Daughter of the Deep: Chapters 1–8

The white concrete facades of the buildings are turning pink and turquoise in the sunrise.

Waves rumble and reverberate around the curve of the bay like the snores of a giant.

The cliffs are sheer, plunging straight into the depths of the bay.

My static apnea record is five minutes. Obviously, I can't hold my breath that long when I’m exerting myself, but still, this is my environment.

On the surface, Dev has the advantage of strength and speed. Underwater, I’ve got the endurance and agility.

He lets me scratch his head, which is as smooth and taut as a water balloon, then rub his pectoral fins.

He veers and swims off, the wake from his tail buffeting my face.

The pearl was the centerpiece of Mom’s mangalsutra, her wedding necklace. It’s also the only thing we have left of her. Dev smiles, though his eyes get that familiar melancholy drift.

Our rooms aren’t as spacious as the sophomore and junior digs in Cousteau Hall. And they’re definitely not as nice as the senior suites in Zheng He, but they’re light-years better than the cramped barracks we shared as eighth-graders during our “chum year” at HP.

We’re divided into four houses, based on the results of our aptitude tests.

We’re more or less the same size, and we have the same skin tone—she’s Brasileira parda; my ancestry is Bundeli Indian—so she can usually fix me up nicely for a school dance or a Saturday furlough in town.

Verne’s gilded metal facade stands out among the campus’s white buildings like a gold-crowned tooth.

He’s got a coffee-stained smile, silver hair, and gnarled hands like tree roots.

As usual, Hewett is pallid, sweaty, and disheveled.

The school’s boat is usually moored in the harbor.

The problem is, he never makes idle threats. If he says we’ll have extra weekend homework, we do. If he predicts 90 percent of us will fail his next exam, we do.

“But I warn you not to expect survivors. Land Institute has launched a preemptive strike. They mean to eliminate us. I have been fearing an attack like this for two years.”

Why is Hewett talking about LI and HP as if they’re sovereign nations? Land Institute couldn’t just destroy a chunk of the California coastline and kill over a hundred people.

Another one of those oddities I don’t think about much: Harding-Pencroft has a dispensation to use military-grade equipment for our training.

Everyone seems lost in their own dismal thoughts.

We also know she is the quintessential Orca. Her note cards are really just an emotional-support tool, like Top, because her mind holds more information about Harding-Pencroft, natural history, and marine ecosystems than all the books in our recently destroyed library.

Ester can tell what animals—sometimes people, though she finds that harder—are thinking and feeling. She can predict their actions with uncanny accuracy...assuming her own raw nerves don’t overwhelm her.

He never curses. He’s super straitlaced.

I tell my housemates what I suspect. Sabotage. Treachery. Cold-blooded murder.

She gives me a wink, a gesture of solidarity.

He gives me a listless wave, his expression part concern, part apology.

Painted on the prow is the HP logo with the four house icons—shark, dolphin, cephalopod, orca—inside the quadrants of an old-fashioned nautical wheel.

Hewett’s eyes have more life in them than the entire rest of his body. They’re incandescent with fear.

Don’t think about Dev, I chide myself.

Gemini tags along behind me, alternately giving orders to his Sharks and making sure I am not being accosted by any ninja sea lions.

She checks the autopilot and the ECDIS one more time before joining us at the table. I wish she could stay at the helm.

House Orca knows all the obscure historical facts and weird bits of trivia. Their members could destroy anyone on Jeopardy! They excel at other things, too, but we jokingly call them House Wikipedia.

For a millisecond, Gem is wrapped in flickering white tendrils of electricity.

“You killed him!” Franklin rushes to Gem’s side.
Hewett turns a dial on the stock of his weapon and nonchalantly says, “Did I?”

That case contains projection modules. They must
 be installed around the exterior of the hull, just above the waterline at one-meter intervals.

I don’t even correct Hewett on the Miss Dakkar thing, which I find incredibly patronizing.

The mission of Harding-Pencroft is to safeguard his legacy, keep his technology out of the hands of human society, and thwart Land Institute, which would use alt-tech to dominate the world.

I study Dr. Hewett’s aggrieved expression.

My nerves feel like a shoal of herring all swimming frantically in different directions.

We spent almost a year slowly orienting your brother. He was being trained to lead, to take over where your parents left off.