Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

life as I entered the darkness above the stage, nearly hitting my head on a squeaking pulley.

“…a costume!”

“…a fake!”

“…ruined!”

“…how dare you!”

I heard the cries of outrage rising from the conference room as Calder, standing on some kind of metal stagehand catwalk, reached out. He lifted me off the rope and Eamon threw a towel over my shoulders. Uther released the rope and frantically beckoned for us to follow on the thin, rickety catwalk. Thick metal mesh ran the length of its floor. From here we hurried to a junction joining another catwalk, this one thinner than the last.

“Wait,” said Eamon, halting us in the darkness. He looked down. Linnaeus, soaking wet and standing near the wreckage of the tank, tried to calm a crowd of guests. Eamon beckoned. “Okay, come on!”

We had to bend double to avoid bumping our heads on the ceiling. I hurried along the metal beams, and tried to keep from ripping the soles of my feet on the uneven screw heads lining the slats. Water pooled underneath every step I took. Don’t look down. Soon we came to a tall utility ladder. Each of us climbed down, water still running off my body and dripping on Uther and Eamon’s heads.

“Go ahead, hurry!” said Uther, drawing a gun and opening a side door. He pushed Eamon, Calder, and me out, then followed after.

We were now inside a long, dimly lit room full of hot water heaters lining the walls like squat columns crowned in copper tubing. Uther pulled the door closed and tried to bar it with spare tubing.

“Leave it, we need to get out of here!” said Eamon.

I wrapped the towel tighter around me as I ran to keep up with Eamon. We came out of the hot water heater room through a metal door on the far side and entered a marble tiled hallway. I ran as fast as my slippery feet would allow.

Eamon led us down the hall in the direction of a sign labeled Stairwell. He threw the door open and flew down the staircase. I stumbled after him. Just as we were near the bottom, the sound of gunfire rained on us. I screamed. Eamon cried out and grabbed his chest. I screamed again, but Eamon continued hobbling down the stairs. Calder slung Eamon’s arm over his shoulder and helped him along. The shots continued as we half-ran, half-fell down the rest of the stairs.

We burst through the doors at the ground level, where Walter waited with the car, doors open and engine running. I jumped in. Uther threw himself into the front seat while Calder helped Eamon in next to me. Walter slammed on the gas before any of the other car doors closed. I looked over at Eamon and gasped. Beneath his hand covering a spot on his chest, a patch of blood soaked the front of his shirt. Popping gunfire came from behind. I squeezed my eyes shut and wrapped my hands around my head. The back window shattered. Glass flew everywhere. Broken glass dug into my skin.

“Hang on!” Walter said as he rounded the curve.

Linnaeus and some other men came into view ahead. One pointed a gun at us. All of us ducked our heads from the barrage of bullets. The passenger-side mirror broke and hung cock-eyed, a bullet-hole piercing its metal shell. Linnaeus, red in the face and hair flying, shouted like a psych-ward escapee. Walter hit the gas and the car roared toward the group. They scattered.

Calder in the back and Uther up front got their doors closed as the car raced out of the parking lot and dodged oncoming traffic. Once we were on the highway, I looked at Eamon again.

“Y-you’ve been shot!” I shrieked over the sound of the wind whipping through the broken back window. He looked down at his chest, breathing hard.

He winced. “It’s just a graze. I’ll see to it later.” Calder pulled Eamon’s hand away and looked at the wound while Uther looked on with concern.

Calder looked up at Uther, then at me. “He’ll be all right.”

I sighed and reached into my ear to pull out the earpiece.

“Why didn’t the earpiece work?” I asked. “I didn’t know when to take the costume off!”

“It must have picked up the signal from Linnaeus’s microphone,” said Uther.

“We kept trying to talk to you, but you wouldn’t respond,” Calder added. “Walter couldn’t get a hold of us to tell us that the water tank had been set up in the wrong place and we had to move the pulley.”

“I’m so sorry, Olivia,” said Walter. “I was too late, but I couldn’t change anything without attracting notice.”

“It’s okay, Walter.”

“We decided to let you take the lead and drop the weight once the costume was off. Your timing was excellent.”

“No, it wasn’t. The air tank broke,” I said. “I either had to try and get out myself or drown.”

“Are you all right?” Calder asked.

“I’m fine. Where’s Samantha?”

“She’s safe,” said Walter. “We’re going to see her in a moment.”

“What about Seidon and Cordelia? And Natasha?”

“They’re meeting us shortly,” said Eamon. He shifted and cringed, holding on to his chest.

“Are we almost there?” I asked.

“Nearly.”

“You’re bleeding too,” said Calder, who pointed to the skin on my waist not covered by the towel. I looked down to examine the damage. Livid, red welts marked some of the skin and in some thin patches it had been torn away. I shrugged even though the pain of it was catching up to me.

“It’s nothing. It’ll heal,” I said, more worried about Eamon’s injury than mine. “I can put something on it when we get back to the hotel.”

“We’re not going back there,” said Walter. “I’m taking you to the Imbali so we can make a run for it.”

“The Imbali?”

“My boat. The Imbali de Mer.”

My eyebrows rose. “We’re leaving?”

“We’ve done what we set out to do, but we’ve got to get out of California in case Linnaeus seeks revenge,” Walter continued. “We’re going to travel up the west coast, drop off Seidon