Echoes of the Tide (Deep Waters #3)

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

A ce spent the better part of what felt like a day trying to figure out how the fuck to get out of the opthamologist’s office. There was a lot of useful shit in here, though. Medical supplies, antiseptics, things that probably no one assumed an eye doctor would have. But then she looked at the doors to exit, she found that unfortunately she was completely barricaded in.

Someone had known this was an entrance into the rest of the medical pavilion. They must have seen the part of the pavilion that had broken, and known eventually, someone would use the opening to get in. Why would these people not cover all their bases? Stupidly, she’d assumed they were more like the gang who ran her tower, who didn’t really care if there was an opening. Someone would have to be insane to even attempt to swim between towers.

Ace tried for at least an hour to work the nails out of the hammered wood pieces that barred her way out. There were too many of them though, and her droid might have a powerful magnet, but it wasn’t capable of wriggling nails out of wood.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered as she stared at the very last exit she could find. There was a staff entrance and exit that had taken her too long to figure out. She’d needed to find a set of keys to unlock certain doors, and even then, the doors were stuck by salt and rust. Hammering through that had exhausted her.

But, once through, she found the staff door was also barricaded. This time by water.

“Who floods part of their own city willingly?” she asked Tera. The little droid made a circle in her hands before dropping down onto the floor and zipping away. Likely to triple check that they’d found every single door that might get them out of here.

She stood there for a few moments, staring into the darkness of the flooded room as a scalpel floated past the small window on the door. There really was nothing on the other side of it. Absolutely nothing. Just a blank space of darkness where anything could be lurking.

For a while, she stared directly into the eyes of the abyss. She wanted to look at that darkness. She wanted to feel the hopeless sensation of loss that even though she had tried her hardest, she could not get out of this room.

For some reason, it grounded her. It always had. Looking into the water and realizing how weak and how small she was, even if everyone else seemed to think she was neither of those things.

Then she turned away from the door and made her way back to the waiting room. At least those windows showed a little more of the sea.

She staggered into the room and sat down on one of those plastic chairs. It wasn’t comfortable. She didn’t imagine it ever had been. But she sat there, her elbows braced on her knees, staring out at the water beyond. There were some neon lights still blinking that she could see. This office didn’t have much of a view, though.

The waiting room faced the back of a wall and an alleyway. At the very end of the alleyway was the smallest glimpse of those neon lights. She could just make out the letters OMNI, and that was about it. But there was a figure of what looked like a film camera, and a few other objects that made her wonder if that was an entertainment building. Must be nice to live there.

Trickling water echoed in the room, which was her only warning that there was an undine looking at her. Then again, she’d always been able to feel his eyes on her. Since the very first moment they met.

She wasn’t sure why he was back so soon. Maybe he’d never left. That sounded like something Maketes would do. Just linger in the water until she returned. Maybe he already knew there wasn’t an exit from this place.

“Can’t get anywhere from here,” she sighed. “All the doors out of these rooms are barricaded. I can’t get to the upper levels.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Did you know I was going to be stuck here?”

“No. There aren’t any windows on that side. I couldn’t see anything more than you could. This was the first crack in the pavilion we saw, but it won’t be the last.”

That didn’t settle well with her. Already she could feel the ticking time bomb going off that was her sister’s life. She didn’t have time to just sit here and wait for things to get better.

“All right, well... That’s not ideal, but we’ll figure it out. The diving suit is still wet, but that’s okay. I don’t mind being cold.” She stood and turned to see him in the water where she’d expected him. But then he gave her a little frown that made her freeze. “What?”

“We can’t go anywhere right now.”

“That’s stupid, because we are going somewhere right now.” She wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You’re swimming me to the top of this tower to see if maybe there’s another entrance. Or we can bust through a window and make a crack of our own, if we have to.”

“We can’t, Ace.”

How could he sit there all calm and looking at her like there wasn’t any rush at all? Even though he didn’t know about her sister or Ace’s reasoning for being here, he had to know that there was a time limit on him working with Jacob and his gang. This wasn’t a game. They couldn’t wait here and chat, or get to know each other, or whatever it was he was expecting.

“I don’t care what your excuses are for staying here, we have to go.” She’d just tell him. What pride did she have left, anyway? “If I don’t come back with that key, and I mean like tomorrow, Jacob knows where my sister is. He threatened to kill her. He said he was going to bring her to Gamma and ‘make use’ of her before he killed her. I think you can understand what that means.”

His expression darkened the more she spoke. She was used to Maketes’s face looking rather roguish and handsome. He always had a grin on his face, that much she had learned since meeting him. Even while he was speaking with Jacob, he’d been grinning like a lunatic.

But now? Now she understood why he was so terrifying. Now she saw only the intimidating expression of a monster who lurked in the deep and hunted beasts much larger than she was. He looked like he wanted to tear apart the world and she almost didn’t hesitate to think that he could.

His hands clenched on the metal edge of the floor and she swore there was black blood on his palms. “This is the kind of person you keep company with?”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice, now did I?” She shook her head, then slashed a hand through the air. “None of this matters at all. I need to go to the top of this tower. Right now.”

Ace reached for her diving suit, ready to yank the wet material on over her clothing—who cared what it felt like—only to freeze as Maketes grabbed her hand.

There was something visceral about his touch. All she could focus on were the claws that wrapped around her wrist and how massive his hand was compared to hers. He could palm her entire face in one of those giant mitts. He could easily squeeze and break every bone in her hand while she writhed on the floor in pain, but he was so gentle holding onto her.

“We can’t go anywhere,” he said, gently this time. Almost as though he didn’t want her to think he was joking. And then he pointed at the glass.

She’d just been looking out of those windows and there was nothing there. He was trying to distract her, to get her to focus on something other than the churning fear in her belly. But she still looked, and then she saw them.

The creatures on the other side of the glass weren’t like any of the undines she’d seen before. Maketes and his people were the blueprint for what she knew an undine to look like, but these creatures were monsters. They were almost twice Maketes’s length and so dark she hadn’t noticed them the first time. Their skin was nearly black, deep purple lining their much more eel-like tails. Bright yellow bits tipped their thin fins, but they weren’t like Maketes’s in shape. These fins had globes at the end, like an angler fish. And those yellow lights flickered now and then, clearly trying to call something to their sides.

One swam so close to the window that she could see a flashing of sharp edged teeth filling its mouth and then it turned those black eyes to her and for a moment, she swore she saw something in her own mind. A vision. A flash of blood on the floor and searing pain in her wrists. A moment from her past when she had tried to...

“No,” she whispered, yanking her gaze away from that monster who had seen too much.

But in whirling away from one monster, now she stared at another. A bright yellow and orange creature, who watched her with pity in his gaze. “Sorry. I should have warned you they do that.”

“Do what?” she gasped.

“See into the future, sometimes the past. Anything that can happen, will happen, or might have happened.” His gaze flicked to the window and his welcoming expression changed to one of disgust. “We call them depthstriders. And you, dear Ace, happen to live right in the middle of a nest of them.”

“A nest?” She tried to clear her mind of the memory that she hadn’t wanted to relive. “I thought you said you came from a pod? That’s what a group of you are called?”

“Yes and no. My kind of the People of Water live in a pod. We tend to be more similar to what you would consider whales and dolphins. The depthstriders are unusual and different from all of our kind. They live in a nest. A grouping of them that all twist and churn in between each other. It’s as remarkable as it is disgusting.” His black gaze flicked to hers. “Unfortunately, that means we are stuck here. These are their hunting grounds, and they come out at night to feed.”

“What? For how long?”

“As long as they decide to eat.” With a few ushering movements, he made her back up and then hoisted himself out of the water.

Ace was momentarily distracted by the massive tail that he flipped out of the sea and into the waiting room. It was surreal to see a creature like him in a room like this.

She’d been in a waiting room identical to this one when she was little. She remembered her dad bringing her in and arguing with the receptionist about the price of her glasses. In that moment in time, there was no way she ever would have guessed she’d be back here with a massive fish man flopping onto the floor and then dragging himself toward the glass.

He made some gurgling noise and then water rushed out of his gills. She side stepped the mess. Her eyes widened in shock as he did it again, almost as though he was vomiting before he settled and then took a deep breath in. His gills didn’t move this time, only his chest.

Like a human breathed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, trying very hard not to notice that his fluke was flat on the ground and reflecting the light in tiny rainbows of color.

“Joining you to watch the show. I don’t want to be in the water when they’re hunting. Someone might take a nibble on my tail.” He must have seen her looking at it, because suddenly his tail bunched like a snake, coiling closer to him so he could grab that massive fluke and hold it up for her to see. “Did you want to take a closer look?”

Yes.

No.

She definitely didn’t want to take a closer look, even though this might be the only time she’d be near an undine. It seemed so paper thin that it was odd it could propel him through the water. The sight of it was almost mesmerizing, and she took a single step forward.

Before she could say a word, Tera came careening out of a corner and rushing right at him. With a few echoing plinks, it stacked each ball on top of itself as though it too wanted a closer look at the tail that was offered for them to peer at.

“Right, that answers your question, then.” She scooped the droid up, all the pearls in her hand flattening so they could all look at the tail at once. She could almost hear the ooing and ahing noises it might have made if she’d ever given it a voice.

Maketes reached his hand out for the droids. “If I may? It would be a fair trade for me to see your droids while you look at my tail.”

“Just don’t crush them.”

“I have some experience with droids.”

She found that hard to believe, but when had he ever lied to her? Especially when he then handed her his fluke, like it was a giant leaf rather than attached to his body. Ace grabbed it, grunting at the weight that suddenly dragged her arms down. Though it was nearly translucent, it was very thick. Like silicone rubber, particularly strong. It was cool and soft beneath her touch, pliable when she pressed her fingers against it, and such a lovely shade of yellow that faded into purple.

As she ran her fingers and palm down the flat surface, he let out a little chuckle.

“What?” she asked.

“I should have asked to see your feet in return.” Maketes held up his hand, one little silver ball balanced between the space of each finger, although there were two between his thumb and pointer finger. It appeared they were using their own magnetic force to hold themselves staggered on either side of his webs. “I think your droid likes me.”

“It’s just curious. It likes to learn new things.”

“So do I.” He held Tera up to look at them, and she was struck by the vision in front of her.

Somehow, this massive undine was holding her droid with such care. He didn’t even seem uncomfortable by the technology. The halogen lights cast him in terrible shadows, making him appear like the monster everyone claimed his species was. But he wasn’t that at all. In all her experience knowing Maketes, she’d only known him to be gentle and kind.

His gaze flicked down to hers. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing important.”

“Looks important.”

“You’re a lot more tolerable with your mouth shut.” She could feel her cheeks flaming bright hot. Damn man kept doing this to her. She didn’t want to blush in front of him, but he pushed so hard. Every time she thought she had control over the situation, he flipped it back to his favor.

He grinned, as though he knew her frustrations. “A lot of people have said that to me. But you know what I always say?”

“No, I honestly don’t care to hear it, either.”

He leaned a little closer, so close that she could see there were faint purple freckles on his cheeks. Just barely visible, like little lavender paint flecks. “You’d miss me if I shut up.”

“I really don’t think I would.”

“You want me to disappear and leave you here alone?”

Immediately panic flared. She didn’t want to be alone in this unknown tower, and she didn’t want him out with those depthstriders. “Didn’t you say it was a hunting night? And you wouldn’t even stay in the water because they might bite you?”

“Maybe I just didn’t want you to be alone.” Her droid clinked in his fingers, a slight whirring sound coming from them as though they were humming. “It’s awfully scary in here, don’t you think?”

“It’s a doctor’s office.”

“But you don’t know who’s on the other side of that door, or on the other side of that window.” His hand came down on his chest, smoothing down the rippling muscles there and drawing her gaze to the movement. “Perhaps you need a big, strong male to keep you safe.”

That’s exactly what she needed. One with abs that flexed under her gaze and biceps that made her want to bite them.

What? No!

She let out a disgusted sound and stalked away from him before she did something stupid. “Shut up, you big oaf!”

“Whatever you say, kefi .”

Ace refused to let him goad her. She would not turn around and ask what the hell that meant. Even if she wanted to.