Chapter 36

Daios watched the life-sized projection with horror turning his blood ice cold.

Fortis hadn't lied. The achromos had their hands on undines, and they were ripping them apart. Why? He had no idea. They likely would get no answers out of these monsters who thought nothing of killing just to discover answers about his people.

If anyone else was in that room, he would have told them to search more. He would have wanted an answer for why the bodies were just lying there like garbage. But it was Anya who stood looking at them. It was his woman who risked her life just being in that room with the others.

He shifted where he leaned against the moon pool, doing his best to not bump into Maketes, who was holding onto another ear piece that Mira had rigged up so he could contact Ace. His low murmur was distracting, but not enough for him to change what his real worry was.

"Byte," he ground out. "Make a connection with Bitsy. I need to talk with Anya."

Byte chirped out a disgruntled sound. "I cannot just do that. It is a great breach of privacy and considered to be highly rude amongst droids."

"I do not care. Connect with her and force her to let me talk to Anya, or I will smash you into a hundred pieces that even Mira cannot fix."

Mira gave him a dirty look at the threat, but it worked. Byte allowed a connection to go through.

"Kalon," he said, his voice low and sharp. "What are you going to do?"

Arges shifted where he had braced himself inside the room. Already Arges's scales were drying out, but he didn't move from his place, staring at the projection alongside Daios. Anya was dragging something behind her, and her breathing was labored. What was she doing? She was going to hurt herself if she didn't stop.

Daios should be there with her. He could have figured out a way to get into that room so he could join her. Then, whatever she wanted to do, he could do with her.

"I'm getting them out," she said, her voice ringing true and strong through the connection. "No matter what."

"What do you mean you're getting them out?" he growled. "You just set the explosives. We could see that you put a timer on them, Anya!"

But she didn't reply. She just heaved that axe over her shoulders, turned to the tank with the awake undine, and brought it down on the glass. The depthstrider inside flinched, but then it looked at the small indent on the glass and it seemed to know what was happening.

Arges stirred, his blue tail looping closer to him as he pushed himself closer to the screen. "She's going to break it out of the glass."

"It's going to kill her," Daios growled.

"I don't think so. It looks like he understands what is happening." Arges pointed to the other of their people trapped inside the other tube. "That one is still asleep, though."

"Anya," he said, hoping that Bitsy would throw his words at her again. "Stop what you are doing. There are only two of them and an entire city for you to save. Maketes is speaking with Ace, but they need more time."

"Tell them they have thirty minutes," she grunted as she slammed the axe into the glass again. The spiderweb of cracks fractured around the edges. Not quite a break, but enough for the depthstrider to hit it from the other side as well.

"Thirty minutes?" He looked over his shoulder, hearing Maketes repeat the words into the translator and then shaking his head as he read it from the device himself.

His yellow finned brother's eyes were wide with panic before he said, "We can't be ready in thirty minutes."

"Did you hear that, Anya?" Daios shouted, as though she was right in front of him and he could rage at her. "There isn't enough time for them to get there."

"There is." She let out a little yell this time as she slammed the axe down. The spiderwebs grew larger, this time with water leaking out of the small holes between them. "I already calculated it with Bitsy. Tell Ace to use Alpha's safety ships. They can be activated remotely. The explosion will be far away from the housing of pretty much everyone, so only people close to the blast will be affected. They'll get out just fine, and anyone around here deserves to be stuck."

Something about that struck him as odd. The way she said the words, it all felt wrong. Thirty minutes was shorter than how long it had taken her to get to the safety pods herself.

All he could hear was a high-pitched shriek in his head, and time seemed to slow. He looked at Maketes. His brother was completely lit up, repeating the words to Ace and then waiting for the translation of what they said to come through. Apparently that was fine. They could make this work even if Ace had to hack into Alpha's system again.

Mira and Arges were saying something to his mate, but he wasn't listening to their words. All he knew was that he felt like he needed to lie down. Because he knew what she was saying. She'd told him before going in there and he'd been too stuck in his ways to hear what she was saying.

Bracing himself on the edge of the moon pool, he croaked, "You're not getting out, are you?"

Everyone froze. Even Byte tilted his head just slightly before relaying the words to Anya, who had lifted the axe one more time over her head. She seemed to hesitate, that heavy weapon held over her head.

Then she said, "I don't know if I'm getting out of this one, Daios. My family was the one to do this. There's an old human saying, Mira can explain it to you. A captain goes down with his ship. I have to make sure that happens."

The axe flew through the air and struck the glass hard. The projection suddenly whirled as the water caught Anya up and she was tossed back against the table where the dead female was. Sharp objects rained down on her head from the table and she hissed as one of them sliced through her pant leg. The bright bloom of blood was all he could see until a webbed hand came down on the wound.

Again she made a pained noise, and he could see the depthstrider had grabbed her too hard.

"Anya," he said, his voice cracking. "You have to listen to me. Get out, now. The depthstrider will do what he must."

When the depthstrider did nothing other than keep his hand on her leg, she reached up and took Bitsy off her head. Anya turned the projection toward herself and he could see the sweat dripping down her face. There was a grease smudge on her nose and black blood dripping through her hair from the dead body above her. Her eyes were a little wild, perhaps with fear.

"I love you," she said into the camera, with a smile that he knew was fake. "Ace can find me. I'll keep Bitsy on. There's still a chance, Daios. Just a small one, but... Find me? Even if I'm not alive."

"Anya!" he shouted, but then the connection went black.

Byte struggled to reconnect. He could see the blue and green text flying where he tried to make Bitsy listen, but then... nothing. There was no connection. No projection of what Anya was doing.

Nothing at all.

He let out a sound of rage that burst from his chest as anger unlike anything he'd ever felt thrust through his entire body. He slammed his fists down on the floor, denting the metal as he bared his teeth at the others.

"I'm going to get her," he snarled before turning to the water.

"You don't even know where she is!" Mira shouted.

He didn't care. He had to do something. The depthstrider in there was just as dangerous as the people that surrounded her. He had sent her into a pool of sharks to swim while she bled freely. What had he expected?

Maketes moved in front of him, his tail wrapping around Daios's to stop him from moving. "Listen to us, Daios. Give me a moment to talk with Ace, and I will tell you where she is. We can find a way to get to her."

He didn't want to wait a single second more. The words ground out of him before he could stop them. "Every moment I am here lengthens my journey to her side. If she dies, I will blame all of you. I will boil the very sea that you live in. I will hunt every one of you down until your lineage is nothing more than chum in this sea."

The heavy weight of their stares and silence pressed down upon him, but he would not bend. He would not bow to their expectations when his woman's life was on the line.

Maketes nodded. "Noted. Let me talk with Ace first, and then we'll figure out a faster way to get you there."

"I can do that," Mira said with a sudden snap of her fingers. "I've been working on a device to help me swim faster. It has a motor on it. With you swimming and the motor pulling you, you should move faster than without it. It's not teleportation, but it might cut it down by an hour or so."

An hour was half the time. He could do that fast enough. But it was still thirty minutes after the bomb went off, and time was ticking.

His muscles and tail twitched with the need for action. He did not move, though, when Arges approached him. His brother held the metal arm, retrieved from the bottom of the sea. "You will need this."

He did not want to wear it. Anya hadn't liked it, and in the end, neither did he. But he still threw it over his head as Mira came out of her back room, affixing the terrible sensation of needles digging into his skin and flexing the fingers of the metal arm.

Arges took the strange device out of Mira's hands and approached him. "We are here for you, brother." He handed it over and then pointed out the switch to turn it on. "We'll be right behind you. But I need you to hear me when I say you are not alone."

"I hear you, brother," he replied. What he did not say was that he didn't think they could help him now.

"Go get her."

Maketes made a tsking noise and handed the strange rectangle over. "This is the city map. She's somewhere in here. Ace thinks there's a way to get into it through these tubes. Apparently, that's what her father has been using to dump those bodies. As long as the blast doesn't damage those, you should be able to get through."

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as we can be in a few moments." Maketes shrugged. "It's the best chance you've got right now."

"Then I'll take it."

He didn't look at the others. He couldn't. There wasn't any time for reassurance or for any more words. He knew exactly where to go, and that was where he had to continue.

The device that Mira had built would help him swim faster. Already it was pulling him, and he could only hope that would jolt him through the water with all the speed of a sailfish. If he could manage that and maintain that speed, he could get to her. Hopefully. Sooner rather than later.

He darted through the water, feeling the currents running over his sides. The goddess was with him. As he darted away from their home, arcing up in a big circle and then plunging into the fastest current he could find, he knew this to be true. It had been a long time since he'd been so certain that the sea was on his side.

He could feel their goddess in the way the ocean moved with him. He could feel it the moment that the sea knew he was going to save the only woman who had ever meant anything to him. His mate. His heart. His soul.

The goddess was there with him as the first sparkle of Alpha appeared on the horizon. A tiny golden gemstone in the distance and it was still in one piece. He would make it. He could go a little faster now, because the adrenaline running through his body had yet to wear out. The currents pushed with him, sending him careening through the water. Soon he would be at her side. Soon.

The city was the size of his fist now. Not far at all. If only his fins worked a little faster. He could get there, he could...

The explosion rocked throughout the entire ocean. He saw it first. A bubble appeared around a large section of Alpha and then it popped. Debris and dust billowed around the gold. And for a moment, he couldn't see anything at all there. It was the gray texture of muck that had been stirred up, then fell slowly to reveal the golden city of Alpha. Than it all compressed. Sucking back into the city like the hand of a goddess had pressed it back together. Forming a gemstone on the horizon that turned red as the city burst into flame.

Then he felt it. The explosion blasted through the entire sea, shoving him back a countless distance as debris and dust surrounded him. It filled his gills, shoving him into the dirt even as he struggled against it. Fighting for her.

And then it all stilled. Eerily calm again as the sound finally hit him. The strange sound of popping and the echoing thunder of ruin.

"No!" he screamed, the word raw and ragged.

His hearts exploded with that city. Because she was there. His woman had saved them all, but there had not been enough time for her to run.

A fissure opened up in his chest. All that madness that she'd locked away streamed out of it, choking him with the finality that everything he loved, everything he touched, died. And it was his fault.

All the ghosts trailed their hands along his face, but this time, it didn't feel like they were trying to dig into his skin. Instead, they were wiping away tears he couldn't feel.

"Go get her," they whispered in his ears. These voices were no longer full of rage, but of sadness and heartbreak along with him. "Go bring her home, Daios. Lay her down to rest with us. We will care for her."

The choked sound that came out of him was unlike any he'd ever made before. His hearts shattered. He could barely see through the ache in his body. All of it was gone now. Every hope. Every dream. All of it decimated in the wake of that beautiful light that had been snuffed out.

The device in his hands kicked, and he let it fall. Perhaps they would find it later, but right now, he swam with his own body. He used every muscle, every fiber, every twitching pain to get him to her side.

"My love," he called out, his voice echoing through the ocean and pushing through the currents. "I am coming."

He hoped her soul knew. That perhaps some part of her could find peace in knowing that she might have died alone, but she would not stay that way. He would find every piece of her and bring her back. Every bone, even the smallest one, he would carry it to her final resting place. With him, as she deserved.

When he reached Alpha, all the city's defenses were down. None of the other undines had made it before him, but that was all right. Right now, he needed to find a way into the underbelly of this city. Even it meant he had to dig through the mire to get to her.