Page 1 of Whispers of the Deep
One
Mira
“Get away from that window, woman!” The shout echoed through the glass dome, anger vibrating in every word.
But Mira had grown up in the engineering dorms. She knew every nook, cranny, and obstacle in her way. The glass wasn’t going to break. She’d already tested its capabilities long before she started welding the metal framework. It was fine.
Taking her finger off the welder’s trigger, she yanked her goggles up and glared down at the man ten feet below. “Really, Hermon? You think I didn’t test everything before I started welding?”
“All the sparks sure made me think you didn’t.” He jabbed a finger at the opposite side of the glass. “That looks like a crack to me.”
“That’s because it is.” She released her hold on the suction cup in front of her and dangled in the air above him. Her rigging was attached to the ceiling of the giant room. A currently blocked off room, because of all the leaks. “But that panel of glass isn’t attached to the rest of it. It’s not leaking from a crack, you old dolt! It’s leaking from a rusty rivet that I am currently removing. So unless you want to drown with me, I suggest you go back to your office and let me work.”
He grumbled underneath his breath, but she heard something along the lines of idiotic women who thought they knew how to weld.
Mira knew how to weld. She’d been doing this her entire life. It was her father’s lifelong career before he’d drowned and left all his tools to her. And she’d gotten really good at it over the years.
Sighing, she shook her head, slammed her goggles back into place, and swung over to the suction cup handhold again. But before she let the sparks fly once more, she stared out of the glass dome that was only a few inches away from her face.
The ocean.
It was terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.
Their city was built underneath the sea. Deeper than the other cities, but still connected through tunnels and long rail systems that allowed people to travel back and forth between cities. This was just one of the many domes currently cut off from use because of water leakage. But she was one of the few who got to see inside the sealed rooms. She got to see what it was like to sit at the very edge of a drop off that disappeared into darkness.
About thirty feet beyond the glass was the edge. There were still plants growing out there, long tendrils of kelp that waved in the currents. Tiny schools of fish coasted in large groups, pausing to look at her, and then zooming on by. The water was crystal clear. She felt like she could see for miles, but really, all she could see was the rest of their city. Glowing in the distance, faintly blue with all the lights of tall towers, gleaming with glass and metal.
Her quadrant, owned by the Beta Corporation, was mostly industrial. But there were rooms like this one that were intended to entertain.
Mira would never be able to scrub the beauty of this room out of her mind. Even though it hadn’t been used in her lifetime, it was still beautiful. Gold and white checkered floors, massive sculptures of muscular men holding up the ceiling on all four corners, and all this glass. It was a wonder it hadn’t broken years ago.
That crack, though. She’d have to fix that sooner rather than later.
When her boss had told her to take the lead on this project—apparently some rich person wanted to hold a party in this room and wouldn’t take no for an answer—she’d almost lost her mind. Of course, she’d take a room that had been sealed for years. Of course, she would risk her life and potentially die tragically if she got to see this. This beauty. This magic that no one had seen in years.
Testing the welder in her hand, she let the flame burst white hot before setting back to work replacing the rivet. It was a slow leak, but real frightening if it was in a room not often used. Someone would close the doors and then find ankle deep water in just a week or two. Living underwater like they did that was a real concern. So they’d shut off access entirely, not wanting to risk the rest of the city. Every room had storm doors that were rubberized and water proof for just this reason.
Maybe everyone was a little “door happy”. But no one wanted the entire city to flood, and they’d been having a lot of issues lately.
A neighboring city, Gamma, had suffered that. No one survived. It was years ago, of course. Her father had told her stories about it when she was little. He’d claimed the entire city flooded, everyone dead. And the corporations had decided it was too big of a city to lose. So they’d sent in a team, him included, and they’d found the leak. Then they’d pumped all the water out and watched the bodies float back down to the floor.
Shaking off the ghosts and ever present anxiety, she finished sealing the rivet for good. The melted metal would last quite a while, but eventually she’d probably be back up on this wall fixing it again. For the time being, though? Their water problem was fixed.
Pushing her goggles back up, she clicked the release on her harness and down she went. It took a bit to untangle herself from the ropes, but then she had the room to herself. No one would expect her for a few hours yet. So instead of returning to her boss with her report, she pulled an apple out of her metal lunch box and stood in front of the twenty-foot glass wall. It went higher in the center, the dome stretching so far up she guessed it might be thirty or forty feet.
Crunching into her apple, she walked around the room. There was so much water outside that glass. So much.
She remembered getting a little sick looking at it when she was small. Sometimes, looking at the vastness of the ocean was too much. She’d grown up in engineering quarters. They weren’t so lucky, like other professions. Most of her life she’d only had a single window in her room, and even then it was just a view of a rock wall. A tiny porthole barely bigger than her head was a lot different from this.
Some lizard brain part of her mind whispered this was dangerous. So much glass surely couldn’t hold up the entire weight of the ocean. And there was a lot more water than land.
Still. It was pretty.
A brightly colored fish flashed next to the window, and she followed its path. It seemed to be drawing her along, its silver side flickering every time it moved about five feet and then waited for her.
Did fish play with humans? She’d heard the rumor that people in Alpha Quadrant actually kept them as pets. They’d make another glass jar, like the ones they lived in, and then watch the fish swim around. Was it doing that to her? Maybe, to these fish, she was the pet.
Snorting, Mira bit another too big bite of her apple and paused right in front of the largest glass pane. No way. The fish wasn’t playing with her, just like the folks in Alpha weren’t playing with any fish in a bowl.
