Speechless Read online

  Speechless

  Unfortunate Souls #1

  Madeline Freeman

  Copyright © 2018 Madeline Freeman

  Cover Art © 2018 Steven Novak

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  All rights reserved.

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  First Edition: November 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

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  For information:

  http://www.madelinefreeman.net

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Also by Madeline Freeman

  About the Author

  A girl with a special ability. A secret mission. A discovery that will change everything.

  Aria lives in two worlds. The first is the flooded ruins of Los Angeles, where she spends her days scavenging for long-forgotten treasures.

  The second is the surface, where if people knew she could breathe under water, she would be shipped off to a detention facility for aberrations. Her only reprieve from reality is The Colonists, which live-streams the life of her longtime crush, Enrique.

  When the opportunity to join the Colonists arises, Aria leaves everything behind to try out for a life of adventure—and, perhaps, romance.

  But the selection process is more perilous than she could have imagined and when her secret comes out, the real danger begins.

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  This futuristic take on The Little Mermaid will pull you in as our brave heroine fights to find her place in the world and save the person she cares about most in the galaxy.

  “Now he is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes hang, and in whose hand I should like to lay my life’s happiness. I will dare everything to win him…”

  Chapter One

  Even here, thirty meters underwater, Aria couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching her—and for someone to see Aria swimming would be disaster.

  The faded shafts of light that penetrated this far down illuminated nothing out of the ordinary among the ruins of Los Angeles. Still, the sense of unease didn’t let up as she inhaled a breath of salty ocean water and exhaled through the gill slits on her neck.

  Although no person technically owned the submerged remnants of the old city, it hadn’t stopped salvage companies from staking informal claims—and defending against perceived incursions. But she and Alonzo had been careful. No one, least of all Cavanaugh and his thugs, knew they were here.

  A voice crackled over the comm in her ear. “We should get going or we’ll be late for work.”

  Aria twisted, the current lifting her hair and swirling it around her head like a halo of red tendrils. Alonzo Gonzales floated two meters away, striking the plastic-and-rubber fins on his feet at intervals to keep himself just above the ocean floor. No matter how many times Aria saw Alonzo’s face obscured by his scuba gear, she never got over how silly and out of place he looked. But ever since he had come to live with her family a decade earlier, there were few places she went that he didn’t follow—even if he had to look ridiculous to do so.

  Instead of typing a message on her wrist comm, Aria pointed at the tunnel they were excavating and held up her right hand, fingers splayed. The only drawback to her not needing a mask to breathe underwater was the limit to her communication.

  Alonzo’s sigh was so loud that the comm in Aria’s ear dropped out for a second. “We’ve been at this for weeks. Another five minutes won’t make a huge difference. Let’s go. We promised Melody we’d be on time for once.”

  Aria stuck her tongue out, the salt water tart on her taste buds. She sucked in a mouthful of the briny liquid and blew a stream in his direction, knowing it would disperse long before reaching him anyway. They still had plenty of time to return to the DuoCraft and make their way to the restaurant before their shift. When Melody had approached them about working tonight, Aria tried to talk her way out of it without giving too much away. She didn’t want to get her sister’s hopes up if this salvage didn’t live up to their expectations. But, if this was all Aria hoped it would be, the credits from tonight’s shift would pale in comparison to what they would find.

  They were close to a breakthrough; she could feel it. Tingles sparked up her fingers whenever they were close to a discovery. Alonzo called it her “fish sense,” but while he made light of it, she’d grown to trust the feeling over her years salvaging the flooded ruins of this once-thriving city.

  She swam back into the tunnel, darting through the area they’d been widening for Alonzo and his scuba gear. With one press of a button, the flashlight in her wrist comm illuminated the layers of sea-slick brick. She squinted through crevices into the blackness, hoping to glimpse something—anything—beyond.

  Just then, a high buzz reverberated through the water and sent a spike of adrenaline zipping up her spine. The noise was unmistakable.

  A motor.

  Panic flashed along her arms and legs, gathering like pinpricks in her palms and on the soles of her feet.

  In the two weeks they had been working down here, no one had come anywhere close to their location. Tourist season didn’t begin for at least another week, and there was only one company who ventured here anyway. Their “Ghosts of Old LA” tour combined special holographic renderings of the sea floor with a guide telling spooky, allegedly true stories. Two summers ago, one of their boats veered off course and came nail-bitingly close to one of Aria’s scouting missions. Cover had been thin and if they had moved much closer, they would have seen her.

  Unless this wasn’t tourists. Were Cavanaugh’s men patrolling the area?

  Aria’s feet slid against the flexible tunnel shielding as she backed her way out. Fingers closed around her ankle and, with Alonzo’s help, she lurched the rest of the way out, her heart hammering in her chest. Alonzo floated into view, his wide eyes visible even behind his mask.

  Aria peered into the water above them, scanning for any sign of the craft. The buzzing hum suffused the surrounding water, as if the sound were coming from everywhere at once.

  “I don’t have eyes on,” Alonzo said through the comm. “We need to hide.”

  Clenching her jaw, Aria squinted through the shimmering slants of sunlight. The obvious place was their excavation tunnel, but her father’s most important rule was to never hide where you’re searching so no one gets suspicious and pokes around to discover your treasures when you’re not there.

  Actually, that was rule number two. The most important rule was for no one to see Aria in the water.

  She and Alonzo typically selected a hiding place when they first arrived at a salvage site, but this part of the old city had been so decimated by the earthquake that there were no good options to choose from. Aria closed her eyes, calling up the routes they had taken on their different excavation runs. They always parked their DuoCraft in positions a kilometer away from the site, so she had entered the area from countless directions. Her mind’s eye traveled along the meters and meters of black cord she had stretched along the ocean floor to act as a tether for Alonzo. The currents here were unpredictable and so strong they had threatened to whisk even Aria away on more than one occasion.

  She imagined the various routes they had taken to reach this location—through parking lots filled with waterlogged internal combustion automobiles, past heaps of rubble with twisted steel beams stretching upward like skeletal fingers—trying to recall anywhere suitable. An image popped into her head—a seaweed-lined building due south that appeared largely intact. Aria opened her eyes and tugged on Alonzo’s arm, beckoning for him to follow.

  The persistent hum of the motor haunted them as they propelled themselves toward the building. Aria glanced up at intervals but still saw no signs of a boat. Her only comfort came from the fact that the motor sounded no nearer than it had before. It was quite possible the boat would pass by without coming too close.

  As Aria led the way over a high kelp bed, the building came into view. Although at least half of the structure had collapsed, the front appeared unscathed. She kicked her feet behind her, darting toward the front door. It was only half on its hinge, but the opening still wasn’t large enough to pass through. The accumulation of more than a hundred years’ worth of sea life and sediment drift made it nearly impossible to edge the door open further.

  Aria braced her feet against the side of the building and pulled at the door with all her might. Whether it was tourists o
r Cavanaugh’s men drawing near, she couldn’t let anyone think there was anything interesting about this particular stretch of ocean floor.

  She had managed to open the door several centimeters when Alonzo gripped her shoulder.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  Aria paused, straining her ears. He was right. The motor’s buzz had faded until it was an indistinct hum that blended with the muddled sounds of the ocean.

  Alonzo hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “We should head back to the Duo.”

  A measure of the tension coiling Aria’s muscles drained. She nodded, but when she began to follow him back the way they came, a flash of light caught her eye. She spun around, peering into the dark interior of the building. Her gaze followed a strip of light filtering in through a small hole in a translucent window. A palm-sized orb glittered blue and red beneath the remnants of a table.

  She had wiggled through the small door opening before Alonzo realized she wasn’t following. “I thought we were leaving.”

  Aria didn’t bother glancing back at him. The boat was gone, and she would only be a second.

  Her fingers closed around the edge of the table and she pulled herself toward the cracked tile now smeared with sea slime. Trinkets littered the floor—picture frames decorated with seashells, sunglasses, aluminum license plates—but Aria fixed her attention on the glassy ball that caught her eye in the first place. A rusty red color dominated one half, interrupted by the occasional vein of blue and a cap of icy white. The other half was almost entirely opposite—mostly blue with red peeking up in some areas. A tremor passed through her fingers as she reached for it. She had several similar miniatures at home, but each of them represented a different epoch than the one frozen here.

  A zing of electricity shot up her arm when her palm touched the sphere. As always, it was as close as she had ever come, yet exactly as far away as she had ever been.

  “Aria.” Alonzo’s tone held a hint of warning.

  She tucked the globe inside the mesh bag on her back and swam back toward the door as she swung the pack back over her shoulders.

  Alonzo barely waited for her to squeeze through the door gap before seizing her bag and peering through the mesh. He released her and shook his head. “Another Mars? Don’t you have a dozen of those at home?”

  She pressed her lips together but didn’t type a response. No matter how many times she tried to explain her collection of planet figurines, Alonzo couldn’t seem to wrap his head around her obsession.

  “We should leave while the coast is clear.” Alonzo pointed toward the surface. “If that was Cavanaugh, we want to be long gone in case he doubles back.”

  Aria nodded and the two of them swam to the salvage site where Alonzo could clip himself to the lead line for safety on the way back to their boat. Instead of swimming ahead, Aria stuck close to her adopted brother, her muscles coiled and ready to react on a moment’s notice. Despite straining her ears, she couldn’t detect a hint of a motor. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched.

  Chapter Two

  Aria’s father towered over her in the restaurant’s cramped receiving area. Sweat from working in the hot kitchen beaded his brow. But she’d seen this flush in his cheeks too many times to believe it had only to do with standing too close to the cooktop. “Forty-seven minutes late.”

  Aria cringed at the disappointment in his voice.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Alonzo said, redirecting their father’s attention. To his credit, he didn’t flinch under the taller man’s gaze—but it wasn’t much of a surprise. Too often Alonzo had been in this exact position, standing beside Aria when his adopted father expressed his displeasure. “We would have been on time, but right when we were getting ready to leave, some stupid tourists got lost overhead and it wasn’t like we could surface with them—well, you know.”

  Aria kicked Alonzo’s foot, but it was too late—the damage had been done. Her father’s sea-green eyes swiveled back to her, their depths turning stormy. “Tourists? Where were you scavenging?”

  Aria bit her lower lip as her mind spun to come up with an answer close enough to the truth that her father wouldn’t sniff out the lie. “We anchored the boat on the north side of the usual salvage grounds.” She kept to herself the fact she and Alonzo had been considerably west of the boat.

  “Dad, we’re getting backed up in here!” Harmony, Aria’s older sister, called from deeper within the kitchen.

  Her father harrumphed, crossing his arms over his chest. “This conversation isn’t over. Nothing you can scavenge is worth getting caught. Period.”

  Alonzo nudged Aria with his elbow, but she ignored him. They agreed when they decided to attempt this salvage they would keep it to themselves. No use getting everyone’s hopes up if it turned out to be a bust.

  Melody and Harmony had been co-managing Under the Sea, Old LA’s top-rated restaurant, for a decade, but they didn’t own it. Any time they approached the owner, Enzo, about buying him out, he turned them down. But two months ago, an investor in New LA made Enzo an offer too substantial to refuse. As a courtesy, Enzo gave Melody and Harmony three months to come up with a counter offer. But scrimping, saving, and donating wages earned from shifts at the restaurant—even in a family as large as Aria’s—hadn’t brought them anywhere near their goal.

  But if they found what they hoped they would, not only would they have enough to surpass the investor’s offer, Aria and Alonzo could afford a new DuoCraft designed for long-distance voyages. Maybe Aria would never make it to Mars, but she refused to be stuck in Old LA for the rest of her life.

  “I won’t get caught, Dad,” Aria assured him. “I’m careful. Just like you taught me.”

  The muscle in her father’s jaw jumped the way it always did when she referenced the fact that everything she knew, she learned from him. In the years since he transitioned from salvaging for a living to being the head cook at Under the Sea, he had become increasingly leery of the life he left behind. “Times are changing. People... They’re more afraid than they used to be. Quicker to jump to conclusions. I see it on the news streams all the time.” His lips twitched. “It’s safest if you keep to shore until tourist season is over.”

  Aria gaped. “You can’t be serious.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Do I look serious?”

  She opened her mouth, but before she could mount a defense, Harmony called for their father again. This time, he returned to the kitchen to answer his older daughter’s summons.

  Aria didn’t suck in a full breath until her father disappeared back into the bustling kitchen.

  Alonzo raked a hand through his dark brown hair, the corners of his mouth quirking in an attempted smile. “Well, that could’ve been worse.”

  Aria shook her head as she pulled an apron off the wall hook. “Really? How could that have been worse?” She traded the black laces behind her back and looped them into a bow in the front.

  Alonzo’s brow furrowed. “He didn’t lock you in a tower,” he suggested after a moment.

  “Yet.” Aria opened a metal drawer and pulled out two tablets—one from slot seven and the other from slot twelve, which she handed to Alonzo.

  He tucked his tablet into the front pocket of his apron. “Do you think he’s right?”

  The question clashed against Aria’s ear drum like a discordant note on a piano. “Are you kidding?”