Heart of the Deep

by Tiffany Roberts

  “As quick as storms come in during this time of year, they really shouldn’t be going too far from port,” Macy added.

  “Practicality isn’t the sort of thing that’s been able to stop our father, lately.” Larkin’s eyes lingered on the dock for another moment before she dipped underwater. The kraken were gathered along the bottom, more than fifty of them, their skin changed to blend into their surroundings. They were nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.

  Dracchus reverted to his normal coloring as he rose from the seafloor, looking up at her.

  Look for our signal, she signed, moving her hands slowly to ensure her gestures were accurate.

  Dracchus nodded and signed with equal care, using the human language. See you soon.

  Larkin smiled and returned to the surface. “They’ll be waiting.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Randall said.

  The four humans swam toward the dock together, suits easing their movement through the calm water. Anticipation fluttered in Larkin’s chest with increasing strength as they neared their destination.

  She didn’t know how this meeting would go. None of them did. The kraken and the townsfolk wouldn’t be armed, but any rangers in the vicinity would be carrying rifles. It would be up to Larkin, Randall, Aymee, and Macy to keep the villagers from panicking and the rangers from attacking.

  They were only fifteen meters away when shouts rang out and people started grouping up on the dock. Randall was the first to reach it, pulling himself up and turning around to assist Larkin, Aymee, and Macy. They looked at one another, then removed their masks and pulled their hoods back.

  “Macy?” someone asked gruffly.

  Larkin looked at the man as he came forward, recognizing him as Breckett, Macy’s father.

  Macy smiled wide. “Hi, Dad.”

  They both ran forward, catching each other in an affectionate embrace.

  Breckett lifted Macy off her feet. “Ah, Macy girl, we missed you.”

  “Missed you, too, Dad.” Macy’s voice was strained, as though she were on the verge of crying.

  “Macy! Aymee!” Another man joined them, his red hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “Hi Cam,” Aymee replied with a grin.

  “That’s all you got? Hi Cam? We didn’t know if you were dead or alive!” Camrin said, hugging her.

  Larkin watched the reunion silently. She knew all too well how they felt. She looked up at her brother only to find his eyes, filled with uncertainty, upon her. She extended her hand and he took it, lacing his fingers with hers.

  “We need everyone here,” Aymee said, withdrawing from Camrin’s embrace. “Can you get my parents?”

  “You’re not leaving yet, are you?” he asked, frowning. “You just got here.”

  “It’s important,” Macy said, giving him a quick hug.

  “What’s going on?” Breckett asked.

  “We’ll explain soon.”

  “Is Jax…?”

  “He’s here,” Macy said, lowering her voice so only those nearest to her could hear. “They’re…all here.”

  Breckett’s eyes widened. He looked behind him to the gathering crowd, and Larkin followed his gaze with her own.

  Her heart skipped when she saw him — Commander Nicholas Laster.

  He strode down the length of the dock, armed rangers flanking him on either side, and the townsfolk and fishermen stood aside to allow him past with no shortage of disgruntled expressions. Larkin squeezed Randall’s hand.

  “Shit,” Randall muttered, his tone a confused blend of relief and apprehension.

  Larkin hadn’t expected him to get here so quickly. She glanced higher and might’ve kicked herself; how had she missed the lookout he’d posted near the clifftop warehouse?

  It didn’t matter. Spotting the ranger wouldn’t have made a difference.

  Her father was here, and he was alive.

  “Camrin, go. Gather as many people as you can and get them here, fast,” Aymee said.

  Camrin nodded and ran off, squeezing past the rangers. Nicholas glanced at him for only a moment, barely slowing.

  Breckett turned toward the crowd, putting an arm around Macy as Nicholas approached.

  “What the hell’s going on down here, Breckett?” Nicholas demanded. “I was told people just crawled out of the sea. You pulling some kind of—” His words — and his approach — halted as his gaze swept over Macy and Aymee, finally fixating on the people behind them.

  He held Larkin’s gaze for several seconds before looking at Randall.

  Macy and Aymee shifted aside as he suddenly moved forward. He paused for an instant in front of Larkin and Randall and then took them both into a crushing embrace.

  Larkin wrapped an arm around him and squeezed her eyes shut as she turned her face against his shoulder. This was her father. This was the man who had been missing from her life for over a year. Tears burned her eyes as she tightened her hold.

  Nicholas held them for a long time. Long enough for it to hurt in the best way, long enough for her to feel his tears trickle into her hair.

  “I lost you,” he whispered raggedly, “I’m so sorry I lost you.”

  “We’re okay, Dad,” Larkin said.

  “We’re here now,” Randall added.

  He drew back, cupping the backs of their necks with his hands, and looked them over. The tears in his eyes gutted her. “How? Where’ve you been? How did you get here?”

  “We swam,” Larkin replied.

  “Swam,” he repeated and shook his head in disbelief. “Doesn’t matter. You can tell me all the made-up stories you want once we go into town and get a hot meal.”

  “They aren’t making anything up,” Macy said. “We did swim here.”

  “And we’re not going to town,” Larkin added. “Not yet.”

  Nicholas glanced at Macy as though for the first time, confusion creasing his brow, but he turned back to Larkin without saying a word to the other woman. “What do you mean you’re not going to town?”

  “We have a lot to talk about, Dad,” Randall said.

  “And we’ll do it in the town hall while we get you two some food and proper clothing. What the hell are you wearing, anyway?”

  “They’re diving suits. Pre-colony tech. And we’re going to talk here.” Larkin pulled away from her father, taking a few steps back.

  “Aymee!” came another voice from the crowd. A man and woman pushed their way through the rangers — Doctor Kent Rhodes and his wife, Jeanette. They didn’t stop until they reached their daughter, dragging her into their arms. Aymee released a soft oomph and put her arms around them.

  “I thought you were dead,” Jeanette wailed. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” Aymee said. “I wish I could’ve sent word.”

  Nicholas had released Randall and turned partly to watch the scene unfold. “These are the missing girls,” he muttered.

  “That ranger, Cyrus, said they were injured trying to save you from a kraken on the beach,” the Doctor said, “but Randall told us you went with him willingly. We knew Arkon wouldn’t hurt you, but we didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know if you were safe. Didn’t know where you were.”

  “Arkon was trying to save me,” Aymee said. “Cyrus would have killed both of us if we hadn’t left.”

  “What?” Nicholas demanded. “That’s a direct contradiction of Cyrus’s report, and I won’t have you—”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that.” Aymee glared at Nicholas, pulling away from her parents to face him. “You should ask your son exactly the kind of person Cyrus was.”

  “A monster, Dad.” Randall met his father’s gaze unflinchingly. “He was insubordinate, violent, made inappropriate advances toward Aymee and several other women, shot me with the intent of assuming command of my unit, and was ready to murder Aymee and Macy to lure out the kraken.”

  Nicholas’s face paled as his features hardened. The nearby rangers — one of whom was Jon Maso
n, the man who’d run Cyrus’s report back to Fort Culver — exchanged uneasy looks.

  “You should tell us, Jon,” Larkin leveled her eyes on him, “about the drawings Cyrus stole from Aymee’s home. Or how about his plans to relieve Randall of command?”

  “I didn’t know where he got the drawings from,” Jon said, jaw muscles ticking. “And he sent me home right after shit went down on the beach. I wasn’t involved in any of that stuff.”

  Larkin lowered her brows. “But you knew about it.”

  Nicholas stared at Jon, betraying his fury only through a slight flaring of his nostrils.

  Jon’s face reddened. “That wasn’t supposed to be how it turned out! I didn’t know he was going to shoot him. Randall was too busy chasing local pussy to focus on the mission, and he was fucking us over at every step. How the hell else were we going to get anything done?”

  “We were dealing with the unknown,” Randall replied through clenched teeth. “I was trying to figure out what the hell it was we were hunting! That means asking questions before we shoot!”

  “Disarm him,” Nicholas said, gesturing to Jon.

  Jon Mason’s struggles meant little; three other rangers pried the rifle from his hands and divested him of his pistol and knife before they grasped his arms and forced them behind his back.

  “I witnessed Cyrus shoot Randall,” Macy said. “He and the other men who were with Randall grabbed us and used us as live bait to goad the kraken into an attack. They weren’t gentle.”

  “Take him back into town and restrain him,” Nicholas ordered. Two of the rangers hauled Jon along the dock, through the crowd. When Nicholas turned back to Randall, he wore the stoic mask of the commander, that old hardness having returned to his eyes. Larkin knew how much of a sham it was by now. A final, desperate layer of defense against everything that had torn apart the man’s life.

  “I sent you out here to hunt sea monsters, ranger. How the hell did that turn into a mutiny?” the commander demanded.

  Behind him, several more rangers forced their way to the front of the dock.

  “Because they’re not monsters,” Randall replied. “You sent me out here because there was no way the stories were true, there was no way we’d find anything dangerous. Because you thought this was safe. Well, we found the source of the stories, and they’re people. The only monster was the man you sent along with me.”

  “They are animals with above average intelligence,” Nicholas said. “Elle, explain the situation to your brother.”

  “I already have,” Larkin said. “About how I helped capture them, and how they were tortured.”

  He glared at her. “I don’t care for your tone, ran—”

  “It’s time for you to shut your mouth and listen,” Larkin snapped, stepping toward him. “No more krullshit, Dad, or commander, or whatever you want to be called right now. Those kraken that you had caged were people. Intelligent beings who were made by us. They share human DNA, they can talk and reason and feel, and all they wanted was to live their lives in peace before you sent Randall out here to hunt them down.”

  Larkin glanced at Macy, Aymee, and Randall. “We are here to tell you to stop. This needs to end. They are not monsters, but they aren’t going to remain idle while you hunt them. You are going to stand down, commander, before it’s too late.”

  “What the fuck is this?” Nicholas asked in a low voice. “My own children turning on me? You tell me Cyrus was a traitor, and then you try to do the same thing to me?”

  “You know that’s not what this is,” Randall said.

  “Just stop this, Dad,” Larkin said, tone softening. “You did all of this to protect us, but you went too far. We’re safe now. It can be over. Let it be over.”

  “I’ve seen what those things can do.” Nicholas thrust his arm toward the sea vaguely. “I know what will happen if we…if we just…if we let them go.”

  “They have never once revealed themselves in all the years I’ve lived here,” Breckett said. “I’ve worked on these seas nearly every day of my life, and I’ve never seen them, not until one of them brought my daughter back. We thought her lost at sea during a storm.”

  “Jax saved me,” Macy said. “I would’ve drowned otherwise.”

  “This is not the same as what happened to me and Mom,” Larkin said gently. “The kraken are not a danger to any of us, so long as we stop hunting them.”

  Her father’s face paled further, save for a wild blotch of red on each cheek. His eyes gleamed. “This isn’t about your mother. It’s about…”

  “Everything has been about her since she was taken from us,” Larkin said. “You didn’t want to lose the family you had left. I understand, Dad, but it needs to stop. It’s changing you into someone we don’t know anymore. Just… Please, before you lose us both.”

  He clenched his jaw and averted his gaze, his stance unsteady, uneasy. He offered no response.

  “I’m going to show you. We’re going to show you. Please, just trust me, Dad. Trust me in this.” Larkin looked at Randall. “Signal them.”

  Randall nodded and stepped to the end of the dock. He moved his arms in exaggerated signs, making sure the kraken lookout would be able to see them.

  “No weapons,” Larkin said, running her gaze over the people gathered. More had come while they’d been speaking to Nicholas, some of them piled in the boats to see around the cluster of townsfolk. “No matter how strange this is going to feel for most of you, please. No weapons, no hostility.”

  The crowd’s uncertainty was apparent in their whispered conversations. As far as Larkin could tell, only the rangers were armed; several of them kept shifting their eyes toward her father, who remained unmoving.

  Larkin heard a tiny change in the sound of the bay’s gently lapping water. The crowd gasped as she turned, keeping herself perpendicular to the humans and the kraken now climbing onto the end of the dock.

  Dracchus, unsurprisingly, was first. If Larkin’s father noticed, he made no outward sign. The big kraken approached slowly, amber eyes sweeping over the crowd of humans. The rangers raised their rifles as more kraken followed.

  Macy and Aymee pulled away from their parents, turning toward the crowd. As one, Larkin and Randall pulled their pistols from their holsters, aiming at the rangers. Aymee and Macy followed suit.

  “I said, no weapons,” Larkin said, stepping in front of Dracchus. From her peripheral vision, she saw her companions do the same, creating a human barrier in front of the kraken. “We will lower ours if you lower yours.”

  “We have come without weapons,” Dracchus said from behind her.

  Nicholas finally came out of his trance-like state at the sound of Dracchus’s voice. He turned toward Dracchus with wide, angry eyes. “You’re the one that took my daughter,” he growled, stepping forward.

  “Stop where you are, Dad,” Larkin commanded.

  Nicholas hesitated, gaze dipping to the gun in her hand. “What are you doing, Elle? What are you doing?”

  “Protecting them. This kraken saved me that night. He might have taken me, but he saved me, too.”

  “Stand aside, Elle. This has gone far enough.”

  “It has,” Randall said. “Order your men to stand down, Dad. Weapons down. We’re not here for this.”

  “Are you seriously going to stand for this, commander?” one of the rangers said, stepping forward without lowering his rifle. Christopher Brock, the one who’d beaten Dracchus on the boat. “We need to shoot these fucking things.”

  Larkin turned her pistol on him. “Your finger so much as twitches in the general direction of that trigger, and I will put a bullet between your eyes.”

  Brock scowled, glaring at her, but he removed his finger from behind the trigger guard, straightening it along the side of the rifle.

  Nicholas turned his head toward his men. “Stand down, rangers.”

  “This is krull—”

  “Stand down!” Nicholas shouted. “Rifles on the dock and back away.”r />
  Larkin watched several of the rangers cast each other looks of uncertainty, but they did as they were commanded, slowly lowering their weapons and retreating with their hands held out in front of them.

  Once the rangers had moved back, Larkin holstered her pistol; it was the best she would offer while the rangers still carried their sidearms. Randall, Macy, and Aymee did the same.

  “These kraken came here to show you there is nothing to be afraid of. They are not the monsters we thought they were. They came to speak to you,” Larkin said.

  “There has been bloodshed between our people in the past,” Dracchus said, “but there is no need for any more. So long as we remain unknown to one another, there cannot be lasting peace between our people. We come to you today to show you who we are — your neighbors, and not your enemies.”

  Larkin looked at her father. “You asked us where we’ve been. We’ve been with them,” she swept her arm toward the kraken. “Living among them, working beside them. Building a family.”

  “What?” Nicholas’s brows fell. He parted his lips to speak, but no sound emerged.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of rumors about me,” Macy said. “That I was taken in the night by a monster, stolen from my friends and family. Only those close to me knew the truth.”

  Larkin turned her head as Jax, carrying Sarina, moved to stand behind Macy. He put an arm around her.

  “This is my mate,” Macy said, looking up at Jax. “And our child.”

  Silence born of shock dominated the crowd for several seconds, and then they burst into conversation — frantic, uncertain, awed conversation. Larkin gritted her teeth when she heard words like abomination and freak over the din.

  Breckett, who’d been standing near Macy, looked at Jax and Sarina. His eyebrows rose high, wrinkling his forehead. “That’s…my granddaughter?”

  Macy smiled wide and nodded. “Sarina.”

  Breckett’s eyes glistened, and his beard bobbed slightly as though he were moving the mouth hidden within. He stepped closer to Macy tentatively, and a hush fell over the crowd as he reached a hand out to Sarina.

  Sarina clutched her father, her wide eyes moving from the crowd to Breckett.