Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter Nine - In at the Deep End

By the end of lunch, she’d acquired the phone numbers of three new friends, scribbled on napkins as she didn’t yet own a mobile. Those friends each promised to show her the ropes and bring her supplies once training kicked her ass into a state of exhaustion. Then, once Isemay, Alad, and Zhak went back to their duties, Kalyna spent some time just wandering the facility, familiarising herself with the layout, until constant sideways glances eventually drove her back to her room.

Once there, she realised she couldn’t sit staring at the bare walls. What had felt like a gift earlier began to feel like a tomb, and she decided she’d need to decorate if she stayed there permanently. She had no windows, being underground, but she could paint forests and streams. She could paint the sea, or the night sky. It wouldn’t seem so tomb-like then.

Rather than staring at the magnolia walls, she grabbed a swimsuit and towel from her closet, and stuffed them back into the holdall alongside the sportswear she’d need later, when she met up with Staff Sergeant Eorl. Then headed back out of her room again. She ignored the curious gazes that followed her everywhere she went, and almost managed to pretend no one had any interest in her at all, at least once she hid herself away in a changing room cubicle.

Of course, that illusion fell apart when she stepped into public again, but at least in the pool the others focussed on swimming rather than staring. It was no leisure pool, and no one wanted to float about or stand at the water's edges to chatter. The men and women doing lengths had one aim in mind; keeping their bodies honed so they could fulfil their duties as part of the OTF. They seemed a little daunting with their powerful muscles driving them through the water at speed, especially as Kalyna hadn’t spent much time at a pool in recent years. She’d loved it once, though. She loved swimming pools, and lakes, and the sea. She loved swimming, and kayaking, and being near the water.

She waited for a woman with silvers scales on the backs of her arms and legs to execute a perfect tumble turn, pushing off from the poolside with toes that had webbing between them, the colour of carnelian. Once the fish like woman darted away, Kalyna stepped up to the edge of the pool, her toes curling over the edge. One foot slid back slightly as she leaned forward, her fingers down at toe level. When she dived, her body cut smoothly into the water, and she went several submerged meters before surfacing.

Front crawl came naturally after that, and for a number of lengths she concentrated only on her breathing and how good it felt to glide through the water. She didn’t bother counting the lengths she did. It didn’t matter. Over the coming weeks, she would probably train with a goal in mind; to get better, stronger, or faster. Right then, she had no such aim. She just wanted to feel the water tugging at her body and the strength in her muscles as she propelled herself through it. That was enough, because it made her feel a little less brittle.

Front crawl eventually become butterfly, and then butterfly became breast stroke, and when she finally felt bored of that, she challenged herself to see how far she could swim underwater. The first length didn’t surprise her. The second didn’t either, and she assumed some side affect of Eorl’s blood had made it easier for her to hold her breath. The third length almost sent her into a blind panic, though, and by the fourth she wondered if Captain Pullman would be angry at her for challenging her lungs when he had fixed them less than a day earlier.

As fifth, sixth, and seventh underwater lengths disappeared behind her, she decided she didn’t care. Being underwater made her happy. It felt like a cocoon. If Dunstan Eorl’s blood had temporarily given her a chance to enjoy that like never before, then so be it. She kept going until a nagging voice in her head warned that she should be getting ready to face Eorl and the initial fitness tests.

Pushing her body in the pool probably should’ve waited until after those, but it was too late to worry about tiring herself out now. Hopefully Mr-Surly-but-Sexy wouldn’t be too irritated, although he would undoubtedly turn all bad tempered again if she turned up late, and that gave her reason enough to surface. She hadn’t expected to look up and find him standing at the edge of the pool with a crowd of others around him, staring at her in shock and wonder.