Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan

Author:Rick Riordan [Riordan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241538210
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2021-10-04T18:30:00+00:00

I dream of drowning, which isn’t like me.

I’m trapped with Dev in the Harding-Pencroft security office, deep beneath the administration building. On multiple monitors, we watch torpedoes racing towards the base of the cliffs. Dev yells into the PA system, ‘Major threat. Need everyone to EVACUATE. I –’

The room crumbles around us. The floor breaks like a sheet of ice. Monitors and control panels explode. The ceiling collapses. We tumble into oblivion.

We sink beneath the bay, trapped in an air pocket amid a shifting tomb of wreckage. We scream and beat our fists against slabs of broken concrete. Salt water pours in. Dev reaches out to take my hand as my head goes under. My lungs fill with brine and sediment.

I wake in a cold sweat.

For a few shaky breaths, I don’t know where I am.

I hear Ester’s puff-puff-snore from the next bed over. In the bunk above me, Nelinha grumbles in her sleep. Maybe I’m back at Harding-Pencroft, and everything is fine …

Then I remember. Lincoln Base. My old life is gone. There’s a reason I’m dreaming about wreckages …

I sit up, shivering. At least my period cramps have started to subside. That’s a major blessing.

I check my dive watch: 5:30 a.m.

I know I’ll never be able to get back to sleep. I slip out of bed as quietly as I can and grab a swimsuit from my bag. When you dream of drowning, there’s only one thing to do: get in the water as soon as possible.

I encounter no one as I retrace my way through the main room and out to the pier. The Varuna rests dark and silent at her moorings.

As dawn breaks, the lagoon turns to turquoise-and-pink glass. I plunge into the warm clear water. Immediately, I’m surrounded by a tornado of angelfish. I free dive through the reefs. I wave good morning (from a safe distance) to a viper moray who’s peeking out from his crevice. I admire a fourteen-foot nurse shark cruising through the sea grass.

After a while, Socrates finds me. He introduces me to his local dolphin friends. We swim together until the sky is full of light.

By the time I pad back into the base, I’m feeling refreshed. The smell of baking pastries raises my spirits even more. Jupiter waddles around the dining table, setting out baskets of croissants, muffins and Danish pastries in anticipation of the morning rush. I can’t believe one orangutan baked so much in such a short amount of time.

That smells amazing, I tell him. Can I help?

He hands me a turnover. Taste this.

It melts in my mouth: butter that is not butter, perfect flaky crust that tastes nothing like seaweed, fruit filling that reminds me of pears and oranges but is probably from one of Nemo’s botany projects harvested fifty feet below.

If I lived here all the time, my cholesterol levels would go through the roof … Or did Nemo figure out a way around cholesterol, too?

Delicious, I say. Mary Berry would be proud.

Jupiter calmly signs, I love you.

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