The Fog Diver (14 page)

“T
HEY'RE DOING WHAT?
” T
URNING
asked, sounding uncertain. “Ditching?”

I barely heard him over the blood thundering in my ears. If the bosses ditched our block, Mrs. E would fall into the Fog. This couldn't be happening, not now, not when we were so close to getting to Port Oro. No, no—

“No,” Swedish gasped.

Hazel bent over the telescope, and I found myself standing beside her, watching her face. Hazel would say Bea was wrong, and we'd tease her for scaring us. Because she
was
wrong. She had to be.

But just then Hazel made a horrified sound. “They're prepping the platform to ditch. They're halfway done already,” she said.

“How—how long do we have?” Bea asked.

“I don't know,” Hazel said. “Thirty minutes?”

“We're too far away,” Bea wailed. “What do we do? How do we stop them?”

Before I knew what I was doing, I shoved Loretta.

She stumbled backward. “Hey!”

“Your friends did this!” I snarled at her. I'd told them we couldn't trust her. I'd told them, and now look what'd happened.

“I'm sorry,” she said, her face falling. “I thought they'd wait till nightfall.”

I shoved her again, dizzy with fury and fear. “I knew you were bad news. I knew it. If they ditch her, I swear by the Fog that I'll—”

A hand clamped my shoulder. “Please, Chess,” Turning said. “Make no vows in anger.”

I jerked away. “If anything happens to Mrs. E—”

“Quiet!” Hazel snapped. “Let me think.”

I closed my mouth so fast that my teeth clicked. Anger drifted through me in a red haze, but I kept still. Hazel was our only chance.

Turning frowned. “Would someone please tell me what ‘ditching'—”

“She said
quiet,
” Swedish barked, slamming his palm on the workbench.

Hazel paced, chewing on a knuckle. I watched her. Swedish watched her. We all watched her.

She crossed the floor three times, then stopped and looked at Bea. “The mayfly!”

“The what?” Bea said, her eyes glossy with tears.

“That thopper you called a ‘mayfly.' On the hillside airfield. You said you saw it through the telescope. Find it again. Hurry!”

Bea bent over the eyepiece, softly begging the scope for help.

“Ditching,” Hazel told Turning, “is when the junkyard bosses flip a section of the slum, dropping everything into the Fog.”

He frowned. “That sounds dangerous.”

“That's the point,” Swedish said.

“They do that on purpose?” Turning asked, a flash of horror in his eyes. “I've seen it, but I thought it was an accident. That's terrible—”

“We need your help,” Hazel interrupted, and I'd never been happier to hear the bossy tone in her voice. “Bea's looking for an airfield we saw. Once she finds it, we need you to take us there—fast.”

“An airfield? What are you going to do?”

“The same as always,” Hazel told him. “Whatever we can.”

“Found it!” Bea called.

Turning peered through the eyepieceand muttered fretfully. “Yes,” he finally said. “I can get you there.”

“But you
must
return.” Cog Turning's voice echoed in the gloomy mine tunnel. “After you save Ekaterina, you must return to the Rooftop and find me.”

“We will,” Hazel told him.

“There's no other way to cure her, there's no other way to save yourselves. There's no other way to get Chess to Port Oro. Promise me you'll return.” Turning hesitated at a dark junction. “I should bring you straight to the coyote and send you off.”

My breath caught. If he let the bosses ditch Mrs. E, forget about Port Oro—I'd ditch
him
.

“But I can't do that to Ekaterina.” Turning looked at each of us in turn. “Promise me you'll come back.”

“We promise,” Bea said.

Turning nodded, then led us up a rickety ladder into what he called a root cellar. At the far end, he opened a trapdoor in the planked wooden ceiling.

“Turn right on the street,” he told us. “The thopper field is down the block.”

“Thank you,” Hazel told him. “We'll come back with Mrs. E.”

I nodded uneasily. We'd snuck into the Rooftop once that day—I wasn't sure we'd get lucky twice.

“I'll speak to the coyote.” Turning receded into the darkness. “Take care. You are more important than you know.”

We climbed up through the trapdoor into an empty hut
that must've belonged to a farmer or laborer. As we clustered around the door to the street, Bea said, “What did
that
mean? More important than we know?”

“Because of Chess,” Hazel said. “And this Compass machine.”

“Because he's a fog-sniffing lug nut,” Swedish said.

“Yeah,” Loretta agreed. “He's as cracked as a glass trampoline.”

“What's a trampoline?” Bea asked.

Loretta shrugged. “I don't know, but that guy is a cracked one.”

“I like him.” I told them over my shoulder. “Sure, that stuff about me is loco, but he said they'll cure Mrs. E.”

“Yeah,” Swedish said. “And he hired us a coyote.”

“Let's go,” Hazel said, grabbing Bea's hand.

She headed onto the bustling street, and Swedish and Loretta followed a second later. I patted my hair down, took a deep breath, then stepped into the sunlight.

“Is everyone clear on the plan?” Hazel asked.

Bea nodded. “I jump-start the mayfly.”

“I bust heads,” Loretta said.

“And we all go down in a blaze of glory,” Swedish said as we jogged past a cobbler's shed.

I surprised myself with a laugh. “Our favorite kind of blaze.”

Hazel glanced at me. I guess I'd surprised her, too.
Usually I stayed quiet in public, afraid that someone might notice my freak-eye. But even though I was scared for Mrs. E, I was also excited: we finally had a real chance to get to Port Oro.

We brushed past workers hauling crates and clambered over a fence onto the hillside airfield. A few of the gearslingers fiddling with engines and steam organs glanced at us, but nobody raised an alarm. We looked harmless, I guess, just a bunch of kids playing around.

But we weren't playing.. We were fighting for Mrs. E's life.

Bea and Hazel jogged toward the mayfly—that sleek thopper—while the rest of us ambled along behind. In the tool-cluttered outdoor workshop, two gearheads tinkered with the mayfly engine, and a woman in a fancy coat stood nearby, watching with a sour expression.

“She's lovely,” Hazel said when she got close enough. “Is she fit to fly?”

“We're fine-tuning the piston array,” one of the gearheads told her.

Hazel cocked her head. “Does she
fly,
though?”

“Oh, yes,” the woman in the fancy coat said. “She's quite—”

“She flies!” Hazel called, and everyone sprang into action.

Loretta touched her knife to the woman's throat,
whispering threats, and a thump sounded from the other side of the thopper as Swedish clobbered one of the gearheads. I put my arm around the other one and said, “My friends have nasty tempers. Let's keep this quiet.”

“You're s-stealing the thopper?” the gearhead stammered. “That's crazy! The guardships will shoot you down. There's nowhere to go.”

“In that case,” I told him, “there's no reason to make a fuss.”

Bea monkeyed with the pistons while Swedish ran his fingers over the controls—then the engine roared to life. Hazel swung into position, Loretta grabbed for a boarding strap, and I scrambled on deck.

“Help!” the woman in the fancy coat screamed. “Somebody, help!”

With a blast of air, the thopper lifted off—and Loretta shouted, “Wait, wait!”

Sure, she could slink through shadows like a hunting cat, but she didn't know anything about boarding airships. She was still dangling halfway off the deck, her boots scrabbling against the hull, trying to get a toehold.

The thopper rose, and I looked down at Loretta and froze. We needed to save Mrs. E, not Loretta. We couldn't even trust her not to stab us.

“Chess!” Hazel snapped. “Get her. Now.”

So I hooked my boots into the railing and snagged
Loretta as she started to slip off the hull. I didn't
really
want her to break any bones.

“Climb me like a ladder,” I told her.

She grabbed a handful of my jacket, then my pants, pulling herself upward until Hazel heaved her on board. I lay there for a moment, draped over the edge, watching the hillside blur beneath us, praying that Mrs. E was still okay.

After I grabbed the railing and hopped on deck, I found Loretta sitting with her arms around her knees. “Th-thanks,” she told me.

“It's nothing,” I said, trying to ignore Hazel's dirty look.

“No, I mean it.” Loretta swallowed. “I don't like heights. And I know you don't trust me, so—thanks.”

“Sure,” I said, then turned away to stare anxiously toward the junkyard.

I couldn't spot our neighborhood in the endless sprawl, and my jaw clenched as I pictured Mrs. E drowsing in her bed before the walls started collapsing around her.
We're coming, Mrs. E. Stay safe for three more minutes
.

“Hang on,” Hazel called, grabbing a strap behind Swedish. “We've got company.”

“C-company?” Loretta gulped.

“A guardship.” Hazel grabbed Swedish's shoulder. “Swede, they're behind that rise.”

I scanned the sky and saw a guardship veering toward us, a sleek craft with jointed fins, coming fast. There was nowhere to hide.

“We can't outrun
that,
” I said.

“H
E'S FAST, BUT HE
can't turn,” Swedish told me, yanking a lever. “No rooftop puddle-jumper is keeping me away from Mrs. E.”

He swung the mayfly into the air, rising toward the clouds. As we climbed higher, the guardship drew closer. Loretta moaned while Bea danced around the engine, adjusting gears. Swedish hammered a soundless tune on the steam organ keyboard, his fingers a blur, and Hazel stood behind him, her braids flying.

“The shack's three wisps to your left, Swede,” she shouted. “The guardship's five hundred yards and closing.”

“That's what he thinks,” Swedish said, aiming the thopper higher and higher.

Flying slower and slower as we rose.

“Four hundred yards,” Hazel said, and shot me a look.

Sometimes with Hazel there was no need for words. “Bea!” I yelled. “Fasten down, this is going to get bumpy!”

Loretta looked at me with frightened eyes, so I unspooled a jack line and handed it to her, saying “Wrap this around yourself.”

“Three hundred fifty yards!” Hazel shouted.

“Wh-why?” Loretta asked me.

“Because any second now,” I said, “Swedish is going to start
flying
this thing.”

“What's he doing now?” she moaned, and started winding the rope around her arm.

“Three hundred!”

I yanked the rope from Loretta's hands and strapped her down properly. The wind whipped my hair from my face, and she gasped. “Your
eye
! It's full of Fog—and it's
moving
. That's freaky!”

“Yeah,” I said.

“
Totally
freaky!”

“Yup,” I said.

“Dude,” she said. “You're a Fog-eye.”

“I know!”

“Wait,
you're
the kid Kodoc is looking for! You're the most wanted person in the entire Rooft—” she shrieked as the mayfly jerked.

“Two hundred yards!” Hazel shouted. “Swede, they've got harpoons cocked.”

The deck was almost vertical. I tugged my hair into place, wedged myself against a boiler vent, and watched the guardship climbing after us, my heart thundering.

“One fifty!” Hazel shouted. “Swede, stop showing off!”

Swedish laughed and flicked a valve open.

The engine sputtered, and stalled. Then stopped.

A weightless silence surrounded us. No pistons pumped, no foggium flowed. We hung motionless in the air, aimed almost directly upward.

Then the pneumatic
pop-pop
of harpoons sounded behind us. Airtroopers shouted, and the mayfly dropped like a stone. The harpoons missed us by five feet. Wind lashed the hulls, and through my fear I felt a tug of excitement: it reminded me of diving into the Fog.

When the guardship roared past, our little mayfly rocked in its wake. In five seconds, the airship was a hundred yards above us, and heading away, while we were still plummeting toward the lower slope.

Swedish wrestled the wheel, and Bea stepped on a hose to adjust the flow of foggium. Loretta screamed, Hazel whooped, and the engine roared to life. The rudders caught the wind and we swooped toward the slum, ten feet over the rooftops. The bridge whirred past, then shacks and alleys blurred beneath us.

“Swedish did that on
purpose,
” Loretta said, through chattering teeth. “If we live, I'm going to kill him.”

Then a terrible wrenching noise overtook us: the sound of a junkyard neighborhood being ditched. Cracks appeared along the edges of a platform and all the shanties and trash—and Mrs. E, still in her bedroom—started sliding downhill. I leaned forward, urging the mayfly on.

I scanned the slum, my heart clenched in my chest. A hill of garbage sped past beneath us. A flock of startled seagulls screamed around us. I spotted the clearing where we'd stumbled onto gang kids playing bootball—but the cluster of balloons was gone. The bosses weren't trying to keep this part of the slum aloft, not anymore.

My throat dried and sweat stung my eyes. I saw the water hole, the alley stalls . . . then our half-collapsed block came into view, and the shack was still standing! I exhaled in relief—and saw a shadow flickering on the roofs beneath us.

I glanced over my shoulder and gasped.

The guardship was a hundred yards behind us, closing fast. Two cannon ports slid open along the prow.

“Cannons behind us!” I screamed. “The guardship, they're firing
now
!”

Swedish hammered the keyboard and the thopper rolled to the left so hard that a rudder snapped. A second later, the cannons roared like a thunderclap. The barrage slammed into the slum, blasting tents into scraps . . . and
one cannonball clipped the mayfly.

Behind me, Bea gave an agonized shout that turned my blood to ice.

Despite the wild wobbling of the deck, I spun and staggered toward her. But she didn't look hurt. As I got closer, I saw that she hadn't yelled from pain. She'd yelled because the engine was on fire. Orange flames spewed from a broken hose, and smoke poured behind the mayfly like a black river.

“How bad is it?” I yelled.

“She's dead!” Bea called back. “We're going down!”