Chapter 32

It all became a bit of a whirlwind after that. Anya was ashamed to admit she mostly stood there in shock.

She'd always known her father to be ruthless. But experiments? On live specimens? It was wrong on so many levels, and it was painful to hear. She didn't want to think of all those people who had suffered, all because her father couldn't see their people as alive. Or at least, people worth respecting.

And then it had all hit her.

No matter what she did, she couldn't save the city.

She couldn't save her people. They would forever be in the clutches of the man who had made her life so terrible. And then she realized, they didn't want to be saved.

Her father was no scientist. He wasn't capable of finding the undines, cutting them up, or researching about them on his own. There were countless people who helped him.

Her own people. Good people she had always thought were worth saving. They had helped him, and then they had walked through those gilded streets with blood on their hands and smiled like nothing had happened.

It tore her up inside to realize that maybe her people weren't worth saving after all.

She told the undines everything they wanted to know. Mira was quick to jump into learning about the city, and Anya had no intention of hiding anything. She hooked Bitsy up to Byte and let the two droids work. They downloaded every schematic and map that Bitsy had access to. Then Anya had her call up Ace to get her friend involved. It took a while before Ace even answered, but she had known her friend wouldn't remain silent for too long.

"I know it sounds insane, but I need to know this is a secure channel," she said as Bitsy projected the words up on the screen.

"Always."

"Good. I'm working with the undines, and I think I know how to break Alpha."

There was a long pause after she said the words, three bubbles bouncing on the screen, which meant Ace was typing. Considering how long it took, she assumed Ace was typing out an entire monologue.

Then all that came through was, "The fuck did you just say?"

Mira's lips quirked with a wry grin. "Your friend seems nice."

"Yeah, they're pretty great." Anya shrugged before replying. "I know it sounds crazy, but the undines are our ticket in. We're going to destroy the city, and I need you to figure out refugee arrangements."

Again, more bubbles. More time that her friend needed to figure out what to say. In the end, Anya decided to tell Ace everything.

It made the undines behind her bristle. Clearly, they didn't want to trust yet another human with more information about their whereabouts or who they were. But Ace was someone she would trust with her life, and so it was pretty easy to hand that connection over to Mira and Byte.

Almost two days passed before she realized how tired she was. Before she stared down at the map of her city and realized there was only one way this was going to happen. She looked up at Mira once all the men had left, all of them agreeing that the two women needed to eat and rest.

"They'll hunt the biggest thing that they can find," Mira said, sighing as she cracked her neck. "They need to blow off steam and we both need rest."

Anya didn't need rest. She needed a miracle. "You see the same thing here that I see, don't you?"

She didn't have to ask twice. It was clear in the way Mira's shoulders tensed and lifted to her ears. "Yeah. I think I do. But I'm doing my damnedest to find another option, because I don't like what you're planning."

Neither did she. Anya knew there were such limited chances for them to attack Alpha. They would get one more time to make an impact before they'd be locked out of the city for good.

She couldn't take that risk. Not with so many lives at stake.

Mira watched her, her eyes seeing too much. "You know he's not going to let you fucking do this without a fight."

"I know."

"I don't like the guy. He made my life a living hell when Arges first kidnapped me, and he's tried to kill me multiple times." Then she softened a bit, the wrinkles between her eyes easing a little and her shoulders dropping back down. "But even I can see how much you mean to him, and I'm not that heartless. You soften him, and I worry that if he loses you..."

"I will not accept that pressure," she interrupted. "We're both adults and we both have always had the same goal. I don't like Alpha any more than you do, and I intend to save my people and yours by doing this. I know destruction seems insane, but I believe that this is the only path we can take."

"So you really think you're the only one who can set off a bomb?"

God, it was so much worse when someone else said it. Anya shifted Bitsy up so she could rub her eyes before nodding. "Yeah, I do. I know where my father keeps all the weapons in the city. That's where I lost my hearing. I can get in. I can detonate the bombs before anyone has a chance to stop me."

"And you think you can walk right in without your father finding you?"

No. She didn't. She had a feeling her father would know that she was arriving the moment the cameras picked up on them. And there wasn't a way into the city without someone seeing her.

But that was what she was hoping for. She wanted her father to see her. She wanted him to know that she was coming and that he needed to save face because he'd already told everyone that she was dead.

Maybe he knew, in some deep, horrible way, that she'd been trying to get rid of him. Perhaps he had hoped that eventually they would need to fight it out like they were going to in the end. It fit everything she knew about the man.

"And you think Daios is going to let you do that?" Mira asked, her voice echoing through the room.

A shadow passed over the glass. She looked up to see that Daios was the first to return. He carried with him a reasonably sized tuna, and one that she absolutely would not eat. She couldn't stomach anything right now.

Sighing, she shook her head. "No, I don't think he's going to like this one bit."

Both women waited until he poked his head through the moon pool, much slower than when he'd arrived with Anya. Slapping the fish down onto the metal floor, he looked them both over before growling, "Why do you both look guilty?"

Flicking her gaze to Mira, she tried to convey that she needed the other woman to step in. She couldn't do this on her own. She couldn't tell him right now when she was so vulnerable and everything felt so raw.

Mira nodded, her hand hitting the table in what was likely a very loud clap before standing. Bitsy ran words over her eyes that startled even Anya.

"I have something for you, Daios. I've been working on it for a while, but it wasn't working the way I want it to. It's good enough for what we're about to do, though."

She disappeared into a side room, one that had always smelled like metal and oil.

Daios arched a brow. "What's this about?"

"I don't know." But it didn't matter. She had to tell him. She couldn't stand here and look at him like she wasn't lying, just by not telling him what the plan had to be. "Daios..."

Getting up, she sat down beside him on the metal. He reached for her without thinking. That massive arm of his scooped underneath her legs and dragged her closer.

He smelled like the sea. A briny scent mixed with salt that burned her nose, or maybe that was the tears that she refused to let fall. Because he was holding onto her without hesitation. Like she was right where she belonged.

Her forehead came down on his shoulder, and she let him prop her up as though he could take away the weight that was so heavy on her shoulders. Without Mira in the room, he was so quick to run his hand over the back of her head. He smoothed her hair back from her face, hooking the strands behind her ears.

"My kalon," he whispered, and she could feel his lips press to the top of her head. "Did you miss me?"

"Yes," she said with a breathy laugh. "Isn't that crazy?"

"Not so crazy."

"You were only gone for a couple hours, if that. And already I feel like..." She didn't know how to say the words. Only that she didn't like it when they weren't together.

And maybe that was partly because she was afraid all of this was going to shatter around them. What she knew she had to do was only going to make everything else difficult. Or she'd lose her life in this insane battle that wasn't necessarily hers to fight and yet, here she was. Fighting.

He hummed long and low, his chest vibrating with the sound that she could still hear. If she failed in doing this, she'd never hear someone speak so clearly again. Her father wouldn't ever let her leave their home and she would be stuck back in her cage. How could she lose the sound of him when she knew how dear it was now?

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to draw back. "Daios, I think the only way to?—"

Bitsy flashed red all throughout the lens, startling her so much with the bright light that she stopped talking mid sentence, only to realize the droid had thrown up an arrow. And Daios was looking over her shoulder with a frown on his face that almost terrified her.

"What?" Anya asked, turning around to see Mira was standing in the doorway of that room with an... arm.

Or at least, a metal arm.

It was massive, and her arms shook as she held it up for them both to see. Strangely, it sort of looked like a undine arm. The wrist flopped, and the fingers were clearly jointed with fine webbing between them.

"I wasn't going to show you for a bit, because it's still very much a prototype." Mira frowned down at the arm. "There's a lot it can't do. Please don't use this arm on anything that can be bruised, broken, or killed. The tension on it is really touchy."

"What is that?" Daios hissed.

"It's an arm," Mira grumbled, walking toward them while tilting her head down. Bitsy put a little warning that said "murmuring" before she read, "Pretty fucking obvious, I thought."

Neither Anya nor Daios said anything as Mira stepped up next to him. They watched as she lifted the hole in the fake arm up to his half arm, and something felt... wrong inside of her.

Anya didn't know how to feel about him getting "fixed" when she'd never thought of him as broken. He lacked an arm, yes, but that didn't make him less of a person. He had figured out how to live without one and now it felt a little cruel to hand him something like this. Even if he had wanted it, she wasn't sure how to feel.

If someone had offered her a tool to get her hearing back after all these years, she wasn't even sure that she would take it. There were risks to using any new tool. And she was fine the way she was. Sure, she had Bitsy to translate for her, but that wasn't the same thing as something to "fix" what had made her… better.

Years and years of practice had turned her into a different person. Her lack of hearing was part of her, just as much as her eye color or what food she liked. She wouldn't want someone to come in and save her.

But the way his eyes lit up as he slid his arm into the arm hole and how he held so still for Mira to affix a sling around his neck to hold the metal a little tighter against his skin? It made something in her chest squeeze really hard. Because that wasn't the expression of a man who agreed with her. That was the expression of a man who was remembering what it felt like to be whole.

And suddenly, she was alone again. Years and years of practice at not feeling like she was the only person on the planet who had suffered, and now she watched someone else get fixed.

The feelings were so complicated, and she didn't like them.

"This has to connect to your nerves," Mira said, her head tilting to look underneath his arm. "I'd like to affix it more permanently for you, but this will have to do for now. Quick jab."

Daios winced, and then he lifted the arm. The elbow bent at his will, and when he held the metal fingers up to the air, he could open and close them. The fingers clinked together, and they were definitely clumsy. He could only move all of them at the same time, but that was all. Maybe with practice, he'd get better.

He met her gaze, those eyes filled with hope, and she felt like an awful person for not wanting him to wear it.

Daios saw right through her, though. He always had from the very first day. "Mira?" he asked. "Can you give us some time alone?"

"Of course."

They both stared at each other while Mira retreated to her workshop. And then they were alone. Two souls who were different from other people, and now one who was closer to normal than the other.

Why were her eyes watering?

Dashing away the tears, she smiled at him. "How does it feel?"

"You are upset."

"No, I'm just... happy for you." She scooted away from him, taking in the sight of him. "It looks good. With a little practice, I bet you'll be able to use it like a normal arm."

"Why are you upset?"

"I'm not."

Daios sighed, his shoulders lifting and falling with the gust of breath she couldn't hear. "Anya."

"I'm really happy for you." She smiled, but she could feel how watery the expression was. "Really."

He reached for the strap over his shoulder, shaking his head. "This can't work."

"Daios, don't take it off." She lunged forward, her fingers catching onto his and stopping him. "It will be helpful. I have to go back to the city, anyway, and who knows what's waiting for us there? You might need it."

He stared into her eyes, frozen as they were locked together. "You're going back?"

"I'm going to be the one to blow up the city."

His lips parted, and for a moment she thought he was going to tell her no. He would argue that it wasn't safe. She would tell him that nothing they did was safe. They would go to bed angry at each other and maybe ruin all of this before it had a chance to really start.

Instead, his warm hand came up to cup her jaw. "You are brave, kalon. Far more than you have any right to be."

Relief, unlike anything she'd ever felt, flooded through her. With a sharp nod, she stopped looking into his eyes and instead locked her gaze on the arm. "I am glad for you. It's a complicated feeling, that's all. Seeing you like this... whole now..."

He moved so quickly she didn't even see him twitch. The strap went up and over his head. He wrenched the arm off, and she could see there were tiny wires that had wriggled their way into his skin. He pulled those out without a single flinch. Blood dripped from the little holes that were left behind as he dropped the arm onto the floor.

"Whole?" he growled, wrapping his hand around her waist and tugging her against him. Water splashed up to her knees with the force of his movement as he dragged her against his chest. "My lack of arm has nothing to do with feeling whole. A metal device or not, I was never whole before you. You were the first person to look at me and see a man after my injury. Not a mistake, not a failure. You were the one to see me. My kalon, if you wished me to shed my skin, I would. If the arm makes you uncomfortable, then I will drop it into the deepest pits of the sea."

"That's not what I want," she said with a watery laugh. "I don't want you to not be whole again because of me."

"I am only whole because of you." He pressed his lips to hers, the long kiss tasting of salty tears and seawater. When he drew back, he pressed their foreheads together and took a deep breath with her. In and out. "Anya. It's just an arm. A tool to be used, but never something that is part of me. I will use it to bring you to victory, but it does not change who I am."

Nodding frantically, she licked her lips before replying, "I know. I know that."

"Do you?"

She hoped that she did. Because she was going to need him, and she was so afraid that she loved him far more than was acceptable.