The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)
Emily Skrutskie
To Fritz, Tim, and the other guys in the
Schwartz scene shop—because they asked.
1
Any other morning, I’d dive into Durga’s observation bay without hesitation, but this is the day before my life begins. I hang back on the concrete meridian and raise the Tanto strapped to my wrist, jabbing the button that ignites the miniature LED beacon.
As the blue lights glow and a low tone rings out over the water, she rises. Durga’s head is the first thing to emerge from the waves, the brutal lines of her reptilian beak fading into the soft wrinkles that wreathe her huge, round eyes. She lets out a snort that blasts seawater from all three blowholes lined along the ridge of her skull.
The smell of salt, sea, and carrion washes over me, and I drink it in, letting the familiar aroma drain the nervousness from my body. Everything starts tomorrow, but I have nothing to fear with Durga by my side.
She raises one massive, clawed foreleg out of the water and slams it down, sending up a spray that plows over the meridian, leaving me drenched and sputtering and regretting hanging back on the barrier. Reckoners may be ruthless killing machines, but they’re downright cheeky when they know they can get away with it.
When I finish blinking away the brine, I swear I can see a twinkle in her eyes. I snap off the Tanto and pull my respirator up from around my neck, slipping the rubbery mouthpiece between my teeth as I fasten the straps behind my head. My mask comes next, slightly fogged from the warm August air.
Once I’m sure I’ll be able to breathe and see, I take a running leap off the meridian and dive headfirst into the water.
The ocean swallows me in a rush. The morning light dances through the waves, shrouding Durga’s bulk in glittering beams. With a few short strokes, I draw up to the tip of her beak and grab the edge of her keratin plating.
Durga blinks once, then lifts her head.
I crimp my fingers tighter as she raises me up out of the water. She’s horrendously gentle for a beast the size of a football field. Her eyes never leave me.
“Good old girl,” I murmur against her plating, then let go. The water engulfs me again, and I immediately lunge forward to grab the keratin covering her chest. I rap my knuckles against it twice. As long as I remind her where I am, Durga will be careful not to crush me.
I dive deeper, running my hands along the knobby, leathery skin between her plates. Most of the other trainers hate getting stuck with morning once-over duty, but it’s always been relaxing for me. Checking over Durga is like exploring an alien planet. As I glide along beneath her belly, I map out her ridges and crevices, the tectonics of muscles working beneath her skin, the subtle shifts of coloring that patch her hide. Her primary genes come from snapping turtles, giving her the wide, bulky body and spiny plated shell, but the length of her limbs and the muddled regions of red and green that swath her skin are reminders of the marine iguana DNA woven into her makeup.
She’s a big dumb turtle four times the weight of a blue whale, but there’s no denying the elegance of her construction.
I’m halfway down her left foreleg when it happens. Something pulses through the water, and it takes me a second to realize that Durga just shivered.
Reckoners don’t shiver.
I press my palms flat against her leg, the respirator whining in my mouth as it waits for a breath I’ve yet to release. Five seconds pass, and then another tremor shakes the water around me as the muscle shudders beneath my hands.
I kick for the surface, rapping my knuckles against one of her keratin plates when my head clears the water. Her reptilian eyes fix on me as I roll over and swim for the edge of the bay. My heart flutters, worry creeping up my spine. I need to calm down. I need to breathe.
It’s probably nothing, I chide myself. I’ve been around Durga since the day she hatched, and I sometimes forget that she can still surprise me. I spit out the respirator and rip off my mask, tossing them to the side as I haul myself out of the observation bay and onto the divide.
Squinting against the early morning sun, I glance down the row of observation bays to the outcropping where the research facility stands. The building’s glass exterior glitters like a jewel on the edge of the NeoPacific, harshly framed against the rocky coastline. Just below it lies the dock where we start bonding training with Reckoner pups and their companion vessels. Eight bays lie between me and the buildings, but only four of them are occupied. The two closest to the facility host two pups, still training to bond with their companion ships.
As I flash the Tanto to let Durga know she’s free to submerge, the third resident bares her teeth and splashes her fluke at me from the pen on the other side of the divide. Fae is a younger cetoid, a plated whale with a bit of a mean streak. I clamber to my feet and stick my tongue out at her.
Fae’s in for medical observation. The Irvine, her companion, ran afoul of a pirate raiding party, and though the Reckoner did her duty, she took some heavy hits in the fight and came back to the Southern Republic of California in serious condition. Her hide still stinks of smoke where the pirates’ rockets hit her, and her keratin plates bear the singe marks to match. She’s gotten cranky after an entire week away from the Irvine, and I know for certain she’d try to rip off my arm if I got in the water with her now.
Just in case, I switch the Tanto to her signal set and flash a quick burst of light and noise that tells her to leave me alone. She huffs and clicks loud enough that I have to cover my ears. A rumble from below the water on the other side of the divide marks Durga’s reply. A mewl rises from the pups’ pens, and I start off toward the research facility, letting the noises of my monsters put me at ease.
My mother’s lab is on the second floor of the building, fortified by cement walls and a scanner that reads my palm before unbolting the massive steel doors. A blast of warm air hits me as I step inside.
“Mom, something’s up with Durga,” I call, peeling out of the top half of my wetsuit.
Artificial wombs line the walls of the lab, nearly all of them occupied with incubating Reckoner pups. They float in the canisters, tethered by an umbilical line that supplies them with nutrients. At this stage, they’re nothing but little nuggets of flesh and nerve, each ready to develop into a beast capable of ripping a pirate ship to shreds. Some of them are brand new, barely the size of my thumb, with no distinguishing features. Others have already gestated to the point that their type is obvious. My gaze lands on a terrapoid embryo whose forelegs are twitching as if the little turtle-type is already dreaming of the day he sees battle. In the womb next to it, a cephalopoid slumbers with its stumpy tentacles wrapped around itself. Farther down, I spot the familiar knot of a serpentoid embryo’s twisting coils. We’ve developed so many breeds, each uniquely crafted to serve the companies that commission them for their ships.
The gel in the womb gives off a soft glow. It keeps them at a suspended stage of development, curbing them until the day we transfer them to a big, leathery purse and let them grow until they’re ready to hatch. Ready to train. Ready to destroy.
Until then, they’re all just waiting.
I’m so stuck on the eerie sight of baby Reckoners that it takes me a few seconds to realize my mom’s not alone in here. She stands with her back to me, her arms folded as she stares down at a cryo-crate, and Fabian Murphy is at her side. He glances my way and motions for an extra minute.