Page 14 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Fourteen

Fortis

F ortis couldn’t believe it had worked. Taunting her like that had thus far ended in nothing. He knew she had her emotions controlled and was capable in her abilities as a warrior. She would realize that he was being a flipper head to get a rise out of her.

But this time it worked. This time she stomped over to the exoskeleton, muttering under her breath the whole time. Every single movement was rushed and angry, a foolish choice in this situation. Surely she understood that acting in anger would always lead her in the wrong direction?

Apparently, he’d said something that had gotten her so angry she didn’t care anymore.

Or the meds had worn off entirely, and she wasn’t sure how to focus when her mind was new. He could work with that. He could use her weakness to his advantage in this hour of need. But something else bloomed in his chest and made his gills flatten against his skull.

He was taking advantage of her in this state. Peering into her memories without permission was different when they were fighting as equals. He didn’t mind as much when she’d battled and lost to him. But this? This wasn’t the woman he knew. Her frantic, angry movements weren’t right for the cold-hearted warrior he had seen in Tau.

Had he broken her?

The exoskeleton wrapped around her and she struck the button to open the door into the water. Down she went, plunging into the sea like the stones were far away from her. They weren’t. He heard the crunch of her feet hitting the ground and knew that must have been a bone jarring landing for her, especially with the exoskeleton’s added weight. All throughout, he could hear her swearing.

She wasn’t in control over anything right now; it seemed. Somehow, guilt made his fins flatten even further to his scales. He’d wanted to win her trust so that she would tell him everything. He hadn’t wanted to do… this.

The sea ruffled through his hair as though it were pleased with him. “Is that the path you wanted?” he murmured as Alexia figured out how to get out from underneath her own ship. “You are a fickle beast. She is the one who will kill me, and yet you wish for me to pity her.”

In a way, at least. He didn’t quite pity this woman, but now he wanted to help her. She deserved his help.

He’d stolen everything that made her who she was. The scientists in Tau had developed her into being this perfect, unfeeling machine of a warrior who had done everything they wanted her to do. But in doing so, they had suppressed everything she was. She deserved to know what it was like to fight with rage burning in her heart, to know what it was like to choose to fight for something she believed in.

He’d been a warrior his entire life, but he’d also taught many people how to fight. This would be no different from that.

Floating around the edge of the ship, he peered down to see her ripping herself free. The bubble around her mouth fogged with all her exertion, but she didn’t seem concerned.

No, her cheeks were still bright red with anger. Another easy giveaway to notice that she was not in control, nor would she likely be in control any time soon.

“You relied on medication to make you a good guard,” he said. “How strange it is to see you lose your way.”

“I have not lost my way, undine.” She floated up in front of him, those boots giving her the boost she needed to look him in the eyes. “I can fight just as I did before. I am not any different than I once was.”

“Are you not? I can smell your anger, Alexia.”

A little cry of rage escaped her lips, and then she darted toward him. Those boots did make her swim a lot faster in the water, but even that wouldn’t give her the advantage she thought it would over him. He flipped over onto his back and let her glide right past him. She could stop with the boots quickly, it seemed. But even that was a little clumsy.

“Who trained you?” he asked, curious about her people at this point. What he didn’t expect was for her to rant and give away far more than she likely knew she did.

“I have spent half a lifetime training to keep the Originals safe,” she hissed. “I have trained on land and in water. There is nothing and no one I do not know how to fight. I have torn people limb from limb. I have killed hundreds of people. I know death well, undine.”

“Hundreds?” He flicked his tail to move out of her way again, slowly gliding backwards so she had to follow him out into the abyss. “Where did Tau even find hundreds of people for you to kill?”

“You’d be surprised how many humans are down here, and how many Tau deems unworthy of the cause.” She paused in the water, her eyes widening even as she said the words. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But it is interesting to me that Tau has a cause. Which means they are training you for something other than just keeping your Originals alive.” When she reacted a little to that, he narrowed his eyes. “Or they are training you to keep only your Original alive, but there are others who will make it difficult for that to happen. Is that what is being planned?”

“You see too much, undine.”

“What would make that even occur? There won’t be a war between the achromos. Tau already makes sure they control every single city. We’ve discovered your outposts within each one, and it was far too easy to find it within the ruins of Alpha. So it is not your own people you expect to fight.”

She raced for him, but he already knew why she was doing that. A distraction. He was getting too close.

Annoyed, he grabbed the bony arm of her exoskeleton and tore it off the suit as she passed. It was so easy to do. The metal was thin and brittle, so it shattered with an audible pop before he tossed the metallic bone into the abyss.

She froze where she was, staring down at her arm that was now exposed to the frigid sea. With only one useful hand now, the exoskeleton was significantly less helpful.

He grinned. “So it’s my people. Tau is planning to attack the undines.”

She hissed out an angry noise. “It has always been known that this sea is yours. Even before we came down here, the Originals were aware there was another species in the water. They weren’t sure how you would react to so many new faces in what had historically always been yours.”

“We didn’t like it.”

“No, you didn’t.” She shook out her still working arm and then curled the fingers. “And because of that, and two hundred years of fighting between our kinds, the Originals have had enough.”

He wasn’t all that surprised. The attacks on his people had been getting worse recently. He had seen the way ships were following the People of Water in the shallows. Even Beta, a city they should have had under their thumb at this point, was reacting a bit differently when his people swam by. Of course, there were only three cities still standing, and one of them was a prison.

There would be no allies amongst the achromos, other than those who were already helping them. If it came to a true battle, they would be far too easy to wipe out of existence.

“Damn it,” he hissed. Then he lunged for her.

Grabbing her other arm, he tore the metal skeleton off of her, leaving her only in just those useful boots and the spine piece. She barked out a swear and then swiped at him. At least this time, she actually connected. Her fist hit hard enough to leave a bruise, something he was rather surprised about. Even without the skeleton, she’d hit him hard.

But he wasn’t interested in continuing this fight with her now. She’d given him so much information. So much more than what he had ever expected he would get this soon.

On her next angry pass, he grabbed her by the back of the skeleton’s suit. There were a lot of cords and metallic pieces in his grasp now, so it was so very easy to just snap it. Her entire body jerked with the movement, but then he pulled the headpiece off and most of the spine with it. With one hand, he held her shirt, and the other, he dangled the rest of her last weapon in the water beside her. It left her bare, and the booted pieces of the suit entirely without power.

The silence that came after his rather violent yank should have warned him. But he dropped the rest of the pieces into the sea as well, still holding onto her by the front of her shirt.

Fortis waited until she looked at him. That glare stirred something inside of him, and he hated how he responded to just that look. Because he hated her. Every bit of her and no matter what she did to reveal truth after truth, he would always hate her.

Grabbing her by the neck, he let her dangle in the darkness that surrounded them. With a flick of his tail, he brought them farther out into the sea. Soon, the only light that surrounded them came from his body.

She grabbed onto his wrists, but she wasn’t struggling now. Almost as though she knew she had been bested, and easily at that.

“You will help us,” he told her. “You will betray all that you are afraid to betray, and you will be better for it. If you agree to work with us, I will train you myself. No People of Water or achromo could fight you without losing. But to do all of that, you must trust me, virago.”

Her hands squeezed his wrists even tighter. “I will never trust you or your kind.”

He dropped her. It was that easy. He just released his hand on her neck and let the weight of her boots and her body drag her into the depths. It wasn’t a slow decline, even as she tried to swim against the currents, but she wasn’t strong enough for that. She fought hard, with her arms pumping and her legs working, but soon enough, even she grew tired.

She hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t drunk enough water. No one was endlessly powerful. Not even him.

At the last moment, before the currents swept her away, he reached out and grabbed her hand. They remained frozen like that, her falling into the waters below and him, a glowing beacon reaching out to be her salvation.

She stared up at him with those dark eyes, the same color as the abyss beneath her. How many times had he stared into that darkness? How many times had he sworn there were answers for him in those dark waters?

Swallowing hard, he reminded himself that she was not someone who was from the sea. She was not the person he was giving her credit to be. Even though he almost wanted her to be a gift from the abyss.

“Trust me,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “You have no other choice, Alexia. You will have to trust me or I will let you go.”

He could see the struggle in her. Some part of her wanted this all to be over with. Perhaps it was the easier choice to have him let her sink into the abyss. At some point, the pressure would kill her. It wouldn’t be slow. It would be an instantaneous death that she would not feel, and then the sea would make use of all her parts.

He wouldn’t think less of her, but he would be disappointed. Even the sea seemed to pause around them, the currents halting as they waited to hear what she would choose to do.

She looked up at him and didn’t move for a bit. She just let him hold her there, dangling over what was certain death until finally she gave him a nod.

“I don’t know how to trust you,” she said. “But I can promise I will try to learn how to do so.”

“That’s good enough for me. After all, you told me a secret about your city that will be very useful soon enough.”

He drew her up by the arm until he could grab onto her waist. She was such a large achromo and still, her waist felt tiny as he held onto her and swam back to her ship. It was... odd to notice such a thing. He usually didn’t care at all about the bodies of other people.

She was very still in his arms. So still that he worried she might have given up. Perhaps she regretted not choosing death.

He swam with her all the way to the bottom of her ship and then jettisoned her up into the opening. But when he noticed she struggled to even get herself into the ship, he realized the problem.

“Are you cold, virago?” he asked.

Her chattering teeth should have been the first warning sign. He was such a fool. His people didn’t worry about icy waters, but of course, she was freezing. And here he had been, practically swishing her through the coldest part of the ocean.

Planting a hand on her ass, he shoved her into the ship. She rolled on the floor, but he could hear her trying to get onto her hands and knees. It was a start. At least she was still trying to keep herself alive.

But he also knew there was no heat in this room. The ship didn’t have the power to have the heat on any longer, and therefore, she would just freeze to death.

Sighing, he turned to where he had placed the battery packs. One of them wouldn’t hurt. Sure, it was one of his few bargaining chips to convince her that maybe, just maybe, she should help him. But if he could keep her alive longer, perhaps that would also win her trust.

This woman held all the secrets of Tau in her mind. And he’d already decided she was much more useful if he could talk to her about what she knew, rather than just stealing it himself and pretending to understand what he had seen.

He got one of the batteries and attached it to the top of the ship. The achromos should make these more difficult to work with if they didn’t want his people to figure out how to use them. It was literally attached to the top with just a few seals, and then he could see the connection light up.

It felt wrong for some reason to tease her even more now. She’d already struggled long enough in his presence. Soon enough, the computer would turn the heat back on and then, perhaps, he would return.

For now, though, he would let her mourn the loss of everything she knew about herself in peace.