Page 18 of Whispers of the Deep

Her toes were intact. She could wiggle them in her fins. Her suit was fine, although she could feel the cold water seeping through a hole in the back. Eventually, that would be a problem, but right now, she was okay. It would last. The integrity of the suit hadn’t been overly damaged, so she could relax about dying of hypothermia.

Draped over the rock as she was, she couldn’t see much other than stone. At least the light attached to her head still worked. She peered down at the rock between her fingers. Black, porous. She’d seen these specimens come into Beta before.

They were volcanic. She tried to pull up the other words for them, but couldn’t. She panicked a bit. Had she hit her head? Maybe that was the problem.

“You didn’t hit your head,” she assured herself. “You would remember if you hit your head. This is a panic attack. You’ve had them before. You’re all right.”

But she didn’t feel all right. She lifted her head to look around, adjusting her light so it was the smallest, most intense beam it could be and still... nothing. Just water. Just vague shapes in the distance that she thought might be other rocks. Or deep-sea creatures she didn’t want to meet.

The current moved just over her head. Mira reached her hand up and could feel it shoving against her palm. She must have fallen out of the bottom and now she was lying here, on volcanic rock, and there had to be another drop off somewhere nearby.

“You’re alive,” she repeated to herself, folding again over the stone and trying not to think about pressure changes and what they did to a body. “You’re alive, and you’re not hallucinating. You would see things moving in the distance, you would...”

See dark shapes.

She would see dark shapes moving a little closer with every heartbeat and she would probably think they were alive. Mira’s brows wrinkled as she turned her attention back to the shadows in the distance. She didn’t think they were moving yet, but what if they were?

Nitrogen poisoning. It affected divers, and she knew it made them see things.

But wait, no, she was panicking. Her rebreather didn’t do that. She wasn’t carrying tanks of oxygen, nitrogen, and everything else they breathed. The device she made turned the water into air just like the fish did. She wasn’t going to hallucinate, which meant the dark shape approaching her was not in her head and right in front of her.

Fear spiked through her body and she moved without thought.

Mira turned from the stone and kept her body low as she swam away. Whatever trailed her, speeding after her like a bullet through the water, it was hunting. But she was smaller and swimming through tight spaces would give her a lot better chance at surviving.

She didn’t take the time to fear that she might swim farther away from Beta. It was a risk she would have to take to stay alive. Dodging through the stones, she found what she was hoping for. Tall spirals of volcanic material that had fallen over each other, creating a labyrinth of tiny cracks where pale fish schooled.

Cracks she could fit in. But whatever was following her? It couldn’t.

She didn’t stop to see what manner of creature hunted her. Mira darted across the volcanic ruins, hoping it wasn’t still active. Black dust floated up around her, and she could only see as far as her hand, but she knew the spirals were right here. Right in front of her. She just had to make it before whatever was behind her caught up.

One more thrust of her feet and she was there. She grabbed onto the edge of the stones just as one of her fins was caught in the current. It dragged her upward, cutting her hands on the sharp stone, but she refused to let it stop her. Gritting her teeth, Mira tunneled beneath one of the stones, wedging herself so deep inside she didn’t know if she’d be able to get out.

But she couldn’t stop wheezing. She had never once in her life felt like prey, but now she knew what it felt like to fear teeth digging into her without ever seeing her attacker.

Spinning around, she moved too fast and her light hit the stone above her head. She couldn’t hear the sound of breaking glass, but she could feel it crunch and then everything plummeted into darkness.

She thought she was scared before? Now she knew real fear.

Nothing existed. She didn’t exist, if not for the feel of the stone around her and the icy water gathering at the base of her spine. There was no light. And she’d thought she knew what it was like to stare into the darkness, but she had been so wrong.

This was like she was dead. This darkness was like someone had plucked out her eyes and taken her ears. She was nothing and everything all at once.

Until a soft blue light bloomed ahead of her. It was some distance away still, but it was baby blue like the bird eggs in the hatchery. So soft and unassuming that it almost cajoled her out of her hiding place.

Blinking her eyes into focus, she realized that blue light was familiar. Her undine floated across the volcanic ravine, pulling himself with those webbed, clawed hands. He searched for her, she realized. He was looking in all the cracks and crevices, his brows furrowed in concentration and those gills fully extended.

They were so fragile. So thin. Fluttering around his head, moving on their own as the water toyed through them. So many shades of blue, all glowing with bioluminescence around his face. Cutting that muscular chest deeper with shadows and faint blue highlights. His long, powerful tail moved him with barely a flick. Like an eel drifting through the current.

He was beautiful, she thought. If she died here, she was grateful that it was at the hands of something like him.

Then those gills stopped moving, a ripple stiffening them as he turned in her direction and she knew, somehow, he’d found her. But, she supposed, it was never easy for prey to hide from a predator.

Especially not one like him.

Eight

Arges

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