Page 3 of Fionn (Starlight Mermen #1 | Starlight Alien Mail Order Brides #7)

Two mooncrossings later

Fionn

T he catfish bumped against my calf, purring happily, then wrapped its tail around my leg.

Its black scales rubbed against my skin, tickling me.

An explosion of tiny bubbles leapt from its toothy maw, indicating just how happy the beastie was.

I tried to ignore it and stared stoically at the crowds swimming past me.

None of them paid me any attention. As always.

Guarding the Great Archives had to be the most boring job on the planet.

There was no reason anyone would want to rob them.

In fact, nobody seemed to be even interested in visiting.

In the three mooncrossings I'd worked here, I'd seen maybe a hundred finfolk enter the building.

None of them had looked suspicious. Nothing ever was.

The only vaguely interesting creature here was the catfish that joined me for most of my shifts.

Giving it part of my midday meal was the main reason for that. Catfish were notoriously greedy.

I checked my commband. Barely a third of my shift had passed.

I cursed the Matriarch who'd assigned me this job.

When I'd trained to become a guard, this hadn't been what I'd envisioned.

I'd hoped for glory, battle, excitement, not a life of boredom outside a library nobody ever visited.

The only time anyone approached me was to ask for directions.

Aside from that, I was ignored just like the building towering behind me.

Some days, I felt like a statue, turned into stone by sheer boredom.

Something scratched against my hip. I caught the catfish by its neck, preventing it from sticking its head into my satchel.It meowed in protest.

"Stop it," I hissed without looking at the fish. As much as I hated this assignment, I still took it seriously. I wouldn't let this little beastie distract me from my duties.

It purred even louder at my touch, wriggling against my grip as if it enjoyed it.I bet I was behaving exactly the way it had intended. Little attention whore.

"I'm not going to pet you. You're not even supposed to be here."

It chirped with amusement, as if it understood my words. Catfish were incredibly intelligent, but they weren't classed as a sentient species.Most of the finfolk saw them as pests, but after the first few boring shifts, I’d grown fond of my purring companion. At least it appreciated my presence.

Even though it stopped trying to get to my food, it didn't leave my side. I refused to look at the fish, keeping my attention on the passing crowds instead, but I felt its presence. It was strangely comforting to share my shift with someone else, even if it was just a catfish.

A noise crackled in my ear before Commander Myke's voice made me swim straighter.

"Fionn, we've received a report of a disturbance inside the Archives, somewhere on the second level, right wing. You are tasked to investigate. You hereby have permission to leave your post."

It took a moment for me to register what I'd just been told. This was new. I'd never even been inside the Archives and now I was supposed to investigate them?

"Yes, sir," I said, keeping my voice calm. I didn't want to sound too excited. "I'll report as soon as I figure out what's going on."

Who had reported a disturbance? I'd not heard or seen anything out of the ordinary.

Nobody had even glanced at the Archives since I'd started my shift.

It was probably a false alarm, yet I couldn't help but feel my greenskin tighten at the anticipation of proper guard action.

Maybe those two mooncrossings spent training to be a warrior had been worth it after all.

For the first time since starting this posting, I swam to the huge double doors leading into the Archives, each at least four times as tall as me.

They appeared to be open, but it was just an illusion.

The left side of the doorway shimmered silver, a telltale sign of an air-room.

Some materials could not be stored in saltwater, so half the Archives contained oxygenated air.

I turned right, staying in water. A shiver crept over my skin when I swam through the doorway, followed by a beep as the security scanner approved my passage.

Nobody should be able to enter without permission; one of the many reasons why the Archives didn't need to be guarded by more than one person.

There was another entrance, at the back, but it was permanently locked and hadn't been used in many mooncrossings.

The entrance hall lay abandoned. A few barnacles had started to grow on the marble walls.

This building clearly wasn't cleaned very often.

For a moment, I debated whether I should report it, but then decided it wasn't part of my responsibilities.

Surely the people in charge of the Archives knew about the barnacles.

I'd been told there was a cleaner who occasionally came at night, when other people were guarding the building.

Something touched my right foot. Acting on pure instinct, I pulled my weapon from my belt and swirled around, causing a stream of air bubbles to surround me. A happy purr made me lower my weapon. The catfish had followed me.

I groaned in exasperation.

"How did you get in here?" I asked it, not expecting an answer.

The barrier must have been programmed to detect only finfolk, not fish.

That would explain some of the droppings floating in the stale water.

I just hoped the disturbance wasn't caused by some random sea creatures that had made the Archives their home.

That would be one heck of an anti-climax.

I kept my weapon in hand as I swam up through the vertical tunnel connecting the floors.

There were five floors in total, each dedicated to a different period of finfolk heritage.

If I remembered correctly, the second floor held items from our more recent past, maybe a few hundred mooncrossings.

Most of the contents had been digitised long ago, 3D-scanned and catalogued, making this building almost obsolete.

Only the most passionate researchers made the time to study artifacts in person rather than look at them in VR.

It was gloomy up here. Some of the glowshrooms had died off, leaving patches of the wall in darkness, but there was enough light left to find my way around.

The silence in the Archive made me want to talk to myself just to hear some sort of sound.

The lack of any current at all was almost as disturbing.

Even on the calmest day, you'd always feel some movement in the water, whether out in the ocean or in an underwater building.

In here, the catfish and me were the first to disturb the brackish water - well, us and the intruder, if they existed.

I gripped my sonic gun a little tighter at that thought.

After three mooncrossings of imagining what the Archives were like, I couldn't wait to be back outside. At least the glowshrooms were filtering the water, adding oxygen and removing toxins, even though it tasted old and musty.

I swam right, entering the wing where the disturbance had been reported. Should I call out?

No, if there really was someone who had broken into the Archives, they might not come quietly if I asked them to.

But who would even break in here when you could simply make an appointment to access the building at your convenience?

I'd never tried to do so myself, but it sounded easy enough.

Maybe this was all a test by my superiors.

I'd done the same job for three mooncrossings without rising in the ranks.

Both my clutch-brothers had been promoted in that time.

Could this be it? A way to prove my worth?

The catfish bumped against my hip, reminding me of his presence. I was thinking too much. Had to focus.

With the sonic gun heavy in my hands, I swam on.

My greenskin wasn't picking up on any currents caused by a potential intruder, but several of the rooms to either side of the corridor were locked with heavy portals that wouldn't allow any water exchange.

Those rooms had to hold the more exciting contents of the Archives.

In my induction, they'dgiven us new recruits a general overview over what was housed in the building but hadn't gone into any detail.

We were just grunts to guard the Archives, not intellectuals to study the record chips and artifacts.

In this wing, more than half of the glowshrooms sticking to walls and ceiling had died off. The gloomy light made it all look even more abandoned. I didn't have to be a scholar to realise the wasted potential.

Wait.

A sound.

I swirled around, pointing the gun to my right where I'd heard a single air bubble bump against a shelf. I didn't see anyone. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet the bubble had sounded too big to have been created by the shrooms. Someone had been here.

Slowly, I swam towards the sound, along a row of empty shelves, until I reached a round portal set into a wall that had become entirely dark. Glowshroom skeletons still clung to the wall, but there was no life left in them.

An iris scanner next to the portal was active, a single blue beam of light waiting for me to get closer.

It shouldn't open for me, I didn't have the proper authorisation, but curiosity got the better of me.

I approached the portal until I was close enough to the scanner.

With a shudder, the portal opened into an airlock.

Curious. I hadn't realised rooms in this part of the Archives held air.

For a moment, I wondered whether I should check in with my boss. But no. He'd tell me not to proceed. Whatever was behind this door was secret. The scanner had to be malfunctioning for it to let me in.

"Don't follow me," I told the catfish. "You won't be able to breathe in there."