a second, even more unsettling. Heart thumping, I imagined I was back in that water with the chain on my leg. Sinking toward the depths.
Mizzy pulled on my arm. She was stepping out of the boat, but in the wrong direction. Into the water. But—
I heard her foot hit something solid. What? I allowed myself to be led out of the boat, and I stepped on something metal and slick. Had I gotten turned around? No, we were walking on something that had risen out of the water in the room here. A platform?
As we reached a hatch, and I felt my way to a ladder downward, it suddenly struck me. Not a platform.
A submarine.
15
I hesitated, standing in the darkness, holding the ladder leading down into the sub I couldn’t yet see.
I hadn’t realized that this whole “water” thing was going to be an issue for me. I mean … half the world is water, right? And we’re all half water to boot. So stepping into the sub should have felt like a sheep falling into a big pile of cotton.
Only it didn’t. It felt like a sheep falling into a pile of nails. Wet nails. On the bottom of the ocean.
I wasn’t about to let the other Reckoners see me sweat, though. Even if they couldn’t see me in the darkness. Hear me sweat? Ew. Anyway, I swallowed and climbed down into the submarine by touch. Exel’s heavy footfalls followed last. Something thumped above us, and I assumed he was twisting the hatch closed, sealing it.
It was as black as charcoal at midnight inside. Or, well, as black as a grape at midnight—or pretty much anything at midnight. I felt my way to a seat as the machine started to putter, then sank down quietly.
“Here,” Mizzy said, forcing something into my hand. A towel. “Wipe up any water you might have tracked in.”
Glad to have something to do, I wiped my seat down, then the floor, which was carpeted. Another towel followed, and I dried myself as best I could. Obviously, hiding from Regalia required making certain that no open surfaces of water were around.
“Okay?” Mizzy asked a few minutes later.
“We’re good,” Val replied.
Mizzy turned on her mobile, bathing us in light, letting me see the chamber around us. It was lined on both sides with plush orange and blue vinyl benches under windows that had been covered with heavy black cloth. I realized that, unlike what I’d expected, this wasn’t a military submarine. It was some kind of sightseeing vehicle, like one that might take people on tours around a reef. The carpet on the floor had obviously been installed later to help keep pools of liquid from forming.
Exel sat at the ready, watching for any puddles we’d missed in the darkness. “Regalia supposedly needs two inches or so to look through,” he said to me, “but we prefer not to take chances.”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “Can’t she just look under the waves and find us?”
“No,” Tia said. She’d settled into the last seat in the sub, near what appeared to be a restroom hung with a sign reading, MIZZY’S EXPLOSIVE BUNKER. ENTER AT PEACE. EXIT IN PIECES. The latch was broken, and the door kept swinging open and closed.
“Imagine you’re contacting me via your mobile,” Tia continued. “My face appears on your screen, and yours appears on mine. Could you instead, if you wanted to, turn your perspective around and look inside my mobile?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way,” I said. “The screen faces outward.”
“That’s how her abilities work,” Tia said. “A surface of water exposed to the air is like a screen for her, and she can look out of it. She can’t just look the other direction. Under the surface, we’re invisible to her.”
“We’re still in her power,” Val pointed out from the driver’s seat up ahead. “She raised water to flood all of Manhattan—reaching down to rip apart this submarine would be nothing to her. In the past, we counted on her not knowing we were down here.”
“She could have killed us in the boat above,” Tia said. “She let us go instead, which means that for now she doesn’t want us dead. Now that we’re under the surface, she won’t know where to look for us. We’re free, for the moment.”
Everyone seemed to accept this. At the very least, there wasn’t much point in arguing. As we sailed—or whatever you did in a submarine—onward, I relocated to a seat