“Sorry, lady,” his oldest, Ignacio, said, “but you’re not our mother and you don’t tell us what to do.”
They dropped into the mist. They jumped again, and Ricci was there, with Gabriel and Léon.
“Hi, Dad,” Léon said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re iterating.”
“Never stopped you, did it?”
Léon took to the air. Javier followed. Beneath his feet, beneath the mist, the island was changing shape. The arteries folded down onto each other, forming a single black arrowhead. It was the basic defensive posture the island assumed whenever it or Amy perceived a possible threat. The diamond tree loomed large in his vision. Amy sprinted forward. He and the boys stopped short at the beach, but she ran straight across the water. Her feet barely disturbed its surface. She leapt into the tree and landed in its fork, arms raised. Her skin was full of rainbows.
Beneath his feet, the island shuddered.
“You sure know how to pick ’em,” Ignacio said.
Javier bolted for home. He jumped from the beach and landed awkwardly in the water. The membrane caught him and he waded the rest of the way. The water was frustratingly heavy; he felt more tired than he should have by the time he made it to their little island. Amy had slid down the tree by then, and she stood with her back to him. Her fingers twitched angrily at her sides. She and the island were deep in damage control mode.
“What’s going on?” Javier asked.
She answered him with a question: “Above or below?”
“Huh?”
“Above, or below. Pick one. We can go down, or we can bring it up. Where would you like to go?”
His mind simulated several outcomes to both choices. He thought of a hole opening in the island’s flesh and himself sliding down into it. He thought of the weakness of human flesh, and the pressure, and the bends. “How far below was it?”
“Not that far.”
He insinuated himself into her field of vision. “Are there humans on that sub?”
She blinked. “I’m not sure.”
“You could kill them, if you bring them up too fast. If they’ve been too deep for too long. The p-pressure c-could–”
Now it was her turn to kiss him. It was very light and very quick, but it shut him and the failsafe down completely. When his eyes opened, Amy’s smile was all too bright. Her eyes were all too sad. He recognized the expression. She wore it when all the other vN on the island manifested their failsafe. It was pity.
“It’s probably automated,” she was saying. “It’s navigating by algorithm. That’s why I didn’t catch it, sooner.”
He couldn’t help himself. He had to ask. “You’re sure?”
He watched her pity turn to frustration. It displayed as a slight crinkling at the corners of her eyes, an almost imperceptible line between her brows that, unlike those of human women, would never become permanent.
“I would never show you something that might trigger you. You know that.”
Beyond them, the ocean bubbled and foamed. Her expression changed again: anticipation. Whatever Amy had trapped down there, it was coming up. She raised one hand, waved slightly, and a murmuration of botflies swarmed above them.
“I’ll prove it,” she said. “I’m hacking the flies. That way, everybody can watch.”
She hopped out of the tree, and he followed. The flies shadowed them high above as they crossed the island. The bubbling had turned to an active churn. Whatever was coming was big. Big enough, he suspected, to sustain human life.
“Put it back,” he said.
“I know what I’m doing.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Then she looked up at the botflies. Her gaze rested on him again, and she spoke loudly and clearly enough for the flies to hear. “It came here, not the other way around. It’s an intruder. We have every right to investigate.”
“There are people in there–”
“You don’t know that, Javier.” She turned back to the sea, and the thing she’d raised from its depths.
It had a shape: long and tubular, but not rigid, not a perfect cylinder. Jointed. Serpentine. Organic. And as Amy raised her hands and lifted it from the water, it twitched and thrashed like a living thing. Something pallid and glistening dimpled and puckered across its surface as it writhed. Skin. Maybe even vN skin, Javier thought. They could use it like leather, these days. Rigid lines of scaffold beneath its surface popped into relief as it twisted, creating a series of random triangles under the skin. A dazzle pattern, Javier realized. Anti-sonar.
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” Amy murmured.
“What in the fucking fuck?”
Javier turned. Ignacio and his brothers were there, lips pulled back in identical expressions of disgust.