Chapter 35

Two weeks.

That's how long it took for her father to make a mistake.

Two weeks of constant surveillance and someone even standing in her room while she slept. Two weeks of distrust and everyone looking at her like she had somehow turned into a witch in the short amount of time since they had last seen her.

In the first week, she had gone to her father's office multiple times a day. Just to check in on him. To pretend to beg for his forgiveness while she fake cried and told him how much she had missed him and that she really had just been having a wonderful time.

Anya spun a story about where she was. She'd stayed with a friend named Jessica who had invited her to go to Beta because she'd never seen it. She swore up and down that she'd talked to him about it, even made mention of the story to her maids, who apparently had forgotten as well. Her father did not believe her in the slightest. Not a single detail, even though she was meticulous about remembering everything she'd told him.

Because he asked. Every day he asked different questions, each one meant to trip her up. But Anya had lived with this man her entire life. She knew exactly what he was going to ask and why he was going to ask it. He had his own opinions about where she was.

And he had the footage.

But he didn't want anyone to know that he had the footage of her leaving with an undine. So she continued to mock him. To tell him this story that she knew he would never believe, but maybe those who had seen the footage would start to question their own sanity.

A woman dragged into the depths of the sea by an undine? How could she possibly survive? She even dropped in a few conversations about how Beta was so cold compared to here, and she couldn't stand the cold.

Little details that she had thought would win people in her favor. That was always the game with her father.

Who was more popular? He was the old man who ruled them all. The General who kept them safe.

But she was the golden daughter who sat on the pillar he had built her.

At the end of the first week, she stole a keycard from her father's desk. She'd purposefully made him so angry that he grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her face down on the table. Even though she knew the sight of this treatment would make Daios fly into a rage, she needed it to happen. He always kept the keycards in the same hidden place underneath his desk, where his legs fit into the slots of the massive amount of wood that should have been used for anything other than a desk.

She'd palmed it, and then taken the enraged yelling and the bruises down her back and shoulders. He wouldn't ever injure her in a way anyone else could see, though.

When she left the room, she'd looked down into her hand and showed them. A keycard. One of her father's personal cards, which meant it should open every door in Alpha.

All of that, and it still took another week before she could slip out of her room. This was her chance, if she didn't take it now, then she might have to wait another two weeks to do this.

But she was done waiting. And she was done being here. Now that she'd had a taste of freedom, this life felt even more controlled. Anya was done with the cage. Now she wanted to go home.

Bitsy affixed to her head, she made sure that all of her black clothing covered her almost completely. She'd even torn a piece of black fabric off one of her dresses to wrap around her face. The only thing anyone would be able to see was her eyes, and the faint glow of the lens as Bitsy guided her through the city.

"Ready?" she whispered, knowing it was the last thing she would say until she was certain no one could overhear her.

Bitsy put a little thumbs up on the lens, and then they were off. The guard outside her door had fallen asleep. The poor man had been here three nights in a row, and she assumed that someone else had traded their shift so that he would be here yet again. There had been a second man, but he'd gone off to pee, which meant this one had fallen right into a deep sleep without the distraction.

All she had to do was open her door and creep past him. Not exactly easy when she couldn't hear what she was doing, but it was simple enough. Sliding through the smallest crack, she relied on Bitsy to show her a small bar with the level of the sound she was making.

Down the street from her small home, she still had to keep being quiet. There were people here that her father had likely planted. So she yanked her black hood up over her face and made her way down the street like she was hurrying home.

"Quickly," Bitsy said. "Go right, there's another person coming your way."

She didn't hesitate. She turned every time her droid said to.

Anya made her way through Alpha in the dead of night, guided by Bitsy and all the schematics that she'd downloaded before they left. Every step, every sound, all of it was up to her droid.

Artificial starlight lit her way. All the twinkling lights on the top of her largest cage reminded her of why she was doing this. Everyone here was in a cage; they just didn't know it yet. Soon, she would set them free.

They would join other cities. They would learn what it meant to work for what they had, and soon they would realize that life was so much more than indulgence and petty parties where everyone hated each other.

She was giving them a gift. They might not know it now, but soon enough, they would.

"Right again," Bitsy said. "There's a service entrance on the wall. Press the fourth flower on the mural."

They'd discussed how this would go. If they wanted everything to run smoothly, she had to move like she wasn't taking orders. Fluid and natural was the plan. Bitsy would tell her something just moments before she had to do it. If anyone was watching, they would think she was a service engineer if she didn't hesitate. So she planted her palm on the fourth flower and a small door opened up to the right of it.

She had to plunge into the darkness while holding her breath, not knowing what waited for her on the other side.

And then she was in the depths of the city. She remembered these worn down corridors from the day she'd lost her hearing. They weren't like the rest of Alpha. Bare metal bars overlapped over her head, faintly tinted orange with the bare bulbed lights that hung along the ceiling of the metal hall. Steam filled the room, making the fabric of her clothing cling to her skin. Already sweat dripped down her temples, but that could be nerves.

"Keycard," Bitsy said.

She reached into her pocket for it, quickly pulling it out as though she knew there was a door coming up soon that would require her credentials.

"Head down, person coming."

Ducking her face into the shadow of her hoodie, she nodded at the man who walked by her. He had a bandana around his neck as well, likely because he used it to wipe the sweat from his face. The man's exhausted expression didn't change as he returned her nod.

Some of the tension eased in her back as he walked away from her.

"Two doors down, pretend to be resting. Take the door on the left when the group of people walk by you. Be quick."

Quick wasn't easy the deeper they went into this place. Her footsteps likely echoed as she walked, boots clacking against the metal. But here she was supposed to make noise. After all, she was just another worker. Just another person who had come to Alpha hoping for utopia and instead had been thrown into the bowels of Hell itself.

Anya leaned against the wall, one foot pressed flat against it and her arms crossed over her chest. A group of people walked past her, all men heading home likely. Although their homes were nowhere near where she had come from.

One of them paused as he looked her up and down. The others continued moving, but he didn't. No words appeared on her lens, so she had to read his lips. Thankfully, he was staring right at her. "You all right?"

She nodded, not sure if she should trust her voice.

"If you're hurt, you're supposed to go to the infirmary." He hooked a finger in the direction the group had come from. "You need help getting there?"

Bitsy flashed a little red light over her eye, likely trying to pretend to be one of the devices that people used to see through the walls to find broken pipes. But she couldn't put any words there or the man would see them too.

"I'm fine," she replied, trying to deepen her voice but having no idea if she succeeded. "Just needed a breather."

"You're telling me. Been a long day." He palmed the back of his neck and dropped his head. That's when she lost sight of his lips. All of a sudden, she couldn't tell what he was saying. Then he looked at her, and she knew he had said something she was supposed to respond to.

Fuck.

What did he say? What was she supposed to say in response? He was going to know that something was off and she didn't belong here. She was so fucked. So...

He tilted his head to the side. "You can't hear me, can you?"

She shook her head. Why would she lie? She couldn't hear him, and could only make out a bit of what he was saying right now. It wasn't like she could say just anything, and he'd believe she was realistically continuing the conversation.

"That's all right." He enunciated the words better this time. "My brother lost his hearing down here, too. All of us take something home from Alpha. You sure you are good?"

Nodding, Anya wondered if it would really be this easy to convince him to leave her alone.

"Night, then."

And then he walked away.

He just walked away, and she waited a few breaths until Bitsy flared up again. "Left door."

"Right," she whispered before using her father's key card to spill into the lab.

None of the technicians or scientists were here at this time of night. But she still made Bitsy do a sweep for any heat signatures before she felt safe enough to yank the stifling fabric off her face. Only then did she breathe a little easier.

They'd made it into the room where she had lost her hearing and where everything in her life had changed. She didn't even look at the area where the explosion had gone off. All she did was walk right to the back, where she had never been. It was one of the few unlisted rooms in the schematics they had found.

Another set of words flashed in front of her eyes as she approached it, these in the reddish pink color that was usually Daios. "What are you doing, kalon?"

"This is the only time, big guy." She flashed her father's card and watched as the door opened. "I know it's the middle of the night, but I'm getting tired of waiting."

"Wait until I get the others."

"Can't do that."

"Wait." Bitsy even underlined the word, as though he had said it with more command than normal. "You will wait, Anya. It's too risky. What if something happens while you are in there? What if your father comes in? I cannot help you from here."

"I know," she whispered, the words breaking in her throat. "But this is what I came here to do. Bitsy, end contact with the dome. Only provide visuals."

"Anya wait?—"

And then the contact was severed. She felt a bit like she'd cut off one of her own limbs, but this had to be done. She couldn't be distracted, not even by him.

Stepping into the room, she covered her mouth with her hand. They weren't even hiding what they were doing. An undine laid out on a table, dissected. Their tail was limp on the ground, the lovely pale lavender color dulled into a shade of sickly grey in death. It was a female, she thought, considering the breasts that caused the gaping open chest to droop.

Anya couldn't look at her for very long, so she turned the lens in that direction and closed her eyes. She counted to twenty, slowly turning her head up and down so that they could see the entirety of the woman who had been killed. And then, when her head was turned away again, she opened her eyes.

There were four cylindrical tanks on the wall opposite her. They looked like tubes, except three of them had undines in them. One already looked dead. She wasn't sure how she could tell, but there wasn't a spark of life in the floating body. The other two were alive, though.

One was still asleep. She walked up to the tank, tears already burning in her eyes because she knew the sleeping one was probably the next one to be experimented on. If she didn't do this in time, then this undine's life was on her hands.

The male was so pretty. Delicate green fins fanned out around his young face, not a single mark of a scar on his features. Not like Daios.

"The dome is trying to contact you," Bitsy said. "They are saying you should be focusing on getting the explosives. I agree. You are risking yourself every moment you are here."

"I know," she replied. Then she turned her attention to the last tank.

This undine was awake. It bared its sharp teeth at her, those black eyes flashing with hatred. A deep purple color went up from its tail and onto its belly. It was significantly paler than the other undines she had seen thus far, and didn't have the same kind of fins.

She could only guess this was a depthstrider. This was one of the creatures that everyone was so afraid of and yet it was trapped just like the other.

Anya lifted her hand and pressed it flat to the glass of the tube. She knew Daios was likely growling and raging wherever he was because she was taking a risk. But the depthstrider calmed. Its eyes swirled with a hundred colors as it pressed its hand opposite to hers, and she knew, somehow, it understood she wanted to help them.

In a blink, she saw where it came from. The deep dark sea with all the flashing lights of rainbow creatures that lived with them. She saw a small child, held in the arms of a female undine, who looked at her with a soft smile on her face. And she knew... she knew she couldn't leave them here.

Swallowing hard, she shook her head to clear it of the vision the depthstrider had given her and sighed out a ragged breath.

"Bitsy?"

A flash of light illuminated her droid's lens.

Her throat was thick with emotion, and she wasn't sure her words were anything other than a garbled mess. "Tell the others there's been a change of plan. We're moving now. Get Maketes and Ace ready. The moment they can get here, get them here. There's about to be a lot of alarms going off."

"What are you doing?" Bitsy asked, but she could see the messages were sent off into the ether where the others would get them.

"Daios? I know you can hear me." Anya walked over to the shoot near the dead body. Her father was always efficient. She knew there was a tunnel for them to dump these bodies out into the sea. Hitting the button for release, she grabbed the tray of tools beside it and jammed it into the shoot to keep it open. "I love you. Try not to be mad at me for too long."

She knew where the explosives were. She knew where everything was because they hadn't moved them since her accident. Everyone here was so arrogant. They didn't believe for a second that their little golden princess would be the one to destroy everything from the inside out.

Bubbles appeared on the lens, and she knew Bitsy had let him through the channel to send one last message to her.

"Kalon, what are you going to do?"

Stalking out of the room, she reached for the axe that hung in a glass box in case of emergencies. It was so much heavier than she thought, and she had to drag it across the floor after her into the room of ammunitions.

The explosives were small silver balls, just like the ones that had damaged her hearing. But she knew these were meant to be lobbed into the sea where they would set off an explosive that was powerful enough to clear a field of at least one hundred undine.

That was the plan, at least. Her father had never had to use them, but he liked having weapons just in case. She ran her finger over the top of one and it lit up with numbers along the top. Bitsy helped, showing her exactly where to press to give her enough time to save the undines and get out.

Setting a timer for thirty minutes, she assumed that would be plenty of time. Besides, she only had to set one off. There were at least fifteen of them sitting next to each other. A single explosive would set off all the others until it became a massive bomb.

Heaving the axe up onto her shoulder, she stalked back into the room where the two living undines remained. "I'm getting them out. No matter what."