Page 110 of Call of the Fathoms

He looked troubled by that fact, but then he shook his head as though to clear the thoughts from his mind. “It’s fine. I forget that the sea talks to me, at times. It is just...”

“A new voice,” Aulax interrupted. “Why is there a new voice?”

The two of them stared at each other, and she feared she was missing something very, very important.

“Boys?” she asked, slowly. “Why does that sound bad?”

They remained looking at each other, and then she realized they werelistening. Intently. Their eyes were fogged, and some of the other depthstriders had also stopped moving. They were all staring into the distance as though listening to something or someone who she could not hear.

Swallowing, she sat down on the edge of the moon pool and waited. Soon, Mira joined her as well. The two of them remained quietly looking at all these frozen undines, even though someof the higher water ones moved around them. As though it was normal to see the depthstriders all freeze as one.

“Have you ever seen this happen before?” Alexia asked.

“No. But Arges said it’s nothing that’s hurting them, so we shouldn’t worry too much.” Mira put her hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Perhaps we should leave them to it. The depthstriders are closer to the ocean than any other of their kind, and sometimes it talks to them. Like a goddess.”

“They said it was a new voice.”

She looked over her shoulder and up into Mira’s troubled expression, but the redhead quickly wiped that look off her face the moment she saw Alexia looking at her. “We’ll deal with it when we must. But first, I would have your opinion on those rooms full of people.”

Standing, Alexia headed off with her, but stopped into one of the guard rooms to change her clothing. She was wet and covered in only a jacket and pants that had certainly seen better days. If Mira reacted to seeing her so unclothed, the other woman was very good at hiding it.

Finally, she headed off toward the room where all of her nightmares had begun. When she walked into the area for genetic enhancements, she was pleased to find none of the children were there.

Mira waved at the empty tubes where some of them had still been growing. “Children, we know what to do with. Even though they are going to have different needs, we already reached out to Beta and many of the people who were relocated from Alpha. Quite a few of them have experience in childcare, and they have been informed that these are slightly different children than they are used to. I’m certain with enough time and love, they will be just like everyone else.”

“That’s... nice.” Alexia didn’t have the right words for the relief that poured through her. These kids, who were just likeher, were going to have a normal life. People weren’t going to hate them or fear them or try to put them in little boxes like that was a normal thing for children to suffer through.

She was going to see them grow into people. Just like they were supposed to be. Even if they were a little stronger than most or if they were a little more capable, they were not going to be looked at as different.

They were just kids.

Mira smiled at her, as though she understood the meaning underneath those two words. “Your Doctor Barker has offered to be their personal physician throughout their lives. He’s already quite concerned about the genetic enhancements and what that might mean for children or breeding with the rest of us. He thinks you all might be the future of humanity. Even if the origin of where your bloodlines came from is a little unusual.”

She grinned. “I hope they make up the most ridiculous story about where we came from. I’m going to tell the children we’re aliens who came from Above.”

“You just might be. Doctor Barker has made suggestions that your people might be able to survive on the surface, or at the very least, be hardy enough to manage it.” Mira shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll make a trek up there and discover other people already living there.”

Wouldn’t that be a surprise?

Alexia strode through the room that had inspired all her personal nightmares, and into the frigid room where all the reborns were stored. Her breath fogged in front of her mouth as she stood there with Mira, looking at all the hundreds of tubes filled with people. Each of them were identical to the others. A perfect match. A clone of all twenty-five people who had ended the world.

It was strange to look at them. She walked a few feet forward and stopped in front of a woman suspended in front of her. Shewas a clone of a lesser known Original. The woman had been a social recluse.

“Clara,” Alexia said. “This one is a clone of Clara, one of the scientists who headed the genetic program.”

“Oh, so some of the Originals were actually useful, then?”

“Some of them. Most were intelligent folks back in the day. Scientists, doctors, Harlow was a physicist. But hundreds of years of life had made everything boring and some things she knew would never have answers. Why we were here, what lives beyond our planet, all of that knowledge was taken from them the moment they couldn’t get off this planet and had to come underneath the sea.” She laid a hand on the ice cold glass, fractals of frost spearing between her fingers. “But these people are not them.”

“That’s why we wanted you here. We have a bit of a problem. Waking them all and sending them to the cities underneath the sea is going to be difficult. Swarms of the same person walking around isn’t going to be good for... anyone.” Mira ran a hand down her face. “Logically, we all understand these aren’t the same people. They’ve never been awake. They don’t even have memories. But they need to have a decision made about where they are going and what we are doing with them. Frankly, I don’t feel like I should be the one making that choice.”

Of course they couldn’t just wake them all and unleash every single one of them into general populace. There were hundreds of them. So many clones in varying states of age.

She headed out of the icy cold room and booted up one of the computers. She brought up the life chart for Mira to see. “There are eight hundred and fifty-four clones currently in this room. Half of them have already been used. The reborns are frozen and put back in stasis if some of their organs have been harvested, but there were more organs that still be used. Essentially, if theyonly removed a kidney or a liver, they would keep the reborn alive just to take more organs and have less waste.”

Mira’s face twisted in disgust. She didn’t have to say anything.

“I agree. But it was the only way they could make sure that every body was appropriately used and not wasted.” She typed in a few more things and then pointed at the screen. “That leaves us with four hundred and twenty-seven. Half of which are still in the zygote phase. They can be terminated without feeling any guilt. They are still growing.”

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