NeverSea: Echoes of the Lost (Book One)
Book One in the Echoes of The Lost Series
Jenetta Penner & David R. Bernstein
Book Title Copyright © 2017 by Torment Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by Nathalia Suellen
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jenetta Penner and David R. Bernstein
www.tormentpublishing.com
www.jenettapenner.com
www.davidbernstein.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: Nov 2017
Torment Publishing
ISBN-13 ooo-0-0000000-1-2
Contents
SYNDICATE LOGS
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
EPILOGUE
SYNDICATE LOGS
Twenty years ago
Genomics Director, Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #195: 02.23.2078
Today we had a breakthrough. Humanity’s path to salvation has been discovered. I successfully designed the sequence which turns on the genetic markers allowing for cross-species engineered mutation. With this achievement, I have signaled the start of humanity’s adaptation to the ever-expanding oceans that have been swallowing the continents. We will be able to survive on a planet where we will never see solid land again. We must begin human trials immediately.
End Log.
Genomics Director, Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #202: 04.12.2078
The board has rejected my request for human trials for the third time. They have called my research dangerous and requested I stop my genetic project. They are trying to reassign me to the biotech lab. This is unacceptable. Humanity must change, or I will be forced to take drastic measures. Cowards.
End Log.
Chairman Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #1: 04.28.2078
With the support of the security forces, the board has been removed from the research vessel. Unfortunately, this means we are short one lifeboat. We will survive.
End Log.
Chairman Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #4: 05.20.2078
We have secured three girls and four boys from a nearby settlement cruise liner. A couple were older than I prefer, but we do not want to waste good, young subjects on the early testing anyway. Human trials are set to begin tomorrow morning.
End Log.
Chairman, Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #15: 07.09.2078
We’ve lost nearly all our early subjects. Adaptation to the cross-mutation is being rejected with fatal outcomes. This is unacceptable. We must acquire more children at an earlier maturation stage. Teenaged subjects are proving to be a waste of resources.
End Log.
Chairman, Dr. Nerissa Myers - Log Entry #27: 11.24.2078
Due to heavy resistance to the program, I have authorized a radical vessel acquisition protocol to strengthen our new Syndicate forces. The future I have set has to move forward. I will accept nothing less.
End Log.
PROLOGUE
“Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it.”
The Little Mermaid: Hans Christian Andersen
Earth 2082
Arya
Water, water, and water. That’s all there is—all there has been—ever since the oceans swallowed the planet forty years ago. So, it’s like some sick joke that she’s making me into a fish.
“Hold still, my dear.”
Nerissa grabs my wrist, plunging a syringe into my strapped-down arm. I don’t cry in front of her anymore, but the pain is just the same as it was the first time. Her black hair flows just over her shoulders, and those violet eyes, paired with the most beautiful, but cruel face, watch me intently.
“Can I go back to my room?” I plead, rubbing my stinging skin with my free hand. All I want is to go back to my dad at the Atlantis habitat, but there’s no way he knows where I am.
“I can’t perfect humanity if you’re in your quarters,” she says, her face now stern. “I’m so pleased with how your body is taking to the treatment. You’re an excellent specimen.”
She enters something into her computer and waits for the results. I can't see the screen, but her eyes grow excited and wide so she must like whatever it says.
"There, my dear," she says as she turns to me and releases my arm from the pinching strap. "You may go now."
I leap from the chair, not waiting to see if she might change her mind and dash out the door back to our wing to look for the other girls. When I get to our room, the Sisters are nowhere to be found. I grab a towel and plop down on my bed, drying off my red ponytail, still soaked from the saltwater tank the lab techs had me in for the last hour before Nerrisa had her turn at stabbing me. As I look toward the open door, a shadowy figure slips by. Not one of the girls.
“Peter, wait up!” I call.
Peter pokes his head through the opening, his tousled blonde hair looking as if he forgot to brush it today. He's aware if he didn’t answer I’d just run after him and bug him. He’s older than me—sixteen, I think.
“What do you want, kid?” he sighs.
“Can we play that game again?” I plead, trying to forget the vial labeled Marine DNA Combination that was injected into me not ten minutes ago. “You know, the one with the cards?”
“Poker? Naw, you’re just a little squirt.” Peter steps in and pats me on the head, then runs his hand through his tousled white-blonde hair, making it messier than it already is. “I never should have shown you that in the first place. And gambling’s a bad habit. Now I gotta go.”
Before he turns to leave, I drag out a small bag with two cookies from under my pillow. I stole them from a guard. They’re several days old, and I know they’re stale because I’ve already scarfed one down, but they’re still a valuable commodity around here.
Peter raises one of his eyebrows, his sky blue eyes sparkling. “Are those chocolate chip?”
I nod and quickly stow them in my sweatshirt pocket before anyone else notices.
“Fine, I have a few minutes.” He motions for me to follow.
We find a quiet corner and play the card game. Peter cheats, like always. He thinks I’m a dumb kid and won’t notice, but I do. I always do. In the end, I relinquish the prize, but to be honest, the cookies were for him. Peter is like the big brother I never had, and sometimes I think he needs a little sister, too.
“Hi,” a familiar voice sounds from behind, causing my heart to
leap. But not in the bad kind of way.
Peter whips the cookies out of sight. Turning, I find a pair of bright, azure irises staring directly at me. Set against sepia skin and a head of dark brown curly hair, his crystal-clear gaze highlights his handsome, blossoming face. Even at eleven, I know he’s something special.
I clear my throat. “Oh, hello, James.”
James isn’t a test subject, but Commander Thacher’s son. Thacher’s married to Nerissa, but I try not to think about that. Since we’re the only kids in this place, he often sneaks down to play. James had his twelfth birthday three days ago, and even smuggled me a piece of cake, the best I’ve ever had. First, I licked off all the chocolate frosting, then took my sweet time with the actual cake, savoring the vanilla flavor. I didn’t even share.
“What’s that behind your back, Peter?”
Peter’s cheeks flush. “Nothin’.”
The lie is so obvious I break into a giggle. James won’t tell, but Peter doesn’t know this. Peter maintains his distance from almost everyone except me.
“Well, you’ve got something you’re not supposed to have,” James presses.
Peter reluctantly brings out the bag of cookies and shows them to James.
James smiles and glances up at Peter. “Looks good. How about I make you a deal?”
“What?” Peter asks skeptically, obviously believing he’ll lose all the treats he just swindled out of me.
“I’ll let you keep them if—” James throws a glance at me with his big, sea-blue eyes, “—you share them with Arya.”
And that does it. James just swindled me right out of my heart.
Peter rolls his eyes and huffs. “Fine. But keep in mind, just because you're nice to Arya doesn't mean I trust you. You are not my friend.”
He tosses me a cookie so quickly I barely catch it without it turning into crumbs.
“See ya later, squirt,” Peter says, rushing away with the last cookie safe in his pocket.
♦ ♦ ♦
Four long years later – Earth 2086
The alarm blares overhead, signaling evening lockdown. James didn't come down tonight even though I waited for him by the stairs. Disappointed, I round the corner to my shared sleeping quarters, but Peter catches my arm.
“Birthday today?”
“Yeah, fifteen,” I say, looking up at him. He's more than a full head taller than me. “But what does it matter in here? Not as if we’re ever really going to get out and grow up.”
“For sure, I’m not.” He should be around twenty, but I think he stopped aging at seventeen or eighteen when Nerissa’s “treatments” kicked in. His maturity is certainly stunted. He’s still the same punk he always was.
“At least you don’t have these.” I run my hand over the newly implanted gills on my neck.
Peter smiles. “They’re not so bad. Think of all the new things you can do with them. Who else can actually breathe underwater? Well, fish—”
I jab him in the shoulder. “I don’t want to be a fish. I want to be a human.” James probably won’t even like me. My freakish nature is on full display. It's probably why he didn't show up.
“Eh, being human is overrated. I should know. I’m basically superhuman now.” He leans in toward my ear. “I can fly.”
“What? Fly? People can’t fly.”
Peter’s lips stretch into a mischievous smile. “Arya, we’re not normal people anymore. And they haven’t fully tested me because they know if they float me, I’ll jump ship. But, yeah, I can most definitely fly.” He pulls up the bottom of his shirt to reveal a metal belt encircling his waist. “This device keeps me grounded.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I’m pretty sure they’re prepping Marin for the gills next week.”
Youngest to oldest. The treatments seem to take better the younger and more plastic your body is. The only thing they’ve got to function on all four of us is a sonar thing; a weird fish ability to see with sound. I never use it if I don’t have to, and it isn’t consistent. The Sisters haven’t been able to make it work for them for quite some time, so Nerissa moved on to the gill implants.
Nerissa’s words ring loud in my memory. Land will not return, so I will make humanity thrive without it.
“I’m kind of afraid for Marin,” I say.
Peter’s eyes twinkle. “What if I told you I could get us out of here?”
“No way. All of us? How?”
“Uh.” The smirk on his face falls away. “Yeah … that. Your sisters are cute and all, especially Una, even if she is bossy.” He stares into the distance for a second, so I smack his arm. He shakes his head like he’s shaking something off. “But I'm not certain if I can get more than two of us out.”
I square my jaw and glare at him. “Well I’m not leaving them here.”
“Listen, I get it. But they’d want you to get out, Arya, if you had the chance.”
I dig my heels in further. “No, Peter. All or nothing.”
"Fine," he says. "But you need to be ready."
I smile and nod. "I'll let them know."
Inside the room the lights are already out and all four girls are snuggled into their beds. They didn't even remember my birthday. But I can hardly blame them. Nerissa has them in the lab all the time. I think with them getting older and the experiments not working she's getting desperate.
I crawl onto my bunk making the least amount of noise I can and slip under the covers. Salty tears flow over my face and lips and I drift off, drowning in them.
“Arya.” A hushed voice brings me out of sleep.
“Huh—” I start to say, but a palm slaps over my mouth.
“We have to … um … we're practicing getting out of here,” a fully-dressed Peter whispers before removing his hand from my mouth.
I sit and flick my gaze toward the sleeping Sisters.
“No, no. We don’t need them for this round. Just you and me so we can figure out if this is going to work.” Peter’s voice is shaky, and a bead of sweat drips along the side of his face.
“Are you OK?”
“Just a little nervous,” he whispers, pulling at my upper arm.
Rising from the bed, I check out the clock. “Are you sure we have enough time? The guard will come in thirty minutes.”
“Yeah, you don't need to change. Just practice, remember.”
I follow Peter down the empty hallway, and he leads me to a locked service door I’ve never been through. He glances behind us, whips out a security key fob, and releases the lock.
“Where’d you get that?” I hiss.
“Lydia. She and I have an understanding.”
“The guard? You have an understanding?”
“She’s lonely, I have needs … it all works out.” He opens the door carefully and gestures for me to enter.
“But why would she give you the key?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.
“She went to sleep, and I figured she wouldn’t mind.”
“You’re awful.”
I get it. Peter is good looking, chiseled jaw paired with a boyish grin. I can see how he charmed her.
Peter shrugs. “Takes all kinds in this world. Now get moving.”
I sigh and walk through the doorway, nervousness beginning to well up in my belly.
“Peter, I want to go back.”
“It’s just a bit further, and you’ll know exactly what the plan is—for next time.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stun gun, the same as the ones the guards use.
“You get that from Lydia, too?”
Peter doesn’t answer. He lightly propels me through a series of metal corridors. The rush of the ocean grows louder as we draw closer to the outside of the vessel. Even with the sound, I catch the footsteps behind us.
“Security must be coming,” I whisper.
Peter grabs my arm and yanks me around a corner.
“What are we going to do?”
He presses a finger to his lips.
The footfalls grow nearer, and Peter pushes me in back of him. “I’ve got this.”
Fear pulses through me, and what pathetic life I’ve had flashes in front of my eyes. Just as the guard passes, Peter leaps out and takes him by surprise, shoving the stunner into his side. The man doesn’t even have time to react, and his body convulses as it drops to the ground.
Panic surges in me as his chest stops rising and falling. “Is he dead?”
“If we’re going to get out of here now, he’d better be.”
“Peter, you killed a guard! And what? Are we leaving now? You lied to me!” I turn back to the way we came. “I have to get the Sisters.”
Peter catches my shoulders, his eyes wild. “Look, Squirt, the only reason you’re here is you’re like a little sister to me. I don’t care about anyone else.”
“I told you, I can’t leave them.”
“Our exit’s right there.” He points to a sizable steel door. “Emergency pods are on the other side for the taking. It’s now or never.”
I rip myself from his grasp. If I go now, there should be enough time to get the girls. The memory of the directions to get here races in my mind.
“I’m going back.”
Peter shakes his head. “Fine, whatever. I’m looking out for me.”
“Big surprise, Peter.”
He rushes for the door and uses the key fob to unlatch the lock. He then twists back to me, tossing me the fob and the stunner.
“Here. You’ll want these.”
I catch them and bolt down the hall, past the dead guard, without even saying goodbye to Peter.
“There are two pods. I’m taking one of them!” he calls after me.
Despite hating the ability Nerissa gave me, I let out a few clicks with my tongue. The sonar bounces back, letting me know where to go and that no other guards are there. I burst out of the first door we took and race the hall toward our room. One more click, though, immediately tells me someone is on the way. Wrapping my fingers tightly around the stunner, a vision of that dead guard flashes through my mind. It’s still set to kill.