The Secret Sea (10 page)

“Here,” Moira said. The platform vibrated, and the air went a-roar. Zak thought he was back on the ship, its hull shaking with each crashing wave, but the vision stubbornly refused to come.

They clambered onto the Q train to Manhattan. At this time of day, most straphangers were headed in the opposite direction, coming to Brooklyn from the city, so there was no trouble finding three consecutive empty seats. Khalid and Moira flanked Zak.

“Are you okay?” Moira asked him. She had been holding his hand off and on since they left his hospital room.

Tommy, come back. Please. I need to understand.

“He looks a little pale,” Khalid said, worried. The flickering confines of the subway car warped in the lenses of his sunglasses. “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”

“I'm fine,” Zak said. He was close, he knew. Somehow, he could sense that he was close to understanding. Close to Tommy. Again.

“Are you sure?” Moira this time.

“Yes. Trust me.”

I'm coming, Tommy.
His heart skipped a beat and he froze, but it picked up its reliable rhythm immediately.
One way or another, I guess, I'm coming.

*   *   *

The train rattled along, making its usual stops in Brooklyn before diving under the East River to trundle toward Manhattan. The car was eerily silent as only a subway car can be. The noise of the car itself, of its hissing, squealing mechanics, became divorced from the interior, as though it belonged to another world, and the universe within purged itself of sound.

“They must have named him after my uncle,” Zak said, needing to break the silence. He felt nothing; he heard nothing. If he didn't talk, he would go mad.

“Named who?”

“My brother. Thomas Oscar Killian. For Uncle Tomás.”

“Right,” Khalid mused. “Does that mean
you're
named after someone?”

“My dad's stepfather. Grampa Zachary.” He'd never really thought about it before, this business of naming people
for
people.

He'd thought his imaginary friend was his dead uncle; now he knew it was his dead twin. But how? Why? There were other dead people in his life—Grampa Zachary, for one—and he'd never received a visitation from any of them. Not until Tommy. Was being twins enough to breach the barrier between life and death?

He wanted to ask Moira. She subsisted on a steady diet of comic books, science fiction, and fantasy novels. If anyone had a theory on this, it would be Moira. But she would probably have
ten
theories, each one with fifteen subtheories, and if asked, she wouldn't stop until she'd expounded on each and every one. So, maybe not.

“What's the plan here, Moira?” Khalid asked. “We're almost in the city.”

Zak thought he heard something just then, but maybe it was just his imagination. He'd never really heard the voice when he was trying to—it had always sneaked up on him.

“We need to go to the World Trade Center,” Moira said confidently. “If anything's going to happen, it'll be there.”

Khalid twisted around to look at the subway map on the wall behind him. “We should have switched to the R or the N,” he said. “We're gonna end up too far uptown. But we can hop on the R at Canal and—”

Canal. The Canal Street stop.

“What about the E?” Moira asked. “That takes us right to the World Trade Center.”

The Canal Street stop was where he'd seen the flooding. He braced himself.

“Nah, the E doesn't connect up until, like, Times Square. We should just get off at Canal and—”

Moira yelped. “Zak! Stop squeezing—”

But he couldn't help it. His hand had a mind of its own, clenching Moira's hand tightly as the subway car—

The subway car filled with water. Zak's eyes widened, and he strained to hear—

Zak! Zak! Hurry! You have to hurry! Otherwise, it'll be too late!

Stronger, louder than he'd ever heard before.

Tommy! Tommy, listen to me! What's happening?

The car was awash in foaming water. Zak jumped to his feet, dragging Moira up as well, trying to keep their heads above the waterline. How could the car still be racing along while filled?

“Zak! Dude!” Khalid grabbed at Zak's shoulder, trying to pull him back into his seat, but Zak kept his footing. His heart cranked. Stronger. Faster. As the water reached higher and higher, the voice screaming in Zak's mind got louder and louder—
I can't hold on much longer, Zak! You have to hurry! You're the only one who can save me!—
yelling for him to hurry, but the water was so high now that he could barely keep his head above it, and his heart pounded like a drum solo that would never end, but drum solos always ended, and when they did, when this one did, what would happen to his—

And it was over.

As suddenly as it had come upon him, the vision was over. The water vanished in an instant, far too quickly to drain away. It was gone as if—

“As if it was never here,” Zak whispered.

“Zak?” It was Moira, her voice quiet and gentle. Khalid was standing, too, one arm around Zak's waist.

“Dude, you're sweating like crazy. You okay?”

He wanted to tell them that it wasn't sweat—it was water. That somehow he'd been submerged.

Tommy? Tommy! Where are you?

Zak, I can't keep holding on.
Tommy's voice was weakening.
You have to hurr—

Gone.

“What happened?” Moira asked, extricating her hand from his now-limp one. Together, she and Khalid ushered Zak back into his seat.

“You guys didn't see the water?” he asked. “You didn't hear the voice?”

“Sure we heard the voice,” Khalid said.

“You did?” Zak turned to Khalid excitedly, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. “You heard Tommy?”

Khalid's eyebrows mated in concern. “Tommy? Dude, no. The voice of the conductor.” He pointed to the ceiling. “Telling us that Canal is closed for work and we're skipping it.”

Zak groaned and slumped back in his seat.

“You heard something?” Moira asked. “And saw something?”

“Yeah. Right while we were going through Canal Street. Under it, I mean.” What would have happened, he wondered, if they'd stopped there? What would have happened the other day if, instead of running, he'd stood his ground on the platform? Would he have drowned in a flood no one else could see?

He told them what he'd seen. And heard. Khalid took the unprecedented step of removing his sunglasses. He stuck one arm of the frame in his mouth and gnawed at it.

“Look, this is serious. What are we getting into here?”

Moira pursed her lips, thinking. “What do you want to do, Zak? It's your brother. It's your heart.”

There was never a question. “We keep going. We figure this out.”

 

FOURTEEN

They switched trains at Times Square and took the E back downtown. Zak tapped his foot rhythmically on the floor of the train, his body vibrating with urgency and energy. All he could think of was the terror in Tommy's voice, the plea.

“You're the only one who can save me!”

The “only one” part interested him much less than the “save me” part. What did it mean?

Was it possible to rescue Tommy … from death?

He wanted to broach the subject with Khalid and Moira but was afraid the very idea of bringing Tommy back to life would be one step too far, even for his best friends. So he sat, silent, between them and tapped his foot and tried to breathe regularly. It was more difficult than he thought breathing could or should be.

At one of the stations with Wi-Fi, both Khalid's and Moira's phones erupted into flurries of bleeps and ringtones as a backlog of messages came through. All from their parents.

Where are you???
Mrs. O'Grady demanded.

Zak is very sick and you have to bring him back to the hospital NOW
, Mr. Shamoon insisted.

There were more of them, all in the same vein. Varying levels of plea, threat, and cajoling, with a common note of command. A moment of silence swaddled the three of them, and then Khalid said, “Three Basketeers, baby,” and switched his phone off.

Moira did the same. “Three Basketeers,” she repeated.

“Three Basketeers,” Zak added.

“Team Zak one-double-oh!” Khalid hooted.

Zak knew then that he was the luckiest guy in the world, to have two such friends. Words refused to come, so he just gripped their hands tightly and nodded.

And hoped his heart could handle what was to come. The next vision.

He knew there would be another one. In close proximity to the World Trade Center, especially underground, the visions had come reliably. He both wanted and feared them. They could reveal Tommy to him, answer all his questions, blow apart all the secrets that had begun with his parents years ago.

They could also kill him.

*   *   *

As the train rushed under Manhattan, Zak closed his eyes and tried to conjure Tommy's voice, his presence. It was strange—he had no true memory of his twin, yet he felt as though he could imagine Tommy's presence with ease. It was like leaning on your arm until it went numb … and then feeling it slowly come back to life. Tommy was pins and needles throughout his whole being, awakening him from a clotted numbness he hadn't even discerned, because it had gone on so long that it had become normal.

But now … now he could feel again.

He and Tommy were like the old twin towers that had once stood at the end of this subway line—so alike on the outside, different on the inside. One with a bad heart, the other with kidneys that wouldn't work. One had died and one had lived, and maybe that was the way it was supposed to be. But maybe—just maybe—there was a way to fix that.

At the Spring Street stop—two away from the World Trade Center—a cop got on their car. Zak had scarcely registered her presence, when Khalid hauled him to his feet and pulled him off the subway just as the doors closed. Moira barely made it out with them.

“What the hell?” she demanded, rubbing her shoulder where the door had clipped her.

“Five-oh,” Khalid said, as if that explained everything.

“Police?” Zak asked. He tried to follow along, but they were closer to the World Trade Center now, and his ears were beginning to buzz. Just a bit. Just enough to be distracting. He thought he could hear the scream of a gull, but it might have been the subway train pulling out of the station.

“Look,” Khalid said, hustling them toward the exit stairs, “you think it's a coincidence the cops showed up here?”

“They randomly check subways—” Moira began.

“Random, my butt,” Khalid interrupted as the three of them went up the stairs. Any static in Zak's ears vanished. “Look, Zak sleepwalked to Ground Zero before, right?”

Moira groaned, getting it. “His parents called the cops when we left the hospital, and they're going to be waiting for us.”

“Right. And they're probably staking out the subways nearby.”

To Zak, it all sounded remarkably paranoid and, at the same time, highly logical. “So what do we do, then?”

Khalid shrugged. “Go home and play video games?”

Zak ignored his buddy's attempt at humor. He could think only of Tommy's anguished voice, crying out for help. What if his brother was being tortured somehow? Who knew what happened to people after they died? Maybe Tommy was in torment—
had
been in torment for years—and only Zak could save him.

“We'll walk down to the World Trade Center,” Zak said. This part of the city was unfamiliar to them all, but getting to the Freedom Tower wouldn't be difficult. It was the tallest building in the city—in the country—and its trapezoidal angles dominated the skyline. They couldn't miss it. “We'll stick to the smaller streets, avoid any cops we see.”

“What do we do when we get there?” Moira asked.

It was a good question. Zak pretended to think about it, calling out in his thoughts for Tommy.

There was no answer.

“We'll think of something,” he said with a confidence he did not feel. And they turned to the tower and began walking.

*   *   *

“There's a lot of cops here,” Moira said nervously.

“There's always a lot of cops here,” Khalid shot back.

They were on Fulton Street, near the Freedom Tower. Sure enough, the place was crawling with cops. Zak had last been here a few nights before, when he'd awoken from his sleepwalking adventure. He strained to hear the gull, the lap of waves. Something tickled at him, but it could have been the evening breeze coming down Fulton.

His parents were definitely onto him. Khalid was right—there was always a big police presence in this part of town—but there was a flavor in the air, something almost physical. A wariness. An awareness.

The cops were waiting for something.

For him.

“I think—” he started to say, and then the street vanished, the tower vanished. He was on the ship again. This time he forced himself not to panic, not to gape like an idiot. Instead, he stayed as calm as he could, quelling the lurching spasms of his heart.

But wait—his heart
wasn't
lurching. At all. It felt perfectly fine. Reliable. Not like
his
heart.

Shouts and screams all around him. Orders barked. He looked up. Rain spattered and spit. He looked around. The squeak of pulleys and the creak of wood. He ignored it all and—for the first time in a vision—looked
down
.

At his hands.

They were pale. And definitely white.

I'm not
me
in the vision! I'm someone else!

With that realization, things changed—he felt as though something slender and scalding hot had slipped into his gut and then split in two, moving up and down at the same time, cutting him in half. He gritted his teeth against the pain, and then the pain was gone and he could perceive both the rocking, storm-tossed deck of the sailing vessel
and
the crowded, humid sidewalk along Fulton Street. Moira and Khalid stared at him.