Chapter Three #2
She pulled on her shoes, grabbed a breakfast shake, and headed to the greengrocer.
She walked through the silent darkness. The occasional transport got her attention, but their behaviour didn’t change.
It took her fifteen minutes to get to the wholesaler, and she waved as she came in and took a look at the order Emgoth placed.
The numbers were reasonable, and she went around and selected the fruit and vegetables that they needed for the list.
As she was working, the butcher shop lit up, and she eased over there to take care of the other list. She finished with them, went to the bakery to check on the flatbread, and then got on the transport to head to the docks.
The ride was familiar, and several regulars recognized her. She waved but didn’t chat with anyone. She didn’t resent early mornings, but they required focus.
Cloudy got off at her stop and walked the long way through the port down to the dock. She walked down the dock and noticed the problem right off. The stall was missing.
Cloudy walked toward the spot where the stall had been, ignoring the men who were chortling.
“So, you are the partner. We want this business, so take off.” Two thuggish sea Vecchin were glaring at her.
Because she had been given a direct order, she pressed the small icon Hazor had given her.
“No, I don’t think I will.” Then she did the thing that she hadn’t mentioned to the guardians. She lifted her arms, created an energy bow, and shot both the men in the chest.
Humming to herself, she went to the end of the dock and got the built-in come-alongs. She had been paranoid about the stall tipping into the water and paid extra to have them installed. She pulled out enough slack to reach the building she could see under the surface. Time to test her gills.
She got the links and the cables, kicked off her shoes, and jumped into the icy water of pre-dawn at the docks.
Cloudy swam and found the first link on the side of the building about fourteen feet down.
She was still holding her breath, but her lungs started burning as she moved across the building to the second link site.
The gills kicked in, and she gasped in more water.
It was fricking cold! Having her lungs filled with cold air was weird, but oxygen was coming to her system, and she could work with that.
She got everything ready, tugged on the cables, and swam upward as fast as she could.
Cloudy burst upward and aimed for the dock. She slipped and slid as she thudded to the surface, and helpful hands reached out for her.
She looked at Hazor and smiled. “Morning.” She let go of him and stepped to the side, activating one motor and sprinting to trigger the other.
Cloudy backed away as the heavy unit came up and out of the water.
Hazor said, “Cloudy? Why were you in the water?”
“I was putting the links on the stall. It’s coming up now, slowly.”
Hazor looked over the edge. “How deep did you go?”
“Sixteen feet, twenty feet. I dunno. I went to where the building was.”
Hazor looked at her. “You were under for a while.”
“I had gills installed. Crude but effective.”
“You learned to purge them?”
“Yup. In the lab tube.”
“Good. Have you used them before?”
“Nope. Today was the first field test.”
He looked furious.
“Wow. What is the face for?”
“People panic and die each year from gill installation.”
She shrugged. “That is them. I have fought too hard to lose to my lungs. This is gonna take a while, huh?”
He nodded.
“Morsek, Arkon, can you gently put it back?”
They chuckled and nodded.
Hazor looked at her. “Now, can you tell me why the men said you shot them with light?”
Cloudy wrinkled her nose. “They remembered that? I should turn up the voltage.”
“What did you hit them with?”
“Bioelectricity? Apparently, the genetic sample of Vecchin I got involved some of the more dangerous branches of the family coral reef.”
Hazor said, “Show me.”
She sighed, formed her bow, and fired the blast into the brightening sky. It broke into pretty sparks and met the ocean.
“There. See? Nothing big, but it knocks out at close range.”
“Do you have to fire it?”
“Nope, but I wasn’t getting within grabbing distance. Firing is less accurate but safer. I did press the button as soon as I noticed they were there and the stall was not.”
The stall was lifted with the cables still attached and set on its original footprint. She hoped that the emergency restraints had activated when it was shoved.
She looked at the guardians and smiled as she thanked them. Cloudy went to remove the links and let them finish reeling the cables in. When they were put away, she went to the stall, typed in the code on the waterproof pad, and opened it.
“Are you going to ignore me?”
“I have lost half an hour to getting this thing into place. The people who are working in those buildings have no idea anything happened. They know they are hungry and are waiting for us to have a meal ready. I am going to look into seeing if that is possible.”
She stepped inside and exhaled. “Each of these cupboards should have held their contents if everything was put away correctly last night, and it was.”
She went into the miscellaneous cupboard, found the folding signboard, and took it outside. Due to thugs shoving the stall off the dock and its recovery with the assistance of the guardians, we are working to get things back to normal.
Her Vecchin penmanship wasn’t the best, but she asked Hazor, “Is it legible?”
“It is. Thank you for including us.”
“Well, that is a bit of a threat to them, and it indicates the seriousness of the event.”
He smiled.