He sliced the line, and the cylinder moaned in the water as it fired up. The shark’s skin rubbed me like sandpaper as we throttled off through the water.
Toward Newla. Toward Phoenix. Toward Mom.
Toward Charlie.
Chapter 10
I tightened my grip as the shark snapped its snout back and forth. The muscles in my arms burned. The cylinder—a torpedo—yanked us effortlessly through the water. I wondered why it needed to be attached to a shark at all. Probably just another crazy idea of Churchill’s—he seemed the type to go for the theatrics.
We cruised ten feet below the surface. Again I was grateful for my large lung capacity. The cylinder beeped once, twice, and then three times as we sailed through the water. I loosened my grip on the shark. It darted from my arms. The cylinder beeped several more times, then shot off the shark’s skin and burst apart at the surface.
A metal shard from the explosion drifted past me in the water. I grabbed it and shoved it in my skirt’s pocket. It was a far cry from being well armed, but it was better than nothing.
Farther ahead, I saw the rocky edge of the Hawaiian Quartile. HQ was the Federation’s largest island, and Newla was its largest city.
At the surface, I saw the remains of a partially submerged pipe, not wider than my shoulders, blown apart by the cylinder’s explosion. The device had managed to track and destroy the sewer’s entrance. The explosion’s noise, however, would undoubtedly draw the attention of the sewer’s personnel. I had to move quickly to avoid detection.
I lifted myself from the water and into the pipe. Immediately, my eyes stung—its entrance stank like tuna, eggs, and milk left in the car on the hottest day of summer. A brown liquid trickled through the pipe like melted manure. I crawled on all fours, and my hands were caked in the sludge within minutes. Things literally couldn’t get crappier.
After five minutes of fetid crawling, I reached the pipe’s end. If I moved any farther, I’d fall into open air, but I had to keep moving. I heard water rushing below.
I threw myself from the pipe’s ledge and splashed into a putrid canal. My wig was heavy, saturated with the brown sludge; I tore it off and scrubbed my face to remove the rest of the makeup.
The canal’s current pushed me through a dark, narrow cavern. A metal sluice divided the canal into two distinct forks. Its metal door split the water between the left and right paths, diverting it with precise ease. Remembering Churchill’s advice, I aimed left.
But the current’s force grew stronger at the sluice’s gate, and as I grew nearer, the left gate closed. I was pushed right, missing Churchill’s exit. There was no turning back. Forward was the only option.
There would be no Reggie, no Morier Mansion, no meeting up with the other Indigo thieves. I was on my own. But at least I’d be in Newla. The city where Charlie was likely being held prisoner. I had to find her and Mom, and save them both.
A distant rumble echoed through the sewer’s damp chambers. I stretched my arms out to the sides, and realized I could touch both sides of the canal now. It was growing narrower, and the current moved faster. The walls became sharper and steeper. Climbing out was impossible; I was at its mercy.
The canal was no longer lit by dim bulbs, but bright fluorescent tubes. My eyes burned from the sudden change in brightness. The distant rumble became a roar as the narrow channel led into a massive cavern. Floodlights glowed overhead, and the canal snaked around a thick metal column.
A man in a white biohazard suit and hood passed directly over my head on a suspended walkway. Along the walls, yellow hazard triangles warned: “DANGEROUS CONDITIONS—KEEP PANTS ON AT ALL TIMES.”
Vats of green, yellow, and pink chemicals vibrated along the canal’s sides. A pit formed in my stomach. This was no normal sewage canal. It was a route to the treatment facility.
Overhead, a sign read: “Newla Advanced Sewage Treatment Facility—NASTF.”
They should’ve come up with a catchier acronym.
In the fourth grade, we were shown a documentary about the Newla Advanced Sewage Treatment Facility. The NASTF reclaimed ninety-eight percent of the water that entered the Newla sewage system, through a series of fire-heated sand filters and pressurized pumps, which pounded the toxic matter into oblivion.
If I reached the pumps, I was dead.
I clawed at the canal’s walls, but it was no use—they were too steep. The facility’s blades churned in the cavern’s center column, roaring as fires started and stopped within its compartments.
I pressed my thighs against the canal’s walls in an attempt to slow myself down. The metal shard I’d grabbed earlier jabbed my leg from within my skirt pocket. I’d be at the central column in seconds. Ground up in its blades like grass in a mower. I tossed the metal shard toward the churning blades, praying they’d jam.
Miraculously, they did. The blades ground to a halt, buzzing furiously as they fought to dislodge the metal. It wouldn’t last long, though. I quickly grabbed one of the frozen blades and lifted myself from the water. The blade sliced my palms like a knife through butter, but I ignored the pain. Standing tall on the blade, I was just able to grab on to the metal walkway stretched overhead. I pulled myself up just as the blades clicked and spun once again, the jam dislodged.
My knees quivered as I straddled the thin walkway. A white suit wandered over, probably searching for the cause of the stoppage. He spotted me and waved a furious finger in my direction. Blood from the blade’s cut had pooled in my hand. I rubbed my face with it and lowered my head. I stared at the white suit and screamed.
He fell in terror. My cue to run.
I ran to the cavern’s edge. A red exit sign glowed next to another row of the colored chemical vats. I dove behind them, then looked back. Other white suits had arrived, but they weren’t aware of me yet; they hurried to help their fallen comrade.
I sprinted to the exit and found a tunnel lined with familiar dim lights and walls carved from rock. These walls, however, eventually gave way to white plaster ones oddly reminiscent of a stale office building. The dim bulbs, too, were soon exchanged for their fluorescent brethren. The sewage smell was likewise replaced by the soft scent of lemon. Wherever I was headed, my sopping, smelly clothes would not be well received.
Farther down the tunnel—now hallway—a glass case housed a red fire extinguisher.
Over the past two hundred years, there’d been many eras of innovation. The red fire extinguisher had avoided every single one.
Another white suit emerged from a doorway just ahead of me. I ran for the extinguisher, elbowing him aside as I passed. He fell with a grunt.
Wrapping my hands in my skirt’s fabric, I smashed through the extinguisher’s glass case and yanked it out. I aimed the extinguisher in the white suit’s direction, pulled the pin and prepared to spray while he pulled himself from the ground. He yanked his hood off, and snarled at me with beady eyes that burned like cigarettes. Then he lowered his head and charged.
“HA!” laughed a voice from a room he charged past. “LOOKS LIKE TONY HAD THE CHIMICHANGAS FOR LUNCH!”
He stopped in his tracks. “Excuse me, Lenard, but there’s actually an intruder RUNNING DOWN THE HALL AS WE SPEAK—”
I squeezed the fire extinguisher’s handle and coated the hall with a flurry of gray haze. Tony keeled over, coughing, the debris filling his lungs. The thick smog all but hid the fluorescent lights that lined the walls. The dull shadows cast as a result made it look like a bomb had been dropped.