Page 28 of Call of the Fathoms

Why did that hurt so much to hear? Why was it that a monster understood her better than all the people she’d lived with for years?

Damn it. She could choose to just sit here and die. That wasn’t all that difficult to do. All she had to do was refuse his deal, and then eat the rest of her meager food stores. Therewasn’t much left, but a couple of days were still a couple more days without giving into him.

Or.

She could choose to keep fighting another day.

Opening the hatch was so little. She didn’t know why he wanted her to open it, but she could.

So she stood, against her better judgement, and hit the button. The small door on the floor slid open. It was maybe large enough for him to wedge himself into, but unlikely that he’d fit into the space. Still, if he wanted to, he could kill her now.

Maybe it was better if he did. He could end this all, and the complicated feelings she was having would be over. So when he appeared in the water just at the edge of her toes, she didn’t react. Not even when she noticed how broad his features were with his hair smoothed back from his face or the droplets of water that ran down his neck to the hollows of his collarbone.

His arms reached up through the hole and then he leveraged himself upright. He was almost eye level with her, staring into her very soul as he just... remained there. Frozen. Looking into her gaze without all those dangerous swirling colors.

She swallowed hard. “Well?

“You are the warrior I thought you were,” he murmured. A single claw stroked down the side of her face to the sharp edge of her jaw. “How interesting it is to see you not in the water. I cannot sense if you are frightened.”

Should she be honest? No. She would not show weakness to this creature. “I am not afraid.”

“Is that you speaking? Or is that the medicine you keep injecting into your arm?”

She didn’t know. Maybe that should have been a warning sign in her mind that something was about to go terribly wrong. Why was he even asking?

But she was so mesmerized by the creature in front of her. All his pale lavender skin, the dark purple at the edges of his face and the tear tracks down his cheeks. She wanted to trace those marks with her fingers. She wanted to disappear for a few moments, and for some strange reason, it felt like he knew how to do that.

She was honest when she replied, “I don’t know.”

“I think perhaps it is time for us to find out.”

He lunged forward before she could even process what that meant. Their chests bumped, and she tripped over one of the stupid crates behind her. As she toppled backward, he grabbed onto the box that contained all of her medication and disappeared into the water.

It all happened so fast. She stayed where she was, dumbfounded and sitting on top of three boxes while another had fallen over behind her and spilled all the clothing and weapon contents on the floor.

“That bastard,” she muttered. “He just took all my drugs.”

What was she going to do now?

Twelve

Fortis

Fortis darted away from her ship. He knew there wasn’t a weapon she could send after him, and if there was, it wasn’t working. But he still wanted space to look at what he had stolen. This box of needles held some of the answers he had been searching for. He was certain of that.

The sea guided him. He barely even focused on swimming as a current caught him and thrust him away from the ship. Instead, he looked at the box in his hands. It wasn’t even locked. He could open and close it easily, although he kept it closed enough that the needles didn’t fly out. He wanted to know what this medicine was, and just how much of it she was dosing herself with.

If there was anyone who knew how to endure substances, it was a depthstrider. He had grown up in the sulphur fields, deep in the sea. He had spent years inhaling those fumes that would give him the ability to see into the future. It was partially why the achromo medications didn’t work on him.

Although, his son had succumbed to them. The achromos in Alpha didn’t realize they had caught such a young one of his pod. They’d given Aulax far too much for one his age, and that had been enough to keep his boy still and quiet.

It still enraged him. Fortis had gone back to Alpha with the others and he had torn through every achromo who couldn’t make it to the ships. The others knew their job was to save the people of Alpha. They didn’t want to fill the ocean with red blood just to prove a point. But Fortis had wanted to.

They’d taken his son. They’d experimented on him, intended to kill him just to pull apart his pieces and find out what was inside. He needed some of them to die for that. The scientists had been far too easy to find, and he made good on his threat.

The ocean deposited him on a rocky outcropping a little way from her ship. He could still see the meager lights, but they were nothing but a twinkle some distance away. Nothing could find him here. Not her weapons, and certainly not her rescue party that wasn’t coming for her.

He wrapped his tail over the lip of the rock, holding himself in place as he turned the box and opened it. Needles floated out, some of them empty, some half empty, but others were full. He let all but one float away into the sea. They would be buried in the depths with all the other refuse in the ocean.

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