Chapter 27: Building the Team
2584 Words
“You’re kidding.”
“Unfortunately not, the person behind you can confirm.” Alister’s face was red with stress, a hand pressed to the bridge of his nose as he leans back on the wall full of notes. The pair turned to face the wincing Mermatian with wide eyes.
“What, you saw one?” Axel raised an eyebrow, hands fiddling idly with a cloth in an attempt to wipe off the grease stains.
“Not exactly… I am one.”
“What?”
“You’re kidding.” Madeline breaths out, her sharp gaze already looking for any physical differences that she may have missed on first glance.
“Unfortunately not.”
“You’re a… mermaid.”
“I prefer the term Mermatian.”
“You’re a mermatian.”
“Yes”
“A Mer-”
“Yes”
“Half fish, half human.”
“Yes.”
“But-“
“Yes.”
“Excuse me while I go sit down.” Axel doesn’t look for a seat, merely sits where he was standing with a miffed look.
“That’s amazing. To think that there would be intelligent life just like us right under our noses.” Madeline hummed.
“I love how this is not bothering you at all.” Axle huffs, leaning back against the desk.
“It is, but it’s more fascinating to think about. Imagine the possibilities that this can bring about, the kind of research that could come out of this.”
“So, you guys are on board?” Hartley asks, his hands clasped in front of his with a weary smile.
“What exactly do you want us to do? Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board, he’s half fish,” Axle glances up at him as he twists his face at the word fish, but the engineer carried on, “but like, what are we supposed to do? Your guy’s got legs instead of a tail, that seems like something tech can’t fix.”
“That’s the thing, we’re not trying to get Kaelonne to return just yet, we need you build tech that would help in an advantage.”
“Advantage to what? What exactly is going on?”
“So, we were talking, and we realised that, Kaelonne needed help, the only thing that we could think about is getting a way for him to help his people.”
“You want us to build weapons.”
“No, at least not exactly. Something that would give Kaelonne a fighting chance.”
“I don’t want to hurt them. To be honest, I don’t fully understand what is going on. Sirens are not creature you want as your enemy, if possible, I want to resolve this peacefully.” Kaelonne tried to take on the role as mediator and advisor, but following the secondary language was a little harder than he expected. He head hurt at the thought of his father being able to do this on a day-to day basis.
“You want us, people now learning about a whole other species, to build a way to defeat them without hurting them.”
“…Yes.”
“…I’m in, my Sundays were getting a little boring.” Axel lets out a long-suffering sigh as he lies down on the carpet, eyes pointed to the ceiling.
“As am I, but I hope that you do understand that I wished to be paid with more information about these Mermatians and Sirinians.” Madeline fixed him with a ‘no nonsense’ look, her eyes flashing with curiosity.
“Yes, I will try to.”
Madeline immediately ran a few tests on him, something he’d initially balked at, unhappy at the idea of being hooked up to more devices like the ones in the hospital. She’d noticed his reluctance thankfully and fully explained every and any test. The others decided to join in as some sort of competition, to which she rolled her eyes and accepted, but Kaelonne appreciated their attempts to make him more comfortable.
“What do you mean, I could run for hours.” Axel gasped from his position on the floor, chest heaving. Nora and Hartley weren’t in much better shape, leaning on the wall with a hand on their sides. Kaelonne, however, was casually leaning over Alister’s shoulder to see the results as they loaded up on the screen on his tablet. The cool feeling of the air conditioning the being surrounded by the water and darkness of the research centre’s halls made him feel quite relaxed.
“Higher endurance and speed, fascinating.” The doctor whispered as he tapped a few things on the screen. Kaelonne gave a snarky grin at the groans coming from the others. Madeline whistled low in amazement as she took of the band from his wrist.
“And pretty good heart rate too.” She waved the band, typing a few things alongside Alister.
“How is that fair?” Axel groaned from the ground, a hand resting over his eyes. “He just got legs, how does he have the muscles to do any of this?”
“Well, the work showed that he has a high blood cell count, not unhealthy, but it seems just enough to give him a good advantage over untrained humans.” Madeline explained, waving her hands at the trio still panting, “Most likely from his time as a Mermatian in the water.”
“That poses the problem, however,” Alister finally pulls himself out of the multitude of digital graphs and numbers, “about what could possibly happen if the lad remains on land for too long.”
“What do you mean?” Kaelonne watches him as he rubs his legs, the muscles twitching from long run. It was exhilarating, but he spent more time trying not to fall over his own two legs than focusing on the race.
“Well, humans get high red blood count from strenuous activity, whether it be a sport, hiking, running, or even running, but it’s not permanent. At least in the sense that we have to keep training to maintain that count.” Alister carefully explains, “As such, we’re not sure of your high count is a product of your natural makeup or from your time under the sea.”
“So, you’re worried that he might lose that count the longer that he stays on land?” Hartley pushes off the wall and walks up to them with furrowed eyebrows.
“Yes, but we won’t be for certain unless we carry out constant tests.”
“What if I just maintained a certain amount of work?” Kaelonne pulls their attention to the subject of their conversation, “I mean, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be back at sea any time soon, plus, you mentioned something about sports?”
“It could work.”
“Aside from the whole creature of the sea beating us in a race on land -which is honestly going to bother me for the rest of my life -what else you’ve got on him?” Axel pulled himself to his feet, swaying dangerously for a few seconds before staggering over to Nora still leaning on the wall.
“Uh…good heart rate, good blood pressure, pretty much healthy as a can be. His bones are a little denser than I expected, so his weight is a little bit higher than normal, and he seems pretty built muscles wise.” Madeline mutters off on a tangent, leaving Axel looking like his self-esteem had taken a walk out of the building with a plan of never returning. Nora snorted and patted his back.
“There are some interesting things that I’ve found.” Alister perks up, turning to face Kaelonne completely, “You have pretty good reflexes, are those natural?”
“Mermatians are built to be able to protect themselves on a normal bases, but I believe most of my abilities come from training to fight.” The young royal waves his hand, loosely mimicking a fighting stance for a few seconds before dropping it.
“Amazing. And your eyesight, they’re a little below the norm, but your eyes still react in the dark.”
“Mermatians can see in the dark, a good trait as how far down we dwell.” Kaelonne voice does a little grave, missing his ability to see the natural bioluminescence that all creatures gave off. It was like cutting off his ability to tell that creatures were alive.
“Right, I considered that that might be a possibility.” Alister carries on with a nod and small smile, “So, who’s up to another marathon.”
“Noooo.” Hartley, Nora and Axel made their final protest by lying down on the ground.
One more the more interesting days of his time was spending it sitting on the shore of the beach, sand under him and the sound of the waves almost deafening. He didn’t dare go into the water, his mind protesting with his heart. Alister and Nora didn’t question it, sitting on either side of him like guards as they asked him countless questions.
They compared their homes and lifestyle, the way they took care of each other and the way to took care of creatures different from them. Kaelonne explains the build of the castle, still ever so careful of what he allowed them to know. They compared it to places of old that they had, Kingdoms with knights and people, royalty, and rules. He listens to their tales of empires and cities, revolution, and freedom. It was fascinating.
“It does not surprise me for some reason.” Kaelonne nods his head at them.
“How come?”
“Mermatians did interact with humans at some point, most likely to the extent of learning about the way things worked on land.”
“If I may ask, did Mermatians willingly remained closed off from humans?”
“From what I heard, not really. I’m not old enough to put assurances on any of this, but I do believe that we did have some sort of connection with the creatures of land. It would be strange to live so close to them and not try a chance at communication.”
“But something happened?” Alister’s words were more of a statement than a question and Kaelonne found himself nodding.
“War, from what I heard.” Kaelonne placed his weight on his knees, staring at the sea, sparkling sliver from the light of the sun, “Rumours started up, about Mermatians carrying the ability of immortality, things like that. So, humans with power and influence tried to take advantage of that.
“And it drove you all deeper into the sea.”
“Yes, but the Mermatians must’ve copied the humans’ idea of a castle for a form of structure over the centuries. We are warned from young to keep away from the humans.”
“Until now?”
“Until now.”
Axel, the engineer, was actually quite pleasant and easy to talk to. Aside from the constant gags he didn’t understand that - for some reason - often left Hartley sending the nearest projectiles at the human with the yell of ‘dirty jokes’, it was fun to hear his side of things. They’d spent hours at one point just ranting about different equipment and their abilities in the field.
“So, I’ve realised that fire played a major part in the human evolution. To think intelligent beings such as yourselves would be able to come so far.” Kaelonne stared at the tablet Axel was holding for him.
“Yep, built empires, burned it down, created technology, so on and so forth.” Axel waved his hand to the side, “But what about you guys?”
“Us?”
“Yea, well, you can’t exactly build a fire underwater, but you guys seem rather advanced yourself.”
“We may not have fire, but we do have the heat of the lava from underwater volcanoes. At least, I think that that’s the correct reference to them.” Kaelonne glances at Hartley sitting under the air conditioning with his eyes closed, humming as he confirms with a thumbs-up. The heat of the day had all of them indoors.
“Wait, you’re actually able to use that practically?”
“You don’t?”
“Not really , well yea but no, is it like a main power source?”
“Well, no, then we have the Atlitius Crstals.”
“The what now?” This seemed to gather everyone’s attention, all sounds of shuffling and typing quieting.
“Atlitius Crystals. It’s a form of a power source where I live.”
“How did you figure out it would work?” Alister leans back on his chair, “How does it work?”
“Well, I’m not sure exactly how they realised they would work, but they were first used in Lokaltan’s forges.”
“Who?”
“Big bag, who wasn’t actually bad, but ended up being bad.” Hartley drawls out, looking as though he were more asleep than awake. “Who’s story you never fully told me.”
“Wait what?”
“Yes, essentially.” Hartley rolled his eyes with a small grin. He was starting to get to accustomed with human gestures, mimicking those around him unconsciously. “This is one of the forms of the crystals.”
They all widened their eyes in surprise as he pulls out the small bottle Idris had given him so long ago. The Adras crstals still glowing despite the light in the office. “May I?” Madeline holds out her hand slowly. Kaelonne hesitates for a few seconds, not willing to part with something that’s been on him for so long, before resting it in her hands. He trusts her as she walks over to the small table of equipment Alister had.
“Who is this Lokaltar person?” Nora raises her hand out of habit, pulling the attention back to the subject with ease.
“A researcher and an inventor, much like yourself really.” Kaelonne runs a hand through his hair, pulling it back into a rope braid again like he usually did when discussing or working on things. The hair now only reached up to the small of his back, but thanks to the guidance of the humans around him, he was able to keep it in some semblance of neat.
“That’s it?”
“Not exactly, I’m not sure how, but Lokaltar was the one who figured out and thought others how to use the heat of the lava to melt things and the crystals to their advantage.”
“What happened?”
“Not sure, in an effort to make peace, he made war and death instead. Building weapons and such. Some say he believed he deserved to be ruler from the things he created, others said he went crazy as his price of knowledge.”
“Amazing. What do you use these crystals for?”
“Pretty much anything, the one I have here, is call the Adras, or the Healer.” Kaelonne nods his head in the direction of Madeline still running tests on the small bottle. “It speeds up the Mermatian’s natural healing process.”
“Would it work on humans?”
“I’m no sure, I’ve never tried it before.”
“And in good reason.” Madeline speaks up, holding the bottle in front of her with a fascinated look, “These crystals give off a similar reading to radioactivity.”
“How bad?” The others in the room tensed up, leaving Kaelonne slightly confused. He was aware of the presence of this ‘radioactivity’ from a document Hartley watched with him, but he hadn’t realised it would be seen as a form of threat. “Not that much, about the same about your phone gives off, but it explains how it’s possible to be used as a power source. It’s not radioactivity exactly I think, the meter just reacted somewhat to it, so I assume that it gives off the same waves.”
“Waaaait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Axel slowly got to his feet with an awed look.
“Yea, pretty much?”
“I’m confused.” Kaelonne whispers in the back, but they still managed to hear him.
“Your Atlitius crystal might be another element on the periodic table.” Alister gasped, reaching out the touch the bottle as well.
“Well then.” Nora huffed, hardly looking as bothered as the rest of them, “Looks like we found another thing that the world shall never learn about.”
- Writer
