My mom and Bex hover nearby while I practice moving the water. We have so little time and I totally suck.
I point the gauntlet out toward the ocean and try to create a wall of seawater, but I can’t concentrate long enough to make it happen. Then I feel dizzy and my nose starts to bleed.
“She needs a break,” my mother says.
“We do not have time,” Ghost snaps. He has no patience with me.
“I still can’t get around the sea’s . . . bigness,” I cry.
“She keeps seeing its size, and it makes her feel small,” Luna says with a sigh.
Thrill won’t even look at me, he’s so disgusted.
“It’s not how big the ocean is,” Ghost says. “It’s your will that must be huge.”
“We’ve been training her to be small,” my mother explains. “It was how we avoided being discovered.”
Thrill cringes. “She has to be like a Kraken. She has to feel like she’s making the sea tremble with fear.”
“Um, what’s a Kraken?” Bex asks.
“A huge, terrifying monster, an eater of worlds. It lives in a chasm at the bottom of the Atlantic,” Luna says like it’s no big deal.
“Please be joking.”
Luna looks at her queerly. “I do not tell jokes.”
“Okay, so she needs to think like a monster,” Bex says, then turns to my face. “Like a wild thing.”
“Huh?” Arcade asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s silly.”
“No, it’s not!” Bex shouts. “Did you ever feel more powerful, more bigger than life, than back then? Admit it!”
“I haven’t felt stupider, either,” I grouse.
“How is she doing?” Fathom says as he approaches. His appearance makes a tense situation into an oppressive torture.
“I’m constipated or something.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“Good. I can’t get past whatever is blocking me,” I say.
Fathom looks at the setting sun.
“You will do your best,” he says, then turns to me. “I would have a word with you.”
I look to Bex. She gives me a hopeful little smile. My mother has an identical one on her face. Then I follow him down the beach until we are far from the ears of anyone.
He stops, picks up a shell, and brushes sand out of its hollow. It’s a creamy pearl color with pink and silver highlights. He flips it over in his hands, then heaves it back into the ocean. I am satisfied with the silence. I’m afraid of what he might say.
“I wish I had a camera,” he says, still gazing out at the water.
I nod. “Something to remember the place before the world ends?”
“No. I would like to have a picture of you.”
He takes my hand, holding it gently in his, and then he frowns a little, and I know what’s happening inside him. I can hear his thoughts as well as I can hear my own. He has responsibilities to his people and to Arcade. It doesn’t matter that we’re all going to die. He will not break his promises. I realize that, for him, the promises are what keep him from being his father, but there is something strong between us, something he would never deny but something best left unsaid.
“I love you, too,” I whisper.
His eyes brighten and I smile, wishing my phone had a charge so I could take a photograph and capture them forever, because I know I will never see them shining at me again. Arcade has his heart. Maybe it is love, maybe it is obligation, but for him, there is no difference.
And, as if on cue, I hear a voice broadcast from beyond the wall.
“Attention, members of the Alpha Nation. My name is General Thomas Slaines of the New York National Guard. We offer you one last chance to surrender yourselves to relocation,” he says. “We wish for a peaceful resolution to this crisis, but your silence will be considered as a refusal and an unlawful occupation. We will be forced to act accordingly and will attack. We ask you once again to reconsider.”
There’s another signal, a thrum from far down the beach, and every face turns to the water.
“They’re here,” Fathom cries, then holds his hands to his mouth and releases a booming call that rattles my bones. When it is heard, I see thousands rushing to their positions. They carry spears and swords and even tridents, made from human garbage and melted into tools for fighting. Yet some have nothing but their hands and their determination. There are old and young, women and men, children, all raising their fists and barking into the air.
“Fight hard!” Braken shouts as he runs along the shore. He stops before Fathom and clasps his forearm. Fathom does the same.
“Know my pride in you, Fathom,” Braken says. “If we do not survive, I will meet you in the Great Abyss.”