I sink deeper and deeper. I’m dying.
Then I feel a hand on my waist. At first I think I’m imagining it or hallucinating from lack of oxygen, but then there’s another one, slowly spinning me around. I open my eyes, and in the shower of sunlight piercing the depths I see Fathom. He is wounded and bleeding but he is alive.
He smiles and then kisses me, blowing air into my lungs. It’s just a little, just for a few more seconds of life, so I use it for a last, dying wish. I kiss him. I pull him to me, ignoring our wounds, and hold my mouth to his. If I am going to heaven or the Great Abyss or wherever, this boy’s kiss is what I will take with me. His arms encircle me, and we drift lower and lower, together, breathing in each other as we go to whatever awaits us.
There is a feeling in my stomach like I’m going to be sick, and I pull away. He takes my arm and tries to pull me toward the surface, but I struggle. The pain is searing, around me, stretching the skin on my arms and neck, ripping into my throat.
Fathom calls out, but I cannot understand what he is saying, and then I realize I’m breathing. I open my eyes, but I’m not on the beach. I’m still underwater. Is it the gauntlet? Fathom takes my hand and raises it so I can see my skin. It is covered in scales.
He smiles, kisses me gently, and then swims away into the dark water. I call out to him, but he does not respond. I want to chase after him, but the gauntlet is glowing again. There are people who need help. I have to get them out of this bubbling soup. I swim to the surface and take in a deep breath of air. The sensation of pain returns, though it’s not quite as intense, and just like that, I’m breathing air again. I’ve changed. The thing I feared the most has happened. I have taken on some of my mother’s qualities. I look out toward the shore. The Rusalka’s wave broke through the Alpha wall. The water roared into the streets of Coney Island and leveled entire blocks. The boardwalk, the amusement park, possibly even my school are all gone, washed away like they were never there. I look for the rise of my apartment but can’t find it.
Mom! Bex!
I ask the water, begging it to tell me where they are, hoping it will find them alive. My mother is not out here, but Bex!
There.
She’s far off and in trouble, so I sink under and swim, cutting through the water like I’ve got a motorboat engine strapped to my body. I’m as fast as a bullet. Is this the new me? No, the gauntlet is working again. It’s moving the water around me, firing me like a cannonball. When I reach Bex, I grab her with my arm, but I’m going so fast that the two of us rocket out of the sea, high into the sky—twenty, thirty, forty feet—then come crashing down in a painful splash.
I hold her head above the water and listen to her pulse. She’s breathing. I search for something that will support her. There’s a door floating nearby and I pull it to me, then hoist Bex’s body onto it. She’s safe.
I scan the water for Ghost, then Luna, then Thrill, just in case they managed to survive, but they’re gone. I can’t tell if they’re alive or dead, which is strange, because I can feel dead Rusalka twenty feet below me.
Fathom! I reach out to the Voice, asking it to help me find him, but he’s gone too. Did I imagine him? No, that kiss was real. I sink under, hoping to spot him, but there’s nothing. The gauntlet cannot find him, but it finds Arcade. She’s alive. I blast through the water again, wrap my arm around her, and drag her to Bex’s makeshift raft.
Bex awakens, coughing up enough water to fill a bathtub.
“Bex, where is my mother?” I beg.
“When the wall came down, soldiers stormed the shelter. Terrance tried to fight them, but there were so many. They took them both,” she says, then stares at me. “What is going on with your skin?”
“Some kind of Alpha puberty, I guess.” But suddenly terror races through me. What if I have a tail? I have always worried that someday I would make the transformation and wake up with my mother’s tail flopping around under my sheets. I drop under the surface, cringing at what I might see, but my legs are normal, even if my skin looks like a Fourth of July fireworks display.
“You are unique,” Arcade says when I surface.
She’s right. Once again I do not fit. Not human. Not Alpha. I don’t belong to either. I am something new.
“I am Lyric Walker, Daughter of Summer.”
“What now?” Arcade says.
“We didn’t beat them. There’s more out there, right?” Bex says.
“The Rusalka are great in number,” Arcade warns. “I suspect they retreated, but they will regroup and return. They are relentless. They will kill every Alpha until there are none, and your people if they get in the way.”
“We can’t beat them ourselves,” I say.
She nods in agreement.
“Then what?” Bex asks.