Departure(66)

The words stop me cold. Nicholas’s eyes lock on mine. A flash of realization crosses his face. He speaks quickly, more gently.

“Ladies and gentleman, I want to remind you one last time of the stakes. If we fail, if they reset that quantum bridge, we doom the world we Titans created, the world you passengers came from. We have to be willing to trade a few lives for the fate of billions.”

I remind myself: Isn’t he doing what I did by the lake? Sacrificing some lives to save others? But I can’t help feeling something’s wrong here, something I can’t put my finger on.

A blast rocks the ship, almost throwing Nicholas off his feet.

The screen reveals the battle outside. Our two airships are pounding the lone ship returning from Titan City. We circle it, hitting it with bolt after bolt of focused fire. It wobbles, returning the fire it can, trying to fight past us.

Nicholas and Oliver are taking their time destroying it. They’re trying to lure the other ship out, the one that hovers over the colonists’ landing vessels, but it doesn’t budge. It’s in the only safe place. We can’t fire on it as long as it hovers above the colonists, can’t risk debris falling on them—this world’s last hope for a new human population.

On the screen, the enemy airship is finally succumbing to the assault. It hangs in midair, burning, circling before crashing into the Atlantic.

A new wave of blasts rocks our ship—fire from the city. In the briefing, Nicholas told us that they fortified the dam and Titan City during the war, that the aerial defenses were way too sophisticated for us to try to land, making an underwater attack our only option. He was right. We won’t last long up here.

“Suit up!” Nicholas yells, marching to the rows of packs that hang on both walls.

I slip my arms through my pack, put my helmet on, and grab a rifle. The hologram inside the helmet materializes, Nicholas’s face appearing before me. I’ll never get used to this; it’s as if I’m talking to myself.

“The propulsion vehicle in the pack is preprogrammed. Relax and hang on tight to your rifle. I’ll see you on the other side.”

The floor below us sinks, revealing the moonlit sea. More blasts. I grab the wall, hanging on to the cargo net. The helmet shows the scene outside. Our other airship is covering us, standing firm between our ship and the city, taking the barrage full-on. It’s on fire, a floating torch in the night. Just before the crack in the floor gets wide enough to exit, the ship covering for us crumbles and falls. Our own ship shudders as it takes fire, throwing half our people to the metal floor.

Nicholas races forward, dives through the small opening, and I follow.

Serenity. Nothingness.

Falling.

Fire above me. Moonlight on the glass sea below me. A faint thundering in my chest, my heart beating or the battle in the sky, I’m not sure which.

As the water rushes up, my fall slows. How?

The rotors in the pack must work in the air and underwater. They slow me, and I hit the water gently, the suit taking only the slightest impact. Below the surface, they reverse, propelling me forward, pulling me under. In the hologram inside the helmet, I see falling pieces of the two airships, and my route is recalculated. I follow my last instruction: Hang on to your rifle.

Darkness. Only the deep. The seconds seem to stretch out like hours. What will it be like, the fight in the towers?

I’m comfortable telling people what to do, making decisions in the moment. I’ve learned that about myself. Can I take a life? How would I know? No amount of training prepares you for this.

I feel my course adjusting. We’re forming up. Nicholas is ahead, the point of our underwater dart, two dozen zooming suits racing to the bottom of the dam.

Ahead, a giant underwater gate looms, the lattice tight enough to keep fish (and humans) out. The intake. The gates open for us. Nicholas’s access codes still work. We swim down the descending slope of the penstock, a dark underwater ramp. Before us loom ten massive turbines, like boat motors enlarged to the size of four-story buildings. White lights above cast shadows down into the murk.

The turbines’ blades are still. My nerves subside.

This was the test. Nicholas’s plan was to turn the turbines off with his remote access, and if they didn’t respond, to disable them with explosives. The advance probes were right: they’re off. We’re safe.

Nicholas’s face appears in my helmet, but his words are sucked away. No, I am. The pull. The water around me is a vacuum, sucking me deeper down the ramp. The turbines have turned on. The force overwhelms the motor in the diver propulsion unit on my back. It whines, straining against the pull, but it’s no use. The white lights above are bright now, flashing as the giant blades pass, gathering speed. We don’t stand a chance down here.





37





Inside the third-floor lab, the screen that displayed the brain scan splits. I watch the two charred airships take off from the base of Titan City and race over the Atlantic. They stop at the three life rafts and hover.

“The colonists,” I whisper, studying the screen. “Why?”

“To protect us. If we can get them to the city, we can prevent Nicholas and Oliver from destroying it and the quantum device.”

She doesn’t add and us, but we’re all thinking it.

The drama unfolds on the screen as Yul, Sabrina, and I watch.