Page 5 of Call of the Fathoms

The water parted around him, easing his way so that he could go faster. Then he curved his body and dove ever deeper. Farther into the depths of the sea, where eventually he came across a massive warship that had long ago sunk. He took the achromos past this ancient vessel as a reminder of their failures. They had weapons that could harm his people, but the achromos were the species that had always fallen.

Time and time again. Their reckoning was coming. They had no idea that he would be the catalyst.

They fired their first weapon at him, white hot and searing as it bubbled through the sea. He evaded it easily enough, although it was curious that they only fired the one shot. Usually, they fired at least twenty of them all at the same time. The massive amount of bolts were far harder for his people to dodge when they covered so much space.

The warning shot was soon followed by something he had not seen before. A net.

Spears attached to the ends stretched it wide, and he realized a rope attached it to the underbelly of the ship. The sea had been correct. The humans didn’t want to kill him today. Instead, they would want to capture him.

So Tau really was another facility that experimented on his people. Good. The sea had claimed he needed to get inside of Tau, and he intended to listen. Allowing the humans to bring him in was much easier than finding a weakness in the impenetrable city.

The net missed him. It seemed they were not very good with this new weapon of theirs. Perhaps the achromos needed practice.

How hilarious it was to see them struggling. With his son’s voice in his head, he turned to look at them. He was far enoughaway now that he wondered if they would give up. He couldn’t have that. Fortis was having fun, and there was a point to all this.

He wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t see their silhouettes within the ship. The achromos were staring at him as well. Surprised he would turn to even look at them. With every ounce of hatred in his heart, he flicked his fluke and started toward the ship.

If he was going to be taken by their kind in any believable sense, then he needed them to feel fear. Already he could see them scrambling. There was terror in their expressions as they struggled to find the right button. Perhaps one of them wanted to send out a bolt that would surely kill him. Others were saying to send out the net. And then he was right in front of them.

He reveled in their fear. Fortis soaked it into his body even though he could not smell them through the metal. If he struck the ship at this speed, he would damage it beyond fixing. They would all sink to the bottom of the ocean where the ancients would eventually feast upon their corpses.

He looked forward to seeing what fate the sea chose for these achromos.

The water parted around him, sending him careening ever faster toward the panicking humans. He was so close he could hear them shouting when the weapon they chose fired. Closing his eyes, he let peace surround him as he waited for the sea’s judgement.

And there it was. Not the burn of a laser. The sensation of a net wrapping around his body. It twined around all of his fins, pinned his arms to his sides and sent him swinging below the ship. They needed to believe they had caught him. They needed to believe that he was just anotherundinethey had found in the sea. Not a single one of them would believe he had allowed them to catch him.

The net twisted one of his side fins hard. He bared his teeth in a snarl, hoping that if there were cameras on the bottom of the ship that they would see his pain. He could hear them all cheering in there, celebrating that they had caught the feral creature who had nearly killed them.

Hilariously, they had no idea they were transporting a shark into their home. A shark who intended to hunt the first moment he could.

As they traveled past the shield, he saw a few flickering lights on the sea floor. He knew that was his son. Aulax was letting him know that he would return to the others and tell them that Fortis had started his mission. Soon enough, they would know that he had succeeded.

He wasn’t sure how, yet. The sea hadn’t told him that much.

Fortis allowed himself to fall into that liminal place between reality and the future. The place where the sea held his hand and guided him without fear.

These achromos were weak, basic creatures who were in a world that they were ill-equipped to handle. All he had to do was bide his time and everything would fall into place.

It always had.

He stayed quiet and did not struggle as they approached the lights of the city. Soon, he would be within those walls. Soon, they would try to break him with medicine and sharp weapons. What they did not know was that he was ready and prepared for such things. They would not break him.

He would break them.

Three

Alexia

She found Doctor Barker the next morning. Harlow had plenty for her to do in the meantime, as the woman’s mind moved a mile a minute. Before Alexia went to find the reborn, first she had to make sure that the Original’s clothing was still perfectly pressed, that someone had seen to the servant who had made her feel slightly uncomfortable the day before, and that her breakfast would no longer contain whatever it was that she was allergic to. Just in case the next reborn didn’t fix this unbearable issue.

Throughout all of it, Alexia meandered through life in a fog. The medicine made it so much easier to handle everything. And yet... there was still a voice screaming in the back of her head. Like a ringing in her ears that she couldn’t get rid of.

By the time she was standing in front of Doctor Barker’s office, it was getting hard to ignore again. Which was ridiculous. She was not supposed to feel like this. The medicine existed so she could get ahold of these thoughts and cast them aside, not struggle every single day.

Knocking on the door in front of her, she tried to quiet the screaming in her head.

This area of Tau was easier to be herself in, anyway. The doctors and the guards all lived in the same wing. There wasn’t beauty here. Only cold steel, utilitarian cots to sleep in, and medical equipment lying beside weapons just in case the Originals needed to be protected. Even from their own people.

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