Page 7 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)
Seven
Alexia
“ Y ou can’t keep pushing your body like this,” Doctor Barker grumbled as he stared at the reopened wounds along her ribs. “These will not close the more you fight.”
“I need to be ready.”
“You need to rest. I have informed Original Harlow that you are not to overwork yourself, or you will have to be decommissioned.” He sighed before reaching for the needle and thread on the small table beside him in the exam room.
She’d come here right after her latest training session. The other guards understood she didn’t want any of them to go easy on her. She had to keep practicing. That undine had swum around her at an unnatural speed and he’d beaten her far too easily. Her pride stung with that knowledge, yes. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t get better. Prepare harder.
Next time she fought him, she would make him bleed. She had to.
Everyone assumed the undine escaped and that he wouldn’t come back. She was quite certain, in fact, that he would. She’d always listened to her gut. Her body knew the truth long before her mind did, and she’d learned a long time ago to not push away those thoughts. And right now, she knew he wasn’t far.
The undine had a plan. He’d taken that reborn for a reason. He’d gotten into the city far too easily, and now they were all on lockdown. The soldiers who had made the mistake and brought him into the city had been executed. But that wasn’t enough to keep this beast out. She was certain of that.
Shaking her head, she cleared her throat. “You know I can’t stop preparing for his return. None of us can.”
“That is one undine you are talking about. One creature who cannot get back into this city. None of them have managed before.”
“Just because they haven’t managed to get in before doesn’t mean there isn’t a flaw in our city. We leave this place regularly. There are openings, and the guards need to be aware of them all before we feel safe leaving our Originals alone.” She winced. “Harlow is visiting with her ex husband, that’s the only reason I was allowed to go to training today. It has been... exhausting.”
A little furrow appeared between Doctor Barker’s eyes. He turned with the stitches and thread in his hand, but hesitated as he looked her over. “Exhausting?”
Shit . Alexia wasn’t to be exhausted or feel anything at all in that matter. She was Harlow’s personal guard. Day in and day out. If she was tired, she was supposed to get treatment for such a thing. If she wasn’t getting enough rest when Harlow was, then she was supposed to get decommissioned.
“Sorry,” she muttered, looking down at her hands and curling them into fists. “A turn of phrase.”
“Have you been feeling tired lately, Alexia?” he asked, but the words were slow. As though he was giving her a chance to change her mind. “I have medication I can give you for that.”
She didn’t want more medication. She wanted to feel this exhaustion. It wasn’t like she was physically tired, or that she would fail in her duties protecting her Original. It was more that she was tired of being a personal guard and the monotony of her life. This was all endlessly difficult sometimes.
But she couldn’t say any of that to him. Not when she knew how it would look.
“I really am fine, Doctor. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
He leaned close. “Alexia, if you don’t tell me how you’re feeling, I can’t help you. And if someone else discovers that you are feeling like this...”
He didn’t finish what he was saying, but he didn’t need to. She knew what would happen if anyone else caught wind that she wasn’t perfection personified.
The doors to the room slid open, the compressed air punching through the space as Harlow strode in with angry strides.
“Why didn’t you tell me you went after the reborn in the water?” Harlow snapped. “You chased an undine in nothing but an exoskeleton?”
She looked particularly beautiful today, even surrounded by the stark white of the med room. Harlow’s hair was twisted into a lovely low bun, a few strands falling around her pristine face. She wore a strapless white dress that clung to her thin figure and ended just above her shapely thighs. Pretty white heels were on her feet, wrapping around her ankles in delicate silk butterflies that almost looked like they were flapping their wings as she shifted.
The red patch on her shoulder was gone. Likely they’d done the transfer the moment Alexia had returned with the reborn in tow. The clone was good enough to harvest the stem cells they needed to fix Harlow’s allergy, and that was that. Another death. Another body to toss out into the abyss and pretend that it wasn’t horrifying what they were doing.
Doctor Barker punched the needle through her side, but Alexia didn’t react. At least that pain helped to ground her so she wouldn’t look tired when she spoke with Harlow.
“Your reborn was taken moments after we found the correct genetic sequence that you needed. I did what any good guard would do, and that was go after the creature who stole the body that would make you more comfortable.”
Harlow scoffed. “Oh please, don’t give me that drivel. You wanted to hunt an undine and as such, you did so. I understand why. But what I don’t understand is how the beast got into Tau in the first place.”
“He was brought in by a research team. They thought he was incapacitated.” Alexia looked down at the stitching to watch Barker’s neat little black rows. “He clearly was not.”
It was then that Harlow noticed what was happening in the room. A dramatic little hiccup escaped her lips, and she lunged forward as though the stitches were surely a sign of death in her guard. “What happened to you, dear one?”
Oh, they were pretending that Harlow cared. Interesting. She wasn’t sure if this was all for show because Barker was in the room, or if Harlow was having a moment where she realized just how fragile her guard might be.
“I fought the undine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I lost.”
“You have to be more careful, dear. You are my favorite guard.”
“I understand that, Harlow. But I will not live as long as you.”
“Unless I have something to say about it. Like I said, you’re the only competent guard I’ve been given in over two hundred years. I don’t think you understand how many of you I have gone through.” She shook her head before sighing. “You die when I say you die, Alexia. Do I make myself clear?”
Alexia nodded, as a pit grew in her stomach. What did Harlow mean by that? She didn’t want to stick around forever. Immortality seemed more like a punishment than a gift. And yet... Was that what she was saying?
“You’ll take care of this undine issue,” Harlow said. “The other Originals aren’t certain how to address this situation, but I am. You already fought him once. We’ll give you a better ship, better weapons, and you will hunt him down for me. Bring me his head, Alexia, and you will never have to fear decommissioning ever again.”
The Original left the room, and silence burned in her wake. Alexia knew this was supposed to be a gift. A boon. An underlined promise that would give her hope, but all it did was solidify her feeling of drowning and exhaustion.
“I’ve never heard an Original wish to keep their guard forever,” Doctor Barker finally said. He finished with the first row of stitches, and tied off the end with a knot before snipping it with very sharp scissors. “That is a great honor. You’ve made a lasting impression on her.”
“How wonderful for me.”
Again, Barker looked at her with a gaze that saw too much. “What was it like being in the water with an undine?”
She searched her memory, trying to figure out what he wanted her to say. Likely, he would expect her to say that it was nothing different from what she had experienced before. It was just another hunt. She’d fought her entire life, and this was a different opponent who had beaten her. But frustration got her nowhere, and self loathing also wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
Now that she had her emotions glimmering in the back of her mind, and the meds were wearing off again, it was hard to think of what someone without those feelings would say.
Doctor Barker had never threatened her well being, though. Maybe she couldn’t quite trust him, but she could at least be a little more honest than she could with others.
“Magnificent,” she finally admitted. “Unlike anything I have seen before.”
“Out of the water, he was quite massive.”
“They seem even bigger when you’re in the water with them. It’s odd, because he seems like an overly large human from the waist up… but that tail.” She shook her head. “He can even glow underwater. I’ve never seen any creature like that before. Such power and such control over his own body. There was no way I could fight against him and win.”
“What an unusual circumstance you’ve found yourself in.” Doctor Barker wheeled his chair away from her and reached for a needle filled with more drugs that she knew would take her away from this moment. “I have a few more questions before I administer this medication, if you don’t mind me asking them.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why would you want to ask me questions while I’m obviously not myself?”
“I believe I’ll get the more honest and factual answers. But I do ask that you be completely honest with me. No hiding the truth.”
He was right. With fewer drugs going through her body, she certainly was more likely to answer everything he asked. And it seemed like he wasn’t going to decommission her for having them, at least not right now.
She leaned back in the chair, pressed a hand to her aching side, and nodded.
“How did you feel when you were in the water with him?”
Alexia thought back to those moments, floating there and realizing he was going to continue hitting her out of the darkness. There was nothing she could do. Even if he decided he wanted her dead, there was absolutely nothing she could have done to stop him.
“Small,” she replied. “I felt very small, and scared. I didn’t know if he was going to kill me or not.”
“And when you were faced with him? I assume there was a point where he stopped attacking you?”
He’d spoken to her. She wasn’t going to tell the Doctor that, but she was still shocked that the undine had spoken directly to her. Everyone here knew they could talk, but she hadn’t thought he would be so bold.
Still, there was something about that experience that had... stuck with her. He had been a warrior, unlike any creature she’d ever met before. A male unwilling to back down, even when she’d pointed a gun at him.
“He was fearless,” she replied quietly. “And I suppose I can respect that. It is what you have all designed me to be, and what I have striven to be my entire life. To see a creature without fear and without the help of so many drugs... I’m not sure. It is not an emotion I have a name for.”
“Jealousy?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Something more like... awe, I suppose.”
She had wanted to learn from him. Seek out what had made him so fearless. She wanted a drop of that in herself, because she’d been terrified.
She would not admit there was a healthy amount of intrigue as well in looking at him. She’d never been so close to an undine, and she wanted to know what they felt like. Were his scales rough? What would happen if she tugged one of those glowing tentacles? He’d reacted when she’d sunk her fingers into his gills. No matter how good of an actor he’d been at pretending it hadn’t affected him, it certainly had. She’d felt his shiver and seen the goosebumps rise on his more human-like skin.
But it was unnatural to be so interested in an undine beyond the usual scientific curiosity.
Doctor Barker nodded. “Right. I suppose that makes sense. Now, why did you go after the reborn?”
“It’s my job to bring her back.”
“That’s not what made you go after it.”
She cleared her throat. “I was angry that a creature bested me. I wanted to get her back to prove a point.”
His brows were still furrowed, though. And she had to admit, it didn’t sound convincing to her either. At the moment, that was exactly what she had wanted. She was enraged that the undine had bested her. She wanted to prove a point to herself and to the creature that Alexia was not someone to fuck with.
And yet... The longer she was out of the water, the further she was from the situation, the more she thought maybe she was wrong. It hadn’t been rage that had fueled her.
Doctor Barker moved the needle between his fingers. “You continue throughout this conversation to use pronouns such as he and she for both the undine and the reborn. I find this interesting terminology to use for creatures we do not consider to be... people.”
She sighed and looked toward the door. The more she talked, the more uncomfortable she became. And the more she looked at that needle, and wanted him to inject her. “They look like people. Both of them talk, too, you know. I was in the room where someone didn’t give the reborn the right amount of drugs to keep her quiet. She woke and tried to speak. I didn’t think they were intelligent enough to do so, but she did. She looked right at me and asked me for help. I had to step back and let them continue on with the procedure even though I knew she was in pain.”
“Was that the first moment when you started feeling emotions that were outside of your normal range?”
Alexia shrugged. “I have no idea. It wasn’t like there was an instant where I suddenly knew that everything wasn’t the same. It’s been a gradual change, and now... I’m here. Looking at reborns with sorrow and at undines with intrigue.”
Doctor Barker wheeled closer to her and reached for her arm. He smoothed his thumb over her bicep, which was bruised where she’d been grabbed and thrown on the sparring mats. “These are highly unusual emotions for one such as yourself. I wish to understand, before I... well.”
The needle came closer to her skin, and she knew exactly what he meant. Before he took all those emotions away again. Before she returned to that numbing state she was beginning to hate more and more every time she came out of it.
But it was safer for her to be numb. She would remain alive a lot longer if she wasn’t emotional like this, and was able to do her job without questioning what she was ordered to do.
Barker hesitated. The needle was poised right over her skin, and then he looked up at her with an expression of concern. “Stay safe, Alexia. I worry the longer you bury these emotions, the more you will feel them.”
She placed her hand over his and stuck the needle a little too far into her arm. Her hand was so much larger than his, so it was easy to put her thumb over the depressor and inject herself. Emotions drained out of her quickly as she stood. Mere seconds and she was back to herself.
“It’s all right, doctor. It’s the right thing to do.”