needed elsewhere.
“I’m coming right back,” he shouted over at her through the wind. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
She would try very hard not to.
“How does this work?” Gailen asked.
She showed him how to operate the program. “The nearest satellite should be over twenty thousand miles from here. If you stood on the other side of the oval from me and drew a triangle from my cell phone to yours to the satellite, we’d look like we were on top of each other. But if the stingray is collecting our signal from, say, the top of the glass pyramid, then we’d look several football fields apart.”
“Our triangle is fatter,” Gailen said.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Your work involves small machines and interesting puzzles.” He frowned. “My work in Atlantis has no machinery or puzzles. Will you regret descending with me?”
“It will be refreshing to do something different,” she assured him. “I’ve always wanted to go out and dig in the dirt and make something grow. Now I think I could actually smell roses and lavender and honeysuckle. Things I’ve only read about and never thought I would know what they were really like.”
“Queen Elyssa has described ‘smell’ many times. I do not think the mer have that sense.”
“That’s okay. You can see forever and hear the music and light of animals—and humans. I’m sure you have other things that are just as wonderful.”
He brightened. “Yes, and now that you say so, we do have machinery and puzzles. We still have not solved the mysteries of old Atlantis, the cause of the Great Catastrophe, or how to lift the ruin. I still do not know what plant attacks the structure.”
“Well, if it’s an invasive vine, maybe it will at least have pretty flowers.”
“Or maybe it will smother the new city.” He looked grim, but then he lightened again. “If these puzzles interest you, then you will be fine.”
“I have a lot to look forward to, I think.”
He grinned.
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to find the stingray and be done with this project. The Atlantis Life Tree had beckoned her like a promise. Her destiny awaited beneath the sea.
Ryerson was on his way to being arrested. Bob was on the lookout for the captain and crew that had stranded her. Once they got the stingray, the platform would be secure and she could go with Gailen and discover just how far her new abilities stretched.
“You stay here,” she told him. “I’ll cross to the other side of the oval.”
“On foot? No. I will swim.”
“Keep the phone as dry as you can.” She double-checked the case. “It’s only waterproof for a few feet.”
He shucked his T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, dropping them on the damp pavilion. Unlike the workers who wore thick jackets, he seemed immune to cold. And she was pretty comfortable in her own thin T-shirt and boxers, come to think of it. First a clear nose, then cold hardiness? She really had changed.
He strode down the steps, nude and unashamed, and entered the water with barely a ripple. The inner lagoon was choppier now that the wind had come up, but Gailen held the phone above the waves and crossed easily, then climbed the scaffolding on the other side. Together they performed the tests.
Huh.
The data located the stingray device in the glass pyramid. But not at the top like she’d expected. Somewhere inside.
That could explain a bad signal.
Wherever it was, she wouldn’t be stupid. She’d wait until both Bob was back and Gailen was with her to search.
“I did not get it wet,” Gailen called cheerfully as he neared her side, lofting the cell phone like a torch. “Although if a case is waterproof, does that not mean it is immune to water?”
“Yeah, they all say they’re waterproof, but then you drop them in the toilet and suddenly they’re not.” She walked along the railing as he swam to the lip of the artificial shallows.
A dark shadow moved beneath him.
Gailen frowned. “Starr, I—”
He thrashed and disappeared.
Something had dragged him under the water.
Her heart kicked.
She raced to the steps. Waves splashed her boots.
The waves folded over and smoothed.
Gailen was gone.
Bob jogged up to her. “What was that? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” She searched the water. Her heart thudded faster and faster.
Isag and Xemil had never come back. They were supposed to find each other and the patrol. But they’d never come back.
She gasped for breath. Her lips tingled.
Too much excitement.
The film came down, wrapping her in calm.
No!
She fought against it, dropping her cell phone and tearing off