Go where?
To the tunnel of course — as soon as that last monster clears out you all can follow at a respectful distance and when you get out to sea don't stop going until you reach the surface.
Or, instead, go into the fenced room.
Grab Walter and Tolliver and the three of you tackle Oscar Flynn and incapacitate him and hope that Lanny doesn't follow you inside and get into it, hope you don't all end up in some tangled mess of flailing limbs and ripped-out regulators.
I must have flinched, ready to make a move, because Walter's grip on my arm turned to iron.
I looked at him and he nodded toward the control panel out here in the front room, the main power source, the big enchilada. Let's turn off the juice. Cut off Flynn's power. And then Walter let go of me and finned toward the panel.
I wanted to object. You don't know the code.
But Walter knew what to do. He had his dive knife in hand. The hell with keypads. He was going to cut the cable.
How long to cut through that thick band of insulation and wires, that thick snake?
I split my attention between Walter and Flynn, Flynn at the keypad in the fenced room and Walter putting his blade to the cable out here, and I saw Lanny trying to wrestle free of Tolliver and Tolliver trying to hang on to his catch. And I saw Flynn at the keypad punching a button.
I found myself finning through the gate into the fenced room, pulling my dive knife from its sheath.
Flynn flipped a switch
A floodlight blazed in the fenced room.
I kicked harder, skimming the inner fence to the wall where the power cable snaked from outer to inner panels, and I put my own blade to the thick snake but I could barely nick it.
Flynn at the keypad hesitated, and then he nodded and his fingers flew across the number buttons. It looked for all the world like he was keying in a password. I remembered the numbers written on Lanny's slate. Flynn had given Lanny the password but we had interrupted Lanny before he was able to enter it.
Nothing interrupted Oscar Flynn.
We were too late.
Flynn pushed away from the keypad, finning toward the small PVC-framed gate set into the wall.
I had kind of forgotten it.
I remembered it now, with alarm. Password entered, signal sent along the cable to the gate mechanism.
The little gate was swinging open.
I began to retreat.
And while I propelled myself back along the fence line toward the main gate, I could not stop looking where Flynn was looking — at the little gate. The floodlit water rippled, a little current outflowing from the side room.
I thought I saw something riding that little current.
It was so nearly transparent I thought it was a trick of my eyes.
It was so small I would have missed it if I'd blinked.
It was a gossamer beauty.
It was perhaps the size of a thimble, see-through but for the peppering of gold flecks on the bell. The bell had flattened sides and from each corner trailed a long delicate tentacle, a good deal longer than the bell. The bell was remarkable largely because of its shape. Its shape was cube-like.
A word came to me — I actually heard the word, in my memory, in Violet Russell's voice—cubozoan.
Box jellyfish.
No no no. Oh holy shit no.
But wait, she'd said cousin, we get cubozoans here but they're cousins of the highly toxic tropical box jellyfish, the one in the Discovery Channel ten most deadly creatures documentary. Our little boxes are only cousins, gentle creatures with mild stings.
That's what she'd said.
Yeah sure but that's what she'd told us about moon jellyfish stings, before she was gobsmacked by the highly toxic Aurelia that had evolved into something from a bad dream.
The delicate little cubozoan was joined by another.
Holy holy shit.
I flipped and swam for the main gate and Walter met me there and yanked me through. We crowded up against Tolliver and Lanny, Lanny still in Tolliver's grip, Lanny shaking his head so hard he was going to give himself a whiplash.
In the fenced room, another cubozoan drifted out through the little gate.
And then another. And another and another.
And now there was a flushing of box jellyfish out of the side room. They multiplied, they bloomed, they kept coming and it seemed there would be no end to them.
And on they came.
We should go.
Was the tunnel clear?
I whipped around to look and saw the last monster still visible in the tunnel, the one Flynn had patted, his pet, pulsing now like a giant heart, filling the tunnel, the size of it still a shock. Oh lordy what a sight when I'd first seen them coming from the depths, a couldn't-tear-my-eyes-away sight. Didn't give another thought to the little gate into the side room, never dreamed of tiny cubes in there. Who would? With Flynn's aquarium stuffed with the big bruisers, who would dream of looking for anything else? Not with those giants standing guard.
Bodyguards.
I yanked my attention back to the fenced room. Even in the few moments I'd looked away, it had filled with more cubozoans.
Flynn hadn't moved. He hung in place, lazily finning.
I thought, you're crazy. You're going to get swarmed.
And he was.
The big diver all but disappeared in a thicket of delicate jellyfish. He wore them like a gossamer cloak.
I could feel it, I'd worn a cloak like that, I'd been coated with tiny glassy jellyfish, I'd swatted at my wetsuit, get them off, I'd tried to wipe my face clean of them but there were too many. I too had worn a jellyfish cloak and I could feel the panic.
Flynn wasn't panicking. Wasn't wiping his face. No need. His face was fully masked.
He was untouchable.
He turned now and swam toward the fence, toward the open gate. He swam sleekly and strongly, his cloak flowing with him.
Behind him, more box jellyfish swarmed out of the side room and it was a mesmerizing sight, glassy cubes shining in the floodlight, forming haloes in the shafts of light from the chimney holes.
And on they came.
Flynn slowed, careful not to outswim his cloak, gathering the jellyfish to him once again, and he now approached the gate in a more measured pace.
He was going to bring his cloak out to us. And the rest were going to follow.
Lanny lunged, breaking free of Tolliver, aiming himself like a missile at the open gate, latching onto the frame, trying to pull it shut.
The swing arm remained rigid. The gate wouldn't move.
He turned to us, urgent, and I was the closest to him, to the gate, close enough to see his eyes wide behind his face mask, and I knew what he was asking of us. Of me.
Help.
Don't let those things out.
I was frozen. You mean, shut those things in. You mean, shut Oscar Flynn inside because he wore a cloak of box jellyfish.
Lanny made a fist and punched in the direction of Flynn in his cloak. At the oncoming army of cubozoans.
And then Lanny looked at me. You know dive signals?
I knew that one. Tolliver taught us. Danger.
Lanny tugged again at the gate frame, wild with the need to shut it.
I pictured the hacienda where Lanny lived, trying to recall if there was a garage, if it had an automatic door, and if there was I guessed that Lanny had never had to open it during a power outage, because if he had he would surely now be looking for a mechanical release lever, the kind of bypass that disengages the drive motor and allows you to manually operate the gate.
I had.
And I'd been gatekeeper here long enough to recognize the power operator box, at the junction of the gate and the fence.