I dive deeper, running my hands along the knobby, leathery skin between her plates. Most of the other trainers hate getting stuck with morning once-over duty, but it’s always been relaxing for me. Checking over Durga is like exploring an alien planet. As I glide along beneath her belly, I map out her ridges and crevices, the tectonics of muscles working beneath her skin, the subtle shifts of coloring that patch her hide. Her primary genes come from snapping turtles, giving her the wide, bulky body and spiny plated shell, but the length of her limbs and the muddled regions of red and green that swath her skin are reminders of the marine iguana DNA woven into her makeup.

She’s a big dumb turtle four times the weight of a blue whale, but there’s no denying the elegance of her construction.

I’m halfway down her left foreleg when it happens. Something pulses through the water, and it takes me a second to realize that Durga just shivered.

Reckoners don’t shiver.

I press my palms flat against her leg, the respirator whining in my mouth as it waits for a breath I’ve yet to release. Five seconds pass, and then another tremor shakes the water around me as the muscle shudders beneath my hands.

I kick for the surface, rapping my knuckles against one of her keratin plates when my head clears the water. Her reptilian eyes fix on me as I roll over and swim for the edge of the bay. My heart flutters, worry creeping up my spine. I need to calm down. I need to breathe.

It’s probably nothing, I chide myself. I’ve been around Durga since the day she hatched, and I sometimes forget that she can still surprise me. I spit out the respirator and rip off my mask, tossing them to the side as I haul myself out of the observation bay and onto the divide.

Squinting against the early morning sun, I glance down the row of observation bays to the outcropping where the research facility stands. The building’s glass exterior glitters like a jewel on the edge of the NeoPacific, harshly framed against the rocky coastline. Just below it lies the dock where we start bonding training with Reckoner pups and their companion vessels. Eight bays lie between me and the buildings, but only four of them are occupied. The two closest to the facility host two pups, still training to bond with their companion ships.

As I flash the Tanto to let Durga know she’s free to submerge, the third resident bares her teeth and splashes her fluke at me from the pen on the other side of the divide. Fae is a younger cetoid, a plated whale with a bit of a mean streak. I clamber to my feet and stick my tongue out at her.