The big sea-monster thing.”

We looked, and though we could make out whales and rays and sharks, nothing we saw looked anything like the moving mountain that had almost capsized our sub.

“Our new mission: figure out what that was,” I said, as we turned in a lazy, thirty-degree arc back toward the big island of Hawaii. “I just know it has something to do with my mom – and Mr. Chu.”

As we headed toward land and the marine research station where we’d meet up with the others, I had another, more disturbing thought: What exactly had Angel told the M-Geeks under water? Why hadn’t they attacked her? They were machines, and I didn’t think she could influence machines the way she could humans.

Did Angel know something about Mr. Chu I didn’t?

59

THE MARINE RESEARCH STATION was kind of like the research station in Antarctica, but with no snow, carnivorous man-killing leopard seals, or Angel falling into deadly icy crevasses. Part of it was built out over the water, and there was a section of glass floor where you could look down and see fish and manta rays and sharks swimming beneath you.

The flock and I were lying flat on the glass to watch the fish, thankful that we were back on dry land again and not on a freaking sub.

An intern came to get us. “Will you join us in the conference room?”

I got to my feet. “Sure. I love conference rooms. Some of the best times in my life have been in conference rooms. Can’t get enough of ’em.”

The intern looked at me oddly, but we followed him down the hall. Fang brushed up against me, and it reminded me that we hadn’t had any time together, just the two of us, in days. Not that I wanted any. I just noticed is all.

The conference room held the usual cast of characters: John, Brigid, Dr. Akana, some navy types, some other scientisty-looking people who couldn’t keep their eyes off us. I was used to crazed scientists in white lab coats coming at us with needles and electrodes and wrist restraints. I wasn’t used to scientists who found us fascinating but still kept a respectful distance and treated us like we had actual rights and dignity and stuff. I mean, what was up with that?

“I’ve been developing a theory,” said Brigid, walking to the front of the room. I sat down and tried not to glower at her, but I braced myself: maybe Brigid wanted to do a special mission, just her and Fang. The cow eyes she kept flashing at him made me want to drop-kick her to the middle of next week.

Brigid addressed us earnestly. “Since mankind first began venturing out to sea, there have been tales of sea monsters. Reading these old stories nowadays, we recognize that some of what they saw were regular whales or whale sharks or giant squid.”