Daughter of the Deep(29)

‘The way I see it,’ I say, ‘we have two options. We find this base, warn our people there and maybe get help against LI. That’s what Hewett wanted. Or we turn back to California, report everything to the authorities and hope they can handle it. Questions?’

The group shifts uncomfortably. Everybody looks at everybody else, wondering who’s going to speak first.

Kiya Jensen raises her hand. ‘So, you’re in charge now, Ana?’ She glances at Gem. ‘And we’re okay with that?’

I try not to take this personally. Sharks are trained for command. According to school tradition, Gem should be calling the shots, not me.

I wonder if he will call for a vote on the matter. I imagine he’d win, and honestly I would be kind of relieved. Gemini Twain is competent and reliable. He’s annoying that way.

He gives Kiya a curt nod. ‘The professor’s orders were clear: find this base, no matter what. Ana’s got good intuition, and her Nemo genes let her operate things we can’t touch. I agree with Dr Hewett. She’s our best shot.’

I face our classmates with what I hope is a calm I totally knew Gem would support me expression.

Rhys Morrow holds up an index finger. ‘You’re assuming the base even exists. If Hewett was lying, we’ll find ourselves in the middle of the Pacific with no supplies. He worked at LI, right? He could be our spy, sending us to our deaths.’

Always a sunbeam of optimism, that girl. But she raises valid points.

There’s some uneasy murmuring in the group. Nobody looks shocked by Rhys’s allegations. Rumours travel quickly.

‘The base is there,’ Ester says.

She’s kneeling next to Top, picking bits of crusted sea salt off his furry ears. Ester doesn’t speak loudly, but she gets everyone’s attention.

‘You know this?’ Franklin asks her.

‘Not for sure.’ She’s still addressing Top. ‘Not because I’m a Harding or anything. If Dr Hewett wanted us dead, there are easier ways than sending us to a make-believe island in the middle of the ocean. If Dr Hewett is a spy, it’s more likely he was using us to find this base. He would need Ana for that. Then he could sell us out to LI. Then they could kill us.’

That cheerful idea hangs in the warm, wet air. The sea churns under our feet. Again, everyone is looking at me for answers.

I want to kick an LI upperclassman. I’m a week shy of fifteen years old. Why do I have to be handling this crisis? I want to scream, This isn’t fair! But I’ve been screaming that internally ever since my parents died, and it’s done me no good. I’ve learned that the world doesn’t care what is right for me. I have to make it care.

‘Searching for the base is a risk,’ I admit. I’m amazed my voice doesn’t break. ‘Our other option is to turn back. That’s a risk, too. The Aronnax is somewhere in these waters, and we saw what it did to the school. We had a lot of … a lot of friends on campus.’

More than friends. I think of Dev’s crooked grin. His early birthday gift to me, my mother’s black pearl, hangs heavily around my neck. I look at Kay Ramsay, whose sister was a sophomore. Kay’s watery red eyes are glaring a hole in the deck boards. Brigid Salter, who had a brother in the junior class, trembles as she leans against her housemate Rhys for support.

Yesterday was about shock, uncertainty, fear. Our world was shattered. Today, we have to figure out how to reassemble ourselves from the broken pieces.

Some of us were literally shattered. Eloise McManus’s left shoulder is wrapped in gauze, her arm in a sling so she can’t hold a rifle. For a Shark, that must be infuriating. Meadow Newman stands stiff and pale. Her shirt hides her bandages, but I remember the silver barb that hit her in the shoulder.

Her fellow Cephalopod Robbie Barr leans on a crutch, his right leg in a gel cast from his encounter with a Leyden harpoon. He wipes his nose with a cloth handkerchief. He’s not crying, he’s just famous for his many allergies. Even on the open sea, he can find something that makes him sneeze.

‘This alt-tech …’ Robbie squints sideways at me. ‘You’re saying it was HP’s mission all along to safeguard this stuff. And none of us were told. Not even you?’

‘Not even me,’ I confirm. ‘Until yesterday, I knew nothing.’

I try not to let my eyes drift to Ester. I’m pretty sure she knew more than she was allowed to say, but I don’t want to put her on the spot in front of everybody.

Cooper Dunne hefts his new Leyden pistol. ‘And there are more surprises like this at the secret base?’

Cooper’s leg is still bandaged from the harpoon wound yesterday, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. If anything, he sounds anxious for a rematch with LI – preferably with bigger guns on our side next time.

‘Hewett said that Leyden weapons were the simple stuff,’ I recall. ‘He claimed Nemo’s most complicated tech is still way beyond our best science. Our trials this weekend were supposed to be our first introduction.’

More grumbling in the ranks. Ah, yes, the good old days of twenty-four hours ago, when our biggest worry was passing the trials and staying at HP.

Tia Romero tugs at her corkscrew hair. ‘So the upperclassmen, even the sophomores … they knew all about this stuff, and they never breathed a word.’

I can tell nobody likes the idea that the sophomores had important inside information. The tenth-graders were the worst.