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“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.
chapter 16
ELLE
I was much more confident heading back into the lab. Cepharius picked up my cable as we returned, a feat which I did my best not to watch, but it was touch-and-go, and when the dock appeared out of the rest of the murky deep, it looked like a window into a whole other reality.
Marcus began respooling the cable after I stepped inside. I was thirsty, starving, caked with sweat—but goddamn, I felt alive. For the first time in what seemed like forever.
“Give me thirty minutes to get settled, and then come find me?” I asked Cepharius.
