Above World - By Jenn Reese Page 0,71

said. The Deepfell raised his spear and bared his sharp, sharklike teeth. He probably wanted to rescue them more than she did. But his grimace only widened into something dangerous, something feral.

“No can free. Only keeeel,” her guide said.

She grabbed his arm before he made his first throw. She couldn’t watch him murder his own kind, even if they were mindless slaves. The Deepfell twisted to break her grip, but she held on.

“HydroTek,” she said, pointing to the dome with her other hand. “I have to get there. I have to save my sister.”

They stared at each other. Aluna thought about all the horrible things she would do to whoever hurt Daphine. It wasn’t difficult to let the anger swell into something almost overwhelming. And then she let those emotions swim into her eyes. The Deepfell stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

Instead of fighting, they hid in an outcropping of kelp. As the patrol passed, she got a better look at the enslaved Deepfell’s faces. They looked as unthinking as fish. Even their mouths hung open. Whoever had enslaved their bodies had enslaved their minds as well.

As soon as they were gone, Aluna and her guide resumed their swim toward HydroTek. She tried not to imagine Daphine as a brainless slave, but the images assaulted her. Daphine with that same slack-jawed idiocy, Daphine with no spark in her eye and no smile on her perfect lips. She’d never forgive herself if that happened. Daphine was the Voice of the Kampii, irritatingly beautiful and graceful and eloquent and kind. No one was allowed to hurt her. No one.

HydroTek got bigger and bigger, until it loomed as large as Skyfeather’s Landing in front of her. The tendrils that floated below it didn’t undulate in the current as she had thought. No, they created the current. Pipes hissed, artifacts pumped up and down, and Deepfell slaves became more plentiful. She noticed dolphin and shark slaves, too. Even a few great whites were leashed and guarding some of the entrance holes.

But her guide avoided those areas and took her up, toward the surface of the ocean inside the lip of the dome. This close, the dome seemed impossibly large and intimidating. They squeezed into a narrow intake pipe and swam through the darkness. Aluna focused on the gentle swoosh of water around her body, on her heartbeat, and on the distant hum and clank of machinery.

Eventually, they emerged in a shallow pool inside the dome. Inside HydroTek.

“Thank you,” she said to her guide. And then she added, “May the currents always carry you to safety.”

He squeaked once, twice, and then dove beneath the water. He wouldn’t wait for her. That had never been part of the plan. When she needed to escape, she was on her own.

Aluna squinted in the sunlight. She had surfaced in a pool surrounded by a ring of dirt dotted with dead grass and matted with garbage. Maybe it had been a pretty garden once, but abuse and neglect had turned it ugly. The sloped curve of the dome loomed on one side, and tall, silvery buildings on the other.

She waded to the edge of the pool and hauled herself out. Something rustled. She peered into the shadow of a building and saw a short four-legged creature digging its nose through a pile of garbage. A dog! She’d seen animals like it at the Aviar stronghold, mostly begging near the eating tables or sleeping by the fires.

“What are you doing in this place, little one?” she asked him.

The dog paused in his hunt and looked up at her. A yellow stain covered the tip of his black-gray muzzle. His ears pointed straight up.

“Same as you,” the dog said. “Looking for munchies, dodging Gizmos.” He pointed to the pile of garbage with his snout. “This batch mine mine mine. Find your own.”

“Dogs talk?” Aluna said. None of the Aviar dogs had.

“Sure, yeah, dogs talk,” he said. “You been living under a rock, maybe?” He growled as he spoke, but it seemed more like a necessity of speech than a threat.

She shrugged. “Does under the ocean count?”

The dog’s tongue lolled out in a laugh. “Sure, yeah. Ocean even worse than a rock. Very wet. Very cold. Very bad.” Then he stopped and tilted his head to the side. “Wait. What Humans live in water?”

“I’m not Human. I’m a Kampii,” she said. “From the City of Shifting Tides.” And then, because he was still tilting his head, she added with disgust,