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Overview
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Undertow, the aquatic, dystopian saga continues as a teen on the run must lead the fight to save the world.
In the first book of Michael Buckley’s Undertow trilogy, the Alpha arrived and the world was never the same. At the start of the second book, most of south Brooklyn is in ruins from a massive tidal wave, and the nation is terrified. Nearly everyone that Lyric Walker loves is either missing or presumed dead, including the mesmerizing prince Fathom. It’s up to Lyric to unite the Alpha before the second wave of a cataclysmic invasion wipes out mankind for good. And a new nightmare is approaching…
“Watery fun right up to the cliffhanger.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The second book in [the] series, and it somehow manages to raise the stakes and the action to an unprecedented level.”—Hypable
"Fans of the first title will clamor for this sequel.”—SLJ
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780544633759 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2020 |
| Series: | Undertow Trilogy Series , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 371 |
| Sales rank: | 779,241 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Michael Buckley is the author of the New York Times bestselling series Sisters Grimm and NERDS. Before starting to write children’s books, he worked as a stand-up comic, television writer, advertising copywriter, and a singer in a punk rock band. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit his website at www.michaelbuckleywrites.com.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
SHE SITS AMONG THE CACTUS AND STONES AS THE RISING Texas sun ignites the edges of her silhouette. Her eyes are closed, her legs crossed, as if she is meditating. But the only higher plane she’s trying to reach involves killing and maiming her enemies. She barks at her fish god, the one she calls the Great Abyss, repeating an endless diatribe that deals with ripping out entrails, and severing heads from necks. This is how Arcade prays, and it can take hours. I was out here waiting when the temperature dropped and my bones froze stiff. Now the sun is rising and the air is broiling and I have run out of patience. We’re supposed to be training. We’re supposed to be getting ready for Tempest, but nothing happens until the Great Abyss gets an earful.
I kick a stone, a passive-aggressive reminder to her that I am still here.
I kick another.
“Come on!” I growl, giving up on the passive.
She opens her sharp blue eyes and stares at me. They form narrow slits that I’m sure would shoot lasers if they could. I have broken her unspoken rule—no talking when she’s doing her fiery-religion thing.
“The Great Abyss is owed praise for his favors,” she says. “He is the giver and the taker, the creator of all things, the beginning and the end of this world, and it would be wise for you to kneel and prostrate yourself before him.”
“I don’t believe in the Great Abyss.”
“The Great Abyss does not need you to believe in him. He is, whether you accept his existence or not. Dismiss him at your own peril.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Do humans not have a god of their own you could speak to?”
“We’ve got hundreds of them, but the one I picked isn’t much of a talker,” I say as I raise my hand into the sky. My palm is encased in a thick metal glove that wraps around my wrist and exposes the fingers. With just a thought, it explodes with power and energy, turning my whole arm into a supernova of bright blue light. I smile. It wasn’t so long ago that I was terrified of this thing, but now I’m digging it—a lot. Wearing it makes me feel intimidating, like I’m an Amazonian warrior. I feel dangerous, gigantic, and five hundred feet tall. “We’re wasting time! If I don’t break something, I’m going to go crazy.”
“You want to break something, little minnow? Then break me,” Arcade says as she climbs to her feet. Once there, she ignites her own glove, and without warning, the ground heaves, first left, then right, bucking me like I’m a pesky flea it wants to shake off its hide. A crevice opens beneath me, and mud, silt, and water belch through it, rocketing high into the sky and knocking me to the ground.
I should have seen that coming.
I bear down on my thoughts, turning Arcade’s geyser into a baseball bat as big as a man. I fill it with sand and stones, and then I swing for the fences, right into her rib cage. The impact knocks her off her feet and sends her flailing across the dusty field. She lands with a bone-crunching thud that would kill a normal person. Arcade is made of tougher stuff. She is a Triton, a warrior from an undersea empire flung to the surface by war and horror. Before she set foot on land, she lived her whole life in an inhospitable environment that made her stronger and faster and meaner. My attack was no more than a swat in a pillow fight. She runs toward me, roaring in my ears, with her glove leaving a comet’s trail behind her. It’s her turn to clobber me.
Two weeks ago, I would never have stood my ground like I do now. When Arcade agreed to train me to fight, I was still clinging to the quiet little girl I had been for so long. When she demanded that I think of myself as a weapon, I just couldn’t do it, even though I knew it was confidence and passion that fueled the crazy weapon on my hand. Don’t ask me how it works. All I know is the more badass I feel, the more damage I can do. But getting over years of invisibility wasn’t easy, and my cowardice held me back. Now that wall I built around me is falling down. Now I’m feeling like the wild thing I was always meant to be. Which is convenient, because now we’re in Texas, where Tempest is, where they are keeping my family. Anyone who gets in my way has a big frickin’ problem on their hands. Even Arcade.
Oh, wait—here she comes.
A huge watery fist materializes before me and catches me in the face. I flail backwards, end over end, like a pickup truck just hit me in the mouth. I crash onto my back, hard. Pain stampedes through my hips, neck, and chin. I see stars, and I’m suddenly not sure where I am.
Arcade stands over me, impatient and unsympathetic.
“Get up!” she demands. “Do you think the soldiers at Tempest will give you a chance to recover? They will shoot you where you lie, half-breed.”
I hate when she calls me that word, which is exactly why she does it. She knows it sets me off. She’s asking for it, so I wrap water around a nearby boulder, one that would take ten men to heft an inch, and use the liquid to wrench it free from the soil. It hovers between the teacher and the student. I want Arcade to see what I’ve learned, let her think I will fling it at her if she doesn’t stop insulting me, but her eyes are full of smiles. She’s calling my bluff.
Furious, I send it sailing in her direction. It’s too fast to dodge, and it slams into her with all the power of a subway train. Her body is flung fifty feet away, narrowly missing a patch of wild cacti when she lands. I’m sure I’ve killed her this time. I scamper to my feet in a panic and rush to her side.
“You are the only person in the world who bleeds when she attacks someone else,” she says.
I reach up and touch my nose. It’s wet, and when I look at my fingers, they are smeared in red. I’m not sure why this keeps happening. It seems if I go overboard with the glove, it breaks something inside my head. It’s probably killing me.
“Maybe I need a break,” I confess.
“A break?” she scoffs. “An Alpha does not need a break. Your mother’s blood runs through you, Lyric Walker. Can’t you hear its call for war?”
“My mother was a yoga teacher!”
“Your mother is a Daughter of Sirena. She fought off a pack of barracudas when she could barely lift her own head. Her father was Lan, hero of the Trill campaigns. There are songs about him that will be sung for generations. Your grandmother Shar was also known throughout the hunting grounds for her bloodthirstiness. She once defeated an Orlandi chieftain in hand-to-hand combat, all with a broken arm.”
“Trill? Orlandi? Are they Alpha clans?”
She shakes her head. “There are other empires, Lyric Walker. Did your mother teach you nothing?”
“I didn’t want to know,” I confess. When I found out my mother wasn’t a human being, I avoided everything about her past. I didn’t want Summer Walker the Underwater Barbarian. I wanted Summer Walker wearer of cutoff jean shorts and flip-flops.
“There are many things in the sea, Lyric Walker. Be thankful that you have only seen a small number of them.”
I shudder. I’ve seen enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
“So you knew my family?” I ask. “All my mother really told me is that they were important figures in the Alpha government. I didn’t know they were famous.”
“As counselors and consorts, they were widely regarded, but it was their warrior instincts that earned them respect. You dishonor them with your halfhearted efforts.”
“I’m getting better!” I argue.
Water ruptures from the soil and curls around my neck like an anaconda. It jerks me off the ground nearly ten feet. I dangle and kick for freedom. She could kill me right here. She just might.
“Better is not good enough, Lyric Walker,” she says casually, as if she’s not strangling the life out of me. “We march to Tempest to free our people. Your pathetic efforts will intimidate no one. Is there no ferocity in you?”
The air slowly leaves my lungs. My legs search for land that isn’t there.
“Your city has been demolished. Your friends are dead and gone. Enemies roam your lands. Soldiers have taken your people, torn them from the arms of their mothers, all to cut them open and see how they work! Does none of this burn your passions? Where is your fury?”
“I can’t breathe!” I croak.
She frowns, and just like that, the water releases me. It rains to the ground, taking me along with it, and I land in the sand, gasping for oxygen. She stands over me with the sun behind her, so I cannot see her expression, but I don’t need to see it to know it is full of disgust.
“I have fury.” I choke.
“Then why don’t I fear you? Do you know why I am so much stronger than you with this glove? It’s because, as the humans say, I have scores to settle. My people were obliterated, reduced from millions to thousands. We suffered the indignation of living like rats in your surface world, to be spied on and attacked by human filth. We humiliated ourselves, cowering on your beach, and it was all for nothing! The Rusalka found us. We were easy targets. They slaughtered even more of our people, taking us from thousands to hundreds, and among those broken souls was my selfsame. Fathom’s death will not have been in vain. This weapon I wear burns bright with revenge, and I will use it to crush those responsible—the Rusalka, the prime, and the people at Tempest.”
Fathom. Hearing his name is a punch in the belly. In the two weeks that Arcade and I have traveled together, she has never mentioned him once, not in passing, nothing. I’ve been smart enough to keep my mouth shut too. After all, we’re both in love with him. I suddenly suspect that all this training is an excuse to get me out into the middle of nowhere so she can kill me. She would be justified, I suppose.
“He’s not dead,” I croak.
“Of course he is,” she says, watching me like I’ve said something crazy. “The prime and his consort cut him down in the water. If the Rusalka didn’t track him and feed on his body, then the sharks devoured him for sure. No, he did not survive. He has gone on to join the Great Abyss.”
I’m incensed by her certainty that the boy we both love did not survive. I saw the wound on his side and the blood that leaked from it, and I saw the goodbye in his eyes when he kissed me and swam away, but I can’t give up hope. I cannot accept a world in which he’s not alive.
The glove glows brighter on my hand. Yes, I do have something that fuels it. It’s regret for not holding on to him tighter. I should have held him and never let him go. I was a fool to respect their relationship. She didn’t . . . doesn’t love him. When you love a person, you don’t shrug your shoulders at their loss. You don’t just move on.
A funnel of water shoots out of the ground and catches Arcade, catapulting her into the sky. I wrap her in silt and mud and bring her down to the ground like a pile driver. This time I don’t hold back, so when she hits, there’s a bang I’m sure can be heard for miles.
I walk over to her limp body as she recovers. Instead of a fiery anger, I see the faintest hint of a smile.
“There is a fighter inside you, Lyric Walker,” Arcade says. “Tempest may tremble before you after all.”
I hear someone clear her throat behind us. When I turn, I find Bex standing a few yards away, holding my empty backpack. She’s wearing a miniskirt, a Superman T-shirt, and a pair of Mary Janes that add two inches to her already-tall frame. She’d look hot if it weren’t for the impatient crease between her eyes.
“We’re out of food,” she says. “If you’re done killing each other, we need to go shopping.”
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