Page 29 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Twenty-Nine

Alexia

I t’s an insane idea, but not one she was going to pass up. How many people were ever offered to see where the depthstriders lived? Likely no one, as Fortis had suggested.

She would need to be sure that she didn’t do anything stupid. The depthstriders were notoriously violent, and they hated humans far more than any other of their kind. Not to mention there needed to be some upgrades provided to her because even she wasn’t capable of surviving in those depths.

Alexia might be an upgraded human, but she could still die in pressures like that. There had to be some kind of suit or pod that would withstand the fathoms, but that wasn’t a question she could answer. She wasn’t an engineer.

As she stared at him, she wondered what had gotten into his head. After two weeks without seeing him, she was certain he was only saying this because he wanted to prove a point. Fortis didn’t care about her wellbeing. He’d brought her here, and that was enough for him. He’d done the best thing he could to keep her safe.

But when she’d seen him again, and it was like a live wire had been lit inside of her body. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed talking to him. Every cell fired white hot, and she suddenly wanted to taste him again. She’d wanted to leap into the water and kiss him a thousand times until he admitted that maybe he’d missed her a little as well.

A voice came from behind her shoulder. “Do you think that’s a good idea? She could die. Again.”

Fortis huffed out an angry sound that she recognized. “She will be fine. You will make sure she lives.”

Mira came to stand beside her, the top of her head just below Alexia’s shoulder. “I’m not a miracle worker, Fortis. Pressure at that level would need an entire ship to keep her safe. I can build something along the lines of a pod that you could carry with you, but that would take months of development and testing.”

She already knew what Fortis was going to say, and Alexia couldn’t stop the grin from crossing her face when he said what she expected.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than that. She goes soon. Tomorrow, if we can.”

Mira’s face turned almost as red as her hair.

Alexia clapped a hand to Mira’s shoulder. “Now is a good time for me to fill everyone in on Tau. I think that will help settle this situation.”

“You better put a muzzle on that one,” Mira muttered as she turned toward the door. “I’ll get the others, but you need to get him under control. No one orders me around like that. Not in the city I built with my own damn hands.”

She turned to see Fortis talking with his son, and the flirty young man disappeared underneath the surface of the water as well. Then it was just the two of them. Alone. She watched flickering emotions filter across his features and wondered what he was thinking.

How many people even knew what those micro expressions meant? Alexia had spent her entire life surveying people so she would know what they were feeling and what they might do next. She had to know the inner workings of the mind, and apparently that extended to the undines.

But she had no idea what he was thinking now.

He swallowed, his gaze flicking from hers for a moment before he sighed and said, “Come here.”

“And do what?”

“Damn it, woman, come here. Let me see that you’re all right.”

Alexia crouched next to the water, and he reached for her. She had no idea what he was planning on doing, but she hadn’t expected him to frame her face in his hands and turn her head to the side. He was looking at her neck, she realized. His hands slid down her arms, feeling for the wounds that should have still been there from the squid bites. Then down to her legs.

Heat bloomed as those strong fingers grabbed onto her thighs with impressive strength and slid down the muscles there. Realistically, she knew he was only doing it because he wanted to feel for the wounds, but her mind went elsewhere.

She wanted him to grab her thighs like he had her ankles before. She wanted him to spread her legs wide and... and...

She didn’t know what. But she wanted. And somehow, it felt like Fortis was the only one who could show her.

Still crouched beside the water, she held her breath as his hands slid up her thighs. His fingers lingered there, pausing as though he shared her feelings, before he looked up at her. “You are well?”

“I’m better than I was before. Who knew squid could hurt that bad?”

“I did.”

The joke went right over his head. But she still smiled and nodded. “Of course you did. You know everything.”

“I do.” The two words were so solemn, she knew he wasn’t joking when he said them. He stared up at her like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “I should never have let you go.”

There was a lot of meaning in that statement. Alexia had to tell herself he meant only with the squid. He didn’t mean it any other way. Fortis wasn’t professing feelings for her or that he should have kept her around for longer. That wasn’t him. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t care that she was here or that she... that she almost died.

Because if he did feel like that, then she was so fucked. She was struggling to keep her own emotions separate, and she had never felt like this before. But then again, she’d so rarely felt anything.

Mirroring his pose, she framed his face in her hands. “No, you shouldn’t have. But I wouldn’t have let you stay, either.” She skated her thumbs over his cheekbones. “I am so lucky that you saved me. For that, I will always be grateful, Fortis. You have done more than you know.”

His eyes widened at that. And then the gills along his jaw started to flutter a little. She still had no idea what that meant, but she hoped it was a good thing.

He had done more for her than most people ever would in her lifetime. She was used to being the expendable one, but he had saved her life. He had known she was likely to die, and he’d done everything he could to ensure that didn’t happen. He had no idea what that did to her. But maybe if she told him enough times, he would understand why it was so important.

A commotion started at the door, and she released her hold on him as he flinched. He didn’t want anyone to know that they were even friends, let alone whatever else they were. She respected that.

So she stood and turned long before anyone else entered the room, giving him her back as she faced the onslaught of approaching people. They’d have a hundred questions, and she would answer them all to the best of her ability, but she also knew very well that they weren’t going to like the answers.

Multiple people walked through the door. The lean blonde, the shorter woman with glasses, Mira, the young man from the infirmary, another tall blonde who looked like the woman with glasses, and a few more people in the back she couldn’t see. A lot of humans for such a small space.

The rippling sound of water had her turning to see other undines had joined Fortis in the tight space. The big blue one pulled himself out of the water to create more room, but a red one, yellow, and Aulax all remained in the water with Fortis.

So many people for such a short conversation. Her lips quirked to the side. “I take it this is everyone?”

“Most,” the blue undine said. “My name is Arges.”

Then he ran through introductions of everyone in the room. She was already feeling a little overwhelmed. There were so many people here who expected her to have answers for them. She would do her best, but Alexia was bound to disappoint most of them.

Taking a deep breath, she stilled any of the nerves still lingering and opened her mouth.

“My name is Alexia. I am the seventh version of myself that has protected Original Harlow for years. I have been genetically modified every generation to address certain flaws in my genetic makeup, personality changes, and to enhance human abilities. There are many aspects of my body that have been improved beyond the normal human structures, but I will save you all the details of that list.”

Mira coughed into her hand. “I think we’d all like to know the extent of those, if you don’t mind. Knowing what we’re dealing with, even if it’s just you, would be appreciated.”

“Enhanced strength, lung capacity, faster healing, less oxygen in my blood so I can withstand deeper waters, significant training on how to kill a man with my bare hands, and...” She waved up and down her body. “Obviously I am larger. There are likely more upgrades, but those are the least scientific ones. The rest would have to be explained by a geneticist.”

There was a large wall of silence that met her explanation. Clearly, no one knew how to deal with what they were now facing. That was to be expected, though.

She forged on ahead. “Fortis has convinced me that betraying Tau is the right thing to do. To be honest, I have been considering it for a long time. The medication they use to keep people like me in under control ensures that we do what they wish, but even that has been wearing off. Without leaving Tau, I likely would have been decommissioned long ago.”

“Decommissioned?” the big red one repeated.

“My kind are only good for what we were bred to do,” she replied. “The only reason I would be decommissioned is if I could no longer fulfill my duty in the way I was meant to. I was created to protect Original Harlow, just as many others of my kind were created for others. Years upon years of fixing genetics so that I was the perfect killing machine who was capable of doing everything she wanted. If I could not perform those functions, they would use my genetics to find the problem and then fix it in the next generation.”

The words were regurgitated from what she had been told her entire life. But they sounded so wrong now that she had space away from that place.

And maybe she should tell them. Maybe she should reveal that she wasn’t entirely without emotion. It was okay to so do here, amongst people who felt deeply.

She didn’t expect how hard it would be to open her mouth and say it, though.

“I did not care about my own future. There are... We call them reborns. They are clones of the Originals, used only to heal them whenever they need even the barest of bandaids. Those were the people I couldn’t stand to see mistreated as they were. I’ve watched them wake before. They speak. They have memories they shouldn’t have. And the Originals kill them while they are still alive because these clones aren’t real people to anyone in that city. I want to see that end.”

That was enough, apparently. The yellow undine lifted his fist in the air, pumping it in an eerily human movement. “So that means you are going to help us?”

“It means I want to help you. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I will try my best.”

The blonde woman wearing the droid—Anya, she reminded herself—grinned. “Oh, I think we’ll find plenty of use for you. All you have to do is keep up with us.”

“And that means?”

Suddenly, there were five people all talking over each other. Her training kicked in immediately, and she tracked all the words as best she could.

Ace was already speaking to a few of the droids that had rolled into the room. “Byte? I need you to get information to the waveriders and let them know we have details about Tau, and an informant who will be working with us.”

Anya walked over to the red undine—perhaps his name was Daios—and said, “Make sure you check all the weapons we took from Alpha. We modified all of them to fire underwater, right?”

The yellow undine was already talking with Arges. “If she can give us schematics or even just a login into the city, we can use the droids to map the interior. If we have to, attacking them will be easier than we originally thought.”

Through all the chaos, Fortis stared at her. Their eyes locked, and she knew without saying anything that he was afraid for his people.

“Fighting Tau will not be easy,” she interrupted. “I know you’ve been planning this for a long time, but that does not mean that you will succeed. This is a city that has run the entire ocean for centuries now. These people are the same ones who made all the mistakes long ago. They are not learning from others. They know every rebellion that has ever happened, every fight that has ever occurred, and they have unlimited resources at their beck and call. They are beyond dangerous. I don’t think you understand what you’re setting yourself up for.”

The mood in the room sobered. She hated that she had to be the person to pull their heads out of the clouds, but it was the truth. They were going to get themselves killed if they barged toward Tau with these few people.

“She’s right,” Fortis said. “I have seen their city and felt the power of their weapons. It is an impossible thing to attack them and expect that we will win.”

“Then why bring her here?” Arges asked, his eyes narrowing.

She wanted to ask the same question. He’d been so adamant that they needed her information, but why would he want that if he knew she could not help?

“Because I believe her information is vital. Because I know without question that she will be an asset we cannot lose. But there is only one way you win.” His eyes locked on hers again. “We need the waveriders. The depthstriders. We need everyone. Like my people were used in the fight on Alpha, I believe the depthstriders are the only people who can tear Tau apart.”

Arges grunted. “The depthstriders are not easily convinced. They only fought with us in Alpha because your people knew their own were being killed within that city and there was an opportunity to save some of them.”

“That is why I must bring her to the fathoms, as I told Mira before. They need to meet her.”

Alexia looked over at Mira to see her reaction. She wasn’t pleased, but there was a different light in her eye when she looked Alexia over. “Did you say your blood has less oxygen in it?”

“For pressure, yes.”

Mira sighed and turned her eyes up toward the ceiling. “All right. Well... Fuck me, this might just work.”