Underground – A Merfolk Secret

~ Extras ~

Extra scene: Tech Genius

This is set at the end of chapter 22, Alex has just learned this morning that Drake is missing at sea. So he has some ideas on how to help.

“Is there any chance your friends can locate a Navy exercise taking place in the Atlantic?”

The question came out in a rush, but Gill understood Alex perfectly. She raised her reddish eyebrows and stared at some point in the wall behind him. They were ten minutes early to AP Computer Sciences, and Gill had barely turned her laptop on.

“I have no idea,” she said after a moment. Alex sighed in dejection. “But I can certainly find out. What exactly are you looking for?”

“A diving test. Somewhere in the Atlantic, the Navy is conducting a secret deep diving test. That’s all I know.”

“Does this involve you know what?”

“God, we really need to find you a code word,” Alex muttered. “Yes. We kind of have our hands tied when it comes to investigating right this moment, but I thought about your speech and how you went on and on about the SWIMMERs network, so I thought we could give it a shot.”

Gill started typing, and didn’t stop even when the class began. She had an uncanny method of silently typing that amazed him to no end. An hour later when the bell rang, she was still deeply rooted in her search.

“Gill?” he asked, now feeling stupid for thinking SWIMMERs were good for anything other than wearing Save the mermaid! t-shirts.

“I have a guy who says he can dig into it, but he needs to hack some satellites to do that. Is there any chance we could use Brooks Inc. satellites?”

“If he can hack them, no one will denounce him,” Alex said, cringing at having to tell his father how far he was getting himself into. “I still can’t believe a sixteen-year-old has so much power.”

She stopped typing, and slowly turned to look at Alex. “I might have hacked into my dad’s account. They think my father’s asking them to look into this.”

“What are you going to say when he finds out?” Alex asked, going pale.

“Please. My dad’s a lawyer, not a Silicon Valley tech genius. I’ll get the location, Alex. That’s all that matters.”