Waterwings Read online

  Then Fang came up behind me and put his hand on my waist, just for a second. And I felt a little better.

  The two officers zipped down the ladder, and one of them shouted the order to seal the hatch. Then he looked at us, these six weird, mostly tall, somewhat ungroomed children who had permission to be on a naval submarine. Plus their dog, who almost seemed like he could talk.

  “Come with me,” he said. “The birds are working again.”

  48

  WALKING THROUGH the narrow corridors of the sub was like being inside someone’s intestines, like we were making our way through the digestive tract. I kept expecting the Magic School Bus to show up and dump bile on us.

  I absolutely refused to think about the fact that we were sealed inside this thing, sinking below the surface of the water. I kept repeating, We’re saving my mom, over and over inside my head.

  The officer stopped outside a door. All the doorways on a sub are shaped like Vienna Fingers cookies, kind of oblong. Each door has a sill about six inches high so that if the sub springs a leak and water gets in, each room can be sealed off. Oh, God, I was gonna die.

  We stepped over the threshold and found ourselves in a small conference room. A tall man with short silver hair and dark brown eyes stood up and smiled. “I’m Captain Joshua Perry,” he said, coming to shake hands with all of us. “I understand we have a mission to accomplish.”

  This wasn’t what I was expecting.

  Your mind creates your reality. If you expect nothing, you open up the universe to give you options. If you expect the worst, you usually get it.

  The Voice. That really was the Voice, not my own thoughts and not something Angel was beaming into my brain. It was the Voice, loud and clear. And it had apparently been watching Oprah again.

  Uh, Voice? Not that I’m not glad to hear you again, but this sub is already awfully crowded, and so is the inside of my head, so this might not be the best time…

  “Max?” Captain Perry was looking at me.

  “Sorry. What?”

  “We haven’t had any direct word about your mother. However, late last night, the following surveillance film was taken in the same general area as the first one that you saw. It looks strange because it was taken with a night-vision camera.”

  Someone dimmed the lights, and an image flickered on a white screen at one end of the room. It looked like daytime, except darker and kind of greenish. It was, like before, a huge expanse of featureless ocean. Covered with the shiny sides of dead, floating fish, as far as the eye could see. And attacking the seafood buffet were thousands of seabirds, who had clearly heard about the hundred-for-the-price-of-one special.

  “We don’t know what killed these fish,” said the captain. “Several were recovered and tested. They were negative for traumatic injury, bacteria, parasites, starvation, fungal illnesses, cancers, enzyme imbalances, and gas bubble disease. They’re simply dead, and we don’t know why.”

  “Mass suicide?” Total muttered, clearly wishing he was back at the base with Akila.

  “Then, look at this,” said Captain Perry, pointing with a laser pen. The image pulled back; the camera was clearly attached to a rising helicopter. When the copter was quite high, it changed direction, as if heading back to land.

  All of a sudden, in one tiny corner of the image, an enormous dark thing burst out of the water, sending dead fish flying everywhere and making the birds scatter. The camera quickly swung back to focus on it, and the helicopter started dropping altitude, but within moments the dark thing was gone without a trace.

  “We’ve watched this film a hundred times now,” said Captain Perry, “and we still can’t tell what that was. It was almost like a mountain suddenly emerged from the ocean, then disappeared just as quickly. But sonar images show no large masses in that area whatsoever.”

  The lights flickered back on.

  “What does this have to do with my mom?” I asked.

  Captain Perry looked frustrated. “We don’t know. In the earlier video, we saw part of the wrecked fishing boat in the background of the picture of Dr. Martinez being held hostage. This happened in the same area. The two instances of the dead fish, the enormous flock of birds, the huge thing rising out of the ocean — they’re connected somehow. We just don’t know how.”

  Everything is connected, Max, said the Voice. Everything affects everything else, especially in the ocean.

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. I’d forgotten how incredibly annoying the Voice could be, with its fortune-cookie pronouncements.

  “It’s all got to be connected somehow,” I said. “Are we headed there now?”

  Captain Perry nodded. “We’re keeping on code-red alert status, with full radar and sonar surveillance. We don’t want that mountain to surge up and break us in half.”

  My eyes went wide. Was that even a possibility? Why hadn’t someone told me this? Why was I even on this sub? If there’s anything guaranteed to make me hyperventilate, it’s being stuck in a place I can’t punch my way out of.

  It’s okay, Max. I had to stop for a second and distinguish that this voice inside my head was Angel, not the Voice voice. It’s okay, Max, Angel thought again. If anything happens, we can all breathe under water, remember? It’s like when we’re on an airplane — if anything happens to it, we know six kids who will be fine. Same thing here. If anything happens to this sub, the six of us will be able to breathe through our gills. Trust me.

  Oh, right. Our gills would appear. Excellent. Now I felt better. Not.

  49

  THE MAN LOOKED at his second-in-command, who was looking at the third-in-command, who was staring accusingly at the fourth-in-command.

  “They… escaped?” The man’s voice was brusque.

  The third-in-command kicked the fourth-in-command, who was kneeling on the floor, his forehead actually touching the cold metal.

  “Yes, sir!” Everyone in the room knew the high cost of admitting such a thing. They also knew how much worse it would have been if he had lied about it. “I beg your forgiveness, sir! But they threw themselves over the edge of a cliff. Our trackers were programmed to follow them — no matter what. They kept attacking, sir. And they went over the cliff as well.”

  “But they couldn’t fly, could they, Zhou Tso?”

  “N-no, sir.” He cringed.

  “Unlike our quarry, who can.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Mr. Chu thought for a moment, though he already knew what he was going to do. The weakest link in the chain always had to be eliminated. The men and women he answered to would expect no less.

  He again met the eyes of his second-in-command. The fourth had failed, which was a failure of the third, who had picked and trained him. So it was also the second’s failure, since she had picked and trained the third. Ultimately, this was Chu’s own failure, for he had picked and trained his second. That was how it would be viewed by the board. They all knew it.

  Mr. Chu sighed, then motioned to his second-in-command. She gave a quick nod, then barked instructions at the two armed guards by the doorway. The fourth-in-command cringed and started to beg for mercy but was immediately silenced. The guards dragged him from the room.

  Mr. Chu again sighed heavily. If only the girl had joined his force! It would have been glorious. Instead, she had turned into an increasingly intolerable problem. Fortunately, he was holding the final ace: her mother, Dr. Valencia Martinez.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, Mr. Chu turned to look out the small, thick portholes in his office wall. He knew the fourth-in-command’s solution would take several minutes. “Now the… mutants are on a U.S. Navy submarine?” Mr. Chu verified, gazing out at the blackness.

  “Yes.” There was a world of frustration in that one word.

  Mr. Chu turned and met the eyes of his second-in-command. “Attacking a U.S. submarine, armed with nuclear warheads, would be suicide. Not only for us, but for those we represent. Even on a global level.”

  The second-in
-command was torn but was forced to admit that Mr. Chu was right. “Yes.” She let out the word.

  “But, of course, if something were to happen to the bird people while they were not on the submarine…” Mr. Chu let his words trail off, and turned to stare out the portholes. At this depth, no light filtered down from the surface.

  One of the armed guards dragged in Dr. Martinez. “Ah, Dr. Martinez,” Mr. Chu said pleasantly. “Thank you for joining me. I wanted you to see this. If the CSM does not curtail its activity, a similar fate awaits you.”

  There was a slight vibration, and Mr. Chu’s gaze sharpened. Then — there it was — a rush of bubbles, barely visible, from a torpedo hatch being opened and closed. It was the fourth-in-command’s final solution. A dim, pale object in a blue suit shot out into the blackness and seemed to blossom, momentarily, in the dark water. In the next second, it was crushed and compressed into an unrecognizable blob.

  At this depth, the water pressure was equivalent to several tons of weight per square inch.

  The fourth-in-command had probably suffered for less than a second, not even having time to drown before every bone in his body was pulverized.

  Once again, Mr. Chu and his second-in-command met eyes. “Well, outside the submarine, it’s a very dangerous environment.”

  The second, not daring to display the shiver of distaste and fear she felt, nodded. “Yes,” she said as the pale blob floated away into the dark water. “Yes, it’s very dangerous out there.”

  50

  I’LL BE THE FIRST to admit that in terms of book learning, we’re right up there with, like, sheep and goats. So you won’t be stunned to hear how surprised I was to find out that islands don’t float on top of the water. You can’t go under them, even if you’re in a schmancy expensive submarine.

  “Islands are formed several different ways,” Brigid explained helpfully while I tried not to snarl at her. We were standing around a topographical (read: lumpy) map of Hawaii and the surrounding ocean. “Hawaii was formed by an underwater volcano spitting hot magma up from the earth’s core. In fact, scientists believe that one volcano formed all the islands of Hawaii, as the hot interior core rotated beneath the earth’s crust. Right now, the Big Island is being formed. In ten million years, there might be yet another island, past the Big Island.”

  “Huh,” I said, feeling more trapped than ever. We’d been on the sub for eight hours and had explored every last inch of it. I felt like I hardly had room to breathe. It was like, Hello, Claustrophia? It’s me, Max.

  Now I was being forced to witness Dr. Amazing’s brain at work, as Fang paid attention to her every word.

  “Which is why we have to go around the islands to get to the area where the fish die-off was observed,” said Captain Perry. “Right now we’re passing the Molokini Crater, which is a big sea-life preservation area.”

  “Huh,” I said. We were in a large tin can under six hundred feet of water, and I couldn’t escape. I was starting to feel dizzy. Was the sub running out of air? Where did we get air from, anyway? We needed to surface. We needed to surface, and —

  Max. Go lie down. You’re having a panic attack.

  What?! I thought wildly.

  You’re having a panic attack, the Voice went on. Go lie down on your bunk and slowly breathe in and out.

  “Uh, I’m tired,” I mumbled. “Think I’ll go rest.”

  I stumbled out of the situation room and staggered down the narrow corridor, squeezing past sailors. I felt like I might pass out any second. Every cell in my body wanted to get off this sub. Even knowing that it was the only way to rescue my mom didn’t make it any better. I’ve been locked in cells and dungeons and dog crates and never panicked like this.

  You’re okay, said the Voice soothingly. Go lie down. There’s plenty of air.

  I fumbled my way into the small storeroom that had been turned into our bunk room. Inside, I collapsed on one of the bottom bunks, trying not to throw up. A minute later, the door pushed open.

  “Nudge?” I croaked, my hand over my mouth.

  “Nope,” said Total, trotting up to my bunk. He had a cold, wet washcloth in his mouth, and he put his front paws on my bunk and dropped it on my face. It felt incredible. Then he nimbly jumped onto the narrow bunk and curled up by my feet.

  I pressed the wet cloth to my face and tried to breathe in and out slowly. Just like the Voice had told me. I moaned softly, suddenly overwhelmed by my life.

  “You’ll get your sea legs soon,” Total said. “Or we can rustle you up some Valium or something.”

  “No!” The only time I’d had Valium was when my mom gave me some during an operation to take a chip out of my wrist (long story). In my hazy stupor, I’d said all sorts of stupid, embarrassing things. There was no way I was going to do that again.

  “Suit yourself,” said Total, pushing my legs over to give himself more room. “Listen, Max, while I have you here —”

  “Trapped in my bunk with a panic attack?” I said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he went on.

  Oh, this was gonna be good. What would it be now? Sub chow not up to snuff? Lattes not available? Had he encountered more discrimination against Canine Americans?

  “It’s about Akila.”

  I lowered the washcloth and peeked at Total with one eye. “Yeah? You miss her, huh?”

  “It’s more than that.” Total licked one paw, collecting his thoughts. “It’s — you know I’m nuts about her.”

  “Uh-huh.” Nuts being the operative word here.

  “Amazingly, she feels the same way about a mutt like me,” Total said. “Well, now we’re thinking about… marriage.” He sort of mumbled the last word.

  I sat up, eyes wide, swallowing my shocked laughter. This wasn’t funny. It was cute but not funny. Total’s feelings were real, even though he was a — Canine American.

  “Marriage?” I said.

  “Yeah.” Total flopped down and draped his head over my ankles. “I know we’re just two crazy kids — how can we possibly make it work? She’s a dedicated career dog. How could I ever expect her to settle down, raise a few litters? And me? I’m a flying, talking dog. I’ll only make her life more difficult, no matter where we go or what we do.”

  I knew how he felt. Only too well. Reaching out, I scratched his head between his ears, the way he likes.

  “Also, how could I ever leave you guys?” he said, his black eyes sad. “I know how much you depend on me. How could I leave you to fend for yourselves?”

  “Um,” I said, but he interrupted me.

  “But Akila can’t fly! How can she come with us? She’s eighty pounds of gorgeous, long-legged purebred, but she can’t fly.” His voice broke. “I tell you, Max — this has been keeping me up at night. I haven’t been able to eat for days.”

  I’d heard him snoring just yesterday, when we’d been waiting for the sub, and I’ve never known him to miss a meal. But I knew what he meant.

  For once, I didn’t have any answers. I was having a hard enough time with my own ridiculous romantic life, much less being able to worry about anyone else’s. “Total — if you decide you need to stay with Akila — well, you saw how Nudge made that hard decision. I saw something written on a T-shirt once — it went: ‘If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours.’ If we, the flock, have to let you go, we’ll somehow make that sacrifice.”

  “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 betw
een 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 sunny smile. “I can’t wait to see the others! All right, Captain, let’s get this ship under water!” With quick, efficient movements, she tossed her duffel bag down the hatch, then slid down the ladder rails. John, grinning, followed her. Captain Perry looked at me and motioned at the hatch.