Dark Water (A Dark Life Fanfiction) [edited]

Chapter 9

After Shurl's house had been re-inflated, we, being children, were put on clean up duty. We cleaned up the kitchen and damp living room as best as we could before crowding around the tiny space heater. Hewitt grumbled softly trying to tone out the constant dripping sound.

"I don't know why she is trying to save the plants." he muttered. "We should just move Topside."

Ty frowned at him as Shurl waltzed past with poles in her arms for propping up plants in the greenhouse. "Your parents aren't going to move just like that." he said, sitting next Gemma.

"The Seablite gang attacked us!"

"Why are the called the Seablite gang?" Gemma asked.

"They escaped a prison called Seablite," doc said as he entered the room.

I looked up at him surprised that he knew something about it. "Doc, where'd you hear that?" I eyed him skeptically.

"It was a time before my professional reputation was ruined. My job back then was to monitor the health of the inmates, and anyone else that was living in experimental housing. In this case, Seablite, which was the first subsea prison." he explained.

As he told the story, my mind reeled. I took elements, piecing them together. The outlaws were escaped convicts from an experimental subsea prison that was within the Benthic Territory borders. It was pretty impressive actually, that they could escape a state of the art prison.

"Time to go," John, Ty's dad, said.

"Wait! I want to hear about the break out, Pa," Zoe cried, listening to doc intensely.

"What breakout?" Shurl asked, carrying a tomato plant.

"The Seablite gang is a bunch of escaped psychos and we're not safe down here!" Hewitt blurted running to hug his mom.

"How'd they escape?" Ty asked looking at doc interested. John and Shurl joined the circle, just as curious.

"That's the mystery. No one knows. The power just shut off-- like it did here." doc explained. "And all of the guards fell into a deep sleep. They weren't drugged. I checked them all."

"I bet the outlaws bashed all of them on the heads in!" Zoe said still wrapped up in the story.

"I don't think so. Not a single guard was wounded." doc explained further that they all woke up in unison, exactly twenty minutes later; same time the power came on.

Shurl looked shaken. "It's just a scary story, right doc?" she said hoping it was to scare us kids.

"It's all true. Five years ago, the Seablite gang escaped, vanishing from the prison. No one ever figured out how they did it," doc said.

Gemma smiled, "maybe one of them had a Dark Gift."

Only doc agreed. John and Ty instantly debunked it as rumors. I looked out of the window thoughtfully. A shadow flashed in the corner my eye. Looking over the kelp field, I thought I had seen Shade but I knew it couldn't have been.

Twenty minutes later, suited in my diveskin and helmet, I swam about trying to clear my head. Ty was putting the unusable food out for the crabs. Crabs would eat anything. Everyone else sat in the cruiser, waiting over the kelp field.

As Ty stroked back to the cruiser, he noticed Gemma waving at him. Her lips parted with surprise as she noticed something beyond him. Pointing in my direction, she shouted for the others. We both turned around to see what she was pointing at.  

By the boundary lamps at the edge of the homestead, a bulky shadow floated over the kelp. It was too small to be the Spector, so I swam toward it as fast as a fish could. It was caught in a current, drifting sideways now. Once I reached it, I knew what it was. The very same abandoned, bloody sub that the outlaws had hauled away. Now settling in the kelp field, shifting the silt beneath it. I stood on the hull staring at the closed hatch, mortified that I'd have to say that I knew about this.