Chapter 10

She'd never had so many panic attacks in a row.

Her father had put so many people around her house, she felt like she couldn't breathe. Anya had only seen this many people all constantly walking by her door when there was a festival going on in town. But now? It felt like every time someone walked by her door they were pausing to listen in on what she was doing.

The cameras kept moving. Even when she was sleeping, she would hear them shift and creak as someone constantly monitored her.

Bitsy had to fix the ones in the bathroom almost constantly. She didn't want anyone to realize that she could tamper with the cameras, which meant every time she went into the bathroom, Bitsy had to go first. They had to make it believable that she was still moving around.

She couldn't talk to Ace.

She couldn't do anything other than try to pretend she had a routine that didn't involve everything else she usually did. All she could focus on was that they were watching her. And that no matter what she did, she had to suffer through that.

No one was coming to save her. Not the undine. Not Ace. No one.

And now, Anya couldn't even save herself.

The operation that she and Ace planned had already fallen through. Just a few days ago, she'd gotten the message through Bitsy that the agent they'd chosen to hide out in Alpha while their ship left had failed. Her father's guards were so amped up about this stupid undine coming in and out of the city that they'd made all the other security measures intensely heightened as well.

The young man had been caught and executed on the spot. Anya couldn't help but feel like that was her fault.

She had no control over the undine, but she might have stopped the creature from coming into the city. Maybe. If she had been with her father when they'd discovered the unregistered young man, maybe she could have begged for mercy.

Not that it would matter. Her father had no mercy to give.

"You need to breathe," Bitsy said, the words flashing bright blue on the screen. A small drop of water, cartoonized, so she knew it was Bitsy, followed the words.

She did need to breathe. But really, the only thing that would make her feel better was getting out of here. She didn't want to stay like this anymore. She was being crushed.

Every breath slowly calmed her, though. Wandering into the bathroom, she sat down next to the pool. Soon enough, someone would be knocking on her door to remind her that the pool wasn't safe to sit next to.

There was always someone watching the screens now. Even if she had Bitsy change them over, someone would come over to fix the cameras. They'd done it twice now. If she wasn't careful, she was going to have to... to...

"Is that a crab?" she whispered, so the cameras might not pick up on her question.

Bitsy circled the rather large crab on the bottom of her pool and surrounded it with red exclamation marks. "A crab!"

"A crab," she repeated, leaning a little closer to the water. "What is a crab doing in my pool?"

Sometimes sea creatures wandered into the pipes, but never had they made it this far. There wasn't anything for them to eat in there, and of course, there were the vent systems that they usually got caught in. What in the world was a crab doing in her pool?

But then she peered a little closer and could see there was an etched wave on the back. Someone had carved the shell of the crab. A symbol that she thought maybe was meant for her.

"Bitsy?" she breathed. "I think it's time to get in your case."

The crab looked up at her and rubbed its claws together. She didn't know what that meant, but if she pressed her fingers against the side of the pool, she could almost feel the vibration. The faintest shake of clicking that echoed through the water.

"Don't run," she muttered to herself as she walked into her bedroom. "Don't give them any reason to?—"

"Someone is knocking," Bitsy interrupted, with an arrow pointing toward the door. "Answer it."

She immediately opened the door, stopping the man mid knock. He dropped his hand quickly, his eyes moving over Bitsy before he nodded. "Good, you're wearing that. Your father wished me to remind you that you are not to sit by the pool. If you continue to do so, we will close it off from your quarters."

Anya didn't care what he was saying, but she pretended to read the words flying by as he said them. This man didn't even try to slow down what he was saying, so she could read the words. He just spat all the sounds out, gave her another nod, and then turned to walk away.

"Rude."

She must have said the word too loud because he turned around, only to have her slam the door in his face. She didn't care. This was a sign, she was certain of it.

Taking Bitsy's carrier behind the partition with her, she yanked her wetsuit out of her closet. This was the only area where there wasn't a camera pointed at her. Of course, if she didn't hurry up, then someone would be knocking again to make sure she was okay. And the microphones in here made it impossible for her to talk to Ace. At least, not easily.

So she took Bitsy off her head and gently placed the little robot inside her waterproof carrier. Dragging a finger down its side, she booped it right on the screen where those big eyes stared up at her.

"Trust me," she whispered, hoping the camera wouldn't pick up on her words.

It took forever to yank on her wetsuit, and the entire time she had to talk herself into this crazy plan. After all, a crab with a strange marking wasn't all that much information to go on. It might just be a coincidence.

What was the likelihood that undines had some kind of connection to the sea that humans couldn't understand? Very slim. She was likely going to get herself locked up while her father emptied the entire city of water because of his stupid daughter. She'd be blamed for a lot more things to come than just what she was doing right now.

Risky. All of this was risky.

This might all be something she'd made up in her head because she was so desperate to get out of here, but... She wasn't going to stop. She had to try.

Wetsuit on, green dress over it to give her a few extra moments, she picked up Bitsy's sealed case and took a deep breath. No running. She could only run once she'd crossed over to the bathroom. So she waltzed through her room like it wasn't suspicious that she was carrying a case and wearing strange leggings underneath her dress.

All she had to do was get to the bathroom. Then she could… bolt.

Her foot crossed the threshold, and she ran for the water, hitting it with a sharp slap. The icy temperature stole her breath, and she had to swim back up to the top to fill her lungs.

Fuck, it was so cold. So much colder than it should have been, which could only mean that her father was moving forward with his plans to drain the city. The water was straight from the icy depths of the ocean, and not filtered. That's how the crab got in here.

Taking one more deep breath, she sank underneath the water and made her way to the pipe. The crab was still on one side of her pool, and another was waiting at the opening of the pipe.

But it was all darkness beyond. No undine. No one waiting there to steal her away like some villain in a fairytale. There was just her, staring into a pipe with her droid case in hand.

What did she do? Was she supposed to go back up into her room and somehow try to argue that she'd fallen? She very clearly hadn't fallen into the pool. Her father was going to take her apart for this.

Kicking back to the surface, she took another deep, steadying breath. The water wasn't so bad now, or maybe she was just turning a little numb.

Whatever the reasoning, it made her feel a little crazy. She looked at the door where she knew someone was about to knock or bust in without asking, even though she couldn't hear them. And she felt the pressure of living like this bear down on her shoulders. She couldn't handle it anymore.

Undine or not, she wasn't going to stay here any longer.

Taking another deep breath, she headed back to the pipe. The other crab in there looked at her with something she assumed was surprise and started rubbing its claws together even harder.

Anya shoved Bitsy's case in front of her and then dragged herself into the pipe. Maybe her father would empty it while she was in there. Just the thought made a bubble of insanity pop in her chest, a little giddy whirl of madness. She was small enough to be thrown out the other end of it into the sea. She'd probably die. But what an adventure.

Using her arms and legs to haul herself and the case forward, she made it all the way into the pipe and to the first fork. There were four pipes here, three directions other than the one she was already in. But when she looked, there were crabs in all of them. She could just barely see two of them from the light in what must be other pool systems. The darkest pipe, though, she could feel the faint thrum of another crab rubbing its legs.

The creaking, gritty vibration sent chills down her spine. Or maybe that was the feeling of her air running out.

Still, she turned to the right and followed the sensation into the dark, even as her lungs screamed. Even as the darkness settled around her, cloying and sticky. Everything suddenly pulled at her mind. Whispering that she'd made a mistake, that she was going to die down here and no one would know.

She'd trusted a dream. An undine that likely hadn't even existed and here she was, too far away from her own pool to make it back. She was going to drown. What a terrible way to die when she could have chosen to stay where she had been. Safe as a songbird in a cage.

Everything in front of her turned red. At first, she thought it was the security system. Her father must have already gotten the news that she'd plunged into the pipe system and that could only mean he was about to turn all the water off. It wouldn't save her, but it would kill her very quickly, and maybe that was his game.

Then she realized it wasn't a light above her head. It was many lights, all glowing from a body that reached for her.

A sharp shriek erupted from her mouth, expelling the last bit of her air. She had hoped he would be here, and still, all her mind saw was a clawed hand and sharp teeth flashing in a rhythm of red lights that spelled her doom. Even if she was going to drown, she still was terrified of the monster that suddenly took up the entire pipe with the massive length of his body.

He didn't react to her scream. Instead, he pressed something against her face. It was cold and hard, and for a moment she wondered if he was trying to kill her. But he'd never tried to kill her before and?—

He hit a button on the side and suddenly all the water around her mouth disappeared and she could breathe.

Sucking in as much air as she could, Anya's heart nearly beat out of her chest as he affixed the apparatus around her head. So gently. His claws never once caught in her hair as he strapped it behind her ears and then made sure it was fitted to her mouth correctly. He waited until she was breathing slightly normally before he started to... back out of the pipe system.

He planted that webbed hand against the smooth metal and shoved himself backward. It looked awkward and uncomfortable. He didn't even look up at her, just kept moving as she followed him.

There were more crabs. Everywhere she looked. Crabs with carved waves on their back, a symbol she could only take to mean the ocean itself. He had sent her a message with crabs.

And she'd been right. He was coming for her.

Adventure and hope burning in her chest, she moved after him. Once he realized she could move faster, he did too. She wasn't sure how he was slithering so quickly with only one arm, but she couldn't think about that too much right now. They only had so much time before...

He froze. The undine looked at her, then down the pipe to the right of them. He leaned forward and shoved her hard, back into the pipe that she'd just crawled through. Then, with a surprisingly quick movement, he turned his body around. Wriggling and writhing so hard that blood plumed from a wound across his back and then suddenly his tail was right in front of her. He hit the bottom of the pipe a few times with it.

She wasn't sure what he wanted.

Then he hit it again, not moving.

Did he want her to... grab his tail? For what reason?

Anya didn't want to argue with the undine who was saving her, but she did think this was mad. Grabbing onto a spine just above the fluke, she adjusted her hold just as he launched forward.

They were flying through the pipe now. And she realized that he had been moving very, very slowly for her. Because now they were moving so quickly that she didn't even have time to see the bubbles coming out of the mask he'd attached to her face. The mask she hardly had time to question before she heard the rumbling he must have heard before.

Her father was making good on his promise. He was draining the pipes.

Suddenly, pressure pushed behind them. Air flooding through the system and shoved everything inside the pipes. If the water didn't push them free, then soon enough they would be trapped. They weren't going to make it out because how were they going to get out of the opening into the sea? She didn't even know if they were close to it.

Just as suddenly as the pressure struck her ears, the ringing of her tinnitus turning into a sharp ache, they were suddenly free. She almost heard the sharp pop as they tumbled out into the vast beyond.

She only had a moment to listen to the absolute silence of the sea. Even the ringing in her ears ceased as she looked into the utter nothingness that surrounded them.

And then her eyes found the undine who stretched out to his full height. She had continued to tumble away from him, rolling across the sand until she finally stopped moving. Lying on her back on the ground, she looked up all those strong, flexing muscles. The rolling peaks of his abs, the flat planes of his pecs, the absolutely stunning arm that was splayed wide at his side to stop his movement. And all those brilliant lights, glowing red and evil as he loomed above her. The spines on his back were raised high, she could see it almost like a dorsal fin at his back, they were so large.

The red light cast shadows from underneath his face, turning him into a villain of a story that she might have dreamed up. But then he reached for her and she didn't scream. Didn't even have the feeling that she needed to. She should have been terrified. Instead, she took the villain's hand and clutched Bitsy's box close to her chest as he gathered her tenderly in his arm.

That thick arm bracketed her back, and his strong forearm flexed against her side. He planted his hand flat against her belly and suddenly they were moving again. Rushing through the pillars that kept her city safe.

With her chin on his shoulder, she watched Alpha disappear behind them. Her home was gone.

But her heart was free.