Page 51 of Call of the Fathoms

Swallowing hard, she put her hand on the front door and pushed it open.

It wasn’t a house; she realized. Stepping inside, she was surprised to see there were only benches lining the floor. No chairs, no kitchen, no living area. There were pictures all along the wall, though. Photographs with little placards underneath each photo that explained the contents.

“A museum?” she murmured, shocked that there was even a building like this.

Who would build a museum floating in the middle of the ocean? No one could come here. There were far too many storms, and no human came to the surface, anyway. But this place was still pristine. Someone had been taking care of it.

Leaning closer, she looked at the first picture on the wall and was surprised to see many familiar faces. All the Originals were in this picture, standing beside each other like old friends. Some of them had their arms around others, some were grinning at the camera or making obscene gestures. Just regular people, long before they became immortal.

It was odd to see them like that. Leaning forward, she read the note underneath, “The dreamers who saw a need and decided to serve.”

The story she knew was that the Originals had seen the world ending, so they had created the cities beneath the sea. Perhaps this was the time before the world’s end. When they had yet to see the entirety of their lives starting to crash and burn.

The next five pictures were designs that made sense. Each of them was a different version of one of the cities, blueprints that had then been used to create the actual cities. There were also things she had seen before, although the blueprint of Tau itself was different from what they had below the surface.

Alexia traced her fingers over the words underneath. “The safest city in the world.”

For them.

It had always been the safest city in the world for those who lived in it, but she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

She turned around, eyeing all the framed portraits here that defined her entire life. There were photos of the first animals that were taken underneath the sea. Cows were deemed far too wasteful, and they emitted too much CO2. They were dangerous and therefore not worth keeping. After all, the milk they produced wasn’t as helpful for those who were lactose intolerant, and quite a few Originals were.

Then there were pictures of the cities as they were built underneath the water. So many people had helped with that. Engineers, architects, artists who had spent countless years developing everything that was needed to save the world.

Another set of photos caught her eye on the far side of the wall. She hadn’t seen these before.

Walking closer, she realized this was the start of the genetic program, and a face there made her entire body ice cold.

“Alexia Barron, the first brave soul,” she read aloud as she looked at a woman who wore her face in the photo. She was much smaller than Alexia was now, of course. But she was still a hard-looking woman who appeared far more capable than those surrounding her.

That version of herself had willingly joined this group of people. She’d chosen to be experimented on, and all other versions of herself were then forced to do the same. Anger bubbled up inside of her. She wanted to go back in time and slap this woman across the face, because surely she should know what she did to herself and to so many others.

There were so many versions of Alexia who had been tortured and tormented to get to this version. So many who deserved so much more than death on a cold table because they had emotions.

Taking a deep breath, she moved onto the next picture that depicted a strange machine. It jutted out of the coast, metal pieces all gleaming in the sunlight. A single tall pillar, with a ball of electricity at the top.

“The first weather manipulator,” she read out loud, the words sticking in her throat. “The first of many. A failed experiment that led to...”

She stopped speaking because the next words were almost impossible to say. Not out loud. She refused to give them breath.

A failed experiment that led to true perfection beneath the sea.

Was this admitting that the Originals had affected the weather? It couldn’t be. They were the ones to save the world, not end it. She moved to the next picture, and the next, each one solidifying the truth.

She saw the scientists who worked to create the weather device. Then a photograph of the first hurricane guided to an enemy country. They then created a device that beckoned earthquakes and called about a tsunami that killed thousands. The next photo was of the first storm that got out of hand, a hurricane that stirred up the sea so much that most of the east coast drowned. More and more devastation as the experiment took on a life of its own.

In their quest to create something worthwhile for their egos, the Originals had destroyed an entire planet. They were the reason everyone lived under the sea, and then they had gone even farther with it. They’d genetically enhanced humans, forcing people like Alexia to work for them. Lie for them. Create and enforce stories that other people took to heart.

All because of their own egos. Because they were a group of friends who thought they were better than everyone else.

And then, at the very end of all those pictures, there was a large framed piece of paper. It almost read like a manifesto, and it turned her blood to ice in her veins.

We are the Originals.

We are the few who will survive the end of the world.

We will never die.

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