May Contain Spies: A Spy Thriller (Meet Abby Banks Book 1) (13 page)

“Swim! Now!” she screamed, kicking toward me and pointing. I glanced at her for a split second before thrashing forward.

My mother caught up to me in an instant and when she grabbed me, I jumped and flailed wildly, trying to throw her off as my screams filled my helmet.

“Abby, it’s okay,” my mother’s voice was so labored, it took me a moment to make out her voice over my own cries. “Just swim naturally and try not to look so much like a wounded animal.”

I glanced at her as she surged ahead of me, gripping my hand as she did so. I turned my head back toward where the shark should have been but I couldn’t see it anymore as I swept the blade of my flashlight beam back and forth.

My mother pulled me forward, and as I turned back forward, I made every effort to kick like a normal, non-panicked Abby Banks. “Hopefully it was alone,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

“Or if there are others, they decide he’s the prey now,” my mother replied.

That thought chilled me to the core. Maybe there were others? What if they thought we smelled mighty tasty covered in shark blood? I swallowed, trying to concentrate on breathing because if I didn’t, I was going to freak out, and I didn’t think that would help much, especially given that we were a million miles beneath the ocean with no help in sight.

One breath in. One breath out.

I don’t know how long I swam like that, focused on my breathing, but when I looked up there was a huge underwater mountain looming before us. In its base, a few meters from our position, was a dark hole in the wall. Brown crags of rock jutted up from all angles as bits of fleshy green plant-life floated around.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing with my flashlight so that my mother would see what I was talking about.

“Our destination. That’s where we rendezvous with my friends,” my mother said, glancing back at me, and for whatever reason, I knew she was smiling at me.

I don’t know why, but that made me feel pretty good inside even though we were headed into a deep, dark hole under the water.

“How many secret underwater bases are there?” I asked as we reached the entrance. It was way bigger than I’d initially thought. Maybe even big enough to fit one of those one-person submarines that my mother used earlier.

“A lot,” my mom said, placing her hand against a small metallic pad. It glowed with bright, crimson light for a second before a green light flashed three times. Then a series of lights came on around the entrance, illuminating the sea for several hundred meters in every direction.

“This is a lot bigger than I’d expected,” I said as a metal door opened a few feet into the cave to reveal a solid black rubber room with a grated floor.

“This one is just a baby,” my mom said, and I knew she was smirking at me as she pulled us into the room and pressed a button. The doors behind us snapped shut with a surge of bubbles. Then the water in the room began to drain away through the grates beneath our feet.

A moment later, my mother pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair in a way that made me envious. She smiled at me, and I could see the relief in her face as she took a step toward me and patted me on the shoulder.

“You did great, Abby. We’re almost out of here,” she said, and for some reason, I almost believed her.

Chapter 12

The elevator we were in was weird because it was made of glass. The walls, ceilings, and even the floor were nothing but glass. You would think this meant I had an awesome view, but because we were inside a freaking underwater mountain, the only thing I could see was black rock and cabling.

The moment my mother had pulled off my gear, we stepped into the elevator without changing out of the skin-tight black under-suits. This wasn’t bad if you were my mother because the way the thing hugged her body made me a little jealous because, well, it made me feel curveless. I crossed my arms over my chest and glanced out one of the glass walls. More black stone. Awesome.

“Why is there a glass elevator inside an underwater mountain? There’s no scenery,” I said.

“There will be,” my mom replied, not looking up from the electronic device in her hand. It was about as big as a greeting card and just as thin. The light from its screen illuminated her face, casting it in a blue glow that made her look almost ghostly.

“Will be? We’ve been in this elevator for like an hour, how much more travel could there possibly be?” I asked, glancing up and down in the small space but seeing no discernible change in scenery.

My mother glanced up from her tablet and gave me a look that meant I had confused her somehow. “Abby, we’re not moving,” she said. “We’re only being decompressed.”

“What?” I asked. “The walls look like they are moving. How could we not be moving? It feels like we’re moving.” I stamped my foot and the elevator didn’t move at all.

“Whatever you say, dear,” my mother replied, focusing back on her electronic gizmo.

A moment later, the wall behind her slid open with the hiss of compressed air to reveal a lime green room. White tile with a stripe of lime led the way out of the elevator before turning off down a corridor. My mother stepped out of the elevator and motioned for me to follow with one hand while stuffing her tablet into a pouch on her leg.

I followed her into the agonizingly colored room and cringed. The walls and ceiling were all lime green, and the lights overhead were those fluorescent ones you see above workbenches and in factories. They swung haphazardly on too-thin cables as we passed under them. It was as though our movement was disturbing them even though they were several feet above our heads.

When we reached the corner, I noticed that the colors changed. While one of them was still lime-green, the left fork was caustic-yellow and the right one was blood-red. The middle stripe of tile changed as well. I looked at it for a long time, waiting for my mother to decide where we were going to go.

“Is this whole place color coordinated?” I asked when my mother didn’t move.

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s to help you know where you’re going.”

“So why aren’t we moving then?” I asked.

“We’re supposed to meet my contact at this corridor. It’s why we came in the way we did,” she said, glancing down the hallways and taking a step backward. Her left hand reached down toward her gun, fingers resting lightly on the handle.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “We need to leave.”

“How do you know?” I asked, filled more with confusion than fear. Didn’t we just get here?

“Hawthorne is never, ever late. I’ve been trying to ping him this whole time, and he hasn’t responded.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, yanking me down the blood-red hallway. Our footfalls, or rather my footfalls echoed on the tile like a leaping elephant.

“Maybe he just got tied up, you know, getting to an underwater mountain base?” I asked, but even as I said the words, I didn’t really believe them. My mother was unflappable, and for some reason, she was totally flapped.

“The only reason he wouldn’t be here is if he is dead or captured. Neither of those two scenarios are particularly useful to us,” she replied as we came up to a room with a white door. It was closed, and it had one of those little windows with the steel mesh like you sometimes see in hospitals.

My mother reached out, gripping the knob with one hand and twisted it, but it didn’t move. This should have been obvious since the little red light next to the door was solid red. Didn’t that generally mean it was still electronically locked?

“Um… I think it’s still locked,” I said, pointing at the light. “Isn’t that what the light means?”

“Yes,” my mother hissed. “I’m trying to decide if I want to risk using my keycard or if that will just make bad things happen to us.”

“Bad things?” I gulped. “Like what?”

“Like filling the hallway with nerve gas so that we die puking our guts up. I really don’t want to go that way if I can help it.” She glanced at me. “I somehow doubt you do either.”

I forced myself to smile at her and shook my head meekly. Part of me hoped she was joking, but I didn’t think she was because this really wasn’t the time or place for that. “So let’s not do that. What is your plan B?” I asked.

“Steal a submarine,” she said, tapping the door with her finger. “They are through this door.”

“Well if there is a choice, should we try the yellow submarine instead of the red one?” I asked. My mother smirked at me, and I didn’t quite understand why.

“You’re cute,” she said, pulling out her gun and moving farther down the hallway. The weapon was huge in her hands now that I could see it in clear light. It looked different than the other guns I’d seen, too, because it was all black with a wooden grip.

There was a sound above us. A sort of high pitched whine that reminded me of gears moving, and I glanced upward to see a solitary white camera, its black lens pointed toward us. My breath caught in my throat as I scampered forward and grabbed my mom by the shoulder.

“Camera!” I gasped, pointing at the offending machine.

“Great,” my mother said, swinging her gun up and firing in one quick motion that left my ears ringing. Bits of shrapnel rained down from the spot where the camera had been, littering the ground with pieces of broken white plastic.

My mom grabbed me by the arm and tugged me bodily down the hallway as the sound of pneumatics filled my ears. Evidently, my mother heard it too because she pulled off her ring. It was solid black and had what looked like a chunk of obsidian for a gemstone. She glanced back at the door a couple meters behind us. She bit her lip and looked up and down the hallway before lunging forward and slapping it on the door. It stuck there with a wet squelch as my mom sprinted back toward me.

“Run!” she screamed, shoving me forward. I didn’t waste any time asking why, I just high-tailed it because why wouldn’t I? My mother was telling me to run after she placed some super-spy device on a doorway. The odds of it exploding were exponential.

There was a shriek of metal, and an explosion rippled through the hallway. I glanced over my shoulder to see the door twist inward on itself like an accordion. It was like the device was sucking up the door. It ripped free of the frame with a loud crack that shook the walls.

“Wait, Abby, if you get too close you could get pulled into the gravity well along with the door. It prioritizes organic tissue for some reason,” my mother said, coming to a stop so suddenly that I crashed into her. She grabbed me by the shoulder and steadied me as I stumbled forward. Score one for klutzy me.

I watched as the device began to glow like a red-hot piece of metal as the last of the white door disappeared into its gullet. It fell to the ground with a clang that rang in my ears, but my mother paid it no mind as she stepped past me and walked toward it. With almost casual indifference, she plucked it from the ground and stuffed it back on her finger.

“I can’t believe you wear that on your finger,” I said with a gasp.

“It takes some getting used to,” she said, waving me forward before stepping into the room, shiny black gun still drawn. “Come on.”

I was at her side a moment later, and my eyes bugged out at the sight. What stood before me looked like a giant mechanized orca in a pool of water. It was a huge metal monstrosity painted to match one of the whales if you weren’t looking too closely at it. Only instead of those big white patches at the front of the things head, it had giant windows.

My mom stepped up to the orca and pressed a button on a control panel. The creature’s giant maw opened, and its tongue extended like a ramp until it came to rest on the metal floor at her feet. She stepped around to the front of the thing and put one hand on its snout.

“Abby, this is Jonas. Jonas, this is my daughter, Abby,” she said and disappeared inside the whale’s mouth.

I waited a moment, half-expecting the whale to respond to me, but after a while, I felt a little silly and walked up to the whale. I could already see my mother seated behind the left eye. She made a ‘hurry up’ gesture, and I stepped on the tongue. I was pretty sure it was just my mind telling me it was spongy because I was reasonably sure it had to be pink metal.

“Well, this is creepy,” I said, mostly to myself, and walked up the ramp into the whale’s mouth. I had barely cleared its gullet when the mouth snapped down with a clang, cutting off my escape in a movement that made my heart leap out my throat and beat frantically inside my mouth. I swallowed, pushing my heart back into place as I clutched my chest.

Neon lights lit up the floor, directing me to a chair that was situated in the right eye-pod. I sat down in the brown leather chair and smirked to myself. This wasn’t so bad, right? I mean, I’d always wanted to travel inside a giant mechanized orca.

“Well, now I can scratch this one off my bucket list,” I said to the whale, patting its inside with my hand. “Probably SeaWorld too. I don’t think they let you get
this
up close and personal with the whales.”

“Glad to be of service,” warbled a low guttural voice from a speaker beside my head.

I screamed, jerking my hand away from the spot when laughter filled the room through the speaker. My mom’s laughter.

“Gotcha,” she said, and I knew she was smirking. I glared at the speaker.

“Oh, right, because today hasn’t been weird enough that I wouldn’t expect the submarine to talk,” I growled and crossed my arms over my chest as the orca-sub began to move backward in the tiny pool.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” my mom said and both the harnesses lit up with red light. I grabbed hold of the tabs and clicked them into place with only three tries. When I’d succeeded the harness glowed green for a moment before winking out. Then the orca dove into the water.

We descended for what felt like forever, and the screen in front of me lit up with some sort of weird imaging. I’m not quite sure how Jonas the whale-sub managed to do it, but it was rendering the surroundings in a full three-sixty view in perfect color.

“That’s pretty cool,” I said, mouth somewhat agape.

“Glad you’re impressed,” my mom said. “Now, we just need to meet the Plan B contact.”