Part 20 (2/2)

I realized my eyes were shut tight. I opened them to find Lilly's eyes open too, the backlight making them dark and almost predator-like again.

Then it was over. She pulled away. 'Come on,' she said with a gentle smile, and shot off ahead. How long had that been? A second? An hour? I felt like I had no idea. For a moment I just stared up at the blur of sunny sky. My first real kiss. With a girl I still could barely believe I got to be around. In spite of all that was happening, in spite of the way my nerves were ringing, I felt a sadness that it was already over. Would we ever have another chance? Why couldn't this just last?

Owen. Find me.

The siren was one reason why. The dead bodies, the siren, the gills... I flipped around and swam after Lilly. As I caught up to her, I scanned the depths. 'Do you see her?'

'Not yet... ,' said Lilly.

'There.' I pointed out to our right. There was the slithering, flickering form.

'Oh... yeah, I see it,' said Lilly. 'Lead on, O.'

I kicked hard and we were off, skimming the lower edge of the sunbeams, out over the s.h.i.+pwreck and then across the open lake.

What is oldest will be new. What was hidden shall be unlocked. The secrets remembered by the true. She stayed out ahead of us, always distant, and yet always in view, until we reached the Aquinara, where the rocky bottom rose up to the concrete wall, the intake and outflow tunnels doing their cyclical work. She stayed out ahead of us, always distant, and yet always in view, until we reached the Aquinara, where the rocky bottom rose up to the concrete wall, the intake and outflow tunnels doing their cyclical work.

The siren slipped down among the black rocks at the lake bottom.

We followed, diving deep.

Come home, Luk.

White light started to creep into my vision again, almost as if that vision of the city, and the crystal skull, had to do with proximity to whatever was down here. I saw the image forming again, like it was downloading into my mind-the pyramid, the ash sky, the kids kneeling on pillows, knives at their throats-but this time I concentrated on the water and rocks around me, on Lilly, the blue of the siren, and tried to keep that vision from overwhelming me.

There was a moment of stretching, almost like new s.p.a.ces were opening in my head, and then I could see both things at once. It was like there were two screens in my mind's eye, like at different depths, and I could slide back and forth between the two. Out in front, at the surface of my mind was the lake. Back deeper in my head was the boy Luk, skull before him, about to die.

Not to die, the siren added, as if it could see this vision too. To transform. To evolve. To transform. To evolve.

As we swam down, the water pressure strengthened. I felt my sinuses compressing, my ears popping. I pulled deeper, kicked harder, first battered by the outflow water, then resisting the sucking of the intake.

And then we were beneath the currents and among the shadows and the brown-slicked rocks at the lake bottom. Ahead was the dark opening. The siren's pale light flickered from inside. Lilly was off to my left, peering around like she'd lost sight of the light. 'Over here,' I called.

I swam toward the opening. It had looked like a random gap in the rocks from up above, but from down here I could see that it was actually more of a rounded hole, kind of like a tunnel. The edges were rough, like it had been hand-carved. The siren's light flickered from a few meters in, and around a bend.

'We're going in there?' Lilly asked.

I peered inside, where the ghostly light beckoned.

Come home, Luk.

I pulled back inside my head, saw the boy having his throat slit, his world becoming white. Then I pushed back out to the world of water.

'Yeah,' I said. 'We're going in.'

Chapter 16

I SWAM INTO THE TUNNEL. IT WAS DARK EXCEPT for the siren's light. Reflected in the blue were the heavy, oblong figures of zombie koi, a pack of them, hovering in here, almost like guardians. We had to angle ourselves to pa.s.s between their fat, fleshy bodies, brus.h.i.+ng against their clammy scales, and I almost wondered if they would turn on us, converge and devour us to protect this place's secrets. But they just stared dumbly as we pa.s.sed. for the siren's light. Reflected in the blue were the heavy, oblong figures of zombie koi, a pack of them, hovering in here, almost like guardians. We had to angle ourselves to pa.s.s between their fat, fleshy bodies, brus.h.i.+ng against their clammy scales, and I almost wondered if they would turn on us, converge and devour us to protect this place's secrets. But they just stared dumbly as we pa.s.sed.

'I hate these things,' I said to Lilly.

'They couldn't be grosser.'

We rounded a bend. The siren was floating far ahead, at the end of a long pa.s.sage. As we swam forward, she rose up out of sight.

'Mine shaft,' said Lilly.

I turned to her blue-tinted face. 'What?'

'I heard on the Free Signal that EdenWest is right near the site of ancient copper mines.'

'Oh yeah, Paul said something about that. People that came here before the Vikings.'

The tunnel ended at a solid wall where the siren had been. A round shaft opened up above us. I pushed off the rock floor and rose through it. There were notches like ladder rungs carved in the wall. After a few meters the tunnel turned and continued upward at an angle. As I swam, I felt the pressure lightening. Above, the blue light seemed to ripple and separate in gla.s.sy diamonds. We were nearing the water's surface.

I stopped just below and then slowly lifted my head and eyes. The tunnel angled up out of the water and, a few meters ahead of us, opened up into a large chamber.

Lilly's eyes rose beside me. I nodded to her and we slowly crept ash.o.r.e, gills tucking away, pulling in breaths of cool, damp cave air. As we stepped onto solid ground, her hand slipped into mine.

We entered the chamber. In the flickering blue, I saw circular walls and a curved ceiling. And there, hovering in the center of the s.p.a.ce, was the siren.

I'd never had such a clear look at her, and now I saw that she was lovely, and yet, different. She had long, dark hair flowing down to her waist, the hair pushed back off her forehead with a band made of gleaming stones. She was all monochrome, shades of blue light, and yet I felt like, in my deeper mind, she had color. The simple dress she wore, sleeveless and down to her knees, was that crimson fabric of the priests on the pyramid, the belt tied loosely around her waist of hammered copper disks with turquoise crystal centers. The band above her forehead that held her hair back was ruby and jade. She wore a pendant around her neck, a leather strap holding a soapstone carving of some fearsome animal, a tiger maybe, only it looked larger, more fierce, but it was hard to tell because her light was brightest around her heart.

And the structure of her face, deeper-set eyes and a more p.r.o.nounced forehead, high cheeks, her dark-toned skin-everything was so similar and yet so different. It was as if we were connected, and yet by such a distance of time, by so many thousands of generations, that we were almost different models of the human form.

”h.e.l.lo?” I said to her. My voice echoed in the chamber.

She floated, not replying, gazing at me almost like she was sizing me up, deciding if I was worthy.

”What now?” asked Lilly.

”No idea,” I said, and yet I felt like that wasn't true. I didn't know what to do next, what was about to happen, but I had a strange certainty that something would. Like I'd boarded a train that was now in motion.

Then the siren spoke, its voice louder, harsher than I remembered it. The key is inside you. The key is inside you.

”What?” I asked.

The siren winked out. The world went black.

But not silent.

”What's that?” Lilly whispered.

There was a humming, faint, but electric-sounding. Ahead, I saw a sliver of white light in the black. I gripped Lilly's hand and headed for it.

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