Kingdom Keepers V(69)

A shimmer to Finn’s right caught his eye. Like a flash of light. He looked that way: nothing. Empty sea. Turned his head back to watching where he was going. Another wink. Another inspection. Several more flashes, like from paparazzi cameras.

Then, at once, a wall of silver, like a curtain dropping.

A battery of barracuda.

Charlene blew bubbles as her eyes went wide. She’d slipped out of her hologram.

Several hundred fish. The fish turned direction and vanished again. Finn understood intuitively the change was the result of one of two possibilities: the fish were heading away from them, or the fish were heading for them. This explained the wall of silver disappearing—they were no longer seeing the fish from the side.

Charlene popped her head above the water’s surface, gasping. Her hands splashed and her feet treaded water. Willa paused and surfaced to help, attempting to determine if it was a bug in 2.0 and, if so, what could be done about it.

Willa swiped her hand at Charlene’s back. Her hand passed through her friend.

“You’re okay,” she said over the roar of Charlene’s frantic splashing. “You’re stable. This is 2.0.”

“I hate fish!”

The most significant improvement of the 2.0 upgrade was its resistance to fear; prior to the upgrade the slightest tremor of terror made one’s DHI more solid. That Charlene had lost some of her DHI was both troubling and unexpected.

“You’re freaked out,” Willa said. “You need to calm down, Charlie.” If Charlene didn’t return to full hologram the fish would have something to bite.

Maybeck, swimming out ahead, missed the entire Charlene and Willa event. Finn saw the fish coming at them and Charlene slapping on the surface, indicating her hands were flesh.

Some fish attack their prey mouth open, like in cartoons—the big fish after the little fish. Other fish hunt in schools. Finn found this out the hard way. When the wall of silver reappeared, it surrounded him and the two girls. It arrived all at once, like a net being dropped. And not just silver: silver with small black eyes, staring at them. The circle of fish was tightening.

As Finn stopped, he treaded water. Without being consciously aware of it, he’d made his hands and feet 2.0-solid.

The spinning school was incredibly close. Close enough for Finn to see their teeth. Their mouths were long, like the rest of them, so there were plenty of teeth. If Finn had known his fish better he would have realized they weren’t barracuda, but needlefish. Though this realization wouldn’t have helped him any; the truth was that needlefish were much more likely to attack humans than barracuda, much more likely to do harm—as in tearing a chunk of flesh away. Fish that attack in schools operate under a mob mentality. One chunk of missing flesh turns into many. This tends to be detrimental to the prey.

Finn waved his arms threateningly and the school scattered. The swirling wall of silver vanished, then reappeared instantly like the flash of a bullfighter’s cape. In the blink of their disappearance, Finn saw past the curtain to Maybeck, who was swimming back toward Finn and the girls. Maybeck, with his powerful arms and wide eyes and a look of heroic intentions. But the swirl of fish continued to close upon Finn and the girls. It was quickly approaching snack time for the needlefish, and though Maybeck’s intentions might have been noble, his arrival would only offer the fish additional food.

Four legs and feet kicked furiously just above Finn’s head. He kicked to the surface, his last underwater image a few brave needlefish taking aim at one of the girls’ feet and toes. He spooked them with another wave of his arms.

On the surface, Charlene was panicked, Willa unable to calm her down.

“Here’s the bug,” Willa said to Finn as he broke the surface. “In order to tread water, we seem to make our hands and feet solid.” She lifted her hands out of the water and clapped for him.

He tried it and also clapped. “Uh-oh.”

“We need to calm her down, and we need to get swimming again.”

The lifeboats were a good distance away, nearly to the ship.

Finn moved in front of Charlene. “Okay,” Finn said calmly, “I want you to float on your back. Arms out to the side.”

“Isn’t that the dead man’s float?” Charlene asked.

“No, that’s when you float facedown,” said Finn.

“Oh,” said Charlene.

“Lay back and arch your spine,” he said. He was thinking of the needlefish’s proximity to all their toes.

He too was treading water, but he saw that sometimes his hands pushed against the water, sometimes they passed through it without effect. Yet he was able to keep himself on the surface. Take that, Philby!