Leo’s eyes open.
He’s not sure what time it is. There are miles of thickly compressed water between him and the Sun. He powers his phone back on for a moment to check, but he doesn’t really feel connected to the number on the screen.
He’s eaten and rested. Gun and his reformist friends are making arrangements to get him into the Imperial capital, disguised as yet another surface captive. His earlier scientific curiosity has given way to more primal concerns. How do I get free if I’m cornered? How do I escape a hostile world like this?
“What about handcuffs, restraints, whatever?” he’d asked Gun. The squid-dude had laughed and explained (in his unique way) that captives weren’t confined down here. After all, if they ran, where would they go? The hangars and ship ports and such are well guarded, as are any of the important structures. The most secure areas are simply kept underwater, where a human would drown in a lightless hell before reaching anything of consequence.
Fuko, Gun, and Leo are standing near a mass transit system, built into Whitewater Outpost. Leo’s pretty sure that it’s just Splash Mountain from Disney World, but in a straight line instead of climbing and diving everywhere.
“What about Trace?” he asks.
“Trace will be there too,” explains Fuko. “He will be making the approach to the capital by stealth. I have provided him details on security thanks to Gun’s reformist contacts.”
Leo’s got his suitcase, and the Link Suit inside. He feels confident that he can fight his way out, if it comes to it. Still, he’s had friends to rely on for so long. This feels pretty lonely.
“Alright,” he says at last. “Let’s do this.”
The next capsule comes, and Fuko and Leo climb into it.
The transit capsule looks like - and just might be - a translucent material like the inside of an oyster shell. It rides in a tube, propelled by water pressure supplied by the ocean. Leo recognizes the loops of a Tesla valve in the tunnel, which serve to regulate the pace of the water.
“Guess you folks are the world’s oldest plumbers,” he muses to Fuko.
“Eh?” The girl startles out of her reverie.
Leo’s instinct to listen kicks in. “Y’know, you’ve asked a lot of me already, I’d say you have to trust me by now or we wouldn’t be doing all this. So trust me. What’s on your mind?”
Fuko looks out the window of the capsule, but doesn’t answer.
Leo leans back against the spongey seat. “Okay. I’ll guess, and you can throw a ninja star or some shit at me if you don’t like what I say.”
He thinks about the situation, what he knows about the Chosen, what little he knows about Atlantis, and starts to speak.
“You’re loyal to the family that raised you, and by extension the culture you’re from. But you’re not comfortable here. You’re going through your cousin to get things done, not friends and acquaintances you have. In fact, you spend most of your time in a culture that this one took a shot at conquering.”
“That means you’re conflicted. You want this place to be cool, to be nice, to be the good guys, 'cause you were told they were. But as one of the Chosen, you spend every day helping folks who are nothing like them. Every time you see a captive down here, you see someone who in Halcyon you’d have jumped in to rescue in a heartbeat.”
“Plus, there’s Trace. He’s doing the thing your Halcyon hero’s heart tells you to do, but he’s also attacking your family, basically. This whole situation is putting pressure on your trust in him, and you don’t like that. You want this to be over, to go back to the surface, but you’re here because this needs doing, this’ll help your cause, it’ll take the pressure off. So you’re worrying about it, because it’s super personal to you.”
Fuko looks away, and keeps doing so as he talks. Finally, she speaks up. “I don’t have any ninja stars.”
Leo guesses he hit the mark. But it feels like there’s something else, something nobody wants to talk about. Something Nautilus did? He tries another tack.
“Trace was pretty willing to come down here. He complained a lot, but you didn’t waste any time arranging this trip after the blood test, and he didn’t have to take any time to think about it. You probably have a million ways to get a human being underwater. You didn’t need Trace to persuade me to come along - I’d already agreed.”
Fuko turns around. She looks distressed, and Leo feels guilty immediately. “Do you always just… talk about peoples’ feelings to them? It’s really weird.”
Leo hangs his head. “Sorry. Yeah, feelings matter to me a lot. I can be pretty forceful about stuff too. I apologize.”
The capsule is quiet for a full fifteen minutes before Fuko speaks again. “You were right. About all of it.”
Leo looks up. He wants to speak, but holding off feels right just at the moment.
Fuko doesn’t meet his eyes. She’s staring out the window, as the undersea lands of her native country go by. “We’re taught not to express our feelings. To wear masks.”
Leo nods. “Honne and tatemae. If you’re talking about Japan. Or is Atlantis like that too?”
Fuko shrugs uncertainly. “I don’t know what it’s called. Like… hahaha, like a fish in water, I lived it without knowing its name. But um, the other part of me, like the True Atlanteans? We’ll show startling or sudden behavior in response to aggression. ‘No sudden moves’, like bank robbers say. So we have, you know, protocol, ways of doing things, to keep everything calm.”
“Deimatic behavior,” Leo prompts. “Startle display. It’s a thing in biology.”
“Deimatic behavior.” Fuko turns the word over in her mouth, getting used to it. “Yes. So for this reason, we do not ‘rock the boat’. Hahaha, so funny, Fuko, all these underwater jokes.”
Leo grins. “I think they’re clever. So basically, you have this ingrained biological reaction to puff up when challenged, but as a social species you’ve also got this de-escalation instinct.”
A memory comes to him. “Trace is like that too. When I talked to him awhile back, he got pretty defensive pretty fast, but he also deflated real quick.”
Fuko smiles strangely. Leo’s not sure how to read it. “Yes. He is like that, isn’t he.”
“Must be nice to have someone like you, in the middle of America,” muses Leo. “We’re some of the loudest, most outlandish motherfuckers on the planet.”
Fuko actually laughs at that. “Yes, that is true. But that is what makes you all so interesting.”
“That’s something else your Reformists will have to figure out, if they want peaceful coexistence.”
“Yes. That is very true. Peace will not be easy. But, Mr. Snow, we heroes must do whatever we can for its sake, mustn’t we.”
Leo grins. “Yeah. And that makes you a hero in two worlds.”