Page 13 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Thirteen

Alexia

S he was losing her mind down here. The darkness was getting to her without her medication, and the anxiety was getting worse with every moment that passed. Alexia had never felt fear before. She could freeze into a block on the floor and with her medicine, she wouldn’t have cared. Her mind would have continued to figure a way out of the situation, of course, but that didn’t mean she would have been afraid of death.

But she was now. She was terrified of it.

Every bit of her, every fiber of her being was frightened about what was going to happen. She’d run out of food before the reserve energy died. But there was no way of knowing that. Life support systems continued to fail. The filtration to her water was next to turn off, and after that, she was a goner.

Alexia never had the time or ability to think about death. When she had her medicine, she understood it was just a lights out situation. Some part of her that the drugs couldn’t reach was a little relieved by that. She didn’t want to think about an endless life with Harlow.

But now? Now she wanted to live. That lizard part of her brain had awoken, and all she wanted was to live for every moment that she could. She didn’t want to be stuck down here in the deepest part of the ocean, wondering when an undine might return with a scrap of food.

“Computer?” she asked, pacing back and forth in the meager space as she could. “Update me on the life support, please.”

“Life support was updated thirty minutes ago.”

“Again.”

“Life support is at three percent. All non functioning facilities of the ship have been turned off. Water storage will be depleted shortly. Oxygen levels will remain as the last function onboard.”

“What’s the next function after water that I will lose?”

“Heat.”

Of course it would turn the heat off next. That’s the only logical next step. But she’d likely freeze to death before she would notice that there was no more air. A quiet death awaited her then, but why did that make her heart race?

Staring out into the darkness didn’t help. There wasn’t anything she could look at in this ship that helped. At least the blinking lights had kept her adrenaline up. It was hard to think with those constant blinking lights. But those were all gone now. Every single one of them. All that remained were the few console lights that were still in front of the pilot’s chair. The blue light turned everything dreary and, frankly, terrifying in this meager space.

She could lie down and just let it happen. She could situate herself on the floor and tell the computer to turn off all the heat and oxygen. The remaining battery could likely be used for a message to Tau, who would eventually want to recover this ship and understand what had happened to one of their trained guards. But a voice inside her screamed that she wasn’t done fighting. Not yet, at least.

Grinding her teeth, she grabbed the rivet gun that was only meant for emergencies and started banging it on the outside of the ship. She’d learned a day ago that if she shouted for hours on end, he still wasn’t very likely to hear her. But if she banged on the walls, then he could. The metal sound apparently traveled much faster than her own voice.

It didn’t take long until there was a flash of a tail outside of the front window. He never took that long to show up. It was almost like he was as starved for attention as she was.

Or maybe he was just curious about her. He watched her, she’d realized. When she was sleeping, sometimes she’d open her eyes in the middle of the night and swear he was right outside of the window. She’d become some pet for him to stare at. No matter what time of day it was, he was likely somewhere beyond that glass. Watching her every movement.

Already her body was starting to atrophy. Alexia could feel her muscles aching to be used and now, two weeks later, they felt like they weren’t even there. She’d tried to do pull ups and pushups for hours on end, but without food, she couldn’t do them. She was forced, instead, to linger here. Staring into the darkness and hoping that an undine would show her mercy.

He didn’t. But of course, his kind rarely did.

The fins flashing in front of her window were a warning that he’d chosen to lay himself on top of the ship. He liked to do that. She wondered if sometimes it was only because he wanted her to look up at him in some power play that was supposed to make her feel small. It worked, if that was his plan.

Looking up at the massive creature that seemed to float above her, she found it was harder to notice their differences. Yes, he was strange. The long tail wrapped around almost the entirety of her ship, and he still had long claws that he loved to trail along the glass. But there were other parts of him that were familiar now.

The strange, toothy grin usually meant he was up to something. The way his fins flared when he was surprised. Sometimes she even noticed that his glowie bits would light up in a particular pattern if he was angry or hungry. She’d been observing him just as much as he’d been observing her.

“How far away were you this time?” she asked.

“Not far.”

“You haven’t brought me any food.” She gestured at the ship with limp hands. “Hilariously, my batteries are running out every moment we wait. So you better try to get what you want from me sooner than later or I’m going to die in here.”

His brows furrowed. “You’re not going to die.”

“I have three percent left.” To drive her point home, she said, “Computer? How many more days will the ship be functional?”

There was a long pause before the tinny voice replied, “Two days and sixteen hours. First, water function will be turned off?—”

“Thank you, computer.” She interrupted before it would run through every situation and make her chest seize up like it did last time. Instead, she tried to be brave. Just like she’d trained her entire life to be.

Alexia crossed her arms over her chest, widened her stance, and stared up at him.

“What?” he asked, playing dumb. “You’re giving me a look.”

“You have less than two days to make up your mind.”

“About what?”

“Whether you’re going to kill me or not.”

He tapped a long nail on the glass. She could see he was pretending to think. Usually, when he was actually considering her words, the lights on his forearms lit up. It was almost like he didn’t realize they were doing it. And she’d used it to her advantage thus far. But this time, the lights remained dormant, so he had already thought about this.

His hair twisted in a stray current that toyed with the strands. While he thought he was tormenting her, she looked at the delicate way his gills flared open when he breathed. His body was remarkable this close. She had never seen anything like him before, and now that she had, Alexia wasn’t sure how she would go back to a normal life.

Who else in Tau had experienced this? Sure, there were plenty of scientists who had experimented on an undine. There were a lot of them who had seen undine up close and far more personal. But none of them had talked to one. None of them had spent days on end watching their graceful movements and the way it seemed like the sea accepted them in a way that it never would humans.

Finally, he tapped his nail on the glass harder, getting her attention away from the gills on his ribs and instead on his face. “What do you have to offer me?”

“You were the one who wanted to make a deal for food in the first place!”

“What would you offer me for a battery?”

She froze. What did he mean a battery? He’d ripped them off her ship and then likely thrown them into the depths of the sea. He wasn’t smart enough to... keep them.

He was.

He was smart enough to keep the damn things, and he had done exactly that. He’d just been waiting until the very last second to barter with her.

“You have the batteries?” she hissed.

“I have a battery to trade with you for information about your city.” He shrugged. “And if you give me more information at a later time, I may have the second battery as well.”

Rat. Bastard.

He was going to keep her on the threshold of death for however long he wanted her to. He was going to continue with this torture until she snapped.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to find that numb place the medicine brought her to. The place where her thoughts weren’t running red and she could focus on what was being said in front of her, rather than wanting to get that rivet gun and empty it into the ceiling above her, flooding be damned.

“What information would you consider to be good enough to get the batteries back?” she ground out.

There was a lot she could tell him about Tau that wouldn’t be dangerous for him to know. The layout of Tau was obviously off limits. She wasn’t going to tell him?—

“I need a way into the city that others of my people could use.”

“Absolutely not.” That was the last thing she was going to tell him. “You trapped me here, undine. That doesn’t mean I am willing to sell out my entire city.”

“You’d rather die?”

“I would.”

He leaned closer until his face was nearly pressed against the glass. She could see the anger in his gaze boiling underneath the surface of those black eyes. “Your people stole my son. I thought he was dead. But he was just in Alpha with all their scientists, who were preparing to tear him apart so they could catalogue his insides. Did you know that? Just before Alpha was destroyed by my people, yours almost killed the only child I have.”

She wanted to argue that Alpha wouldn’t have done that without reason, but she had seen it herself. No one in the cities treated the undine like they were people. And that killed her, because she could so easily see that he was a person.

He had a family. A reason to fight.

Damn it, he had a son. She leaned against the wall of the ship and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry to hear that. It shouldn’t have happened. No one deserves to lose a loved one like that, it’s…”

There were no words. Not for something like this.

She could apologize a thousand times over, but it wasn’t her who had done it. She hadn’t made the choice to kidnap his son, nor had she been one of the scientists who had experimented on the boy. But she knew deeply what it was like to be a child in the hands of a scientist.

Her heart ached for Fortis’s son. She looked down at the floor and whispered, “No one deserves that. And I hope that he has found some peace since.”

As if those words would ever be enough. As if she could wipe away the wounds that his son had sustained.

“He’s better than he was when I found him,” Fortis replied. “Making friends with achromos as we speak. How he’s doing that, I will never know. After what your people did to him, he should hate you.”

Her head lifted at the words, shock allowing her to look him in the eyes again. “Making friends?”

He shook his head. “This is not information you get without betraying your own people, virago.”

“My name is Alexia.” And for some reason, it was important for her to hear him say it. It seemed like the nickname he had given her tore her away from that humanity she still clung to. The humanity that wasn’t here in a tiny ship with nothing but the vast, endless sea to watch her.

“I don’t like the name.”

“You don’t get to name me.”

“It looks like I do.” He paused for dramatic effect, then eyed her. “Virago.”

Her nostrils flared with anger. Yet again, she wanted to punch a hole through the ship just so she could throttle him. But she didn’t. She was good. She controlled the anger that was flaring so white hot in her stomach that it was almost impossible for her to focus on anything else. A medal was needed for the sheer force of will it took for her to grit out, “Alexia.”

“Virago,” he repeated. “You have no idea what an honor it is for me to gift you a name other than what the achromos have given you. Your name means nothing to me or my people. But virago has a purpose, a meaning.”

“And yet, it is still not my name. You’re purposefully trying to distract me from the fact that you refuse to do anything about my circumstances. I will not tell you anything about my city if you are unwilling to at least give me something to eat. Or batteries, so I don’t freeze down here and die .”

He scoffed. “I will not have this conversation with a woman who refuses to even get into the water with me. You are so terrified I will kill you that we cannot even have this conversation without you becoming so angry you cannot see straight.”

“You want me in the water?”

“I think you’re afraid to get in the water.”

Her temper would get the better of her, it seemed. Because the moment he said that was the moment she lost all control over the situation. Her face burned with anger, something it had never done before. Her hands curled into fists, and she snapped.

“Fine!” she was shouting, and she didn’t even know why. “You want me in the water that fucking bad?”

“You can’t get in the water. You cling to the safety of your ship, because without the medicine they gave you, you are weak.”

That stupid, sarcastic smile on his face hadn’t budged. And she couldn’t let him win.