Page 4 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Four

Fortis

T he sea had not warned him about all of this. Fortis allowed the second membrane over his eyes to close, leaving the world slightly foggy but convincing the idiot achromos who surrounded him that their drugs had worked. He had been preparing for this moment for years. Of all the depthstriders, Fortis was the one who had taken the most sulfur. He’d inhaled a significant amount of numbing mist in the deepest sea. He’d even punctured his skin with lionfish barbs.

No achromo drug would make him sleep. But he wanted them to think that he was resting, because he wanted them to make a mistake.

Already they were speaking, giving him more information than any of them likely wanted him to know. He knew this place was Tau, that he had found the correct city to infiltrate. He knew the Originals were the ones living here, confirming all the achromo mates’ theories.

This place was run by ancient achromos. Achromos who had been alive for much longer than was natural. The Originals, as they called themselves, were unnatural beings who had designed all these cities underwater. They were the ones who had brought the metal to life underneath the sea, and somehow, they had not yet died.

He needed to see this for himself. Or at least find proof that this was possible. So he stayed quiet. Even when they hefted his body with six men out of the net and onto a wheeled table. Even when they brought him into this room, that smelled like antiseptic and metal.

He kept his eyes looking like they did, kept his breathing low and still. What were they going to do to him? Were they going to tear into his body exactly as they had planned for his son?

A flare of anger burned white hot in his chest. Aulax had suffered as no depthstrider ever deserved to. He had shared his son’s memories after he had gotten back, taking some of the anger onto himself so that Aulax could function without rage determining every single choice that he made.

Fortis hoped they would try to experiment on him. He wanted the pain to ground him when he knew that there was a part of himself that could fracture at any point. He hoped they would give him a chance to destroy them.

Instead, they did nothing. The groups of achromos stood around him, looking him over and murmuring thoughts to themselves.

“I wonder if the gills are capable of breathing in air?”

“No, we tested on one before, remember? They have a set of lungs as well. He must have expelled the water from his gills already, because he’s still breathing. See? You can see his chest moving. That is a good sign. He’s not dead.”

“How would we know if he died? Is the only sign of life its breathing or do their colors change as well? Some fish do that. Their scales lose their luster after we bring them in.”

“Good question. We should try it on this one and see if the colors dull.”

He heard the door to the room open and close. More achromos coming in to peer at him like he was a spectacle just for them to leer at. He would never understand these creatures. They were so interested in his people, but they also did everything they could to eradicate his kind.

Frustration brewed and he could already feel some of the electrical signals in the tips of his fins aching to burst. He wanted to glow and terrify them. He wanted them to see how large he was, and how the sight of his lights made him seem even bigger.

But he wasn’t in the water, and those electrical lights wouldn’t make him look larger here. So he kept them off as these newcomers walked over to him.

The first one reeked. He could just barely see the man as he strode into the room, but his lip nearly curled at the scent that clung to him. Blood, drugs, and the strangest scent of something sweet underneath all of that which gave him a rather rotten smell. He was a small male. So small that it was, perhaps, concerning. He should have been able to be larger. How was he supposed to protect a mate when he looked like... that?

And then the second person walked up behind his head. He couldn’t see who this was, but he was suddenly blasted with the scent of the sea. Saltwater, the fresh sea air that so rarely cleared his lungs when he was above the water. And something else. The comforting scent of sea grass and vetiver, a scent he’d only smelled once in his entire life. When he was young, he’d traveled throughout the entire ocean and he had stopped at a marshy area. That place had smelled like this person.

Whoever it was, they smelled good. They made him want to fill his lungs with their scent.

He hated them for it. Immediately.

“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 creature they 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.

A hulking machine surrounded the woman, and they were jabbing her with long needles. He had no idea what this reborn was, but he did see that there was something attached to her mouth. It looked a bit like the rebreather Mira had created, although this one also had a heavy device wrapped around the woman’s torso. As he watched, it inflated and then deflated. Continually.

Whatever was attached to the woman’s face was keeping her breathing, and that was all he needed to see.

Timing this right was important. But he knew the sea had planned to provide him with an opportunity, and this was that opportunity. The woman lying on the table might be ill, but she was the only one weak enough for him to grab and disappear into the ocean with.

The scientists turned as one at the sound of a noise outside of the glass. Likely another person reacting to the sight of a massive depthstrider laid out on the table.

It was the right time. He could feel it. Almost as though the sea itself swelled in his chest and bid him to move. So he did. Using his arms, Fortis shoved himself off the table and onto the ground, twisting as he did so. He landed on his forearms, which made it all too easy to slither over to that table, lunge for the woman, and drag her onto the ground with him.

Shouts echoed in the room, and he knew there were plenty of people reaching for weapons. By the time they got those weapons drawn, however, he was already out the door.

So many achromos underestimated him because of his size. They thought something big like him would be lumbering and slow, especially on land. But Fortis was quick. Dragging the strange creature with him wasn’t all that hard either, considering the woman weighed less than he expected. She was so thin, so small...

He turned down the hallway they’d brought him in and immediately heard a shout of rage. He took only a few moments to look over his shoulder, delighted to see the big woman was following him.

“You will never catch me,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed toward the room with the large moon pool. He’d watched them lock it, and he knew how to open it now.

They were all fools. Every single one of them.

Slamming his hand onto the panel, he mimicked the complicated pattern, and it was that easy. Buttons to push and a door opened.

He watched the floor parting, ready to flee into the sea with this weak little creature who would hopefully stay alive in the freezing waters just long enough for him to get some information out of her.

But at the last second, a harsh spike of pain zinged up his tail. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he turned to see the woman had plunged two blades into his fluke. She held them against the ground, or perhaps she’d stuck them into the floor itself, and glared back at him.

“You will not take her,” the woman hissed.

“I find it hilarious that you think two little knives are going to stop me.”

He watched her eyes widen, perhaps in recognition that he was talking to her, before he ripped through his fluke and disappeared into the dark waters with his prize.