“That we know? Or in total?”
“Both.”
Ciaran shrugged. “Globally? Many. That we know personally? Us, the Bass Strait boys, the Norway consortium,” he said, nodding to Fray, and then he pointed his thumb toward Otis. “And the Maori boys.”
Otis gave a wave. “Hey.”
“There are others,” Ciaran added. “Some warm-water dwellers.”
“And you’re cold water...”
Ciaran gave him a smile. “Yes.”
Sawyer looked at Fray then. “You’re from Norway?”
He flashed his killer-watt smile. “Originally. I was born there, but I’ve been here my whole life.”
“Born...,” Sawyer mumbled. “Okay, so are you born, or do you... hatch? I don’t even know the right word.”
Ciaran studied him for a long moment. “We hatch.”
“Holy shit.”
“New generations of our kind don’t happen often,” Kellan supplied.
Right.
Okay.
He’d said Maoriboys. “And you’re all male?”
“Yes,” Ciaran said.
They were all male...
What the fuck?
“Uh....” Sawyer blinked. Because that meant... “So there’s asexual reproduction....”
He took a moment to get his head around that.
“Yes,” Kellan replied.
Okay, then.
Sawyer stored that away to ask more questions later when it was just him and Ciaran and decided to focus on consortium issues. “Uhhh, how have you remained undetected?”
“There have been a few instances throughout history,” Ciaran said. “But if we are seen in freeform, we are assumed to be octopuses.”
Sawyer suddenly remembered... “All those old sea tales of giant squid.”
That was so fucking crazy.
But he was getting off-track. “Okay, more questions.... Uh. How does it work? With your human bones and whatever. What happens to them when you go into freeform?”
Kellan fielded that one. “They are absorbed and become what is similar to cartilage. Our air sacs become lungs, for example, but some physiology cannot change.”
“Such as?”
