Page 3 of Whispers of the Deep

He made some kind of noise, eerily similar to a whale, and then launched away from her. He swam with so much grace through the water toward the center of the room. And then she watched him look up at the blasted glass he’d nearly blown to smithereens. With one final look back at her, he swam back up through the crack.

The shards tore at his tail as he moved through it, forcing him to slow down for a few moments as she got an eyeful of the end of his tail. So stunning it didn’t look like it should be attached to his body at all. The fin was delicate and fine, with veins of blue rioting through it. And then she realized the blue was pulsing, glowing, like a bioluminescence that she’d only seen in pictures. With one last, final flick, he was gone. Leaving nothing but his blueish, black blood in the room.

“Fuck.” She drew the word out long and low.

She’d almost died. And now she was going to almost die again when she told her boss that the room she was in had flooded.

Their client wouldn’t want to host a party in a room filled with seawater. And wasn’t it supposed to be in less than a week? She’d have to get out there, fix the glass, and then a cleaning crew would need to be hired. There wasn’t supposed to be a cleaning crew at all in the budget.

If she wasn’t fired, she’d definitely have to pay for all this out of pocket, and...

“Ooohh,” she muttered, again drawing out the word before she turned to look at the blank hall. There were very few windows here, only halogen lights blinking above her, stretching down the long metal tube. “I am so fucked.”

Two

Arges

Arges hated the achromos, as they called the colorless ones who lived in the walled in city. He’d been but a child when he had his first run in with their kind. He’d been small enough to be stupid, finding time to stay in front of their windows so he might see them. Their bodies were so strange. Those ugly, two finned monstrosities had once been intriguing to his young mind.

He remembered the searing pain of their weapons. It was hard to forget the sensation of heat blasting along his side as one of them had shot him in the tail. The blood had bloomed in the ocean that day, not just his own, but also that achromo’s.

His father had murdered the creature who had dared to attack his son, and he’d paid with his life as they had all started shooting at his father. The achromos were monsters. They had ruined this sea and they would continue to ruin it if they were allowed to do as they wanted.

Thus, he became the monster who fought them.

Arges moved a strand of kelp out of his way, eyeing the piping system he and his pod had been planning to attack. It was their secondary choice, unfortunately. the achromo who had challenged him, the woman he’d seen in the last dome he’d broken into, had ruined his first plan.

The piping system he’d scoped out was right in front of the dome she’d fixed. That would have caused an issue if they returned and there were achromos there. She’d ruined everything, that little sea nymph who had stared back at him with too much bravery.

He’d shown her why that was dangerous. Arges still got a flash of pride when he remembered the fear in her eyes as he approached the crack she had so foolishly pointed out. It had proven difficult to break, but he’d managed.

Unfortunately, that had only brought more attention to the room. The achromos were ever so effortless in their tenacity. A trait that might have been admirable if they hadn’t taken over far too much of his world already, polluting it with their stench and refuse.

“Ready?” his brother asked. Daios was the eldest of his blood, a terrifying brother whose coloring was mostly blood red. Considering the amount of scars that covered his body as well, it was difficult to see Daios as anything but a weapon.

“Ready.” For all Daios’s aggressive visage, Arges had led their pod for years, much to his brother’s discomfort.

Even now, he could see Daios eyeing him as though seeking out any form of weakness. Arges knew what he was thinking. They should have attacked the achromos weeks ago. They should have drawn them out of their larger domes and into the tunnels that were easy to collapse.

But they couldn’t fight like that. Not with the weapons the achromos had, or the strange metal creatures they’d been creating that crawled all over their homes. He’d seen what had happened at Gamma. Their mother had spoken of the city they’d captured that had suddenly come back to life only a few cycles after.

He had to be careful. They all had to be careful around these weak creatures who used their minds to their advantage.

“You know the plan,” Arges said, coiling his body and flicking his tail powerfully through the water. They sped away from their hunting grounds, and instead returned to where their pod waited. “There are six different pipes. Each one needs to be broken.”

“Why are we breaking the pipes?”

“The achromos need air to breathe.” Air like he and his brothers didn’t need.

Just like the first time he’d been told of their air needing bodies, he shivered in disgust. Fluttering his fingers over the delicate gills along his ribcage, he feathered his touch over their barely noticeable texture before he focused his attention on the pod waiting for them.

Six other males. All massive specimens who had fought sharks, battled against the achromos, and lived to tell of both. One of them was rumored to have fought a squid longer than the achromos’ homes were tall.

Arges paused in front of them, floating next to his brother, who had crossed his arms over his chest. “The pipes hold the air the achromos need to live. We will kill many of them when we destroy these pipes. And the ones who flee will be stuck in the central tower. We are leaving only two pipes for air. If that does not kill them all, then it would leave them exactly where we want them. The second attack will be ours to win.”

All the others released out their battle cries like the orcas that attacked without conscience. His people were terrifying and great. They would take this sea back from the achromos who thought they deserved to live here.

Pride flushed through his chest, turning his normally gray skin mottled with dark splotches. He could feel that pride coursing through his veins. It heated his blood and sent him careening along the currents. The ocean drew him to the farthest corner of the achromos’ city. To the place where he knew his pipe waited. This was where he would make his final stand. This was where he would destroy them, force them all into the smallest section of their city, and then they would drown.

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