Chapter Text
“Whelp. That should do it.” With one last flex of his prodigious biceps, Wriothesley tightened the final bolt needed to secure the metal plate over the neatly-organized array of pipes. Tapping it just to be sure each part had settled neatly into place, he grinned, twirling his wrench around one finger and depositing it back into his toolbelt before spinning open the valve atop the device. The sound of water rushing along the newly-accessible pathways was music to his ears, and he hummed along as he packed up the rest of his tools, double-checking that everything was where it ought to be.
Blue-tinged light rippled across Wriothesley’s hands as he stowed his belongings, occasionally interrupted by the flitting shadow of a school of fish swimming hurriedly past as though they had somewhere to be. From a hole in the coral, a moray eel gaped at him, the full length of its sinuous, sickly chartreuse form hidden within the depths of the crevice.
Hoisting his toolbox, Wriothesley took an extra moment to appreciate the spectacular sight of the towering tank and the many, many animals he and his team worked hard to keep hale and hearty.
Of course, as the administrator and head engineer of the Fontaine National Aquarium’s Life Support Systems Department, Wriothesley didn’t get to be quite as hands-on as he used to be. Some days he missed it, tinkering with the various machines that created a stable environment well-suited for each and every marine creature. Others, he found himself overly weary even for his thirty-eight years of age, and happy to be able to delegate to his thankfully competent team of intrepid systems operators.
Today was the first sort of day; thankfully, no dreary meetings prevented him from soothing the itch in his soul by finding a task or two to help out with. He had noticed the salinity of this particular exhibit had dipped below the normal range just before lunch, and diligent monitoring hadn’t indicated any signs of improvement. Thankfully, it was a quick fix – one of the pipes cycling in filtered ocean water from the harbor outside had a leak at a connector point, and replacing the coupling had set things to rights. They’d keep an eye on it, of course, but for now, that was one less to-do his team would have to deal with.
Satisfied, Wriothesley popped open the door leading from the employees-only area back to the main exhibit hall, fully intent on grabbing a sandwich from the cafeteria before retreating to his bunkerlike office in the bowels of the building. He slipped through the doorway as unobtrusively as possible, not wanting to disturb the crowds of guests that ambled through the halls like schools of fish, letting the latch close behind him with a quiet click.
The soft sound was followed, very abruptly, by a shrill, sharp shriek, aimed directly into his poor eardrum. Wriothesley pivoted towards the noise with a smile that ended up more of a strained grimace, and met the gaze of a very chagrined and flushing preteen, mouth covered by her hands as though to take back the outburst. Her friends stood behind her, giggling unhelpfully as she sputtered apologies.
“I – sorry, I didn’t mean – you just, I didn’t see – Ginna said –” the poor girl babbled, shrinking away from the many eyes turning their way. “I thought you were a ghost!”
Ah. Well, that explained more than it didn’t.
Wriothesley raised his hands with a much more genuine façade of a smile, trying to look as nonthreatening as someone of his significant height and well-earned bulk could manage while being liberally laced with scars. “Hey, it’s all right,” he answered placatingly. “Sounds like your friend was winding you up with a bunch of tall tales about this place.” The young woman nodded with a sniffle, wiping at the corner of her eyes with the heel of her hand. Archons. “Well, I can promise I’m not a ghost – and I’ve never seen one, either, even when I’ve been here overnight.” He pointed helpfully to the nametag pinned to his crimson Henley, thankful he’d remembered to move it off the charcoal coveralls whose limp arms were currently tied around his waist. “So don’t worry so much about it – she’s just pulling your leg.”
The girl swallowed and hesitated before nodding again, giving him a shaky, watery smile. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Great.” Wriothesley gave her a thumbs up and headed on his way, trying not to feel too exasperated. Nothing he’d said had been a lie, he reminded himself. He hadn’t seen a ghost, ever, in all six years working at the aquarium.
That said, Fontaine National’s reputation for being haunted as fuck wasn’t precisely unearned. Plenty of the strange goings-on were public knowledge, passed around in the sort of gossipy rumormongering and online storytelling that the poor startled teenager would have easy access to. And that wasn’t even accounting for the undue number of headlines in the Steambird starting with ‘Fontaine Man’ outlining events associated with the aquarium. People eagerly shared tales of happily viewing an exhibit, only for their vision to blur and flicker. When they came to, they inevitably found themselves in an entirely different part of the aquarium – or, in a few worse-case iterations, nearly about to dive off the metal catwalks into the larger tanks.
Of course, most of those stories were just that – someone repeating something they’d heard happened to a friend of a stepfather’s aunt’s third-cousin-once-removed, or kids in an escalating game of one-upmanship trying to tell the most fantastical story and impress their friends. None of those tall tales had any evidence to back them up, leading Wriothesley to conclude they’d never really happened at all. In reality, he only got reports of people ending up where they shouldn’t a few times a year, and had always filed away the claims of memory loss as a convenient, well-respected excuse meant to keep whatever aquarium staff had let them in out of trouble. A plethora of badge-access-only doors guarded the back rooms from the general public, after all, and no matter how many times Wriothesley checked, those locks were never broken.
Of course, none of that explained the other things: guests with a sudden and violent revulsion to their purchase from the food court, all previous allergies and preferences notwithstanding, and guests who drained their water bottle time and again, claiming they just couldn’t get enough. But hey, unexpected medical events cropped up all the time, and at least one of those incidents was some jokester filming for TeyTok.
All of those things were common knowledge. Most of them, Wriothesley was sure, could be explained away if anyone bothered to give the phenomenon enough time and attention, which no one ever did. Besides, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t helped things along by starting a rumor or two of his own, in an attempt to dissuade any particularly audacious aquarium-goers from exploring where they shouldn’t. He and his team kept a running tally of which ones they’d heard repeated back to them. So far, “employees who went to check on an exhibit one day dissolved when they touched the water, and now you can see the outline of humanoid shapes in the tanks if you look at the right angle” was tied with “one of the back rooms has a portal to the depths of the ocean where they drop trespassers.”
What was much more damning than anything Wriothesley could come up with were the incidents that didn’t make it to the news or online. Some things the aquarium managed to keep well under wraps, and all for the better. It didn’t need to be advertised that, every so often, the exhibits would rearrange themselves in vastly improbable ways, everything from small rocks and enrichment items hopping to a new exhibit to massive coral structures seeming to pick up and move of their own accord. And the public would, probably, panic if they ever learned that staff would, occasionally, lose track of their charges. It wasn’t just the smaller fish, either; every so often, some of the large jellyfish, or, one time, an entire blubberbeast, would simply vanish, only to reappear, in perfect health, back were they should have been. The worst had been when a particularly rare Raimei angelfish had come into their care for rehabilitation, practically on death’s door from a particularly nasty but unidentified parasite. It hadn’t been even an hour before it was simply gone; two days later, it was back in its isolation tank, swimming around happily as if it had never been sick.
For all Wriothesley thought the stories about the building being haunted were overblown, even he didn’t have a good explanation for that one; he assumed the culprit to be some employee with an overzealous sense of humor, but couldn’t quite sort out how they’d accomplish to rework entire exhibit spaces overnight. Even the security team had been baffled, citing problems with the cameras during each of the incidents. The various departments had been at each other’s throat for weeks after the Angelfish Episode; the tension had heightened to such an unbearable degree that, amongst a myriad of other problems, the previous director, Furina, had been forced to step aside and a new board had taken over.
No, it couldn’t be denied that the aquarium’s reputation for being eerie as all get-out was well and truly earned, even though most to all of the weird events had some sort of plausible explanation, if only anyone would dig deep enough. Wriothesley didn’t really blame the poor kid for being startled when he popped up seemingly out of nowhere.
Sighing, he ran a hand through his already-ruffled salt-and-pepper hair. People seemed to be all the more high-strung about this stuff as of late, and while he’d like to blame it on a new flurry of social-media-fueled scuttlebutt, he wasn’t active enough on those sites to say for sure.
The rumbling complaint of his stomach reminded Wriothesley of his original destination, and he pivoted back towards the café. In the midst of his ruminations, he realized, he had inadvertently autopiloted towards the more secluded back hallway that eventually led down to the Life Support System team’s basement office – affectionately nicknamed the Fortress.
A laugh, childish and gleeful and distant, promptly halted him in his tracks as it echoed down the abandoned corridor.
Frowning, Wriothesley scanned the space, even though, after six years, he knew every inch of this aquarium like the back of his hand. There was nothing back here, really – just a rarely-used restroom, a drinking fountain, and a blocked area currently under renovation.
The pitter-patter of tiny shoes tapping merrily along the carpeted floor instantly drew his attention past the ropes declaring ‘No Entry,’ echoing along the silent hall, far from the susurrus of the crowd. Sticking his head around the barrier with a scowl, Wriothesley caught a flash of silver and blue, bouncing away around the corner with a trailing giggle growing fainter.
“Hey!” he shouted after, to no response; grumbling, he wrangled his way over the barricade with an awkward hop. “Hey, kid!”
Still nothing.
Muttering darkly under his breath, Wriothesley marched quickly down the corridor of temporary partitions, dodging scattered orange cones and thick plastic sheeting and sign after sign warning him away. He wracked his brain, trying to remember what, exactly, lay in wait at the other end of the hall – besides, of course, piles of loose construction equipment just waiting to squish a too-curious child left unsupervised.
He found, to his shock and dismay, that he was coming up entirely blank.
Wriothesley knew this aquarium back to front. Why couldn’t he remember this exhibit? It couldn’t have been under renovation for six whole years – something must have been here, at some point, and surely he would have remembered, or checked in, in the interim –
But when Wriothesley threw aside the last translucent, heavy curtain in his way and skidded to a halt in the vast, open space, he found no bags of unmade concrete or steel beams or pipes waiting to be laid. The room before him, illuminated dimly from above with the barest wisps of emergency lighting, was, in fact, practically pristine – and entirely empty, save for the enormous tank that soared to the ceiling and spread more than a few arm spans across.
This, Wriothesley was positive, wasn’t on any map or schematic or diagram he had ever seen.
As far as aquatic habitats went, it was a masterpiece. The glass walls sank deep into the floor, probably as deep as the foundation of the building. Thick kelp grew lush and verdant nearly to the waterline, waving gently in an unseen current. Rocks from pebble to boulder and shells of every possible sort dotted the sandy bottom, and coral bloomed upwards in massive, craggy mountains of multicolored microbiomes. In the shallows simulated by a stone-and-sediment shelf near the top of the tank, lumitoiles splayed out in lazy stars, and romaritime flowers bloomed in a stunning bouquet. And if he tilted his head just right, Wriothesley could see a wide opening amongst the enormous pile of rocks stacked in the corner, the dark crevice suggesting a cave or some other hideaway.
What, he wondered, was this meant to house? A tank this big, it had to be something enormous.
Enormous, and probably not child-friendly – and all that seaweed was fine, until a tiny body got tangled and it became a drowning hazard, he abruptly reminded himself, swiveling on his heel to scan the periphery. There didn’t seem to be any other exits, so the little trespasser had to be here somewhere.
He could sense it in his bones.
“Hey, kid!” he called again, cupping his hands around his mouth to magnify the sound. “You’re not in trouble, but you can’t be back here, all right?” He let the silence sit again, ears peeled for any hint of guilty shuffling, but he was met with only the melodious rush of running water. “Look, I saw you run in here, so there’s no point in hiding.”
It wasn’t just that there was nowhere the child could have run to; Wriothesley could feel the distinct weight of being watched, the heavy awareness of being keenly observed from the shadows.
It had to be the kid.
“I’m not joking; it’s dangerous back here,” he warned. “C’mon –”
A bright, sunny laugh and a violent splash shattered the tranquil silence of the room, and Wriothesley whirled around, heart hammering in his throat, feet carrying him halfway towards the ladder at the tank’s side as he fully braced himself to dive right in depending on what he saw.
Nothing.
Not even a ripple marred the crystal-clear surface of the water.
Wriothesley scrubbed a hand over his face. “What the fuck.”
At this point, someone had to be messing with him – probably whoever’s eyes he felt tracking his every step.
“Right,” he exhaled. “Okay. Hide-and-seek it is.”
Hide-and-seek, apparently, was not the answer either; his thorough scouring of the exhibit area turned up no one and nothing but the usual machinery to keep the tank going. The little girl must have run past him, Wriothesley reasoned. Just darted off back the way she came. It was nearly closing time, and a missing child would have been broadcast to all staff over their radios, so she had to have found whoever she came with.
Nothing strange or unusual there.
But then, who was watching him?
In an effort to distract himself from the daunting prospect of a question he couldn’t answer, Wriothesley circled back around to the filtration unit he had found early in his search. A quick look showed it rumbled along in more-or-less working order. Still, slimy emerald algae clung to some of the cracks and crevices; it looked like no one had checked on the damn thing in years, a likely prospect if no one knew it even existed.
With some prying and the judicious application of force to his wrench, Wriothesley managed to crack the unit open, wrinkling his nose at the stench of briny rot that wafted out. “Gonna have to check who had eyes on this last,” he muttered, pawing through his bag for a replacement and grinning victoriously as he found just the right one; for all the teasing his employees gave him about his hoarding tendencies, they did pay off every now and again. Pinching the slick, disintegrating old filter between two fingers, he tossed it aside, settling the new one tenderly into place. The unit would still need a more complete tune-up, but this was a start. “I’ll just have to come back,” he mumbled, not sure if he was speaking to himself or his hidden observer.
The walkie-talkie at Wriothesley’s hip squawked to life; the sound sent him jumping nearly out of his skin and into the ceiling as the sudden burst of crackling, squealing noise invaded the silence.
“Fortress to Duke, Fortress to Duke, come in, over.”
Wriothesley grabbed the device with a good-natured eyeroll, pressing the button to respond. “This is Wriothesley. Roussimoff, you know this isn’t a spy movie, right?”
The other man’s laugh pitched high and staticky, cutting out before coming back into an audible range. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but let me have my fun, eh, boss? Hey, someone from Vet is here lookin’ for ya, you got a minute?”
“Yeah, I’ll be down in ten. Thanks.” With practiced precision, Wriothesley reattached the filter, grinning as it purred to life. “There. All set,” he announced, crystalline eyes narrowing at the rippling water of the tank one last time in a final attempt to discern any faint flickers of movement.
His gaze was met with an expanse of pure nothing, only that continued intangible pressure of eyes on his back, heavy on his shoulders no matter where he turned.
Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe the area was empty and abandoned and the tank simply a forgotten relic of some would-be renovation that slipped through the cracks when the aquarium had changed hands a few years back.
There had to be some reason for all of this, and come Abyss or high water, Wriothesley would find it.