Chapter 4

Anya had no idea what had just happened. Her hair had fallen out of its clip and she swore she had felt something very cold radiating against her spine, but that was... insane.

She would have known if someone came into the room. She'd known when that ridiculously rude maid had come in. And she'd heard what the woman said. She had the glass over her eye, and Bitsy was very good about translating any sound that happened around her. So, of course, she knew that her father wanted her to go back and entertain people.

She just didn't want to go back.

Anya didn't think she should be required to do anything she didn't want to. Her father could entertain his guests on his own, without her, and he would be absolutely fine. But god forbid she deny him anything! She was his pretty little songbird. She was supposed to sing when he told her to sing.

He argued it was to keep her safe. She was in danger wherever she went, and he was the only person who could keep her safe.

This was the first time in her life she'd wondered if he was maybe right.

Her heart raced in her chest, thundering against her ribs until she wondered if it was possible to die from fright. Bitsy kept flashing a message in her eye piece but she didn't have the faintest idea what it said because she just couldn't get herself to read right now.

She had been alone in this room. She was certain of it.

Hadn't she?

What if she hadn't been alone? What if someone had walked right up behind her and she had no idea? All she could think was that her father had enemies. What better way to get to the old man than by killing his most prized possession?

But as the water slowly stilled, she could see there was nothing in there. There was no one in the room. Her panicked gaze flickered over everything before she settled on that truth. She was alone. She had been alone.

Something in her whispered that she'd seen something reflected in Bitsy's glass. An impossible thing because her mind couldn't conjure up the details of an undine that perfectly. She had only seen the drawings of them on that fateful day when she'd lost her hearing, and even then, it wasn't like she could remember it all that well.

No. There was no undine in the city. That had never happened before and it wouldn't happen while she was alone here.

Then she read the message that Bitsy kept flashing in front of her eyes.

"There is someone here."

Gulping, she shook her head. "No one is here, Bitsy. You can see that as well as I can."

But again, her little droid was always the argumentative one. "No, someone was here."

"The maid came in and out."

This time in dark red, underlined, with wiggling text so it looked like the kind of message a serial killer would leave on a mirror. "We are not safe."

Anya told herself that the droid was overreacting. They'd both had quite the fright, and it still felt like someone was looking at her. She swore she had sensed eyes on her the entire time she was in here, but she was also talking with Ace and figuring out a plan to get people into Alpha. They had a plan to destroy this place from the inside out, so of course she felt like someone was watching her.

If anyone caught her talking to someone off Alpha, then they would send her in for questioning. Let alone if they got their hands on Bitsy and saw the schematics that she was sending to someone off station.

But there was no one in this room. She was just paranoid because she was doing her work out of her room, and her clip must have just... flung out of her hair. That was the only explanation she could think of.

Reaching up, Anya ran her fingers through the strands. "Maybe the clip had too much strain on it," she muttered.

Bitsy's reply flashed loud and clear. "You've used that clip a hundred times."

She had. It was her favorite because it had been her mother's. It was the only thing she had left of the woman that gave her life, because her mother had died in childbirth. Unfortunately, she'd left Anya alone with a tyrant for a father.

Pinching her nose, she took a deep breath. "Do you see where the clip went?"

By the time she opened her eyes, Bitsy had circled an area in the pool. Because of course her clip had flung off so far that it was now deep in the water. She couldn't leave it there, though. It was the last bit of her mother, and Anya would do insane things to keep it.

Looking around for one of the pool nets, she groaned as she realized no one kept the nets around their pools in this section of Alpha. There was likely some kind of cleaning house nearby where they kept everything. But if she stepped outside like this, then she would be swarmed by people. And she had no idea how much the salt water of this pool was going to ruin her mother's clip.

"Fine," she muttered. "Two birds, one stone."

"What are you doing?" Bitsy asked.

"I'm going to get my clip back. And I'll be soaking wet, so Dad will send me right back to the house to get changed. And then I will decide that I won't come back. Easy. I don't have to go to the party, and I get my clip back."

"This is stupid."

"You're stupid," she replied, before yanking her dress over her head. She took Bitsy off as well, setting the droid on the ground even though she knew it was probably making some kind of noise in displeasure. The little thing was already rocking back and forth like it wanted her to pick it back up.

But she needed to get that clip, and she refused to let fear control her. She had let it control her life for years after the accident. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and she was braver than she was back then.

In nothing but her bra and underwear, she dove into the pool. She'd been swimming her entire life, and she found it as easy as breathing. At least without currents. From what she'd heard, it was harder to swim outside of Alpha than it was within it.

Diving all the way to the bottom, she grabbed the clip and turned her body to kick off from the floor.

But then she noticed the fin. It was a delicate looking frill, just barely sticking out of the pipe that brought fresh sea water into the pool. Though mostly gray, she could see fine filaments of red running through the thin membrane. It was beautiful, a rare color in these parts. But then her gaze followed that fin to what it was connected to, and she felt her heart stop beating.

A monstrous creature lurked in that pipe. An almost human face stared back at her, glinting fangs flashing in the meager light. Though his nose was flat and his jaw broad, he wasn't remotely like anything she'd seen before. Red edged gills framed his face, but long dark hair tangled around his features in matted strands that looked almost like tentacles.

But his eyes... Oh, those black eyes saw straight into her soul. She barely had a moment to realize that his black hand, webbed and tipped with deep red claws, was gripping the edge of the pipe. He could so easily attack her. She couldn't even see how large he was, or guess how fast he could move, because he was deep inside the shadows of the pipe.

If she peered a little closer, all she could see was the faintest outline of a muscular chest, and that was... disconcerting.

Belatedly, terror struck her hard in the middle of her body. She felt a bit like she might vomit until the warning bells screamed in her mind that she had to run. Flee. Hide. This creature would eat her alive. Those fangs could tear her flesh from bone so easily she might not even feel it.

Kicking her feet against the bottom of the floor, she launched herself up to the surface. Run. Hide. Flee. All of those words and more kept replaying in her head.

There was an undine in her home. Alpha was supposed to be impossible for anyone to get in or out of. She knew it was. She'd been working with Ace for years on a way to get someone into Alpha without her father knowing. Yet this undine was right in the pipes.

In the very foundation of the city.

Breaking the surface, she sucked in a panicked amount of air, as though that might help her in the slightest. She was going to die. Any minute, she was going to feel those sharp teeth clench around her ankle and drag her back into the depths. Soon the pool would be filled with the billowing blood exiting her body and no one would even know that she was dying.

She should scream for help. Someone might come running if they heard her, but right now she couldn't force herself to even make a sound. Or maybe she was making noise and she just couldn't hear the pitiful whines that surely... surely...

Grabbing onto the edge of the pool, she hauled herself out of the water and spun around. Like she had a shark chasing her and if she placed a well-aimed kick, that would make it leave.

But there was nothing in the water. Not at all.

Still breathing hard, her eyes wide in horror at what might have just happened, she reached for Bitsy.

The droid crawled onto her head with words scrolling past her vision so quickly she almost couldn't read them.

"What were you thinking? What is in the water? Did something try to grab you? I told you we weren't alone. Why don't you ever listen?"

"There is something in the water," she gasped, her eyes still locked on the waves she'd caused as she tried to escape it. "It's an undine."

There was a long pause as the droid took in what she said, and then there was the strangest response from the little droid, who had always been more afraid of living than it was of being decommissioned.

"Can I see?" The words vibrated with excitement.

"What?" she gasped. "No, you cannot see. Are you insane? That thing could kill me in an instant."

"Anything could kill you in an instant. That noise bomb you picked up that destroyed your hearing could have killed you, too. But you still picked it up. You've always been an adventurous person, Anya. Now let me see the undine."

It was one of the longest messages Bitsy had ever played in front of her eyes. The robot was usually quite succinct, even going so far to shorten what people were saying. Anya had a feeling the droid was a rather lazy worker, but that's what she got for giving the AI its own personality.

Sighing, she shook her head. "I don't think I can get back in the water."

"Sure you can."

"It's not a good idea, Bitsy! I'm already so out of breath, I don't think I could stay under the water for more than a few seconds."

"Try."

Blowing out a breath, she told herself she could do this because there probably wasn't an undine under there after all. It was just a figment of her imagination. A fish stuck in the filters that she'd thought was a massive creature.

No one could get in Alpha without her father knowing. Alpha was the safest place in the ocean for humans, and had been for almost two hundred years. The city was a prison as much as it was a home.

She slithered back into the water, her eyes on the pipe like something monstrous was going to burst out of it at any moment. But nothing moved. The fin she'd seen before wasn't there either.

"Well." Bitsy said as she sank into the water. "That's incredibly disappointing."

If they'd been in the air, she would have muttered something about how the droid was doing fine underwater, which she didn't think Bitsy's model was rated for. And yet, the deeper she dove, the more it seemed like her heartbeat stuttered.

Because there was something in the darkness of the pipe. Even as her ears popped and her tinnitus screamed so loudly it made her wince, she could only focus on the shadows that moved in an undulating pattern.

First came the clawed hand. The red-tipped fingers that curled around the edge and then... then it was the rest of him. Or at least, the rest of him that she'd already seen.

The broad shoulders that barely fit in the pipe. Those soulless black eyes, and the terrifying grin that made her think of monsters in her closet when she was a little girl. He was everything that she'd been terrified of when she was a child. Right here. Right in front of her.

"Oh," Bitsy said, the word even wobbling in her vision.

But then the undine reached out that hand. The light played through the webbing, and she realized it was very delicate and thin between those deadly fingers. Delicate and so... pretty.

Maybe he was magical. Maybe he cast a spell on her. Because the only logical thing to do in this moment was to kick back off the floor and run. Or maybe to scream so hard that bubbles came out of her mouth, obscured her vision, and then he drowned her.

Instead, she reached out a shaking hand and mirrored his movements. Her fingers gently skated over his. She could feel the claws that could tear through her flesh. But he stayed eerily still as she traced her fingers down his, to the webbing that felt like velvet, to his broad palm that was dotted with so many scars she couldn't begin to count them.

He was warm in the cold water, when she could have sworn he'd been behind her and radiating an ice cold sensation down her spine. But he didn't move now. He just watched her, his eyes shifting to look at her hands. At least, that's what she assumed he was looking at. It was hard to tell with that otherworldly gaze.

Black eyes. Completely black without a hint of white.

He was here. And she was touching an undine. Her hand looked so small next to his.

He was patient with her, just letting her stroke him while his fingers remained spread wide. But when she looked back at him, she could see that the gills around his neck had flared out wide. They shuddered in the water, gently fluttering with movement that made them look almost graceful. She hadn't thought she'd ever describe an undine with those words. And, she supposed, her first impression had been terror.

But now, she looked at his face and wondered if there might be some beauty in those angles after all.

Her lungs spasmed, and she curled in on herself with the sensation. This was her last moment before she didn't have enough time to get to the surface. Looking up, she moved to kick off from the bottom only to feel a clawed hand palm her waist.

Eyes wide, she looked down at him to see he'd come partially out of the pipe. His hand was so large it spanned her waist from the middle of her ribs all the way down to her hip bone. Those claws were delicate though, carefully making sure not to break her skin as he palmed the curve just under her heartbeat.

Then, when her wide gaze flicked to his, he pushed her up. Toward the surface. A powerful shove that had her rocketing toward air. Spluttering, she looked back down to see that he had really disappeared from the pipe this time. At least, she thought.

An undine had helped her swim. He'd potentially saved her life.

"What the hell was that?" Bitsy asked.

Anya really didn't have an answer.