We worked as if in a fever, horrific fumes filling our lungs, our bodies clammy and wet. At any moment we expected the guards to burst in, and Sula’s hand was never too far from her harpoon. Seawater roared through the pipes as we packed each screen with garbage. The floor of the sea room was slick with slime. Each step grew more treacherous, each breath more perilous.
When the five screens were packed with garbage, and Sula had made certain no liquid could leak through, we lifted the first screen gently so as not to dislodge the seaweed. Then we tried to slide it back into its slot as seawater rushed madly about our hands. It slipped in easily at first, but jammed near the end as the water pressure grew. I tried to help shove it in, but my bad shoulder made it impossible to push on anything. Even my good shoulder hurt when I tried pushing with that arm. But Sula’s strength made up for my weakness. The muscles in her forearms knotted and bulged as she shoved the screen with all her might and forced it to lock into place.
The remaining screens were easier. With each one we improved on the angle. I discovered that if we lifted the screen several millimeters off its track, it slid in with less resistance. One by one we shut down the intake of water from the ocean until the pipes were completely blocked and the holding tanks were emptied.
The sound of the clogged water was unlike anything on this Earth: a low keening, like some prehistoric animal bellowing in its death throes. Without the polluted sea to process, the pumps sucked nothing but air, creating a vacuum in the pipes that strained and threatened to buckle them.
But the pumps had been constructed to handle just such an emergency. After twenty seconds an alarm sounded, and the machinery shut down. Strobe lights flashed. A recorded voice blared warnings through amplified speakers. To compensate for the loss in pressure, steam blasted through the pipes, leaking from cracks in the fittings and spilling into the room like smoke.
Sula grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the doors. We raced for the stairs even as we could hear voices shouting nearby. There was no going down. The only direction was up. We took two steps at a time, tripping but not falling, running as fast as we could manage. The flashing lights made it seem as if we were in a holo-cast: flickering images and half-seen pursuers in the iridescent blackness.
Sula’s hand went to the harpoon. She held it above her head as she pushed me ahead of her on the stairs.
That’s when I heard the staccato burst of gunfire and felt the pulse of concussion grenades. They were close—plaster rained from the ceiling, and the walls exploded. Then my feet left the ground, and I was falling down, down, down…
CHAPTER 19
I landed hard on my back. Grit blanketed my lips and eyes. My neck ached, and there was a lump on my skull. Sula lay beside me, one arm cradling my head. I tried to sit up, but she stopped me. “Stay put,” she ordered.
We had fallen two floors. Bullets ricocheted above us like angry sand hornets. Below us all was silent.
“Who’s shooting?” I whispered.
“Stop talking,” she hissed.
The alarms continued to sound. Emergency lights cast a yellow glow, while strobes flashed intermittently. While we lay in the semidarkness, hidden behind the broken wall, six black-booted men thumped past us in stairwell. I folded myself into Sula, burying my head in her ribs. Stray wisps of blond hair brushed my face. Her sea-soap smell was in my mouth. My head rose on the sharp intake of her breath. Then the men passed.
We waited behind the wall until Sula was certain it was safe. In the sea room the men had probably found the clogged screens and were working to clean them. We could only hope the distraction served its purpose. While Bluewater guards rushed to contain the damage, Ulysses and Will gained precious minutes to get to the presentation room. But the gunfire meant something had gone wrong. Bluewater should have been hunting for Sula and me below, not Will and Ulysses above.
Sula pushed me into the dusty hall and then onto the staircase. The walls were blown away, but the stairs were intact. We stepped over broken glass, plaster chunks, even a dead body—a guard, face down. We did not slow.
The octagon fortress was not nearly as tall as it was wide. I realized now that it covered the sea floor and was barely visible from the shoreline. Anyone searching for two escaped fugitives would have a lot of ground to cover. They would naturally start near the water, where the sea room was located and the skimmer was docked: the most logical place to escape. The roof was the last place they would think to look.
That’s why the two guards on the roof were more surprised than we were to see a young girl and a woman in a wet suit. Their hesitation was the only advantage Sula needed. She swiftly killed one man with her harpoon and knocked the other unconscious with a blow to the back of his head.
“Did you have to kill him?” I protested.
Sula retrieved her weapon. “What would you like me to do? Give him a kiss?”
“Why can’t you use the destabilizer? Or the taser?”