Daughter of the Deep(8)

Mascara traces down Nelinha’s cheeks like dirty rain. She stands protectively over Ester, who sits cross-legged on the gravel, sobbing into Top’s brown-and-white fur.

Gemini Twain says what we’re all thinking: ‘This is impossible.’

He waves his arms, pointing to where our school used to be. ‘Impossible!’

I’m not really present. I’m floating about six inches above my body. I can feel my heart hammering in my chest, but it’s a dull, distant beat, like music coming from a stereo system in the dorm room below mine. My emotions are wrapped in gauze. My vision flickers around the edges.

I realize I’m dissociating. I’ve talked with the school counsellor, Dr Francis, about this. It’s happened before, when I got the news about my parents. Now Dev is gone. Dr Francis is gone. My house captain, Amelia. Dr Farez. Colonel Apesh. Dr Kind. The baby otters I nursed just yesterday in the aquarium. The nice cafeteria lady, Saanvi, who always smiled at me and sometimes made coconut-filled gujiya pastries almost as good as my mom’s. Everyone at HP … This can’t be happening.

I try to control my breathing. I try to anchor myself in my body, but I feel like I’m going to drift away and evaporate.

Dr Hewett lumbers off the bus. He mops his face with a handkerchief. Bernie follows, lugging a big black supply case. The two men have a hushed conversation.

I read Hewett’s lips. I can’t help it. I’m a Dolphin. My training is all about communication. Gathering intelligence. Codebreaking. I make out the words land and attack.

Bernie responds: Inside help.

I must have misread. Hewett couldn’t have meant Land Institute. Our high schools have been rivals forever, but this isn’t some prank like them egging our yacht or us stealing their great white shark. This is annihilation. And what did Bernie mean by inside help?

I breathe. I gather my shock and compress it into my diaphragm, the way I do with oxygen before a free dive.

‘I saw the attack,’ I say.

Everybody is too distracted to hear me.

I say it again, louder. ‘I SAW THE ATTACK.’

The group falls silent. Dr Hewett peers at me.

Gem stops pacing, and I don’t like the way he’s glaring at me. He clenches his fists. ‘What do you mean attack?’

‘It was some kind of torpedo,’ I say. ‘At least, I think it was.’

I describe the wake line I saw heading towards the cliffs, the way it split into three parts just before impact.

‘Can’t be,’ says Kiya Jensen, another Shark. ‘The grid was up. Anything coming through would’ve been neutralized.’

My legs tremble. ‘This morning, Dev and I …’

Grief bubbles up in my throat, threatening to choke me.

Oh, god, Dev. His lopsided, squinty grin. His rascally brown eyes. His ridiculous pillow-flattened hair. Seeing him every day, I could hold on to the memory of what our father looked like. I could tell myself that our parents weren’t completely gone. But now …

Everyone is staring at me. They’re waiting, desperate for understanding. I force myself to continue. I describe the strange flicker I saw in the lights of the grid.

‘Dev was going to report it,’ I say. ‘He was probably in the security office right when …’

I gesture north. I don’t make myself look again, but I can feel the gaping hole in the landscape where Harding-Pencroft used to be. It’s like a dull ache in my jaw where a tooth has been pulled.

‘One torpedo?’ Tia Romero, the House Cephalopod prefect, shakes her head. ‘Even with multiple warheads, there’s no way a single missile could do that kind of damage. To trigger a landslide of that magnitude …’

She looks at her Cephalopod housemates. They start whispering among themselves. Cephalopods are problem-solvers. It’s what they do, like me reading lips. Dump a box of Legos in front of them, tell them to construct a working supercomputer out of the pieces, and they won’t rest until they’ve figured out a way. Only Nelinha stands apart, keeping silent watch over Ester.

‘It doesn’t matter how it happened,’ Gem decides. ‘We need to go back and search for survivors.’

‘Agreed,’ I say.

On any other day, this would be headline news. Gem and I haven’t agreed on anything since we started at HP almost two years ago.

He nods grimly. ‘Everybody, back on the –’

‘No.’ Dr Hewett hobbles forward, cradling his tablet computer in one arm. Sweat patches have soaked through his shirt. His complexion is the colour of frozen custard.

Behind him, Bernie kneels and opens the supply case. Inside, nested in foam, are a dozen silver drones the size of hummingbirds.

Hewett taps the screen of his control pad. The drones buzz to life. They rise from their foam cradles, gather overhead in a swarm of blue lights and tiny propellers, then zip along the coastline, heading towards HP.

‘The drones will run surveillance.’ Hewett’s voice shakes with anger, or grief, or both. ‘But I warn you not to expect survivors. Land Institute has launched a pre-emptive strike. They mean to eliminate us. I have been fearing an attack like this for two years.’

I touch the black pearl at my throat.

Why is Hewett talking about LI and HP as if they’re sovereign nations? Land Institute couldn’t just destroy a chunk of the California coastline and kill over a hundred people.