James Patterson - Max

Then, as we watched, the dumb-bots seemed to huddle in for a consultation. A minute later, they started to disperse, heading off into the dark water one by one, their little fanlike rotors leaving small white trails behind them. Angel waved good-bye to them, then turned and wiggled her eyebrows at me and Gazzy.

I gave her the universal WTH expression, and she grinned and dog-paddled closer to the Triton. Clinging to the side, she went through an elaborate “told you so” pantomime.

With Angel still holding on, I turned the Triton around and headed back to the Minnesota , feeling overwhelming relief, tension, and extreme irritation all at the same time.

I was giving Angel a look of “Wait till we get back on board, missy,” which she was cheerfully ignoring, when her face suddenly went blank. Then her eyes widened in fear, and she pressed herself flat against the Plexiglas dome, her small knuckles white.

“What? What? ” I cried. She looked in at me, and my heart turned to ice when I saw how scared she was.

In the next moment, a powerful swell of water came out of nowhere and swept us beneath the bigger sub, making us crash against its underside. Angel clung to the Triton and hunkered down.

“What the – there aren’t currents like this, this deep!” I said. Our dome smashed against the metal sub again, and my throat closed as I wondered just how tough the Plexiglas was.

“Holy crap!” Gazzy shouted, pointing.

A mountain was coming up out of the murky depths below us, creating such a huge swell that the Minnesota was actually tipping to one side. We crashed against the sub again, and I jammed the joystick forward, desperately trying to get back to the underwater hatch we had exited from.

“What the heck is that thing?” I cried. If I couldn’t keep us angled right, Angel would be smashed between us and the sub. I yanked the joystick to the left.

Off to one side, the mountainous thing moved past us, heading toward the surface. I saw now that it had a beginning and an end and wasn’t quite Everest-sized but still totally qualified as ginormously freaking big.

“There!” Gazzy pointed above us, and punched the remote that opened the Minnesota ’s bottom hatch. The next water swell carried us up into the belly of the sub, Angel still holding on tightly.

“Close the hatch!” I commanded. The hatch doors closed beneath us, and lights flashed as the hydraulic pumps began to force water out of the chamber. Another twenty seconds, and we popped the Triton ’s hatch, breathing in the damp air. Gazzy and I quickly jumped out, and I grabbed Angel, who was sopping wet and shivering. Holding her tightly, I stroked her hair.

“What happened with the M-Geeks?” I asked.

“I just asked them to go away,” she said. “They said okay.”

“O-kaaaay,” I said. “And what was the swimming mountain?”

Big troubled eyes met mine. “I don’t know, Max. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before – not like a person or an alien or a mutant. But – it was thinking . It has thoughts. It’s intelligent. And it wanted to kill. It wanted to kill everything.”

Just then something hit the sub hard, knocking us off balance. More alarms blared, and we heard shouting. There was a gut-wrenching grinding, the sound of screeching metal, then the sub went silent, tilted on its side.

We were dead in the water.

BITTER IRONY crushed me: we’d escaped death so many times on land and in the air, only to be doomed to die in the ocean.

I’d read news reports about a hundred Russian sailors who had all died trapped in their sub in less than two hundred feet of water. We were in much worse shape. I didn’t know if the sea monster would be back, or if the M-Geeks had really gone away. I didn’t know if we were sinking slowly into the darker, colder depths of the ocean, never to rise again. With the power gone, we couldn’t even limp back to the base. And at this depth, the water pressure was so great that the hatches couldn’t be opened. There was no way out.

But a leader can’t dwell on stuff like that. A leader has to lead.

“Okay, guys,” I said, channeling confidence and authority. “First, let’s get -”

The chamber door opened, and Total peeped in, the flashing red emergency lights highlighting his fur every couple seconds

“Yo,” he said. “Sub’s in trouble. Climb out here – we’re doing an emergency surface.”

“An emergency surface?” Quickly we scrambled up the slanted floor to the open doorway. Fang was standing behind Total, followed by Nudge and Iggy. My flock was together, and they’d come to find us.

“Yeah,” said Fang, giving Gazzy a hand up. “There’s all sorts of backup systems. Apparently. We’re dumping ballast and pumping in air and should be at the surface in about half an hour.”

Well. Let’s hear it for those thoughtful sub designers, eh?

We ended up feeling our way to the front of the sub and were among the first off when it finally reached the surface. They popped the hatch and deployed inflatable life rafts. I’ve never been so thankful to breathe fresh air.

We bobbed around in the ocean in six-foot waves until navy choppers came. They lowered a long rope ladder, and some Navy SEALs jumped down into the water to help. It was all very controlled and orderly, which is, I gather, how the navy likes it.

“Children first!” shouted a SEAL, holding the ladder. “Let’s go!”

There were eighteen sailors with us in our raft, all waiting for us to go first.

“Can we just meet you guys somewhere?” I asked John Abate. “We don’t need to take up space in a chopper.” Plus I’m dying to stretch my wings and get up in the fresh air, where I feel normal .

John nodded and quickly gave me directions to a marine research station about thirty miles away, where we’d meet.

I clapped once to get the flock’s attention. “Okay, guys,” I said. “Ready to do an up and away?”

They cheered and stood up.

“Please get on the ladder!” the SEAL barked.

“We’re not getting on the ladder,” I said firmly. “Thanks anyway. I really think you’re being all you can be. But we’re out of here.”

It was hard to jump up into the air from an inflatable raft, but we managed, though we sank about a foot into the water before we were aloft. But finally there we were: moving our wings strongly, feeling the air blowing against our faces, our hair streaming back. It was heaven.

Below us, stunned sailors and crewmen stared up at what they’d heard about but had never expected to see. John and Brigid waved, and maybe I’m imagining things, but I thought Brigid looked envious. Maybe she wanted wings too.

“Thank God!” I said, climbing high above the ocean. We soared until the rafts were tiny dots on the dark, gray blue water.

Angel was peering downward. “I’m trying to see that big thing,” she said. “The big sea-monster thing.”

We looked, and though we could make out whales and rays and sharks, nothing we saw looked anything like the moving mountain that had almost capsized our sub.

“Our new mission: figure out what that was,” I said, as we turned in a lazy, thirty-degree arc back toward the big island of Hawaii. “I just know it has something to do with my mom – and Mr. Chu.”

As we headed toward land and the marine research station where we’d meet up with the others, I had another, more disturbing thought: What exactly had Angel told the M-Geeks under water? Why hadn’t they attacked her? They were machines, and I didn’t think she could influence machines the way she could humans.

Did Angel know something about Mr. Chu I didn’t?