WALKING THROUGH the narrow corridors of the sub was like being inside someone’s intestines, like we were making our way through the digestive tract. I kept expecting the Magic School Bus to show up and dump bile on us.

I absolutely refused to think about the fact that we were sealed inside this thing, sinking below the surface of the water. I kept repeating,We’re saving my mom, over and over inside my head.

The officer stopped outside a door. All the doorways on a sub are shaped like Vienna Fingers cookies, kind of oblong. Each door has a sill about six inches high so that if the sub springs a leak and water gets

in, each room can be sealed off. Oh, God, I was gonna die.

We stepped over the threshold and found ourselves in a small conference room. A tall man with short silver hair and dark brown eyes stood up and smiled. “I’m Captain Joshua Perry,” he said, coming to shake hands with all of us. “I understand we have a mission to accomplish.”

This wasn’t what I was expecting.

Your mind creates your reality. If you expect nothing, you open up the universe to give you options. If you expect the worst, you usually get it.

The Voice. That reallywas the Voice, not my own thoughts and not something Angel was beaming into my brain. It was the Voice, loud and clear. And it had apparently been watching Oprah again.

Uh, Voice? Not that I’m not glad to hear you again, but this sub is already awfully crowded, and so is the inside of my head, so this might not be the best time…

“Max?” Captain Perry was looking at me.

“Sorry. What?”

“We haven’t had any direct word about your mother. However, late last night, the following surveillance film was taken in the same general area as the first one that you saw. It looks strange because it was taken with a night-vision camera.”

Someone dimmed the lights, and an image flickered on a white screen at one end of the room. It looked like daytime, except darker and kind of greenish. It was, like before, a huge expanse of featureless ocean. Covered with the shiny sides of dead, floating fish, as far as the eye could see. And attacking the seafood buffet were thousands of seabirds, who had clearly heard about the hundred-for-the-price-of-one special.

“We don’t know what killed these fish,” said the captain. “Several were recovered and tested. They were negative for traumatic injury, bacteria, parasites, starvation, fungal illnesses, cancers, enzyme imbalances, and gas bubble disease. They’re simply dead, and we don’t know why.”

“Mass suicide?” Total muttered, clearly wishing he was back at the base with Akila.

“Then, look at this,” said Captain Perry, pointing with a laser pen. The image pulled back; the camera was clearly attached to a rising helicopter. When the copter was quite high, it changed direction, as if heading back to land.

All of a sudden, in one tiny corner of the image, an enormous dark thing burst out of the water, sending dead fish flying everywhere and making the birds scatter. The camera quickly swung back to focus on it, and the helicopter started dropping altitude, but within moments the dark thing was gone without a trace.

“We’ve watched this film a hundred times now,” said Captain Perry, “and we still can’t tell what that was. It was almost like a mountain suddenly emerged from the ocean, then disappeared just as quickly. But sonar images show no large masses in that area whatsoever.”

The lights flickered back on.

“What does this have to do with my mom?” I asked.

Captain Perry looked frustrated. “We don’t know. In the earlier video, we saw part of the wrecked fishing boat in the background of the picture of Dr. Martinez being held hostage. This happened in the same area. The two instances of the dead fish, the enormous flock of birds, the huge thing rising out of the ocean—they’re connected somehow. We just don’t know how.”

Everything is connected, Max,said the Voice.Everything affects everything else, especially in the ocean .

I gritted my teeth in frustration. I’d forgotten how incredibly annoying the Voice could be, with its fortune-cookie pronouncements.

“It’s all got to be connected somehow,” I said. “Are we headed there now?”

Captain Perry nodded. “We’re keeping on code-red alert status, with full radar and sonar surveillance. We don’t want that mountain to surge up and breakus in half.”

My eyes went wide. Was that even a possibility? Why hadn’t someone told me this? Why was I even on this sub? If there’s anything guaranteed to make me hyperventilate, it’s being stuck in a place I can’t punch my way out of.

It’s okay, Max. I had to stop for a second anddistinguish that this voice inside my head was Angel, not the Voice voice.It’s okay, Max, Angel thought again.If anything happens, we can all breathe under water, remember? It’s like when we’re on an airplane—if anything happens to it, we know six kids who will be fine. Same thing here. If anything happens to this sub, the six of us will be able to breathe through our gills. Trust me .

Oh,right . Ourgills would appear. Excellent. Now I felt better.Not .