We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Lost Ark Dreaming , a new science fiction novel by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, available now from Tordotcom Publishing.
Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.
There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.
Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this conflict: Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living—for everyone.
Prelude
What are we but water and skin?
My dearest All-Infinite—
You must understand
that this is the way
the world always ends:
in
worthy questions
left unanswered
lonely
hearts and empty eyes;
lapping warnings
nightly silence
ripples
in the undersea.
Yekini
Yekini had one dream, and the ark was always in it.
She had never been religious—not in the old ways before the deluge, not in the new way of the Master Clerics, and not in the way of those who secretly tended to bygone spiritualities. Yekini should never have even known the tale of the ark and the flood. But somewhere between tower-wide broadcasts regaling denizens with sermons about the fulfillment of the Second Deluge, and Maame—who was intensely spiritual and knew too many tales from above and under the sea—learning about it was inevitable.
The dream was always the same. The ark’s keeper stood at the bow in a flowing robe, reaching out, asking Yekini to hand over the basket. Sometimes, it was Olókun who stood there, stretching forth a tentacle rather than an arm. Sometimes it was Noah, with a bushy beard and a tight squint, crow’s feet at the edge of his eyes. Other times it was Sekhmet in her lioness head, or Utnapishtim looking like immortality personified, or Deucalion or Waynaboozhoo or Manu. Sometimes, the ark was a boat or a ship or a raft.
Regardless of who stood there or on what, Yekini always looked down, into the face of the baby in the basket.
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Lost Ark Dreaming
The baby was her—or at least had her face. Sometimes, the face was that of her foster grandfather’s, Maame’s husband—an approximation, since he died before she was three. Sometimes, it was what she imagined her own parents would’ve looked like if they’d survived long enough for her infant brain to retain their features. Sometimes it was a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance. Always someone she could choose to save.
The real problem was that she always chose not to.
The ark’s keeper would try to collect the basket from her, but she would hold on, fingers locked in a vice grip, knuckles taut. Halfway through this tug-of-war, her awareness would return, and she would see that they were not standing on the deck of the ark or boat or raft, but on the roof of the Pinnacle, overlooking the other four towers of the Fingers—back when they were still beacons of radiant hope, before they fell and became derelict. Except, it wasn’t the Fingers, but Old Lagos from the time before the waters, how she’d seen the city portrayed in image and video feeds.
And just when she thought of that, the waters would come.
The wind always arrived first, tickling her eyebrows, and when she looked down, the waters would rise, rise, without warning, as the reports had said they did. One moment, yellow automobiles littered the streets far below; next moment, they floated on their sides alongside everything else: trees, buildings, people. She would look up and realize the ark was not the ark at all, but a rescue helicopter, taking off with the ark’s keeper staring out the window, shaking their head as they left her standing there with the basket. The basket, which, when she looked down, was now empty, lacking answers yet filled with questions.
Then she would wake up in a sweat and realize she was late for work.
Today, for instance.
0730, Day 262, Year 059, the glowing numbers on her nightstand read, which meant she was on the morning rota, which meant she was due at 0800, which meant she was already half an hour behind schedule, which meant she had slept through her alarm—which meant her dreams were becoming more intense.
Yekini scrambled out of bed, slammed her knee into the built-in nightstand and cursed. She crawled to the kitchen, put a dish cloth under the spigot, squeezed, and wiped her armpits and privates. Next: a breath mint. Between cleaning her teeth and dressing up, there was only time for one.
When the pain in her knee subsided, she slid the wardrobe open, moisturized her locs and palm-rolled those closest to her face while picking out a clean suit. Midder dress code for work was pastels, and she went for a quick and efficient gray and white. She was halfway through stepping into her shoes when she heard Maame’s raspy breathing from the living room.
Shit.
Yekini hopped to the kitchen and programmed a breakfast sequence for her grandmother. As the pot confirmed the prep settings for corn pap, Yekini popped her head around the doorway to see if the woman was awake. Light washed over Maame from the screen she’d been watching the night before, but her chair was still reclined to its sleep position, her eyes still shut.
Yekini whispered the remaining instructions to the unit’s assistant: shut off screen, set timed lights, set alarms for Maame’s medication, set alarms for Maame’s programs. The assistant whispered back its confirmation. Satisfied, Yekini slipped out the door and whispered her final instructions for a timed lock.
The hallway outside was wide and curved, as most of the corridors in the Pinnacle were. Yekini ran for the elevators, often not seeing oncoming pedestrians until she’d almost bumped into them. It took a while for her to realize she was on the southbound track. She crossed quickly to the outer northbound track, to the dismay of a tram driver who almost careened into her. No time to apologize. She had to make the elevators.
She arrived just in time to catch the last one, slipping in before the doors closed, breathing heavily, sweat lining her neck. The car advanced upward, packed full of Midders like her who worked so high up the tower that their shoulders almost brushed the Uppers. Most were dressed in the same way as she—essential, minimalist—making it clear they also worked in some arm of government.
Yet they shot her glances anyway. Perhaps today it was the sweat and her slightly rumpled clothes. But it could just as easily have been the blotch of yellow dye in the corner of her hair, or the fancy pin on her suit. She enjoyed a dash of color every now and then. Her coworkers and superiors, like most Midders, did not.
Once the car eased into Level 66 and the doors opened, Yekini shot down the corridor, glancing at her wearable every few seconds. 0756, 0758, 0759. At 0800, she crossed the sign that said Commission for the Protection of the Fingers.
A grid of workstations, laid out over the large floor, welcomed her into the agency. She scurried through them to the workzone in the rear that read Analysts, one eye on the clock. Her station, all the way in the back row where junior analysts sat, was within reach.She raced to her desk and pressed her finger onto the station scanner, clocking in. The desk pinged its acceptance and began to process. Yekini crossed her fingers, counting the seconds, wishing for a miracle.
The desk pinged. You Have Arrived, it congratulated her. 0801 hours.
“Fuck me,” said Yekini, slumping into the chair.
She leaned her head back over the headrest, waiting for a second ping, one that was definitely going to be bad news. Sure enough, before her thought was complete, the desk pinged one more time. Yekini sighed, tapped the screen, read the message, then frowned.
This was a mistake, surely? She’d only been a minute late this time—that didn’t warrant this kind of response. And yes, her punctuality strikes had racked up, blah blah blah, but…something was wrong here. Something had to be.
Because why on Savior’s given waters would they send her undersea?
Tuoyo
Tuoyo’s day had begun with a literal bang. A junior technician had woken her up by slamming repeatedly on her unit door rather than do the respectable thing and ping her ahead of arrival. But all expectation of etiquette vanished from her mind when he revealed that something had torn a hole in the airlock of Level 9, and as Level Foreman and Head of Safety, it was her duty to see to it.
First things first: she sent a sitrep upstairs, labeled it critical as protocol demanded. Then she reported at the desk long before her shift was due.
Turned out the culprit was a broken panel in the sluice gates used to flood the airlock for underwater exits, an action they hadn’t carried out in a while. A broken gate meant they couldn’t deflood and depressurize the airlock, the one thing it was good for.
The hole in question was a split seam in the airlock’s wall. Tuoyo guessed that sustained underwater pressure on the aging walls must’ve done it. They were lucky this was a level where the walls were fortified, meaning there was no structural damage. This was also a work wing and not a residential one, so the leak had only affected a few isolated areas and some engineering equipment.
She quickly dispatched two teams: a cleanup crew to seal off the wet areas of the tower and begin siphoning the water, and a tech team to the airlock to repair the gate and mend the seam. In the interim, she spent an hour peering over sweaty heads into various monitors with feeds from the Pinnacle’s exterior underwater cameras.
There was no sign of any NTD—non-tower dweller, as the OPL classified them. No sign of a breach on the outside walls either. The sluice gate’s break was clean along the edge, so it didn’t look like the work of an external party. Constant pressure changes could do that to aged material. She’d noticed such weaknesses in other parts of the level, so it wasn’t far-fetched. The Lowers were built shitty anyways, a situation she found surprising for people as smart as Uppers supposedly were. Didn’t they know that if the Lowers crumbled, the whole tower would follow?
She watched from the monitors as the techs replaced the broken gate, then returned to the airlock and began to weld the split seam. It was really one errant wall panel, and took about an hour to fix. Afterwards, they de-flooded and de-pressurized the airlock, checked for leaks, pressurized and flooded again just to be sure.
Everything seemed fine.
As the team waited in the chamber for the final de-flooding and de-pressurization, Tuoyo sent a follow-up sitrep upstairs with copious notes about cause, damage and repairs. She removed the criticalwarning she’d initially appended to the report. Hopefully, upstairs hadn’t dispatched a response yet—and even if they had, she could defend her decision. A seam split in the walls was critical.
One hour left until her shift ended. She retired to her workroom to catch a bit of sweet sleep, and was just about dozing off when she was awakened, rudely, by the beeping of her handheld.
She rose from the pull-out bed in the tiny workroom and peered at the screen. A visit: two officials from the midders were on their way to see her with regard to the breach.
Ugh. Protocol would be the death of her.
But then she looked at the two officials, and her heart began to beat a little bit faster.
The last time an official from COPOF had shown up to see her, it was for a very different reason. The dark cloud that hung over her life had formed that day and had not left since.
Breathe, Tuoyo. Breathe.
She pushed the bleak thoughts down and folded the bed back into its compartment. As she squeezed back into her jumpsuit, she swiped through their profiles, wondering why the COPOF would send someone. Did they think this was an internal threat? Or worse, external?
Did they think it was Children?
The thought of Children sent a chill through her, fear braided with antipathy. She pushed it down.
She met them in the hallway. They were dressed funny, their protective getup a mixed bag between high-risk conflict and underwater gear, but completely neither.
“Are you the Foreman for this level?” the short man asked without pleasantries. Tuoyo was immediately reminded why she hated being in the same room with these Midder government types.
“Good day to you too,” she said, her demeanor flat. “I’m Tuoyo Odili, Foreman, HSE and Security, Level 9.”
“I’m Yekini,” the woman next to him said, and waved awkwardly.
“Yes, yes,” the man—profile name: Ngozi—said impatiently. “Can we get this done?”
Tuoyo led them down the corridors to the south end of the level, what she liked to think of as the Aft of the Pinnacle. The tower itself was almost shaped like the old ships of yore—or like many such ships stacked one atop the other. The south face was the stern, and the north face the bow—which was why her mind thought of it as the Pinnacle’s Forward. It was a marvelous feat of engineering and architecture, and if not for the challenging conditions of the Lowers, amidst other life challenges, she might’ve even loved living here.
“Why are you dressed like that?” she asked the two officials.
They looked at each other, confused.
“The mobilization brief said this is how we should gear up,” Yekini said. She was a young woman—younger than Tuoyo, at least—slightly impish, and gave off the impression that she regarded all of this as some sort of novelty.
“Oh,” said Tuoyo. “So, you fell for the prank, then.”
Ngozi frowned. “The what?”
“Your people do it all the time. Because you lot never come down here, they tell you that you need all these ridiculous things. See if you’ll know.” She eyed Yekini’s firearm. “You don’t need that for anything here, unless you’re trying to start some disturbance. Or you’re police. Or both.”
“I knew it,” said Ngozi, slapping his palms. He turned to Yekini. “You know your superior will be hearing from me, yes?”
Yekini had something on the tip of her tongue, but decided against it. They went on in silence.
“You sound very erudite,” said Ngozi. “I was led to believe that Lowers aren’t very, well, sound.”
“Mr. Nwafor,” Yekini said.
“What? It’s just a question.”
Just a question. Tuoyo snorted.
“Something funny?”
“Yes,” said Tuoyo. “You. You are funny.” She said funny like idiot, and hoped it was obvious to any discerning ear, Ngozi’s included.
“Explain.” He said it like a command, an attempt to claw back some of his splattered dignity. Tuoyo didn’t want to fall for it, but decided he needed the lesson anyway.
“Just a question,” she said. “People like you say things like that so you don’t have to face the truth about yourselves.” He made to interject, so she hastily added: “And before you say it’s not true, I know it is because I used to live in the midders.”
That gave him pause, and she proceeded.
“People told me things like this throughout my time up there. They thought they were being nice. I don’t know what your definition of nice is, but implying that everyone is stupid where I come from doesn’t sound nice to me. And, if you must know, many Lowers are very well educated, myself included. You think this tower is held up by the Savior’s hands?”
Ngozi, who seemed to have tuned out a while back, suddenly snapped his fingers. “I knew it!”
The two women glanced at one another. Yekini made a disdainful click in the back of her tongue.
“And what did you knew?” Tuoyo said dryly.
“Your name,” said Ngozi. “It sounded familiar.”
Oh no, Tuoyo thought.
“You’re that Tuoyo Odili,” he was saying. “That was your wife, right? The anthropologist who was all over the screens a few years ago—she was on that boat expedition that was attacked by Children?”
Tuoyo swallowed. Though she had long left that Midder life behind, every now and again she ran into someone who recognised her from the family photos of her and Nehikhare that had filled the broadcasts. The OPL had put them up without her consent, of course, trying desperately to turn eyes toward the stories of the people lost, and away from the cause of the disaster.
She’d hated talking about it then, and she hated talking about it now. She’d spoken about it enough for a lifetime.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Yekini said.
Tuoyo nodded. “It was a long time ago.”
“So you know about Children, then?” Ngozi said, oblivious. “Tell us—do you think it’s Children, this breach?”
She did not think it was Children. She did not think it was anything. She did not think at all. She wanted to stop talking.
“Children can’t survive out of water,” was all she could offer.
“Ah,” said Ngozi. “Of course. I knew that.”
The airlock’s heavy doors came into view. Tuoyo breathed a sigh of relief and punched in the entry code.
The airlock looked and smelled exactly like it did after every flooding—dank and moldy. It used to be re-insulated periodically, but like most things in the Lowers, that had not been done in a long time. Rust had now taken over the place and it looked more derelict than it should have. Light came from a single source: a large lamp at the sealed exit.
The most alien thing here was the sea gunk that stuck around after every flooding, and the smell that came with it. Some of it was possessions from a life before, things that did not degrade, mostly plastic. Some of it was the nondegradable parts of unrecognizable gear, industrial and building material from whatever structures still stood undersea. But most of it was litter—container caps, cosmetic products with the names washed off. They clung to the walls like starfish.
Tuoyo remembered how fascinated Nehikhare used to be by this trash. Not trash, as she’d say. A window into the lives of the old world. Every now and then, there would be knickknacks from the old nation in their unit—a personal item recovered on an expedition, a portion of a piece of equipment, some sand dug up from the sea bed that used to be Old Lagos. Tuoyo hated it then, and as was her way, had been vocal about her distaste. But Nehikhare would laugh it off and kiss her, and then Tuoyo would forget how to make words again.
Ngozi coughed. It echoed in the metal chamber.
“My ears.” He poked a finger in each ear and twisted.
“You get used to it,” Tuoyo said.
“I don’t know how you can. Smells like fish in here.” He surveyed the compartment. “If this is just a transition chamber between us and outside, why is a broken sluice a critical problem again?”
“The critical alert wasn’t for the sluice,” she said, pointing to the newly repaired section along the wall edge. “That was.”
The weld lines were so clean they would’ve been unnoticeable if not for existing rust. Tuoyo marveled, for a moment, at how neat it all was, how much good training she’d imparted to the techs.
“Okay, but I’m still struggling to see how that’s critical. It’s just leakage, right?”
It wasn’t a bad question—not from a non-engineer, at least. But she found herself swallowing a scoff at just leakage. This man and his justs.
“We have a saying down here: every leak is death,” she replied. “Maybe for you up there, a leak only means a failure of plumbing. But down here, an unattended leak could easily mean a structural failure. A leak here is bad for all of us.” She leaned in, hoping to drive home her message. “All of us.”
“Okay, wow, you’re an intense woman,” Ngozi said, recoiling.
Yekini, who had been pacing around the airlock so far, poking her head into corners and peering at edges, had stopped at the sluice gate and was inspecting the repairs. Without looking at the others, she said: “That split looks bigger than I expected.”
Tuoyo was unsure how to respond to that.
“Unless they welded beyond the hole.” Yekini’s expression had shifted from impish to serious. “Because that looks almost big enough—”
“To fit a person,” Tuoyo completed, and she suddenly wasn’t so sure what she believed had happened anymore.
“I thought you said it was pressure?” Ngozi asked, but Yekini was already moving. She approached the weld, ran her fingers down the lines, then took out a flashlight and swung its beam across the walls.
“Is there something you’re looking for?” Ngozi pressed.
Yekini ignored him and turned to Tuoyo: “Did you scan the airlock before or after the repairs?”
“Both? Sweeps are automatic sequences within the pressurization and de-pressurization cycles.”
Yekini pressed a button on the flashlight, and another light came on—ultraviolet. “Including a UV sweep?”
“No.” Tuoyo frowned. “That’s not included. Why would we want to do that?”
Yekini pulled out a medium-sized can and sprayed it in a spot. “To check for things that say that something alive was in here, perhaps?”
“Alive? You mean, like, my tech staff?”
“What’s that?” asked Ngozi, pointing to her can.
“Luminol,” said Yekini, spraying another spot. “And no, not your techs, who I’m sure were suited the whole time. I’m more concerned about anything else that was not them.” She sprayed again. “Any fluid will show under Luminol and UV—blood, semen, saliva, urine, sweat. For aquatic creatures, we’re looking for Trimethylamine. That’s what gives that fishy odor you’re smelling.”
Tuoyo knew that word—Trimethylamine. After what happened with Nehikhare, she had done a lot of reading aboutthe sinking of The Centurion—most of which she wasn’t really supposed to have been doing. It was where she had come across this word.
Yekini was still spraying. “I’m just looking for traces. See if maybe something got in here that was big enough to—”
Yekini stopped short at a spot near the weld. She sprayed again, tentative. Reflexively, her hand reached for her firearm and paused there.
“What is it?” Ngozi asked.
Yekini gulped. Slowly, she sprayed from her can, in long, large bursts, over the welded panel. Then she clicked her UV light on and pointed it there.
It took a second, but slowly, the outlines came into view: sets of five digits, scattered all over the formerly split seam.
Fingers, maybe; toes, maybe. But the most prominent thing was that which connected them—the light membranes of a web.
“Children,” Tuoyo whispered, and overhead, her dark cloud rumbled.
Excerpted from Lost Ark Dreaming, copyright © 2024 by Suyi Davies Okungbowa.
