“I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
Theo stopped several times to gaze at the rock formations, but she never lingered too far behind; her hands occasionally settled on his arms, her fingertips glided over his skin, reminding him he wasn’t alone.
“There’s a strange…buzz,” Theo said, scratching behind her ear. “Do you feel it?”
Halting, Vasil dropped his gaze, focusing on his hearing and the feel of the air against his skin. There was a faint current both in the air and in the water, and he still sensed the muted rumbling of the ocean, but that was all.
“I do not feel anything out of the ordinary.”
“Hmm. Must just be me, then.” She reached out and ran her fingers over the wall.
“I’m picking up a strange energy signature, but it is very faint,” said Kane. “It doesn’t have a match in my database.”
Theo’s exploration slowed their progress, but Vasil was unbothered. She was like a youngling, curious and unashamed, finding wonder in everything she saw. He couldn’t help but smile when she drew her knife to pry free a colorful shell that had been embedded in the wall. She called it a souvenir.
“This is pretty,” she said, staring at the shell as though there weren’t dozens more just like it lodged in the stone all around. She turned and took a few steps deeper into the cave only to stagger to a halt. She swayed forward and raised a hand to her head.
Vasil moved closer to her. “What is wrong, Theo?”
“That buzzing. I can feel it vibrating in my head. It’s strange… It’s like a headache, but it’s making this weird pinch.” She lowered her hand and looked up. “Is something glowing up ahead?”
“Theo, those readings are strengthening,” Kane said, his voice oddly distorted.
Brows falling low, Vasil followed Theo’s gaze with his own. The cave narrowed up ahead and curved to the left. A patch of impenetrable darkness waited beyond Vasil’s soft glow, and beyond that shone another gentle light, cast from around the bend.
Vasil frowned. “It is halorium.”
“That’s what the IDC came here for, isn’t it?” she asked. “What your people were forced to harvest?”
“Yes.” He glanced behind them; only more darkness lurked beyond the light of his stripes. They weren’t terribly far into the cave, but the sea was fickle. This place could flood in moments if the tide came in, and he’d have trouble protecting even himself from being slammed into the stone walls when that happened. “We should go back now.”
“Hold up. We’ll leave in a second, but I need to see this first.” She ran ahead, water splashing around her legs.
“Theo!” Vasil turned to follow her. Dread coalesced in his gut, threatening to climb into his chest and throat.
“Theo, you ca—” Kane’s words were lost in a jarring, staticky hiss.
As she reached the bend, Theo lifted a hand to her head again. Her torso dipped forward, and she stumbled, throwing out an arm as though to catch her balance. It was only when her hand found the nearby wall that she steadied herself and staggered forward a few more steps. She vanished around the corner.
Vasil’s hearts quickened, and he pushed his body ahead to match their pace. Theo’s cry — fraught with pain and fear — preceded a heavy splash just before he rounded the bend.
He looked down; for an instant, his hearts seized, and so much pressure built up in his chest that it felt near to exploding. Theo lay face-down in the water. Though it only reached her mid-shin while standing, it was deep enough to almost fully submerge her in her prone position.
Darting to her, he slipped his arms beneath Theo and snatched her out of the water. Her body was stiff — legs straight, arms clutched against her torso, and head tilted back. Though her eyes were open, they displayed on their whites. The blood trickling from her nostrils glistened in the glow of the large halorium shards jutting from the wall nearby.
Did the halorium somehow cause this?
There was no time to consider the question; he had to assume the answer was yes. She shuddered in his arms, muscles remaining taut, and produced a choked, gurgling sound. Foamy spit oozed from the corners of her mouth.
Vasil gave over to instinct. He turned her sideways in his hold so the liquid flowed out of her mouth rather than gathering within and shifted his arm to support her head and neck. He rose and, moving as quickly as he could without jarring Theo, carried her toward the cave’s entrance.
The light on her wrist flickered and flared, accompanied by a distorted, inhuman voice.
“Kane?” Vasil asked.
Theo continued to convulse, her body straining against his hold.
The computer spoke, but his voice was garbled and indecipherable, made worse by its reverberation off the cave walls.
Water sloshed around Vasil’s tentacles as he pushed on faster. Panic clawed at the edges of his mind, but he would not allow it entry; panic could not help Theo.
“Stay with me,” he said, tightening his grasp on her. “Stay, Theodora.”
When the opening came into view, Vasil’s hearts skipped. The sound of the waves washed over him but provided none of the comfort and relief it normally would have.
“She is having a seizure,” Kane said, words finally understandable despite the lingering distortion. “Ease her down on her side in the sand and keep her head up off the ground.”
Vasil lowered her to the sand the instant he crossed out of the cave, keeping a hand beneath her neck and head to maintain his support. Her convulsions continued, and foam poured from her mouth.
Kane’s orb projected from Theo’s wrist, hovering in the air over her. “Relax your hold on her, Vasil. If you try to restrain her, she may be injured.”
Clenching his jaw, Vasil did as instructed. His limbs trembled; he wanted to clutch her against him so she knew he was there, so she knew she’d be all right, but that could do her harm.
He didn’t know how to help her.
“What is wrong with her?” Vasil asked in a low voice.
“As I said, a seizure. My systems temporarily shorted out, causing electrical feedback in her nervous system.”
“I do not understand, Kane,” Vasil growled.
Theo shook harder for a moment, ejecting a spray of spit with a choked exhalation, before finally easing. Her eyelids fluttered shut as her body sagged in the sand.
“I am connected directly to her,” Kane replied.
“You are on her wrist. How could that affect her like this?”
“My projector is at her wrist, Vasil. My systems are integrated with her. I am connected to her brain. I’m…part of her.”
Vasil released a heavy breath, nostrils flaring. Questions swirled in his mind and gnawed at his gut, but none of them would help the situation. None of them would help her. He brushed wet hair out of her face and stared down at her. She was breathing, but otherwise unmoving.
“Theo?” he said softly.
“She’s unconscious,” Kane said. “And may be for some time. The strain on her body was immense. This sort of thing…it isn’t supposed to happen.”
“But it did,” Vasil said. He skimmed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “Will she be all right?”
“Her brain activity has normalized, so yes. I think so. We won’t know for sure until she wakes up, but as far as I can tell…there’s no permanent damage.”
The sighing of wind and sea filled the ensuing silence. Vasil’s fingers and tentacles tensed, but he didn’t tighten his grip on her. He knew humans were fragile, but he didn’t know something like this could happen; he still wasn’t entirely sure what this was. Kane’s explanation made some sense but remained largely beyond Vasil’s understanding. Someone like Arkon might’ve understood and been able to explain it in clear, simple terms, but Vasil was not Arkon.
“You said there was halorium in that cave,” Kane said. “That must’ve been the energy signature I was reading. Is that what caused this?”
Vasil’s stomach sank as realization st
ruck him. “I did not… You are the machine, not Theo. Why would it do this to her?”
“Because I am part of her!” Powerful fear and despair resonated in Kane’s voice. “I should have told her to turn back.”
“I should have made her turn back,” Vasil said. He gathered Theo against his chest and rose from the sand. Her body was limp now, in such alarming contrast to the stiffness of minutes ago that it set his hearts to racing again. He started back toward their camp. “I…should have been able to see. I know the pieces, I should have been able to put them together.”
Kane’s orb swelled and brightened, only to dim and dwindle in size. “As much as I’d like to have someone to blame, I cannot hold you accountable for this. I should have recognized the energy as potentially harmful, and Theo should not have been so eager to plunge into the unknown. We all made mistakes today…”
Vasil dipped his gaze to Theo, his frown deepening. “I hope she does not pay any greater a price for those mistakes.”
Theo woke with a groan. Pain pulsed in her skull, and every muscle in her body ached. She raised a hand and squeezed her temples between two fingers and a thumb as though the pressure could ease the pounding in her head, but even that slight movement was a strain on her weakened body.
“Theodora?” Kane said. “Can you hear me?”
Large, strong fingers settled over her free hand, grasping it gently.
She furrowed her brow and opened her eyes — only to snap them shut against the blinding light, which added a delightful stabbing sensation to her already monumental headache.
“What the fuck?” she said, turning her head to the side. “Turn off the damned lights.”
“They aren’t on,” Kane replied. “You may be overly sensitive to light, at the moment. It should pass soon.”
“Why are you talking so loud?”
“I’m not,” he said at a lower volume. “Again, you are likely just experiencing some—”
“Sensitivity. Okay, got it.” Theo lowered her hand from her forehead to rub her eyes. She couldn’t remember ever waking up to feeling this shitty — and she’d gone drinking with IDC marines on more than one occasion. She turned her hand in Vasil’s loose grip and laced her fingers with his. “What happened?”
“Halorium,” Vasil said.
“And lo, for all your questions have been answered,” said Kane.
“Wanna be a bit more specific?” She lowered her hand and slitted her eyes open. The light blasted her, jabbing another knife into her brain, but she blinked the brightness away until her vision cleared, and everything came into focus.
Vasil stood to her left, staring down at her with concern. The light that had so blinded her streamed in through the open pod hatch, cast by a clouded sky that looked to be dimming with approaching evening. She glanced down to find herself sitting in one of the chairs, blanket draped over her legs and torso.
She couldn’t remember much from after she’d run toward the glow — toward the halorium. All she could recall was a sense of adventure and excitement, her eagerness to see what had pushed the IDC to break so many rules all those years ago, and then pain. She’d blacked out.
Her memory held a big black patch of nothing afterward — zip, nada, zilch — until she’d woken a few minutes ago.
Vasil grunted. “He must explain. I still do not understand.”
“The halorium in that cave shorted me out,” Kane said. “It emits a powerful energy, almost like a form of radiation, and it was more than enough to short me out. Vasil did not exaggerate the effects — if anything, the vague explanation he gave us was an understatement. You suffered a prolonged seizure due to the electrical feedback from my failing system.”
“And that stuff — the halorium — was why your people were made, right?” Theo asked, looking at Vasil. “And if I didn’t have Kane, I could have just walked up to it and touched it.”
“Yes, it was, and yes, you could have,” Vasil replied. “From what I know, it is usually found in the sea. Below depths at which humans would die before they ever got close enough without diving suits or underwater craft.”
“And those things wouldn’t work because they fail when they get close to halorium,” she said.
Vasil nodded. His deep frown hadn’t eased since she woke.
“Hey.” She reached up and smoothed her fingers over his brow. “It’s okay. I’m still alive, right?”
“You are, but what if it had been worse? What if I — we — had lost you?”
“You didn’t.”
“The possibility of it was…jarring, to say the least,” Kane said.
Vasil lifted his hand to cup her cheek, brushing the pads of his fingers over her skin. “We were frightened, Theodora.”
Theo turned her head and kissed the center of his palm. “I’m sorry. I should have paid more attention to the signs. It felt like something was off, but I kept pushing forward. You may not believe this, but I have a bit of a stubborn streak.”
Vasil smiled, though the expression was still tinged with sorrow. “I understand the want for exploration and adventure, but we must maintain some caution.”
“All of this is new to me, and I let myself get swept up in that.” She covered his hand with her own and closed her eyes. “I threw my training out the window and acted like a child. I won’t let it happen again.”
“You have…opened up since we first met,” Vasil said. “You seem freer. I do not want you to give that up. As Kane said to me before, we all made mistakes today. Do not hold yourself solely responsible. None of us could have known what was going to happen with any certainty. I just…do not want to lose you, Theo.”
Vasil’s words, spoken with such sincerity, such depth and emotion, produced a flutter in her stomach and a warmth in her chest. She opened her eyes, ignoring the lingering discomfort from the light, and met his gaze. Slipping a hand to the back of his neck, she tugged him down. He came willingly. She kissed him softly, and he returned it, wrapping an arm around her to draw her body closer.
“You won’t,” she said against his mouth. Tilting her head back, she brushed the tip of her nose against his.
“Never,” he growled. The promise and power he instilled that simple word send a thrill down her spine.
“I like him,” Kane said through the neural link.
Me too.
Though she had a feeling the word like wasn’t adequate to describe what she felt for the kraken.
Chapter 11
Vasil wondered if his eyes were deceiving him when the lights on the sea floor, reduced to a ghostly glow by distance, first came into view. He knew the surrounding seascape well — he’d followed its familiar features to this spot, the beating of his hearts echoing in his chest like stones banging on a metal drum — but it had been so long since he’d been here that it seemed a place existent only in his memory. A projection of his own imagination.
The Facility took shape in the gloom as he neared it — several large buildings, defined by clashing light and shadow, gathered upon the sea floor, each older than the kraken people; the place of his birth. Relief eased his tension and dulled the ache in his muscles. The journey from the pod to this place had taken most of the day, but it was not yet completed.
He would allow himself rest only when Theo was beside him again.
Was she all right? She’d managed to keep herself safe every other time he’d gone searching, but he’d normally return to the pod at about this time of day to share their evening meal, and the incident in the cave three days before had left him shaken. He wasn’t likely to return to her until nearly sunrise the next day if he moved as fast as possible. He’d never left her alone for that long.
Though she was intelligent, tough, and capable, he couldn’t help his worry. Between her gun, her training, and Kane, she should’ve been fine, but that wasn’t enough to ease his nerves. He needed to be with her, needed to be certain.
And how must she feel with me gone, not knowing whether I am safe, not knowin
g when, if ever, I will return?
Two posts topped with white lights materialized in the darkness ahead, set about half a body length apart in the sandy bottom. There was no net stretched between them, which meant there was no hunt in progress; he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not — more of his people present meant more potential questions. The last thing he wanted as any further delay in returning to Theo, especially if that delay was unnecessary.
He continued forward, and the shadows on the main building receded with his nearness. He knew those walls instinctively. Ever since he’d been deemed old enough to be given into the care of the male kraken — the hunters — the sight of the Facility’s exterior had held great meaning to Vasil. This had been home. It had meant safety, security, comfort, and community, even if that sense of community often felt strained. The kraken had always worked together for mutual survival, but socialization was limited before human influence had offered a different way of life.
Now…he wasn’t entirely sure what the Facility meant to him. Perhaps it maintained much of its old meaning, though not in the same fashion. It was safety, security, comfort, and the possibility of community not for himself, but for Theodora.
Vasil swam to the entry door, where he tapped the buttons on the keypad — 081305 — and waited for the red light over the door to change. Once the light switched to green, the door slid open, and he entered the chamber beyond. The door closed when he pressed the button on the interior wall, and the room thrummed gently as the water drained. The sensation of his body gradually growing heavier was as jarring as always; he found it strange how the transition seemed normal when emerging onto the land from the sea but remained somehow unsettling when it was so slow and deliberate.
Not important, he reminded himself, spreading his tentacles to support his weight as the water dipped below his waist. I am here only to help Theo.
Though that wasn’t entirely true — he missed his friends, human and kraken alike — it was his primary motivation. She might have died in that cave because of the halorium, and that was but one of many threats to her safety. A swelling tide; a violent storm; a roving predator; the place they’d been staying held more potential threats than he could count. The Facility and The Watch were the only places where many of those dangers were reduced and, in some cases, all but eliminated. Nowhere guaranteed safety, but Theo deserved better than she had on that beach.
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