Its jaws clamped around me.
No light. No air. It had swallowed me whole.
The world went black.
Chapter 7
A ringing sounded in my ears like bells between classes. My fingertips and toes tingled and blistered. Voices echoed around me, whispering my name. I caught only fragments, like wisps of smoke through fingers.
“—should’ve let him die—”
“—too bold and too stupid—”
“—need bold, stupid, and brave—”
“—worried about Tim—”
“—can’t tell him the truth, or he’ll—”
“—like Bugsy, just Bugsy. Balls, the poor kid wasn’t ready—”
“—well, dear, that’s what we’ll tell him, then—”
“—putting a damn iris scan on the next one—”
The voices melded together in a symphony of sound. One ran into the next. All of them drowned beneath the ringing.
“—he’ll stay. That’s final. We need a spark—”
“—Sparky’s been asleep for two days, dear—”
“—Bertha’s got the bag ready for Newla. We’ll leave this afternoon. I suspect he’s already awake.”
I tried to slow my breathing, but it was too late.
“Unlock his wrists,” ordered Phoenix. “On second thought, wait until he’s fully conscious.”
Kindred sat herself at the edge of my bed. “How are you feeling, dear?”
“Toes,” I said. “T-toes and fingers. B-burning.”
Cold metal pressed against my wrists—handcuffs. They hadn’t been so kind this time. I guessed it was fair, considering I’d tried to kill them.
“Bertha, dear, could you grab some algae and eucalyptus from the stores?”
Bertha grumbled something under her breath and then left. Kindred checked to see if Phoenix was looking before she undid the locks.
“There you are, dear,” she whispered. “Our little secret.”
Mila stood silent at the back of the room. Her bright green eyes glowed like a cat’s.
I glanced around at the eyes in the room. Dove, Phoenix, and Kindred had the familiar blue eyes. So Mila and I were the only ones unvaccinated. I blushed when I realized I was probably the youngest person in the room.
Phoenix caught Kindred pretending to fiddle with the cuffs. “I suppose you can take them off,” he said. “In fact, I’ll bet you already did.”
She smiled innocently. “There we are, dear.” She let the shackles fall. “Pardon our precautions. We just wanted to be a bit more—”
“Prepared,” finished Phoenix.
I nodded. My fingers and toes still tingled. Why hadn’t they killed me? What were they planning? Where were the megalodons? I rubbed the burns on my fingertips.
“So,” I said, “what, uh… happened?”
The three terrorists exchanged nervous looks. “What happened,” called Bertha as she climbed down the ladder, “is that you shot us up like a moron and damn near killed yourself in the process.” She handed Kindred the algae and eucalyptus. “Far as I’m concerned, we should kill you right now.”
“Really, dear?” said Kindred, spreading the crushed algae between my toes. “That’s how you make friends?”
“That’s how he makes friends!”
“You’re seventeen, dear,” said Kindred. “He’s twelve—”
“Fifteen,” I interrupted.
“You should know better by now, Bertha. I mean, really! I thought we’d have a nice day. Silly Kindred thought we’d have a nice, memorable day—”
“I’ll give you memorable,” said Bertha. “Just hand me a gun—”
“You swam into the mouth of a megalodon,” said Mila, stepping from the shadows. “I shot the beast with Bertha’s gun, and you rolled out like a marble. Another went after you, but I got that one too. They floated to the surface and I filled them with bullets. I grabbed your body away from them. Ran inside and turned on the island’s extra engine. A feeding frenzy broke out as we drove away. They devoured each other like rats.” She looked sick. “Then I waited for the others to wake up. Only these three did.”
“I was already awake,” said Dove with a dumb grin. “But the sand felt good on my back.”
Kindred patted his hand.
“Sparky never woke up,” said Mila. “In fact, he still hasn’t.”
I pointed to my back. “The one with the—?”
“Sloth?” said Bertha. “Christ, kid. Let’s use our words.”
I glanced around the room. There were no guns. No instruments of torture, as far as I could tell. Just my bed and the Lost Boys.
What did they want from me? I took a deep breath. I couldn’t think about what they had planned. I just had to get through the day—focus on the conversation at hand. “Sparky never woke up?”
Mila shook her head.
The tingling in my fingers and toes now made sense. I’d been inside the megalodon when she’d hit it with the Paralyzer. I’d been electrocuted, though the monster’s thick skin took most of the blow.
“Now that I think about it,” said Dove slowly, “Sparky hasn’t slept in, like, two years. I mean, the rest’s probably good for him.”
Bertha tightened her jaw. “Doveboat, what have I told you about thinking?”
He stared off into space. “I forget.”
“Think, Dove!”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to—”
“You can think when I tell you to!”
“I believe,” said Phoenix, “we can attribute Sparky’s continued unconsciousness to his use of Cafetamines. You can’t stay awake for two years straight and not expect it to catch up with you. Batteries only last so long.”
“Car Battery is already burnt out,” said Bertha, looking at me. “And we didn’t even get to use him.”
Use him? For what? What had they intended to use me for?
I had to change the subject. If they thought they couldn’t use me for whatever it was they’d planned, then they might just kill me instead.
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“Who?” said Bertha. “Sparky?”
I nodded.
“Why? So you can try to kill him again?”
Kindred rubbed eucalyptus over the algae. “Maybe he wants to apologize?”
Bertha made a face. “And maybe I want to be chancellor.”
“Take him to Sparky,” said Phoenix. He was wearing a shirt now, but beneath it his muscles still rippled.
“But he’s already got Tim in there,” protested Bertha.
“Just take him,” said Phoenix.
Bertha grumbled and motioned for me to follow her up the ladder. We passed a room with metallic walls and tables.
“The armory,” Bertha said with a smile. “My lab.” She pointed to a set of weapons laid out across the main table. “Recent inventions,” she said proudly.
I scanned the table. A black pen, a small silver box, a three-pronged projectile jammed into a gun, and a bundle of chewing gum wrappers.
“They’re—uh—well, they’re something,” I said.
She showcased them from left to right. “Laser Pen, Video Loop Fractalfyer, Grappling Gun, and some Gum Wrapper Bombs. Or,” she winked at me, “as I refer to the four: oh shit, deep shit, deeper shit, and holy shit.”
“How refined,” I muttered. I noticed a stack of paper clips also rested on the table’s corner. “And those are?”
“I call ’em ‘Paper Clips,’” said Bertha, “but they’re top secret.”
“Let me guess: they have an uncanny ability to hold multiple documents together with ease?”
“Shut up, Car Battery.”
As we exited the lab, I noticed a pair of pink flip-flops resting against the wall. “Highly specialized weaponry,” I muttered.