iD by Madeline Ashby Read Free Book Online Page B

uncomfortable,” he said, between kisses. “Let’s go home.”
    She said nothing. She’d gone completely still.
    “Come on, the shipment can–”
    Amy reached up and covered his mouth with her fingers. Her eyes had defocused. “It’s not the shipment.”
    She slid off the bough, skidded down the tree, and pressed one hand to the ground. Her hand sank beneath the island’s surface. Then her forearm, up to her elbow. She grimaced. It looked as though she were freeing a clog in the island’s plumbing.
    He joined her. “What is it?”
    Her expression rippled into surprise and delight. “It’s a submarine .” She withdrew her hand. Streams of black oil coursed down her fingers and rejoined the earth. “The chimps are trying to look up my skirt .”
     
    Together, they closed the distance between his garden and the nearest arterial in a single leap. They didn’t even bother running. They bounded. Three feet, five feet, until the dark trees became one black blur. As they ran, the trees grew. Javier heard their leaves rustle as they expanded, thinning, creating cover. They jumped, and Javier saw the diamond tree straight ahead, far at the other end of the thoroughfare. They were running straight for home. All over the island, a mist began to rise.
    “Hey, is this shit explosive, too?”
    Amy didn’t answer. She pounded down the thoroughfare, running faster and faster, her hands like blades, her knees at a perfect right angle to her hips. She tucked them into her stomach as they sailed over the heads of the other vN. As they cleared the canopy of mist, two other figures joined them.
    “Go back to your treehouse, Xavier,” Amy said.
    “Sorry, lady,” his oldest, Ignacio, said, “but you’re not our mother and you don’t tell us what to do.”
    They dropped into the mist. They jumped again, and Ricci was there, with Gabriel and Léon.
    “Hi, Dad,” Léon said.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re iterating.”
    “Never stopped you, did it?”
    Léon took to the air. Javier followed. Beneath his feet, beneath the mist, the island was changing shape. The arteries folded down onto each other, forming a single black arrowhead. It was the basic defensive posture the island assumed whenever it or Amy perceived a possible threat. The diamond tree loomed large in his vision. Amy sprinted forward. He and the boys stopped short at the beach, but she ran straight across the water. Her feet barely disturbed its surface. She leapt into the tree and landed in its fork, arms raised. Her skin was full of rainbows.
    Beneath his feet, the island shuddered.
    “You sure know how to pick ’em,” Ignacio said.
    Javier bolted for home. He jumped from the beach and landed awkwardly in the water. The membrane caught him and he waded the rest of the way. The water was frustratingly heavy; he felt more tired than he should have by the time he made it to their little island. Amy had slid down the tree by then, and she stood with her back to him. Her fingers twitched angrily at her sides. She and the island were deep in damage control mode.
    “What’s going on?” Javier asked.
    She answered him with a question: “Above or below?”
    “Huh?”
    “Above, or below. Pick one. We can go down, or we can bring it up. Where would you like to go?”
    His mind simulated several outcomes to both choices. He thought of a hole opening in the island’s flesh and himself sliding down into it. He thought of the weakness of human flesh, and the pressure, and the bends. “How far below was it?”
    “Not that far.”
    He insinuated himself into her field of vision. “Are there humans on that sub?”
    She blinked. “I’m not sure.”
    “You could kill them, if you bring them up too fast. If they’ve been too deep for too long. The p-pressure c-could–”
    Now it was her turn to kiss him. It was very light and very quick, but it shut him and the failsafe down completely. When his eyes opened, Amy’s smile was all too bright.