Chapter 15

chapter 15

ELLE

The first embarrassing thing I'd noticed about Cepharius was his forearms.

The man— I mean, kraken!— was dragging up cables like he was working out to audition for the lead in a Marvel franchise. His shoulders and arms were layered with muscle, his chest was wide, and it drifted down to an exceptionally chiseled stomach, below which his hips were wrapped with a belt that had pockets, and beneath that, instead of legs, he had a kilt of muscle, leading down into eight long, strong separate tentacles.

And watching him drag arm over armful of cable up did importune things to body parts I'd forgotten I even had.

Then I remembered that I was a human boobless wonder, I'd never touch him again, and Marcus chimed in with, "Diver heart rate rising," at the same time I realized Cepharius could be reading my thoughts right-the-fuck now. I was chilled with so much embarrassment the only reason I knew the integrity of my suit wasn't compromised was because I hadn't died.

And then I'd told him he was pretty?

Small white dogs, Elle !

We traveled together after that in silence, me mostly marveling at our surroundings, as the helmet's map showed the structure nearing.

"I believe what you are looking for is just ahead," Cepharius told me.

I latched onto the safety of that conversation. "What do you know about the site?"

"It tastes weird."

I blinked. "Why would you?—"

"Twenty feet to screen black," Marcus said, and I came to an abrupt stop.

"What do you mean?" I asked Marcus, as Cepharius spoke inside my head with concern.

"Elle? Are you all right?"

I held up a finger to tell Cepharius to cool it.

"Past that point, the only people who can see the information you're about to visually acquire are you and Mr. Marlow," Marcus explained.

"And the kraken!" Donna added.

Nothing in the dossier had mentioned this. "I don't understand?—"

"All information past that point is classified. We take that very seriously down here. We'll still be monitoring every other indicator of your health, and there's a panic button installed on your suit's chest—and if you tap the button on your neck, we can speak to you, if it's required."

"But I'll mostly be on my own," I wondered aloud.

"Not entirely," Cepharius said.

I shook my head rather than explain to him, and walked forward, hearing Marcus count my steps down.

"Screen black in ten . . . in five . . . screen black zero. Good luck, Doctor."

I paused on the other side of the "line."

"Elle?" Cepharius wondered .

"They turned off communications on their end."

"Why?" His concern was instantaneous.

I sighed. "Because this mission is classified." Which I understood, but fuuuuck. I turned to more profitable lines of thought instead. "What did you mean when you said it tasted weird? Why would you taste it?"

"I can taste things with my suckers—the metal tasted strange."

"Metal?" I asked—and then the outskirts of my headlights found it.

I took two more steps forward, and then looked up, and found myself standing at the base of a wall of dull metal, at the bottom of the sea.

It was covered in the inscriptions similar to the ones I'd seen in the ROV footage. Each of them were the size of my hand, and any of them that were hit by my light began to glow a cool blue.

"See?" Cepharius said.

"Oh. My. God," I whispered. I started walking sideways, praying the cameras attached to my helmet were taking everything in.

"It is twenty of my lengths tall and thirty of my lengths wide," he informed me.

I risked looking at him again. "Then that's massive."

"Why, thank you," he said, with a chuckle. "But yes, it is."

"And your people have no idea what this is?"

"I haven't gone back to ask them, since I arrived—but no, I've never heard anything about something like this on the 'qa."

"Would it be possible for a find like this to be ignored—or forgotten—this whole time?"

"The bottom of the ocean is a very large place." Cepharius's mind gave the impression of a shrug. "I take it your people do not know what it is, or who it is from either?"

"No. But I am the best person to figure it out." I ran my tongue along the outside of my teeth in thought. I looked back at how much cable I had left behind me. It was like a leash, and I couldn't outpace it—which meant the top of the building was probably lost to me. It was frustrating because I needed as much data as I could get, although the thought of deciphering an entirely unknown language—by myself!—without a computer was almost laughable.

I could feel Cepharius thinking beside me. "I believe I can help," he said, then swam away vertically.

"How?" I wondered.

"It seems my bioluminescence is enough to trigger their intrinsic light," he explained. He was so far away I couldn't even see him.

"How good is your memory?" I asked.

"Exceptional."

"How many of these do you think you could memorize and then think back to me in place order with complete accuracy?" Many monsters had incredible memories, and I hoped krakens were among them. I would've crossed my fingers in my suit, if I could've.

Cepharius paused for a long while, presumably looking at them and considering. "Probably a hundred. Many of them repeat, which will make it easier."

I exhaled a little, relieved. If I could run a frequency analysis on the icons that repeated, I might be able to make a start, looking for patterns. "Okay, then—let's make a grid of things." I showed him what I wanted in my mind. "You attempt to learn every symbol in that top upper quadrant, and I'll systematically use the camera down here."

"Understood."

We worked in blissful silence for hours, making our separate scans of the structure.

While I had never seen any of the symbols before, after a time I began to get a feel for their general structure. I thought of each of the symbols like bricks almost, comprising the wall itself. There were a different number of vertical slashes in each upper corner, then what I believed to be pictograms in the center, finishing off with a certain repetitive slash across each bottom, like an artist signing their work repeatedly.

I was glad I had the camera working for me, and that Cepharius seemed independently busy, because I couldn't imagine concentrating on memorizing my own symbols while I tried to figure out other, larger, questions, like how the fuck something the size of a mid-range office complex had wound up here, at the bottom of the sea.

Islands could be destroyed by the same volcanos that created them, but that seemed unlikely given the rest of the terrain, and while my NDA had prohibited me from knowing where in the ocean I physically was, I didn't think many islands were near places this deep besides.

Could it have been transported out here?

Why? When it was this big, and presumably this heavy? I rapped a gloved hand on the side out of curiosity. It felt solid—and the symbols nearest where I'd tapped it flashed red.

"Cepharius!" I shouted out on our bond, and he raced down in an instant.

"Are you all right?"

"You didn't have to come down here—just—try touching the wall."

He did, slowly setting a hand on it, and nothing happened. But if I tapped it—red.

"Do it like I'm doing it," I said, and he followed my lead.

The symbols flashed red again.

"What does it mean?" he asked me.

I started tapping lightly, and then more heavily, until everything flashed red within three symbols' length.

"Maybe it's kinetosensory?" I guessed, and felt his confusion at the word. "Reacting proportionally to vibrations, turning our energy into a color change."

"Should I punch it to see what it does?" he asked raising up an arm. I reached out and grabbed hold of his bicep quickly .

"No. You could damage it—we don't know enough yet." The tactimetal of my gloved hand registered more sensation than I was prepared for, allowing me to feel the insane strength in his muscles as they bunched beneath my palm—then his free hand engulfed my own, to slowly remove mine from him.

"Sorry," I apologized.

"There is no need. However, my mind is just about full, and you are hungry. Shall we return?"

I would've complained about him reading my mind—but he wasn't wrong. And it was already going to take me hours to "download" the symbols he'd gathered from him.

"Sure," I said. I knelt down and found a rock I could use to mark how far I'd gotten with the camera, before turning to walk home.