Daughter of the Deep(90)

Somehow, I get to my feet.

Dev frowns at the gun in my hand. ‘Come on, Ana, you had your chance to kill me. You couldn’t do it, remember?’

Kill him?

Suddenly I realize why Dev has been so uninterested in Gem’s weapons. He assumes they are loaded with standard rounds. A laugh bubbles up in my throat. Dev has no intention of killing me. And he knows I won’t kill him, so the guns are useless. It would never occur to my brother to use anything less than lethal ammunition. Dev tends to play an offensive game.

My hysterical giggle seems to unsettle him.

‘Ana, you’ve lost a lot of blood.’ His tone is so caring, so brotherly. ‘Put that down –’

‘You don’t get it, Dev.’ I raise the gun. ‘What’s rightfully yours isn’t the sub. It’s your family. Your friends. And you destroyed it all.’

I shoot him three times. The last rubber bullet snaps his head back, raising an ugly red spot right between his eyes. He falls backwards, crashing spread-eagled on the deck.

My hysteria turns to despair. I sob and drop the gun.

I’m not sure how long I spend weeping at my brother’s side. He’ll live. His pulse is strong. Still … I’m mourning. Something between us has died.

Nearby, Gem groans. ‘Ana?’

I wipe my face. ‘Hey …’ Still wobbly, I straggle to Gem’s side. He looks groggy and cross-eyed, but otherwise not too bad for somebody who was recently smacked with a ratchet.

I hold up two fingers. ‘How many fingers?’

He squints. ‘Twenty-five?’

‘Yeah, you’ll be fine.’

‘Is Dev –?’

‘Taken care of,’ I say, trying to keep my voice from breaking. ‘I shot him with rubber bullets.’

Gem’s eyes widen. ‘That couldn’t have been easy, Ana. Are you –?’

‘I’m okay,’ I lie. ‘I’ll be okay.’

I try to help him sit up, but he groans and lies down again. ‘I think maybe I should just … stay here for a minute. Why has the boat stopped?’

I hadn’t even noticed. The engines have gone silent. We’re dead in the water. This means someone stopped the boat. Which means there are more enemies on board.

‘I’ll check the bridge,’ I say.

‘You look terrible.’

‘Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ve got this gun.’

‘It’s a nice gun,’ Gem agrees. ‘Be careful.’

I totter off. I imagine I’ll be defeated if I have to fight anything more dangerous than a three-year-old with a pool noodle, but I have to secure the ship.

On the bridge, I get another surprise. Standing over the unconscious body of an LI upperclassman is a frizzy-haired girl in a nemonium dive suit, a Leyden gun in her hand.

‘Ester?’ I croak.

She turns, looking embarrassed. ‘So I got your comm message. It turns out dolphins aren’t the only ones who can fit through that chute that leads to the tank in your cabin.’

‘I love you so much right now,’ I say.

‘I know. I think you’re about to pass out.’

As usual, Ester is right. My knees buckle. She catches me as I collapse, and my consciousness sinks deeper than my body has ever gone.





I’ve always been better at making messes than cleaning them up.

We have some big messes to deal with at Lincoln Base.

The next two days, I am out of commission. Franklin and Ester hook me up to the machines in the Nautilus’s sickbay, which I’m told will slowly rehydrate me, replenish my blood supply and ensure that my internal organs do not explode.

My room-mates are Gem, recovering from his head injury, and Dr Hewett, who actually looks better than I remember. During the professor’s rare moments of semiconsciousness, he grumbles about his students’ substandard quiz scores. I never wanted to know what teachers dream about. Now I do.

Franklin tells me that the Nautilus seems to have ideas about how to treat pancreatic cancer. He isn’t sure what compounds the med-bay machines are producing, but they are slowly flushing the cancer cells out of Hewett’s body.

Since Nemo understood DNA 150 years ago, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But as I lie in bed I have time to think about what Dev said – about how HP could have used Nemo’s technology to save the world a hundred times over.

On the other hand, I’ve seen what Land Institute’s hunger for power did to my brother. Humans are still not ready for all of Nemo’s advances. I don’t know what Land Institute’s school motto is, but I want it to be This is why we can’t have nice things.

As for Gem, he stays in the sickbay with me probably longer than he needs to. Even when Franklin clears him for duty, Gem says, ‘Maybe I’ll rest here a bit longer. Head injuries can be tricky, right?’

Franklin frowns at him, then at me. ‘Yeah. Sure. Tricky.’

I laugh, which hurts my newly stitched side. ‘Gem, you don’t have to be on bodyguard duty any more. I’m fine.’

He glances towards the corridor, which may be the first time I’ve ever seen him take his eyes off a target. ‘Not a bodyguard. Maybe I could just, you know, stay as a friend.’

A warm feeling spreads out from my sternum. I remember what Gem told me days ago, in Lincoln Base’s sickbay: I don’t have many connections. So the ones I do have are important.