Dark Life: Rip Tide by Kat Falls

try.
    “What’s wrong?” Gemma asked, seeing my expression.
    “A pod of orcas is headed this way.”
    “Great. Can you get them to tow us back to the Trade Station?”
    “Know why orcas are called killer whales?” I asked, while unholstering my speargun. “Because they eat their own species—as in, anything in the dolphin family. Especially a wounded dolphin, which is why they’re hurrying this way. My distress call … that was their dinner bell.”
    “Okay, the distress call, bad idea,” Gemma said, clearly trying to remain calm. “But you told me that orcas don’t eat people.”
    “Right.” I scanned the water around us. “But I never said that they don’t
kill
people. The only sure thing about orcas is that they’re unpredictable. Every group is different. Like humans. Some pods are playful. Others ruthless.”
    “Let’s hope we get one of those playful pods.”
    “There.” I pointed to where a six-foot dorsal fin broke the waves.
    “Oh! That’s big,” she gasped.
    I’d seen three with my biosonar. The typical number for a transient pod. A good hunting number. And orcas were, without a doubt, the smartest hunters in the ocean. They knew how to gang up on a whale four times their size and force its mouth open so that one of them could dart inside and rip out the whale’s tongue—an orca delicacy.
    Now two of them made a wide circle of the raft. I kept the speargun across my knees in case either had experience with a harpoon. I didn’t want to trigger any bad memories. But where was the third orca?
    I got my answer when the ocean exploded next to us and the black-and-white orca propelled itself out of the water. I froze, transfixed by its ascending body. For a timeless moment, the massive animal seemed to hang in the air, and then, as if snapped back to normal speed, it dropped broadside down. Amidst a curtain of spray, the orca sank beneath the waves, leaving us soaked.
    I released the breath I’d been holding. “He was taking a look at us. To see if it was worth tipping the raft over.”
    Gemma pushed her sopping bangs out of her eyes. “And what did he decide?”
    I saw no sign of any of the orcas now. “They submerged.”
    “Is that good or bad?”
    “I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
    After a minute, Gemma said, “Actually, if we’re both going to die”—she lay back in the raft—“I’d rather notwatch.” Her expression turned puzzled. “Do orcas thrum?”
    “What?”
    “Hear that? Definitely a thrum.”
    I froze, listening, but heard only the lap of waves.
    “Like a sub.”
    “You’re hearing something under the water?” I lay down with my ear pressed to the bottom of the raft.
    “I’m not totally hearing it,” she admitted. “It’s more like a vibration.”
    I have exceptional hearing, according to the doctors who tested me when my Dark Gift first emerged. Better hearing than is considered normal for a human, and yet I didn’t hear or feel any vibration.
    I sat up, deciding to slip into the ocean to take a quick look around. If there was a sub nearby, I’d see it with my sonar. But just as I was about to climb out, a flexiglass dome broke the waves, not twenty feet away from us.
    Water sluiced from the sub’s dome, and I caught sight of blond curls as the driver gave a hearty wave. Zoe. She must have tried to follow the green sub anyway, even though the Slicky could never keep up. It had taken her this long to get this far.
    Moments later, as I hauled myself into the Slicky behind Gemma, Zoe grinned from the pilot seat. She didn’t even wait for me to catch my breath before asking, “Aren’t you glad I never listen to you?”
    As I powered the Slicky over the waves, closing in on the Trade Station, I sensed something was wrong. But I put it down to my churning thoughts about what the surfs might have done to my parents.
    “It’s too quiet,” Gemma said, sounding spooked.
    Right. That’s what was missing—the noise. It was a weekday, yet only the