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“What do you need from me then?”
“I’m glad you asked. Come with me.” Jack led me to where strapped down boxes of equipment, scuba gear, and oxygen tanks waited to be used. “If you survive the day and are willing to come back out tomorrow, I’ll give you the rundown on how all of this works, but for now. All you need to use is this.” Pulling out a hard-topped briefcase, he carried it to a table bolted in place by the bow and unlatched it.
Neri came to stand beside me as her father opened a heavy-duty laptop, along with sensors, wires, and an electronic drawing pad.
Angling the screen toward me, Jack said, “When we’re down there collecting samples, the computer will automatically record our findings. All our equipment is linked through an in-house Wi-Fi. However, sometimes the connection gets interrupted and can cause the data to file into the wrong columns. What I need from you is to keep track of the data coming in, and if there’s a glitch, keep it filing in the proper place.”
“That’s it?”
“For now.” Anna smiled. “Let’s start easy.”
“It’s when you start swimming with us that the real fun begins,” Neri said softly, wrenching my gaze to hers. “It’s a whole other world down there. A world that is so pretty and colourful and big.”
Images of her swimming and bumping into a corpse of someone I loved shot into my head.
I suddenly felt sick.
I swayed a little and Anna murmured, “Are you nauseous from the waves, Aslan? If so, we have seasick-reducing bracelets that push on pressure points. They work surprisingly well.”
Moving away from Neri, I focused on the computer. “I’m fine.”
Jack pulled up a plastic chair from where it’d been stacked and strapped in place. “Get familiar with the program. Feel free to click on a few things and learn how it works while we get our gear on.”
“I’m not wearing a tank today, Dad,” Neri announced.
“Oh, yes, you are.” Jack crossed his arms. “You know the rules, Nerida. You may free-dive ten metres or less. We’ll be at least twenty today. You are wearing a tank, or you’re not going.”
Neri pouted. “But it gets in the way when I play with Sapphire.”
“I don’t care. I like you alive.”
“Well, I’m not wearing a suit, then. I’ll just wear fins.”
“Heaven help me with you, child.” Jack threw his arms at the sky. “Don’t come complaining to me when you start shivering from being down there for too long.”
“I wouldn’t dream of complaining.” Neri smiled a triumphant smile. “And besides...the cold never bothered me anyway.”
Anna groaned and tugged on Neri’s wild hair. “Stop quoting Frozen. And get in the water, before I throw you overboard.”
The Taylors left me sitting in silence as they dressed each other in weighted belts, oxygen tanks, and flippers, before giving me some last-minute instructions, waddling with their flippered feet to the side of the boat, opened the side to reveal a sturdy staircase, then fell backward into the blue.
Chapter Ten
*
Aslan
*
(Moon in Korean: Dal)
AN HOUR PASSED.
An hour where the sun blinded me, burned me. Its relentless siege on my skin made me coat my already tanned flesh with liberal amounts of sunblock from the huge dispenser next to the cage where the scuba gear lived.
It helped stop the burning, but it didn’t stop the heat. My eyes grew blurry from watching numbers automatically appearing on the screen as Jack and Anna did whatever they were doing down there.
Occasionally, the column where raw data was collected would skip to a random one-off page, leaving me to track down where it was recording, copy and paste it back into the correct area, then realign for the next lot of information.
The glitches were frustrating, and I could see why Jack wanted a deckhand. It was mind-numbing work but would save time when it came to correlating later.
I couldn’t get over the fact that whatever equipment Jack was using on the seafloor had the capacity to talk to a computer up here.
Time continued ticking onward, and I kept doing what I’d been tasked with before a strange noise wrenched my head up.
Hoping that the connection wouldn’t glitch, I stood and headed toward the side of the boat. My plastic boot clunked on the deck, and my bare foot burned from the hot planks. Grabbing the sun-sizzling railing, I looked down and froze.
The water undulated and twinkled.
Bright blue and perfect—the exact opposite of the black massacre that’d come for us in the storm. This looked like it wanted to be my friend, promising a cool embrace and a place to rinse away my sweat and strain.
But it wasn’t the sea that made my heart pound harder.
It wasn’t the memories swirling like spectres behind my eyes.
It was her.
Nerida.
Or at least, I thought it was her.
Quicksilver images flickered beneath the surface. Grey and sleek along with skin-flashes and chocolate streaks.
