Max Read online

  "What? What?" I cried. She looked in at me, and my heart turned to ice when I saw how scared she was.

  In the next moment, a powerful swell of water came out of nowhere and swept us beneath the bigger sub, making us crash against its underside. Angel clung to the Triton and hunkered down.

  "What the—there aren't currents like this, this deep!" I said. Our dome smashed against the metal sub again, and my throat closed as I wondered just how tough the Plexiglas was.

  "Holy crap!" Gazzy shouted, pointing.

  A mountain was coming up out of the murky depths below us, creating such a huge swell that the Minnesota was actually tipping to one side. We crashed against the sub again, and I jammed the joystick forward, desperately trying to get back to the underwater hatch we had exited from.

  "What the heck is that thing?" I cried. If I couldn't keep us angled right, Angel would be smashed between us and the sub. I yanked the joystick to the left.

  Off to one side, the mountainous thing moved past us, heading toward the surface. I saw now that it had a beginning and an end and wasn't quite Everest-sized but still totally qualified as ginormously freaking big.

  "There!" Gazzy pointed above us, and punched the remote that opened the Minnesota's bottom hatch. The next water swell carried us up into the belly of the sub, Angel still holding on tightly.

  "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, channeling confidence and authority. "First, let's get—"

  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, stunned sailors and crewmen stared up at what they'd heard about but had never expected to see. John and Brigid waved, and maybe I'm imagining things, but I thought Brigid looked envious. Maybe she wanted wings too.

  "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."

  "What about the Loch Ness Monster?" Gazzy asked. He loved stuff like this.

  "That's a myth," someone said.

  "It's never been proved or disproved," Dr. Akana said. "Some people think Nessie is the last surviving plesiosaur. Some people think it's a mythical creature come to life, like a phoenix. And some people think it's always been a hoax."

  "What we're dealing with now is not a hoax or a leftover dinosaur," said Brigid. "It's a real, living creature, and according to our telepath, it's full of rage and a desire to kill."

  We all looked around for a minute until we realized that the "telepath" was Angel. Well, "telepath" sounds better than "creepy little mind-reading kid," so I was cool with it.

  "But what do you think it is, Dr. Dwyer?" asked one of the other researchers.

  "I think it's either a created life-form or a life-form that's been affected, mutated, or enhanced," she said, "by radiation."

  "Created life-form?" One of the researchers frowned.

  "Like us," I said. "Right? Ninety-eight percent human, two percent avian." Might as well name the elephant—or bird kid—in the room.

  "Well, yes," Brigid said awkwardly, not looking at me. "Only not as successful. But I'm more inclined to think that it was an ordinary life-form that was irradiated and has mutated."

  "Radiation?" Nudge asked. "Like, they microwaved it?"

  "Not exactly," said Brigid. "There are many sources of radiation, both naturally occurring and man-made. I'm thinking of some of the mutations observed after Hiroshima and Chernobyl."

  "I've heard those names before," I said, wondering if it had been on a TV show.

  "Hiroshima is a town in Japan," John said. "The U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on it near the end of World War II. The bomb killed a hundred thousand people outright, but tens of thousands more later from radiation sickness. Plus, as time went on, it became clear that lingering effects of radiation caused some human genes to mutate. This mostly showed up as birth defects, miscarriages, and cancerous tumors."

  "Fun," I muttered.

  "Chernobyl was a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union," John went on. "The site of the worst nuclear-reactor accident in human history. The area around it is still contaminated with radiation, and it's unclear whether people will be able to live anywhere near it ever again. Huge amounts of radiation were released into the atmosphere and caused genetic problems and contaminated food and milk as far away as Sweden and England. The thing is, radiation can cause unpredictable and often fatal genetic mutations in living creatures."

  "You're saying you think there's radiation in the ocean, and it caused these creatures to mutate into these attacking monsters?" a researcher asked.

  Brigid nodded. "That's exactly what I'm saying. Now we just have to find out where the radiation is."

  60

  I LIKE BOATS better than subs," I said.

  I looked up at the sky above us, and back at the foamy white wake we were leaving behind us. I breathed in deeply, the fresh, salty air still seeming like heaven after being on the sub. We were on the marine research station's biggest boat, a forty-five-foot tri-hull that sliced neatly through the water.

  "We're setting up the radiation-detecting equipment right now," said Brigid. "Fang, come see this—it's really interesting."

  I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Fang shot me a sideways glance, then followed Brigid below deck to the equipment room.

  Half an hour later we were far out into the ocean and could barely see land, even with our raptor vision. The boat's engines stopped, but the water here was too deep for us to anchor. I couldn't help it—I ran down the deck of the boat, then leaped off the end, into the air.

  Snapping out my wings, I rose on the ocean's thermal wind, climbing in lazy spirals toward the sun. In moments I was joined by Angel, Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge, and Total. Everyone but Fang. I tried not to think about him, his dark head bent toward Dr. Amazing's as they murmured about ocean maps. For now I just wanted to enjoy flying.

  Six months ago, we'd flown just about every day, for hours. It had been our main mode of transport. My wings had felt strong, tireless. Some days it had actually felt weird to walk. Lately it seemed like I spent a lot of time in planes, on boats and subs, in cars. But today I could fly and enjoy the sun and exercise making heat radiate off my feathers.

  "This feels good," said Iggy.

  "Yeah," Gazzy agreed.

  "I never want to wear khaki again," Nudge declared, swooping in a huge, freewheeling circle. For a while we'd lived among hawks and then with some bats. They'd taught us all kinds of maneuvers, and I always felt a burst of joy when I recognized them in the air.

  These were the times when I didn't actually feel that human, and I could let go of some of my human problems. Like my mom being kidnapped. Or Fang and Brigid. Or my come-and-go Voice. Right now I could just—

  "Agh!"

  Something hard and wet exploded against my shoulder, drenching my shirt. I looked back frantically, hoping I wouldn't see a sprawling flow of blood. It seemed like… it seemed like…

  I looked up to see Gazzy almost doubled in half, laughing so hard he was practically snorting. He got a grip on himself and whipped another water balloon out from under his jacket. Nudge squealed as he smacked her right in the head despite her evasive moves.

  "My hair!" she shrieked, water dripping into her eyes. "You know what humidity does to it!"

  Iggy cackled and pulled out his own arsenal. He and Gazzy pelted me, Nudge, and Angel over and over—I had no idea how they'd even reached that elevation carrying so much weight in water balloons. And where had they gotten the stupid balloons anyway? It wasn't like we'd popped into a party store lately!

  "Ow!" I yelled. "Stop it, you two! I'm gonna get you!"

  We played dive-bomb and chase, tag-a-feather, and had water-balloon wars for a good long while. At one point I'd grabbed Gazzy's leg, holding him upside down and shaking him to make his balloons fall. Nudge and Angel hovered below him, catching the ones that dropped, then humming them at Iggy and Gazzy.

  Good, clean bird-kid fun was had by all. Except Fang.

  Finally we swooped lower and lower, faces flushed, hair windblown, eyes bloodshot from the breeze, cheeks hurting from smiling so much and laughing so hard.

  On the boat's deck, I saw Fang waiting, standing very still. Several researchers were holding binoculars, watching us fly back toward them. When we were about sixty feet away, Angel suddenly pointed.

  "Look over there!" she called. "Something big and dark, not a whale!"

  I looked and saw it: a huge, uneven shape, seeming to dive down deeper into the water. In another moment it was gone.

  I landed gracefully on the boat's deck with barely a sound, like a little sparkly fairy or something. Let's see Dr. Stupendous do that.

  "We just saw something in the water," I said, panting a little. "It went too deep for us to make it out, but there's definitely something there, not too far away."

  "We need to go under and look for it," Angel said firmly, climbing up on the boat rail and preparing to jump.

  "Hold it!" I said. "Let's come up with a plan before you jump in, okay?"

  "I agree," said Brigid. "We're picking up radiation signals, but we can't tell where they're coming from. I'd like more time to explore that."

  "Oh," said Angel, nodding, and I let out a breath at her apparent show of reasonableness, something that had been in short supply from her lately. "But I'm ready now," she said, and hopped nimbly overboard, plunging quickly into the water.

  I was gonna kill that kid.

  61

  I
'D LIKE TO take a minute to point out that under water, humans need fins, a mask, a tank of compressed air, and a regulator to breathe from. Up in the air, I needed nothing. What does that tell you? I was not meant to be under water.

  It took almost eight minutes for me, Fang, Dr. Akana, and John to get set up in scuba gear. It felt more like a month. But finally I was holding my mask against my face and falling backward over the side of the boat, feeling the weight belt and heavy scuba tank pulling me beneath the surface.

  Three more splashes and then our gang of four did a 360, hoping against hope that Angel had lingered in the area.

  How much do you wanna bet that she did, and that we spotted her right away, and that she agreed to stay with us nicely while we looked around under water?

  Didn't think so. That mouthy six-, I mean seven-year-old—with a will of iron and all the calm reasoning power of your average rabid squirrel. Between that and her occasional bids to become the flock leader, she—was cruisin' for a bruisin'.

  John and Dr. Akana pointed off into the distance and started to swim in that direction. Fang and I followed, because we sure didn't have any other options. Ahead of us were hills of coral or rock or something and a zillion fish swimming in and around and darting in and out of shallow cavelike places. Dr. Akana had told us that there were some volcanic caves in the waters around Hawaii, and I guessed that was what we were looking at.

  But no Angel and not even a trail of bubbles to follow. We were all carrying powerful flashlights and now shone them into the caves, watching as fish startled over and over again. We saw lobsters, too many different kinds of fish to identify, corals, sponges, a couple of moray eels poking their heads out of their holes. But no Angel.

  I was starting to get really mad, and this tank on my back made me feel awkward. The fact was, when it was just the six of us, Angel really listened to me and wanted to stay close by me. Now that we were surrounded by grown-ups who were giving us food and taking us on adventures, Angel didn't seem to need me as much. It hurt.