Page 9 of Call of the Fathoms

“Where did you find a specimen like this?” the metallic smelling man asked.

“He was right near Tau, off the deep sea ledge. I wasn’t expecting to see an undine there, but here we are. Bastard tried to ram us in the sub, but we netted him and then brought him back here.” The soldier seemed proud of himself. Fortis wondered just how proud he would be when he found out that Fortis had planned this entire thing.

“Interesting...” A cold, dry hand touched his side, gently lifting one of his hip fins and fingering the bulbous end there. “Strange. This one doesn’t look like many of the others I have seen.”

Movement over his head made his eyes flick to the hand that touched his hip. A hand that was now covered by a significantly larger one, gently peeling the man’s fingers off of Fortis’s fin. That hand was massive, but it wasn’t masculine at all. Long fingers, tapered nails that were filed short, and callouses on the palm. It was a working hand, a hand of a warrior.

Who was this person who smelled like the sea and had hands larger than any achromo’s he’d ever seen?

He’d made a mistake. His eyes had moved underneath those lids. There was the faintest intake of breath from this massive person leaning over him, and he knew that whoever it was, they had seen him move.

“Are his eyes supposed to do that?” A deep voice, but feminine. Rough around the edges, like she didn’t talk very much.

He let his eyes limply return to the center, but that meant he was looking right up at her.

Fuck, he hadn’t realized achromos got this big. She was a massive woman. Mira was tall, and he’d seen some taller male achromos as well when he had spied on their homes. But this woman? She was huge.

She towered over him and all the other people in this room. Her strong features were carved from marble, cut in sharp lines and ragged edges. This was a woman made for battle. He could tell that from the hard set of her eyes and the sharp clench of her jaw while she stared down at him as though she knew he was faking.

The metallic man beside her chuckled. “He’s very much out, if that’s what you’re concerned about. The drugs we use would kill a human if we even got a whiff of it. It’s perfectly normal for their bodies to react to touch. They are very unique creatures, Alexia. Would you like to touch him?”

No, she shouldn’t want to touch him. None of them should want to touch him. As far as they knew, he was unaware of anything that was happening. It was wrong to touch another person like this, and yet, none of these creatures cared. To the achromos, he was just a sea creature who had no thought or reasoning.

So when the woman walked over to where he could no longer see her, he wasn’t all that surprised. Though she was bigger than the others, she wasn’t different from them. She’d just been given the opportunity to explore an undine when he could do nothing in response. Why wouldn’t she take that?

Her fingers glided over his gills, a rather sexual touch that she likely didn’t understand. No one had touched him there since his wife, and she’d been long dead. The sensation was... not entirely something he hated, but given the circumstances, he wanted to flinch away from her. Her fingers weren’t even gentle about it. She touched him like she had a right to do so.

And then she leaned over his eyes again, looking right into his dead gaze as though she knew what she was doing. And damn it, maybe she did. Because she sank her fingers a little deeper into his gills.

It took everything in him to not grind his teeth. She’d notice the bouncing muscle in his jaw if he did so, but damn it, that was not what she was supposed to be doing. If she kept fingering his fucking gills, then he would have a reaction none of the people in this room would likely expect. He wanted this woman to stop testing him, when she damn well knew that he wasn’t actually asleep.

“Gentle, Alexia!” the short man beside her scolded. “It’s a live specimen. You can’t just jam your fingers inside of it. If you harm it, then the other scientists will never let me hear the end of it!”

“Sorry, doctor,” she muttered.

The slow glide of her fingers out of his gills was something he wouldn’t likely forget any time soon. A shiver nearly traveled through him. Those broad, strong fingers had skimmed through the natural slickness of his gills with far too much ease. Like she’d done that before and knew every single nerve ending to tempt him with.

Rage bloomed in his chest. This achromo might be different from the others, but he would kill her with even more rage for touching him. He would see her eyes widen in fear and shock, then he would bathe himself in her blood. He would coat himself in her pretty scent and glory in the sounds of her drowning.

She stepped back, and the doctor moved closer again. He flashed a light in Fortis’s eyes, and yet again, he just barley managed to keep himself still. They really were trying everything they could to make him angry.

“No reflexes to light. I’m sure it’s all fine. I’d like to research him more if you don’t mind, Alexia? We’ll have the reborn brought in here to thaw so I can keep an eye on both specimens.”

“I don’t think that’s very safe, doctor.” The woman was smarter than everyone in here. If there was some creaturethey wished to hide from him—this “reborn”—then they really shouldn’t bring it in this room.

But they did.

He laid there, unseeing, as noises filled the room. The sound of wheels as another table was brought in. More lights as they illuminated the space even further. At one point, a metal arm extended over his head, this one seemingly full of needles before it disappeared again. Their murmurings voices were saying things that meant absolutely nothing to him.

Something about calcium levels, genetic mutations, and letters and numbers mashed together like that was a language on its own.

All throughout, the big woman loomed above his head. She never moved. Not once. Those dark eyes stared down at him with distrust.

She knew he wasn’t asleep. Or at the very least, she suspected it. So she was more aware than any of the others in this room, and that meant she was the one he needed to watch out for.

Fortis waited until the right moment. A scientist bumped into his table on their way over to the other, and he allowed his head to flop to the side. It perhaps looked harmless to most, but he noticed the way the big woman stiffened at the movement.

Now he was staring at the other table. They’d laid out a woman there. She was young, with pretty long hair and a proud nose. Completely nude, she also seemed to be slightly damp. Her pale skin was nearly white, as though it had never once been touched by the UV lights that filled these rooms and helped the achromos not die in their long time away from the sun.

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