AQUA (The Elements Series Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  Map

  1. The Fear of Success

  2. Threshold

  3. The Interview

  4. Arco's Confession

  5. The Others: Part One

  6. Aftermath

  7. Coming Home

  8. The Others: Part Two

  9. The Message

  10. Last Sunset

  11. Embarking

  12. Parson Fish

  13. Bearings

  14. Launching

  15. Arrival

  16. Playing with Buttons

  17. Food-Shaped Food

  18. Tattoo Story

  19. Campus Tour

  20. Ms. Plume

  21. Stabilize

  22. Questioning Liddick

  23. Aligning

  24. The Echo Explanation

  25. Is This Seat Taken?

  26. Empathy Class

  27. Biotransfer and Culture

  28. Debriefing

  29. Endurance and Survival: Part One

  30. Endurance and Survival: Part Two

  31. Cross Curriculum Interface

  32. Sorted

  33. The Leviathan

  34. Ship Stations

  35. Launch

  36. Falling

  37. Setting Out

  38. Cave and Consequences

  39. Rising

  40. Truce

  41. The Call

  42. The Net

  43. Developments

  44. Confessing to Arco

  45. Azeris

  46. Opening the Channel

  47. Boarding

  48. Termites

  49. Containment

  50. The Bubbles

  Continue the Journey

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  AQUA | Book One

  Copyright © 2015 by Tracy Korn. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  Cover Design Copyright © 2015 by James Korn

  Photography by J.Korn Photographics

  www.jkornphoto.com

  www.theelementsseries.com

  Edited by Ryan Bachtel and Rachel Carpenter

  Summary: Only the best can begin career training at Gaia Sur, the elite academy on the ocean floor, but when Jazz begins receiving cryptic messages from past Gaia cadets coming from within the earth's core, she and her friends discover that the road to everything they've ever wanted now leads somewhere they never wanted to go.

  For Laura and Michael.

  A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

  ~ John Augustus Shedd

  CHAPTER 1

  The Fear of Success

  This morning is like every morning that has come before, and I am the only one who cares that it could be the last.

  It's May, and through the shuttle window this time of year, it's just bright enough outside to see the relay dome for Gaia Sur, the only way anyone ever gets out of Seaboard North. It sits about half-a-mile out from shore in the Atlantic Ocean, though the school itself is miles below.

  In a few minutes, the sunlight will wrap over the smooth, metallic surface of the dome and make it shine like a fallen star until it sinks into the rising tide, leaving only the blinking red buoy light by the time we arrive at the interviews today. I've watched this happen for the last twelve years of preliminary school, but this time, right now, could be the last, and it feels like I never saw it coming.

  My twin brother, Jax, sits next to me on the shuttle leaning his head back on the seat with his eyes closed like he does every morning, but I thought he might look out the window today. Tomorrow, we'll either leave our mother and Nann, our little sister, and take a submarine to Gaia, or learn that we'll never be able to. I don't know which I think is worse.

  Jax says it's what we've been working toward all these years, but now that it's finally here, the reality of possibly leaving and never coming back is paralyzing. I know everything will be taken care of here between the stipends that Jax and I will earn if we get into Gaia, plus my father's security package, so I just tell myself that if we can't have him, at least the hydrogen plant gave us that. Not everyone is so lucky.

  No one except the seniors will be in school today, which means Nann and our mother will be able to distract themselves with going to the marketplace, cooking, and then decorating for the port festival tonight instead of worrying about how Jax and I are scoring. Both my mother and father sat for the interview when they were 18 too, but the only thing they ever said about it was that it's long. That's all anyone ever says about it.

  "Will you stop bouncing?" Jax opens his brown eyes in a squint against the reflecting sun and elbows me in the ribs as our shuttle pulls away from the station and heads for the tunnel tube.

  "Ow!" I say, stopping my knee abruptly and glaring at him, then turning my gaze back through my small circular window to watch our mother, Nann, and all the other parents and siblings getting smaller as they wave.

  "Jazz!" Jax hisses.

  "What?"

  "You're making my teeth rattle," he says, pushing a hand through his dark brown curls, which are too tight to actually be in his eyes, so he's evidently trying to show me how exasperated he is.

  "Sorry," I say, managing to roll my eyes right into the bright overhead lights that flicker on as we enter the tunnel.

  "Stop worrying about the interview. We've had twelve years of preparation for this, and we're ranked third and fourth in the class. If you want to worry about someone, worry about this guy…" Jax pushes the back of a light brown head of wavy hair in the seat in front of us.

  "Let's go then, Ripley!" the boy is out of his seat and pushing back at Jax, both of them laughing and squashing me into the window with their flailing ape appendages.

  "Hey, I'm sitting here!" I yell at Jax and the other half of the idiot equation, Arco Hart, who is ranked tenth in our class. He smiles an apology at me, but all I can do is shake my head and look out the window, which is pointless because there's nothing to see but steel and shadows in the tunnel on the way to the school.

  "She's just wound up about the interview," Jax says, and I swallow hard to keep from rounding on him.

  "Why are you worried?" Arco asks, his face falling when I turn to him.

  "Because I'm the only one who—what? Why are you looking at me like that?" I press my lips together and scowl at him, then taste the blood in my mouth.

  "Here, take this," Arco says, slipping out of the aisle and back into the dark blue covered seat in front of us, then reaching over the top of it with the handkerchief he's just fished from his pocket. I touch my fingers to my now throbbing lip and pull them back to see the bright red smear, then look up at the handkerchief he's offering and raise an eyebrow at him. "Come on, it's clean," he smiles again, so I take the cloth.

  "Must have happened in the jostle. Sorry, Jazz," Jax says, wincing. "Make sure you press on it." I narrow my eyes at him and feel guilt well up in my chest about the whole situation, which makes no sense at all. Why should I feel guilty about getting hit in the mouth by a couple of orangutans? "I'll get a cold pack," Jax says after looking at Arco, then grips the steel pole at the end of our seat to hoist himself upward and toward the front of the shuttle where the medi-droid is stationed. Why doesn't he just press the call button? I think, and shake my head, even more annoyed. When I look back to Arco, I find him staring down at me with hang d
og hazel eyes as he props his chin on his forearms over the top of the seat.

  "It's fine. It's just a busted lip," I mumble through his handkerchief.

  "I'm really sorry."

  "I'll live," I say, but he doesn't look any less pathetic.

  "Why are you so worried about the interview?"

  "That's not what's bothering me," I answer, pulling the cloth away to see if the bleeding has stopped.

  "Then what is it?"

  I debate telling him because I don't even really know myself, but then it comes spilling out like a bucket of frogs.

  "Aren't you worried about not coming back?" I ask. He looks at me, expressionless for a second, and I get the feeling that whatever he says next won't be the whole truth.

  "Jazz, it's not like we'll never talk to our families again. There are still port-calls."

  "But that's only virtuo, and only for six days each year."

  He waits another beat before responding. "They'll be OK if we get in—when we get in. Isn't that the most important thing?" he asks, fighting to maintain his smile, and now I know he's worried too.

  This is the part no one wants to talk about. The fear of failure is easy, asking what if we don't make it, what if we have to stay in the overcrowded Seaboard stacks forever with nothing to do and no chance of making something of ourselves? But the fear of success? What's the danger in getting everything we've ever worked for...everything we've ever wanted? What's the danger in sacrificing everything we've ever known just so we can protect it? But no one else thinks like this.

  None of it makes any sense, so I just look through the window into the tunnel and watch nothing race by.

  ***

  The last of the cold pack disintegrates as the shuttle pulls into the school station, and the hydraulic steel doors slide open a few feet up the aisle. As we approach, I see teachers lining each side of the school foyer through the window—five women on one side, five men on the other.

  "What's happening in there?" I ask Jax, but he just shakes his head as he peers over my shoulder.

  "I don't know."

  "Are we supposed to go in now? No one is moving," Arco says, then leans over the seat in front of him to talk to someone else just as we hear the school intercom.

  "YOU MAY EXIT THE SHUTTLE IN THE ORDER YOUR NAME IS CALLED."

  My knee starts bouncing again, and I will it to stop.

  "FRAYA CLEARMORE," the intercom voice says.

  "Fraya is ranked first in the class, so this can't be bad, can it?" I whisper to Jax.

  "ELLIS RAJ."

  "He's number two, which means we're probably next. It has to be a rank thing," Jax says, looking at me reassuringly. I hear my heart drumming in my ears, then notice Jax's knee bouncing.

  "JAZWYN RIPLEY."

  The guilt I'd felt in my chest earlier is replaced now with a heavy sheet of ice that makes it hard to breathe. I stand and shuffle past Jax, his expression telling me he will be right behind me.

  "JAXON RIPLEY," the intercom voice continues. "QUINN STALLWORT, AVIS LING."

  When I step off the shuttle onto the concrete platform, everything is in slow motion. The seamless gray walls of the docking bay move past like in a dream until they flow into the brushed metal benches lining the building and then into the arching steel entryway of the foyer with the school icon, the shiny chrome letters SBN embossed on the inside of the globe at its peak. Through the window that wraps around the building, I see our teachers standing along opposite walls, all of them dressed in the same style, but differently colored tunics and pants. Ms. Wren is standing along the left wall wearing all sky blue, which stands out against her dark skin. Some of her long black braids have blue beads at the ends, which click together when she walks through the door smiling at me, her high cheekbones and delicately angled features like an ancient Egyptian queen's. She doesn't say anything, but her soft expression makes me feel like there's nothing to be afraid of.

  "Ms. Wre—" I start, and she stiffens, shaking her head back and forth just barely, and just once. My stomach churns with the uncertainty, and my head feels like someone has left a screen on an empty feed, the static noise seeming to get louder as we walk through the foyer doors and stand against the wall. After a few minutes, the anxious feeling causes a nervous smile to pull at my lips, which stops in place with the searing pain and tinny taste of blood suddenly on my tongue again. I suck my bottom lip into my mouth and hold it there with my top teeth as Jax walks in with the others, each teacher approaching a student to stand together like Ms. Wren did with me.

  Jax's dark, heavy brows are knit together, and he contorts his face into something that I'm sure he thinks is reassuring when he sees my expression. I'm exactly one minute and 18 seconds younger than him, but that's all he needs to feel like the protective big brother. We all have enough to worry about without him adding me to his list, though, so I point to my lip and shrug it off. His brows relax, and in knowing he feels better, so do I.

  "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS, TOP TEN SENIORS!" our principal says over the announcement speaker. "AT THIS TIME, PLEASE FOLLOW YOUR ASSIGNED INSTRUCTORS."

  "Why are we—" I start to whisper what I'm sure everyone is thinking to Ms. Wren, but her quick gray eyes stop me. She shakes her head at me slowly, deliberately, and I know I can't ask her anything else right now.

  I look over to Jax on the other side of the room and find him mouthing the word breathe to me, but that's not helping to melt the spreading freeze I feel. I try to smile at him and remember my lip just in time, raising my eyebrows and nodding instead to assure him that I'm fine, even though I'm not. I find Arco right behind him, whose eyes are bright and smiling, and for just that second, I do feel better...warmer until he disappears down the shadowy algorithms hallway towering in the wake of Mr. Hmong's balding head, and the ice slides over my chest again.

  CHAPTER 2

  Threshold

  I look back at our silver, bullet nose shuttle and see that no one else has disembarked yet. Why isn't anyone else getting off? Why isn't anyone talking? I think, overwhelmed with questions that I can't answer. Maybe I'm just picking up on everyone else's anxiety. Ms. Wren said that can happen sometimes, especially in a closed space like this foyer or the shuttle. Maybe that's really what's making me uneasy about the prospect of going to Gaia. So, I need to calm down. I need to take a deep breath, I think as I start to follow Ms. Wren. It's not like they're going to kill us. Ms. Wren could not look at me and smile even a little bit if they were going to kill us. That I know for sure.

  The sound of our footsteps echoes behind us in the communications corridor, and it's so palpable that I keep turning around to make sure no one else is there. They've turned all the holograms off, and until we pass the occasional steel water pooler, the long stretch of obsidian walls, doors, and floor make me feel like I've fallen through a hole in the earth beneath the daybreak blue of the ceiling.

  Ms. Wren gives me a still look that transforms when her eyes flash almost imperceptibly, but I notice. She holds my gaze for a second too long…she wants me to notice, so I watch her face more closely. She's using all the cues we discussed in the body language unit last week: eye contact, nodding, the way she's angling her head forward to draw me in. I still don't understand everything from Empathy class, but the feeling that comes over me is reassuring—as long as I don't ask any questions, that is.

  There is still no one else in the communications corridor with us when we stop at a room I've never been inside before. I've always thought it was a closet for the maintenance droids, but when Ms. Wren opens the door, it's much bigger—about the size of an office—and a round metal table with two matching chairs and a white, lidded box on top of the table are in the middle of it. There are no windows in this room, which is strange since all the rooms in this wing have windows, and all the walls are a milky white, which is also strange since all rooms in the communication corridor are blue. On the opposite wall there is one door, and I have no idea where it could lea
d. Ms. Wren closes the door behind us, takes my hand, and leads me to the little table to sit down after she puts the tote on the floor.

  "We don't have a lot of time, Jazwyn, so I can't explain everything, but you're all right; you're all going to be all right, don't worry. You and the others are able to interview first because you're in the top ten, isn't that wonderful? You don't have to wait here all day." She smiles her normal, bright smile at me now, which turns her cheeks into little apples, and I smile back at her as widely as I can without splitting my lip open again. "Oh no, what happened there?"

  "Just an accident on the shuttle. My brother and Arco were wrestling," I answer. She smirks and nods, knowing them both well. "Ms. Wren, why did we have to be quiet back there?"

  "Today, the commons areas are amplified to secure the interviews just like every year. Everyone, even students on the shuttle can hear whatever might be said. Can you imagine how upset the rest of your classmates would be if they knew you were all interviewing first when they'll be here for hours waiting their turn? That's why we wait until we're behind closed doors to tell you why you were called off separately. You'll need to tell anyone who asks that you're not permitted to discuss the reasoning. Part of your Gaia acceptance, or the security of your topside career track depend on you not sharing the details of this interview with anyone outside your cohort, even years from now."

  I look down at the table to figure out how to ask her about this, then meet her eyes again. "No disrespect intended, Ms. Wren, but wouldn't it be motivation for everyone to try harder if they knew the top ten didn't have to wait all day, or just if they knew how they could better prepare?" I ask.

  "Of course, which is exactly why we're not allowed to tell you. Competition like that would divide your focus—Gaia wants the top ten students to be motivated to achieve solely by the prospect of getting into Gaia. As for sharing the details of your interview with those beyond your cohort, it would only cause anxiety. Everyone's interview is different."