“Not me. I can breathe water. So can the little kids. That’s where they are now. Living with the One. Underwater. The One has the Pod now. It will be safe once it’s all inside and nothing can eat it. It’s been waiting for a long time for a way to live all together. We’ll be adrift. And protected by the Pod. Nothing can get us, understand?”

“Felix? Please. Let me help you. Maybe I can reverse this, make you well again.”

“I am well. I don’t ever have to hurt again.” But he would miss the electric bliss he’d felt with Sheena and Felicity, that pricking delightful tingle that had run clear through his body. Maybe, when Tomaya came back, he could feel that again with her.

From down the hall, he could hear the Song rising and falling as the algae rejoiced over Michaela’s body.

He whacked the door one more time, seeing a long sliver of duraplast peel off.

That’s when the roar started. He heard it from a long way off. Barely audible to begin with, then louder. And louder. Until the entire Pod was shaking so loudly it overwhelmed the Song.

“Thank God!” Vik cried from behind the door.

“Someone coming,” Felix told himself. Frowned. The last time it had been the Supervisor. This had to be her and the shuttle again. Then the shaking and sound died down to stillness. Had to be the landing pad.

More grownups to deal with. He sighed.

91

“Got it!” Dek called as he banked the airplane. “About six degrees north of east and ten kilometers out.”

From her seat in the cabin, Kalico stared down at the designs made by endless lines of swells. In Capella’s slanting light, the surface of the sea had a platinum look, intricately textured by wind and wave. She had always loved flying over water, watching as the composition of larger patterns of swells broke into smaller and smaller patterns until the whitecaps could finally be discerned. Layer upon layer of complexity. That’s what made oceans magical.

Kalico could discern the long curve of the reef, marked by the way it refracted waves, and finally she picked out the change in color, the deep royal blue edging into lighter tans, yellows, and blue-green mats of submerged vegetation.

And there, that little dot of white, that was the Pod.

“How are we doing on charge?” Kalico called to where Dek and Talina sat in the cockpit.

“Down to forty percent,” Dek told her. “With the prevailing tailwind, we could just make the beach if we had to.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to,” Talina muttered under her breath.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Dek told her, that wry Taglioni smile bending his lips.