With a satisfied smile on my face, I walked into the inner sanctum of the security rooms. At least Captain Winona hadn’t tossed me off the case. Yet. I needed to follow everything down the line.
The inner sanctum was quiet as always. The mers who worked here rarely saw ocean action. I was pretty sure they rarely saw any action. A low wall about hip height ran the length of the smaller room. Across that wall, I saw the person I was hoping would be on duty today.
“Hey, Walna, can I chat with you for a second?” I asked the female security guard hunched over her desk. She and I weren’t swimming in the same pod or anything, but we were friendly.
She turned, her bright yellow hair the perfect complement to her emerald skin. “Hey, Seren.” Her smile was open and welcoming as she met me at the half wall.
My shoulders relaxed a bit. She’d never doubted me. Hades, she hadn’t even distanced herself from me all those revolutions ago. “You heard about the disturbance in the newbie orientation?”
Her face fell as she nodded. “It sounded awful. Morphe said it was the worst he’s ever seen.”
I nodded. “Almost topped my personal scale as well. I needed to ask you some questions about it. Captain Winona gave me clearance. Do you have it on file?”
Walna shifted and looked over her desk for something. Finding whatever she had been looking for apparently, she turned, nodded. “Right here.” She waved a thin, flat piece of translucent rock in her hand.
I chuckled. “Mages trying new upgrades again?”
She rolled her eyes, smiled. “Yes. At least this one works more than half of the time. What do you need?”
“Do you know of anyone who might have seen something odd? Different? Slightly crazy?” I twisted my lips in a wry smile.
She laughed softly. “Seren crazy or normal crazy?”
I smiled. Unfortunately, there was a difference. “Either. We’ve got nothing. Right now anything is going to be a lead.”
Her mouth drooped. “That bad?”
I nodded. “So literally anything you can tell me is going to be more than what I have right now.”
She tapped one of her long pink nails on the edge of the slab of rock in her hand, her head tipped to the side, her purple eyes half closed. Unless I was mistaken, she hummed to herself as she thought. “Morphe was telling me that one of the tracers picked up some particles, but they were still waiting to hear back from the mages.” Her eyes popped wide after a second.
She leaned forward and looked around the room quickly. She leaned over the half wall and looked down both corridors. When she looked back at me, she waved me closer. “If I tell you something, you have to promise not to tell anyone else. I could lose my job.”
Shark teeth. Did I really want to be in on a secret? I felt like my limit for secret keeping was reaching capacity. And that didn’t even include other people’s secrets.
The faces of those newbies as they decimated their brothers in arms flashed across my mind’s eye again. They joined the faces of those lost so long ago. All of them had been victims. I knew what being a victim felt like. Even if I was still alive, I’d wished for death enough to know it wouldn’t fix anything. Not really.
I sighed, nodded. “I promise.”
Walna nodded. “The mages are working on something new. Something meant only for the royals, Topsiders, and upper levels.”
My brow furrowed. “Then why do you know about it?” I winced. That sounded meaner than I’d wanted.
She smiled. “Because the station security teams will be the ones who run it.”
I nodded. “Okay. And sorry, I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”
She waved that away. “My water’s clear.” She looked around the room again. Back at me. “They’re calling it the Akis. The mages have figured out how to place static spheres of touched water that can see everything and transmit those images back to us here. It will be part of a bigger security system that is placed in strategic points around the cities. It will record and save everything it sees.”
Horror washed through me. It was chased with the tiniest bit of anger. Those could have saved me so much heartbreak and tears. But another thought surfaced before I could travel down that road too far. “The royals are going to spy on us?” I jerked back, but somehow managed to keep my voice down.
The color of her cheeks deepened as her mouth dropped open. She shook herself quickly. “No! It will just be in public areas. Like in the training rooms or the lobbies and corridors. With the kingdom growing, we don’t have enough security members to watch everything all the time. This could really help with keeping everyone safe” She shook herself slightly. “Some of the access points have already gone up. I’m being trained in the system.”
But what about our privacy? Something she’d said kicked in my head: training rooms and corridors. “You could show me the data of the training room and the corridor outside it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But you can’t tell anyone. Honestly, I shouldn’t be telling you. But my little brother was supposed to be in that training room today.” Her cheeks went pale. “The idiot got his tail stuck in a suck hole, so he missed it.”
I reached out a hand but stopped before actually touching her. “I’m glad he hurt his tail.”
She sniffled a bit, smiled. “The boy would lose it if it weren’t attached to him, I swear. But with Momma and Papa gone…” she trailed off.
I nodded. “You’re in charge now. I get that.” And I did. In more ways than she probably knew. “How about this? You access the data. If you see anything out of the normal, you tell me. That way, I won’t actually be looking at the system if I don’t need to.”
She blew out a breath. Smiled. “Perfect. Give me two clicks.” She rushed off to the far side of the room where a new door had been placed. After the quick sound of a series of taps and knocks registered, she walked through the door.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my leg coverings. Humans were good for some things, I guessed. Every time the Topsiders came back from their missions, we got new and exciting things from the human world. Pockets were one of my favorites.
Within a couple clicks, Walna came scurrying back into the room. She reminded me of a crab on the ocean floor minus the click, click, clicking. Her purple eyes were bright. “I found something. And I think you need to see it.” She hit the wall next to me in a complicated series of taps and knocks. The low wall that separated us vanished.
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me after her, her grip strong. “Hurry. I’m going to have to report the oddity, but I wanted to show you first.”
I picked up my pace. We needed to hurry. She didn’t need to get into any more trouble for helping me.
After she passed us through the new door, my brain seemed to explode as we stopped in a room the likes of which I’d never seen or thought to imagine. Mostly darkened, it was a dome of sorts. Much like the dome that protected our kingdom. Along one whole wall was a grouping of translucent rocks. Watery images flowed over their surfaces as if a drawing had been placed under a rushing tide.
Walna moved to the middle of the wall, reached up and tapped one of the rocks. The image on its surface cleared until it felt like I was looking through one of the city’s dome hatches.
She turned back to me, a huge smile on her face. “Cool, huh?”
I nodded, my mouth still hanging open. It was more than cool. I saw so many possibilities—both good and bad. I shut my mouth with a snap. “This is incredible.”
“This is something the Tops went to the mages with a while ago. From what I understand, the top-level mages have been working on it for almost a full revolution. This is the result.” She waved a hand at the whole wall. “I don’t know how they do it, and it would probably make my brain explode to listen to them, but they come up with some of the coolest stuff in the ocean. Fins down.”
I nodded again. Shook myself. “What did you want to show me?”
She nodded, turned back to the wall. “This.” She tapped the corner of the same rock again. The picture on it sharpened until I recognized the hallway outside the training room. “We don’t have Akis receptors in the training rooms yet. They’re doing secondary testing in the hallways right now. But if that information is useful, they’ll start with a wider scale deployment.”
My mouth twisted as I fought off a shudder. The idea that anyone in this room could be watching me at any time and I wouldn’t be aware of it made my skin crawl. But right now, I was willing to forge on so I could get some justice for those kids who’d wanted to serve their king.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” She moved to the desk, did some tapping and knocking that I didn’t understand. The image on the rock shifted. “Wait. Sorry. Wrong hallway.” She did her sequence of taps and knocks again.
The image shifted again. “There.” She stood up straight, backed up. Pointed to the wall. “See it?”
All I could see was the hallway. My brow furrowed. “Did you see something?” I looked at her.
She nodded, her purple eyes bright. “Yeah. Hold on. Let me back it up some more. Your butt looks good on here, too, by the way.”
I snorted. “Yeah, because large butts are so fashionable.”
She laughed, shook her head. “My Toolas likes mine, and mine’s bigger than yours.” She bent at the desk again.
I eyed her backside. Objectively, it was probably a little bigger than mine. But hers had a great shape. Mine was just big.
“Stop eyeing my butt, girl,” she said without turning around.
“I’m just seeing what Toolas gets to enjoy.” I smiled.
She danced it from side to side a little. “And he does enjoy it. Okay, here we go.” She straightened, backed up again. “Now, watch the upper right-hand corner.”
I nodded, focused on the area of the rock she’d pointed out. “Ready.”
A triplet of taps sounded at the desk.
The hallway shifted into focus once more. As I stared at the rock, I waited. My breath held in my lungs as I tried to catch every possible movement.
Like a faint twitch of a minnow’s fins, the upper right-hand side of the image fluttered for a brief click.
“Wait.” I held up a hand.
“You saw it?” she asked, excitement lacing her voice.
I nodded. “Can you go back and make that little part any bigger?” I eased up closer to the wall of rocks with moving pictures. Pointed at the section of the picture I wanted to focus on.
“Yeah. Hold on.”
Drawing my bottom lip between my teeth, I narrowed my eyes as I waited. Possibilities ran through my mind. But one of the most important ones exited my mouth first. “Could it be a flaw in the system? It is new.”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. That’s also why I need to report it. If it is a flaw, then we need to tell the mages.” I heard the absolute horror in her voice at the idea.
I turned to look at her, pity on my face. “Oh, gods, I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, shook her head. “The joys of being in the know. Okay, we’re all good to go again.”
I turned back to the rock, nodded. “And go.”
“Wait. Poseidon’s balls. Sorry! I forgot to make it bigger. Hang on.”
I chuckled silently. My friend didn’t do stress very well, which explained her being nestled in the hallows of the security offices. She was smart as a whip and wickedly clever, but her and pressure didn’t really dance together too well.
I hoped she learned to adjust if she was going to be running the Akis system the mages designed. Maybe it would help her confidence in her work. I could only pray to the gods that it did.
The picture on the rock increased in size until I could only see the top right corner of the hallway. “That’s perfect, Walna. Can you make it move now?”
“Sure.” The triplet tap sounded on the desk again. “Here we go.”
The picture started moving again.
I allowed my vision to unfocus slightly, wanting to make sure I noticed any movement in the picture. There! My gaze harpooned down to a single block. “Back it up again. Maybe ten clicks.”
“Okay.” A slight pause. “Ready.”
I pointed at her without looking away from the wall. The picture moved again. A small smile crept across my face. There was no way that was a flaw. It had to have been produced by something in the hallway itself.
It reminded me of the feeling of urgency I’d gotten earlier as I was leaving. Maybe there was actually something there. Something we couldn’t see with our eyes.
Something only magic could see.
“Is there a way to transfer that moving picture to a notiz?” I turned to her.
Walna’s eyes narrowed for a second in what I considered her thinking face. After a click, she nodded. “Yes. But it might take me a minute. It would probably be easier for you to shell whoever you need to see it to come here. I’ve alerted Morphe already. Told him about what we’ve found.”
I nodded and moved out of her way as she started moving around the room. Lifting my hand to my right ear, I hit the smallest curl on my shell. “Captain Winona,” I called out.
“I’ll get her, Seren, hang on,” Handy called back.
The sounds of whales talking filled my head while I waited for Winona to answer my summons. Marine linguistics wasn’t really my area of expertise, but the whales sounded happy to me. I smiled as I listened to them.
Abruptly, the chatting whales cut off. “What do you need, Lieutenant Seren?” Captain Winona said. Her voice was full-on military curtness.
I immediately changed my approach to match hers. “Your presence is requested in the security hub, Captain Winona. I believe I’ve found something pertinent to the training room incident this morning.”
“You’re no longer on that case, Lieutenant Seren. I’ll be pulling your clearance. Leave immediately and wait for further instructions in your dwelling.” She clicked off the shell before I could say anything else.
My mouth dropped open as hurt and anger washed through me. If she’d stabbed me with a harpoon, it would have hurt less. What the hades was that about? Not even a cycle ago, she’d put me on point. Given the entire investigation to me to manage. And now, I’m just off? Kicked to the trenches? What happ—
Neron. His arrogant face flashed in my mind again. That feeling of familiarity washed through me again. I knew him better than our recent experience would dictate. But how did I know him?
In the end, it didn’t matter. Not today. That shark scat eating, monkeyface prickle fish. This was his doing. He was going to block me out of the investigation. The only eyewitness to the event and he wanted to play power games because I wouldn’t let him scoop me up in his net?
Stuffing it all down into a box where I could save it until later, I turned back to Walna. “Captain Winona just put me on dwelling restriction.”
Her mouth dropped open as her purple eyes widened. “Wha—why? Did she say?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. She’s just now pulling my clearance, so you should still be covered with Morphe. Tell him about my involvement, that should keep you in the clear with all of this. You have the initial clearance though.” I made it a question.
My mind was racing, and I needed to make sure she was protected. This whole thing stank like dead fish. I was quite familiar with the stink of skewed bureaucracy.
She nodded, walked back over to the desk, and picked up the flat rock from earlier. “Right here. She signed it.”
I released a silent sigh. “Good. If you can, make sure you keep a copy of it for your own records. Actually, do it now.” I gave her a smile that felt weird on my face. “Please.”
I knew how crazy I sounded, but I wasn’t going to let one of my few friends get in trouble for something I had every right to be digging in. It wasn’t her fault my life was a scat show of god-like proportions.
Her chuckle was a little scared. “Surely, I don’t nee—”
“Do it, Walna. Please. While I’m standing here.” I cut her off.
She stared at me for a long moment, her purple eyes pinching at the corners. Without looking away, she tapped the rock on the bottom side. The top of the rock dimmed for a moment then came back brighter. “There. All done.”
I nodded. “Good. It could be nothing but more Seren crazy, but this way you’re protected if it does come down to that.”
She made a little O with her mouth. “Oh gods, girl.”
I shrugged. “You never know. Especially with me in the mix. Just keep yourself safe. Thanks for trusting me.”
She closed her mouth, nodded. “Of course. You helped me out when Momma and Papa died. I’ll be there for you in whatever way I can.”
I smiled. “Thanks. Tell Toolas hey for me.” I turned and walked towards the door.
“I will,” she called.
I left the room quickly. Right then I really wished to be in my mer form. But I was stuck moving biped slow. I stomped out of the security hub. Anger, fury, rage...they all ate at me. As if the past was coming up and shoving into my present, it was all I could think, feel, focus on. The past was trying to rip away the careful barriers I’d been able to erect. I hadn’t spent the better part of the last fifteen revolutions putting my life back together piece by piece just to have it ripped apart like the aftermath of a tsunami.
I hit the release switch for the door. Impatience eating at me, I started shoving through it before it fully opened. I should have waited.
The next wall I ran into was a male’s chest.
Mola mola.