Calamity Island

2 | DEPTHS

Sadly, most of the Pearl Snake's collection turned out to be junk. After sifting through dead leaves, common mushrooms, and fragments of material too small to use, Jem had to concede that it was a fruitless endeavour.

"What do you reckon it was?" Casper asked. "Before the Cataclysm?"

He sat cross-legged on a balcony protruding out from the nearest skyscraper, adding a sketch of the snake to the extensive collection in his battered notebook. Knowledge, he pointed out, was a treasure in and of itself. Jem had agreed half-heartedly, but she still would have preferred something shiny.

She kicked at one of the spines of the slumbering creature. "Probably some caterpillar or something," she said. "Woke up one morning and had the fright of its life."

Casper let out a gentle laugh. "Didn't we all."

It had been nearly ten years now since the Cataclysm had completely reshaped the city. Nobody knew how it happened, just of the explosion that rocked Santcosmo and the devastation that followed. The survivors who had managed to take shelter underground emerged to find the city devastated, the northern half of the island completely flooded, and the southern almost unnavigable, overrun with plants and animals changed beyond recognition.

Jem sighed. She picked up a couple of the snake's loose scales as a consolation prize, to brag about when they got back to Little San. Nobody had ever brought down a Pearl Snake before. Pretty much everyone back at Little San said she was crazy for even trying — and in all honesty, they were absolutely right — but this was the sort of thing that made her feel alive.

She'd never have been able to make her mark on the world like this before. But the Cataclysm had changed everything. Humans weren't top of the food chain any more, not even close. There were probably even a few plants further up the ladder now.

That kind of paradigm shift had been hard to deal with for some. A lot of people wouldn't venture outside the settlements — the few safe spots like Little San that weren't overgrown with bizarre megaflora or subject to periodic energy surges that completely transformed the landscape as they shuddered past.

Jem didn't get it. She'd been mired in routines and monotony before, the same old drag day after day. Now, there was a whole new world out there — weird, wild and wonderful. She wanted to see it all.

The Pearl Snake let out a low grumble. Its body stirred beneath Jem's feet.

Casper shut the notebook and looked up. "Time to go?"

Jem nodded, but a flash of sunlight glancing red caught her eye.

"Wait a sec." She moved forward, moving spine to spine to steady herself against the snake's shifting body. Finally, she reached the spot where she'd seen the light. She crouched and sifted her hand though the matted mane until she found her prize.

It was a flat, hexagonal crystal, made of a blood-red crystal. Jem smiled, unable to believe her luck. It was the plate she'd seen two years ago, somehow still tangled in the snake's body.

Jem pulled the compass from the pocket of her cargo trousers. Like the plate, it was hexagonal in shape, fashioned from a smooth, burnished metal. Inscribed around its edges were strange symbols. She slid the crystal into a slot on the side of the compass and three of the glyphs lit up, gleaming blood red.

"Hmm." Jem wanted to think it meant something to her, but in truth she had no idea how the compass worked. She knew the compass and the plates interacted somehow, but everything else was a mystery.

The snake shifted again, stronger this time.

"Um. Jem?"

She pocketed the compass. "Yep. Time to go."

But they'd barely made it a few metres before the snake awoke. Its head jerked upright, launching them both into the water as it took off.

"You okay?" Jem asked.

Casper shook his head. "I'd literally just dried off."

"Hey, it's a great day for a swim," Jem said. "Warm sun, bright skies..."

She frowned. In the transparent water below, she saw a dark shape sinking fast beneath her. She patted her pockets, but the compass was gone.

"Damn it!"

"Cheer up," Casper said, innocently. "I heard it's a great day for a swim."

Jem shot him a glare, sucked in a breath and plunged after it.

The submerged bases of the skyscrapers rippled around her as she dove. Underwater, she could make out the shapes of pedestrian bridges, streetlights, abandoned cars, all covered by blankets of bright green weeds. A submerged city, frozen in time. Silver schools of eel-like fish wiggled in and out of the broken windows.

She pushed deeper. Her lungs burned, and pressure stung her ears. But she was close. The device slowed and settled gently on the road surface, just a few arm-lengths away from her. The red symbols on its surface glowed faintly as it hit the tarmac.

A pulse shuddered through the water. Jem stopped abruptly, bubbles shimmering around her.

Like eyes opening after a long slumber, crimson glyphs appeared on the ground. One by one they glowed to life, until they formed a wide ring, pulsing in time with the lights on the compass.

O-kaay. Not the weirdest thing she'd seen, but definitely up there. Aware of the air piling up in her lungs, desperate to be breathed out, Jem kicked deeper, reaching for the compass.

The water rumbled again. The symbols blazed brilliant red, and bubbles billowed up from the ground. Through the shimmering froth clouding her vision, Jem could just about make out the dark shape of a hole opening up at the centre of the ring of symbols.

Oh, crap—

Jem tried to swim away, but a whirling vortex grabbed hold of her body. The last of her air escaped her mouth in a silent cry, and then the whirlpool grabbed hold of her and dragged her into the darkness below.