Page 50 of Jewel of the Sea

That left only one place; the location was oddly fitting.

He continued along the coastline toward the Broken Cavern.

When Jax had first convinced Arkon to visit the place, they’d been younger — kraken hunters who’d only just reached their majority and begun truly contributing to their people’s wellbeing. It was amongst the first places Jax discovered in his early wanderings, and his excitement, coupled with the promise of seeing some amazing human creations, had coaxed Arkon into going.

By the time Aymee and Arkon reached the Broken Cavern, the daylight had dwindled to a soft glow. The entrance was a rectangular opening carved into the rocky shoreline.

“What is that place?” Aymee asked, weariness and curiosity evident in her voice. It was the first time she’d spoken since leaving the beach.

Midnight blue water flowed into the Cavern, where it met solid, impenetrable blackness.

“It is a place your people built long ago, intended to house large, underwater boats.”

She fell silent. Arkon imagined her brow furrowing as she studied what little of the structure was visible.

Arkon activated his lights — points of bioluminescence within his stripes that cast a soft blue glow, not unlike that of halorium — as they passed into the tunnel.

Aymee’s gasp echoed off the walls. “Youglow?”

“Just another part of our design.” His light was bright enough to touch the concrete walls on either side, but only barely. “It was likely meant to allow us to work at night or in undersea caves.”

She unraveled an arm from around his neck and ran her fingertips over the stripes on his head. “Macy didn’t mentionthis. And she didn’t say much about what happened.”

His skin tingled under her touch, and he felt some degree of guilt at his body’s reaction, after everything that had transpired.

“About what happened? Do you mean between our people?”

“Yes.” Her arm slipped back around his neck. “You said something about it on the beach.”

He frowned. Their voices, though hushed, reverberated off the walls and ceiling, and the sound of the ocean was muted, leaving only the steady splash of water against concrete. This dark, abandoned place seemed the wrong location to speak of such things, but that sentiment was irrational.

“The kraken were engineered by humans to collect a rare element from the seafloor called halorium. Our first generations were essentially slave laborers, but they learned much faster than the humans realized. After years of poor treatment and experimentation, my people revolted against the humans in the underwater facility that served as the operation’s headquarters.”

“Where Macy is now.”

“Exactly where she is now. There was fighting, but it seems to have been largely one-sided. The humans were comfortable in their dominance. They never saw it coming.”

The tunnel opened into the huge main chamber; a gaping hole in the ceiling granted a glimpse of the sky, which was now filled with dark clouds. The dim light from outside reflected on the surface of the water and glinted on the mangled remnants of one of the bridges that had spanned the water.

“How did we never know?”

Her question was likely rhetorical, but Arkon couldn’t help but answer. “I know there were attempts made to contact the mainland, but I do not know if any of those communications were transmitted. The kraken had grown knowledgeable enough to damage the communications array of the Facility and isolate it completely.”

“How do you know they tried to contact mainland?”

“Because the Computer in the Facility has records of those attempts.”

Macy had discovered one such message after she figured out how to access the Computer’s data, and Arkon had found several more in the months since. Regardless of what had brought about the situation, despite the mistreatment that had preceded the kraken uprising, the emotion in some of those messages was overwhelming. They had been desperate people looking death in the eye.

“What did they say?” she asked.

Arkon swam them to one of the ladders inset in the concrete wall and helped Aymee onto it. “They...begged for aid, mostly. For rescue. And the last one told anyone listening to stay away. That there wasn’t anything — or anyone — left to save.”

Aymee climbed to the top rung. Water streamed off her, and her tattered clothing molded to her body. She stepped off and moved aside.

“I wonder if that’s why we know nothing of that place — of you. That the humans in charge wanted it secret to keep people safe.”

He shifted the canisters to his tentacles and pulled himself up the ladder. His bioluminescence did little to light this area; most of the chamber was utterly lost in darkness, save for the edges highlighted by the night sky overhead.

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