OR SAYS it’s not much farther,” said Angel. She was wrapped in a towel, hair still wet, sipping a mug of hot tea. I was next to her, doing all the same things, except I wasn’t communicating telepathically with a radiation-created, man-killing monster. I guess I do have limitations.

We were moving slowly through the darkness, our lights turned off as we tried to sneak up on Mr. Chu’s under-water lair in a six-hundred-ton sub.

Angel’s eyes unfocused, and she said, “It should be up here, on the left. Go really slow.”

The captain gave the command, then handed out night-vision goggles, which Gazzy had been begging for for years. If the captain was smart, he’d count them all before we got off the sub.

“There it is,” said Angel. “Gor and the others are going to wait here.”

In the distance, we saw something that looked like it was out of a James Bond movie: an enormous clear-topped dome, three thousand feet below the sea. It looked like someone had covered over a football stadium and dropped it into the ocean. It was designed to blend in with its surroundings, and without the night goggles, we could have swum within fifty feet of it and not necessarily seen it.

As we got closer I could tell that the whole dome wasn’t clear—it was metal on top, with a wide band of windows around the middle. Three different air-lock entries would admit submarines, which meant Mr. Chu had access to extradeep-diving subs. Maybe he had connections with some military organization? Maybe he was so stinking rich that he had bought his own private fleet of submarines?

“I can barely hear Gor,” Angel said in frustration. She stood up and dropped her towel. “I have to go out again.”

I had forty-thousand tons of reasons why I didn’t want her to go back out, but we were actually relying on the recon abilities of the sea monsters (who called themselves the Krelp, by the way).

Instead I accepted the inevitable, including the even more gross inevitability that I should go out with her.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, reluctantly unwrapping my towel. “I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, thanks, Max!” Angel took my hand and skipped alongside me as we headed for the air-lock chamber. It was like old times, except we were at the bottom of the ocean, talking to sea monsters, and about to rescue my kidnapped mother. Other than that, it was all old hat.

No one protested or tried to stop us this time. Fang looked at me, hope in his eyes, and I smirked at him. I save the huge emotional kissy-face for imminent death scenes. This probably didn’t qualify.

I hoped. I really, really hoped.