Page 6 of Jewel of the Sea

The crowd burst into animated conversation as Randall stepped back. It took Walter several minutes to quiet them down enough to be heard. He thanked everyone for their time and wished them a good evening. The townsfolk trickled through the open doors and into the night.

Aymee finally released the fabric she’d held in her fist and stretched her stiff fingers before smoothing the wrinkles out of her skirt. Randall had a certain charm, a confidence and compassion that should have eased her fears.

But even if the men with him looked rougher, Randall had the hard features of someone who’d scraped out a living in the wilds.

She didn’t want to think of Arkon becoming their target, but it seemed all too possible.

“Be careful, Aymee,” Breckett said. “I know you’re trying to protect them. I want to do the same, but we don’t know these men. We don’t know what they’re willing to do.”

“What were you thinking?” Jeanette demanded.

Aymee winced. “I know. Iknow. I shouldn’t have spoken out like that, but I couldn’t… They’re not monsters!”

“We know that,” her father said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, “buttheydon’t.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Breckett rumbled, glancing at the stage.

Aymee’s brows lowered as she followed Breckett’s gaze. Randall and his rangers were talking with a few of the councilmen; his eyes flicked to Aymee and held. He smiled.

Aymee looked away. She needed to warn Arkon, but it was another week before the next exchange.

“Just be careful, Aymee,” Breckett said.

“I will. Thank you, Breckett.”

They left the town hall together, saying their goodnights to Macy’s father once they were in the square and the crowd had thinned. When they arrived home, Jeanette went to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner while Aymee excused herself, anxious to read Macy’s letter.

She sat on her bed and reached for the letter, pausing as she lifted the jar of stones. Each of them had been selected and adorned just for her. Heart warm, she smiled. It was a small comfort, but every little bit mattered.

Sliding the paper from beneath the jar, she unfolded it. Macy’s familiar handwriting was scrawled across the page, and though shorter than usual, the letter conveyed an abundance of happiness. Aymee wished they were together to share in that feeling.

One of the lines gave her pause. She read it again, and her lips spread into a grin. Aymee leapt from the bed and ran into the kitchen.

“It’s a girl!” she shouted. “Macy had a girl, and she’sperfect!”

Chapter 2

The Facility was a cluster of huge, familiar patches of darkness set against deep blue as Arkon approached, its exterior lights insignificant in the vastness of the surrounding ocean. The humans who’d once dwelled within these buildings had called this world Halora, and the records they’d left behind claimed more than eighty percent of the planet’s surface was covered with water. For all that he’d learned from those records, such a massive area was beyond Arkon’s fathoming.

His people, the kraken, occupied a sliver of the ocean so tiny that it might as well have been a single drop of water.

He cast aside those thoughts as he neared the main building’s entry door. In the past, such musings could have occupied him for hours or days at a time. But there was only one thing he longed to think about now, only one thing that held his attention —Aymee.

Tucking the supply canister under his arm, he entered the number sequence on the keypad. The red light over the door changed to green, and the entry slid open. Arkon swam into the pressurization chamber.

As the door closed behind him and the water drained, his mind’s eye produced images of Aymee. He’d watched from the water as she walked along the beach, had marveled at her easy grace in the open air, had battled the urge to go ashore and speak with her. What would he have said? The single time they'd spoken, he’d been a stammering fool.

When he had gone onto land and retrieved the container, his hands tingled — Aymee had touched it. His tentacles detected a faint, familiar taste, sweet and light and alluring.Hertaste. It was unlike anything in the sea.

“Pressurization normalized,” the computer said from an unseen overhead speaker. The interior door opened after its light turned green, and Arkon moved into the corridor beyond.

The Facility had been his home for his entire life. He knew every hallway, every chamber, knew which lights worked and which tended to flicker. He’d always wondered at the mystery behind it all. Thanks to Macy figuring out how to access the computer’s information, he’d learned much. The Facility was powered by an experimental reactor fueled by halorium — a rare, glowing stone often found on the seafloor. The computer’s records could provide no estimate on how long the reactor would be sustained by its current halorium supply; the technology had been too new when the kraken took control of the place for definitive data to have been generated.

His eyes roamed over the lines and angles of the walls and doors as he made his way deeper inside. Though the dirt and wear of centuries was apparent everywhere, the precision with which The Facility had been constructed was just as noticeable. Everything was even, symmetrical, deliberate. Every overhead light, every doorway, every panel on the floors, walls, and ceilings were exact in size, shape, and placement. There was a certain artistry to it, but he found it somehow cold. Unfeeling.

What about that feeling put Arkon off after he’d spent countless hours seeking balance, symmetry, and precision in his own attempts at art? He’d never quite managed to satisfy himself in such pursuits, and yet, his works felt unerringly more alive than the Facility. Was it simply his inherent personal connection to his own creations?

He glanced down. A dried clump of seaweed had crusted onto the base of the wall and lay draped partly on the floor. Little clusters of sand were scattered on and around it. Though tiny in relation to the corridor — just as The Facility was tiny relative to the ocean — it served as a break in the otherwise perfect patterns made by the drainage grooves running along the edges of the walkway.

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