Chapter 5

Five

Mira

Mira leaned over her boss’s shoulder, looking at the reports that the drones had given them. Unfortunately, she’d done a lot more damage than she’d thought.

Of course, no one else knew that. They assumed that the undine had done it, and if she wanted to keep her head attached to her shoulders, she would let them continue to think so.

He hissed out an angry breath, leaning back in his chair and throwing the controller onto his desk. “Damn beast. There’s no way we can patch that.”

“Are you sure?” She pointed at the section of the wall where she’d removed all the bolts. No one could see it from the drone, thankfully, but any video feedback through the water was hard to tell details. “Look right here. It’s just one panel we have to replace, and we could probably get in there.”

“Yeah, if anyone could get there.” Dennis swiveled all the way around, glowering at her. “The lift isn’t working, Mira. You know that. I know that. None of the electrical works at all.”

“Then we get one of the suits to head down there and patch it up.”

“They don’t know how, and those suits aren’t rated for any detailed work and you know it.” He sighed and shook his head. “Damned shame. All of our work is down there, and we can’t get to it. Not to mention the heads are going to have a field day trying to re-home the rest of us.”

Mira honestly hadn’t thought it would come to this. She was certain, in fact, that they would be able to fix the tunnel. That’s why she’d blocked it all off.

They could see the blast doors had held. She claimed that she’d closed it from the inside and then used one of the escape pods to get to the elevator shaft. But... They’d see the lie in that story once they got back to their section of Beta. All the escape pods were exactly where they were supposed to be.

This was why she wanted to be part of the team to fix it. If she could release one of the pods, then the ocean would do the rest of the work for her. It would be dragged naturally in the elevator’s direction and anyone who wondered why it wasn’t right up next to it, would assume that the currents had caused it to drift.

Mira shouldn’t lie, because this was the problem with lying. She was dragged in every which way, trying to keep the lie going when she should have come clean hours ago.

Dennis looked her up and down, then rolled his eyes. “Listen, you’re in no state to be giving advice on this. Go get warmed up, put on some dry clothes. They set the kitchens up for us for the time being. I’ll come get everyone when they know where they’re going to put us.”

She could use a warm shower. Mira had spent her day with the other engineers, mostly in that damned elevator shaft, trying to get down to their old home. Unfortunately, that left her crusted from top to bottom with salt, stiffening her hair and clothes. She had a blanket over her head and tucked underneath her armpits, but she couldn’t let this go. Not when she knew there was a way for her to get her coworkers back to their section of Beta.

“Dennis?” she asked as he strode out of the control room.

He paused at the door, looking at her over his shoulder. “What?”

“Will they make us leave Beta?”

His shoulders rounded forward. “Every city needs engineers, Mira. Just... maybe not so many of them.”

So they weren’t going to another city, which was good news. But it also probably meant most of the engineers would end up in other jobs. Herself included, considering she hadn’t been on the team for very long.

She sank down into the wheelie chair he’d vacated and stared at the computer screens. They had drones all over the facility to keep an eye on everything, plus cameras on every external surface they could put them on. She’d always known they existed, but Mira had never been up here before.

Engineers kept to their own quarters unless there were areas for them to fix. Like she had when she first saw the undine. But this? She’d never thought there was a room with sixteen different screens, all set into an ancient silver table with so many buttons and joysticks that she didn’t know what she could or couldn’t touch.

But it seemed rather self explanatory. She peered around her, making sure that no one had remained in the room. She was still alone. Just her, a bunch of screens, and a wall of windows that looked out onto a quiet ocean. They were so high up in the tower, most likely all she would see were the whale migrations when they happened.

Oh, she bet they had a great view.

The only thing out there right now was deep blue. So much blue that sometimes it made her eyes go out of focus, like there was something massive out there just waiting for her to see it.

Shivering, she touched one of the buttons. Just a green one, since red seemed like a bad idea. One of the screens in the middle flickered, then changed what it was looking at.

Okay, so the green buttons changed cameras.

She looked around her again and then gently pressed a red button. Just to see. One camera going out wouldn’t be that big of a deal, right?

But the red button didn’t implode a camera or make it start shooting bolts. Instead, she saw an answering red blink on the same camera. Was it recording? She’d heard that the Commander liked to record whatever he found in the ocean. New species, different creatures that they’d never seen before. Whatever it was, he liked to keep a documentation of it.

Humming under her breath, Mira made sure all the red dots were turned off and poked around for a little while longer. After everything she’d done for these people, she deserved to at least see what was going on.

It took her only fifteen minutes to find one of them. An undine.

This one wasn’t the same creature she’d seen before. She was a little ashamed by the flash of disappointment once she realized she didn’t recognize this one. He had bright yellow flashes going up and down his fins as he hunched beside an oil drum. His hands were spread wide against the metal, leaning around the edge as he watched... something?

“What are you looking at?” she whispered before clicking the green button next to the screen.

It took her three cameras to see what he was watching, and then she hissed out an angry breath.

Bright blue. Glimmering in the darkness of the sea like a damned beacon saying, “Look at me, I’m back.”

“What are you doing, you idiot?” Mira found herself irrationally angry that the undine had come back. He was supposed to realize that she had helped him for a reason, and it wasn’t for him to continue attacking her home. Because that was clearly what they were doing. Both he and the yellow finned undine were peering into glass windows, then gliding away the moment they saw someone.

He was going to get himself killed. Or his friend. The Commander had recently outfitted the entire city with weapons on the exterior. She knew, because she’d helped install a few of them.

Her rage turned into concern. What did he think he was doing? He was going to get himself killed, and they had just survived. Together.

The damned beast was likely attacking their city again, but even if he was… Even if Mira didn’t want to admit it to herself, he had saved her life. She’d gotten the story out of the other engineers. Their section of Beta had run out of air, and the undine came after that. If he hadn’t gotten her out of that hallway, or if he hadn’t been there at all, she would have died.

Plain and simple.

“Damn it,” she hissed through her teeth. “I owe you, you big blue bastard.”

Mira wiggled the controller of the camera back and forth. The joystick moved, and with it, the camera. She hoped it was enough to get his attention, and she was right.

Her undine was more aware than the other. He spun almost immediately, his black eyes narrowing upon the camera she moved. Switching to the next camera, she wiggled that one. He was a pretty significant distance away, but he noticed.

The yellow finned one disappeared somewhere in their game of chase. She didn’t know why or where he’d gone, but she could only control so many cameras at once. And she owed nothing to that one.

So over and over again, she drew the undine farther away from where he was and toward... herself, she realized. Mira had unintentionally drawn him to the control room, which would get her in even more trouble if people realized.

Frantically, she made sure every single camera had the recording turned off, or she’d be sent off into the ocean with no gear on. They’d drown her, she was certain of it.

While she did that, she was vaguely aware of a dark shadow appearing on the other side of the glass. She’d look in a bit, but first she had to save her own ass before she saved his. And hadn’t she already saved his life? He was away from those dangerous parts of the city, right?

But then she looked up and her heart stuttered in her chest.

Because he was right in front of her. Of course he was.

Somehow, through the glass, he was ten times larger than she remembered. Or maybe it was just that his tail was all spread out now. She could see it, all ten feet of it vertically, which made him... what? Fifteen? Sixteen feet long, maybe? He was massive. Huge. Enormous. All the words that meant big. Good fucking god. He was right in front of her.

Swallowing hard, she rolled the chair a little closer to the window, hoping he wouldn’t startle or try to break through this glass too.

He looked back at her with those dark eyes reflecting her image, his hair floating around his head, those gills glowing blue along the edges. His black tail hardly moved. He just... hung there. Right in front of her.

Not moving. He watched her as if she were supposed to do something.

So she did. Mira pointed at him, then gestured with her hands like she was swimming. “You need to go.”

He didn’t move.

She shooed him with her hand, but then realized they probably didn’t use the same hand signals. Why would they? He was a different species, and he’d never seen her people before.

Or... maybe he had.

Frowning, she looked down at the computer screens before she looked back up at him. Circling one hand in the air, she gestured at the room they were in. “This room is where these come from.” Then she turned her hand into a gun shape and fake blasted it at him.

That made his eyes narrow, but he still didn’t move.

She didn’t know what he wanted. He clearly recognized the weapons they used to get the undine off their city walls. So why was he not swimming off into the distance to go do whatever it was they did all day.

“Come on, man,” she muttered. “You have got to go.”

Then he pressed a webbed hand against his chest and drew it back toward her. He repeated the motion, as though he wanted her to see or understand something that he couldn’t convey. But she didn’t know what he was trying to say.

He wasn’t thanking her for anything, that much she knew for certain. He didn’t know the cameras were attached to the guns. And he definitely didn’t think she’d saved him. Maybe she had in the beginning, but then he could have left her for dead.

She cursed. Right, that was the correct way to think. He owed her now, because they were even up until this point. He would have died in the tube with her. She’d gotten him out, he had gotten her to the lift. They were even. And now she’d gone and helped him again.

“Fuck me,” she muttered, looking back at the door to make sure no one had come in. “You need to leave. Both of us are going to be in serious trouble if anyone realizes we’re trying to communicate with each other.”

He did the motion again, looking a little frustrated this time before he swam even closer to the glass. She stood, the chair rolling behind her into the room. But she felt like a magnet pulled her closer to the glass and then he put his hand flat against it.

She stared at that palm, so unlike her own. His fingers were massive, long, and tipped with those deadly claws. The webs between his fingers were thinner than she’d thought, and light pierced through them.

Without thinking, she reached up and put her hand on the glass as well. The size of his hand dwarfed hers, but for a moment, she let herself believe that she could feel the coolness of his skin through the glass. Like that icy touch could reach her, even in here.

“Hey, Mira!” The sound echoed down the hall, but they were too close for comfort.

Flinching away from the glass, she turned to stare at the door, her breath ragged in her lungs. Someone was going to see them. They were going to see him, and every part of her screamed that she couldn’t let that happen.

“Go,” she hissed, but when she turned, he was already gone.

Licking her lips, she pressed herself even closer to the glass and peered out into the ocean. He wasn’t there, though. Not even a trace of him.

“Ohh, Mira,” she muttered to herself. “You seeing things, girl? I didn’t think the pressure got to people if you’ve spent your whole life in the ocean.”

“Hey, Mira?” One of the younger engineers poked his head through the door. “You got a second?”

“Considering we’re all out of commission for a while, yeah.”

“What are you looking at?” He walked up to her side and looked out the window. She couldn’t remember his name, but knew that his whole face lit up when he smiled. She’d always thought he was handsome. And tall. Tall always made people more handsome.

“The ocean.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, then rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Guess there’s a lot of it to look at.”

“Sure is. What did you want?”

“Oh.” His eyes hardened a bit, but then he leaned forward like he didn’t want anyone else to hear what he had to say. “Do you remember the new suit the techs were working on? I thought... Well, with your little project...”

“How do you know about my project?” She reared back, looking him over again. She hadn’t told him about that, had he?

“People talk.” He shrugged. “Look, I thought with one of those new suits, and if your project is working, we could probably get that glass wall fixed. Pretty easily, actually. The drones could carry the new plate over and then it would just be sealing it from the outside.”

“What new suits?”

He grinned, and she just knew he was about to get her into a lot of trouble.