Max

I was on a death mission.

Before my head simply exploded from too much emotion, I hit the large button that pressurized the air lock enough for the doors to open to the ocean outside. I really, really hoped that I would prove to be somewhat uncrushable, like Angel did.

The doors cracked open below me, and I saw the first dark glint of frigid water.

Showtime, folks.

72

THE ARTIFICIAL AIR PRESSURE in the chamber allowed me to drop down into the water. Want to hear something fu

Then every thought went right out of my mind as I realized how totally completely beyond cold the water was at this depth. I gurgled out my best underwater shriek, realized I hadn’t been crushed yet, and began to swim toward the light.

I was hoping it was the sub’s floodlights and not the lights of the afterlife, like I’d already just died and didn’t realize it and now I was swimming toward, well, I guess not heaven, even on a good day, but someplace lighter than the other option at least. Then I realized that if I was already dead, I wouldn’t feel like a bird-kid-cicle, so cold that every tiny movement was incredibly painful. So that cheered me up.

At this depth, even though I hadn’t been crushed, it was still shockingly hard to swim, to move, to get anywhere. It was like paddling through Jell-O or in slow motion, and there was a lot of weight pressing in on me on all sides. It didn’t feel good, and I wondered how long my body would hold out.

The water was cloudy, full of debris, and I blinked constantly, wishing I’d remembered to put on a mask before I went charging off on my white seahorse. Then I saw it: one of the creatures. There were several more, grouped around it, but it was the biggest one, easily as big as our sub. It fixed its red eye on me, turning slightly.

The birds are working, said the Voice.

Huh? I was so startled that I quit swimming for a second.

The birds are working, the Voice repeated.

I began swimming again. Voice, could we do this later? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.

I was now about twenty feet away from the sea creature, and as before, I saw its skin was a mass of oozing sores, red-rimmed and raw. It wasn’t symmetrical with a fin on each side – it looked like it had been put together by a two-year-old using a sea-monster Playmobil set. And he’d put it together wrong.

The birds are working, the Voice repeated. They’re working to help us.

Just then the creature shifted, releasing… Angel.

I surged forward as fast as I could, which was about the pace of a sea slug. Angel’s eyes were closed, and she floated there without moving. My heart constricted, and I paddled harder.

Then she blinked, smiled up at the sea monster, and turned to see me. Her face lit up, and she held out her arms, kicking off from the thing and rushing in slow motion toward me. I grabbed her and held her in a fierce hug, so relieved that she was still alive and that I could kick her butt later.

“Max!” she said, her small arms looped around my neck. It was bubbly and indistinct but understandable. “I’ve been explaining everything to Gor, here.” She gestured at the biggest creature.

“Wha?” I managed.

“It isn’t their fault,” bubbled Angel. “They’re genetic freaks, just like us. And they’re smart. They’ve been attacking fishing boats because the long nets have been damaging their eggs and babies.”

My mouth had dropped open, and now I quickly shut it as some tiny transparent shrimp tried to swim in.

“All the radiation created them, but it’s also making them sick,” Angel explained as minuscule bubbles wafted away from her neck. “They’re really mad at the Chu Corporation. I told them we are too. So now we’re on the same team! Plus -” Angel paused, her blue eyes gleaming in the floodlights. “Plus, they know where Dr. Martinez is.”

73

“GOR SAYS IT’S NOT much farther,” said Angel. She was wrapped in a towel, hair still wet, sipping a mug of hot tea. I was next to her, doing all the same things, except I wasn’t communicating telepathically with a radiation-created, man-killing monster. I guess I do have limitations.

We were moving slowly through the darkness, our lights turned off as we tried to sneak up on Mr. Chu’s under-water lair in a six-hundred-ton sub.

Angel’s eyes unfocused, and she said, “It should be up here, on the left. Go really slow.”

The captain gave the command, then handed out night-vision goggles, which Gazzy had been begging for for years. If the captain was smart, he’d count them all before we got off the sub.

“There it is,” said Angel. “Gor and the others are going to wait here.”

In the distance, we saw something that looked like it was out of a James Bond movie: an enormous clear-topped dome, three thousand feet below the sea. It looked like someone had covered over a football stadium and dropped it into the ocean. It was designed to blend in with its surroundings, and without the night goggles, we could have swum within fifty feet of it and not necessarily seen it.

As we got closer I could tell that the whole dome wasn’t clear – it was metal on top, with a wide band of windows around the middle. Three different air-lock entries would admit submarines, which meant Mr. Chu had access to extradeep-diving subs. Maybe he had co

“I can barely hear Gor,” Angel said in frustration. She stood up and dropped her towel. “I have to go out again.”

I had forty-thousand tons of reasons why I didn’t want her to go back out, but we were actually relying on the recon abilities of the sea monsters (who called themselves the Krelp, by the way).

Instead I accepted the inevitable, including the even more gross inevitability that I should go out with her.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, reluctantly unwrapping my towel. “I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, thanks, Max!” Angel took my hand and skipped alongside me as we headed for the air-lock chamber. It was like old times, except we were at the bottom of the ocean, talking to sea monsters, and about to rescue my kidnapped mother. Other than that, it was all old hat.

No one protested or tried to stop us this time. Fang looked at me, hope in his eyes, and I smirked at him. I save the huge emotional kissy-face for imminent death scenes. This probably didn’t qualify.

I hoped. I really, really hoped.

74

SADLY, THE TEMPERATURE of the ocean water had not mysteriously risen by, say, fifty degrees while we were back on the sub. It was still horribly, teeth-chatteringly cold, and I went ahead and indulged myself in a searing tirade about cold water as we slowly swam toward the huge dome.

A hundred yards in back of us, the sub was still dark, blending in with the black water. I knew they were watching us with night-vision goggles, so I tried to look more heroic and less weeniefied about the cold.

The dome was lit and divided into rooms. Whatever glass-type stuff they had used was a couple of feet thick, and the interior was dim and distorted. Cautiously, Angel and I began to swim around the whole dome, seeing a room full of computers and equipment, another room full of sleeping dumb-bots, some rooms that looked like an apartment.

Finally, when we had swum almost the whole way around, I grabbed Angel’s arm and pointed. There were several small, grayish compartments, set off from the others. In one of them, a slight figure lay curled on its side on the floor. It had long, dark, curly hair. It was my mom. Was she still alive?

Angel’s eyes were big as we hovered there.