Echoes of the Tide (Deep Waters #3)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

H ad she really just swum with a shark? Fuck, she had. She’d seen it with her own eyes. The dark shadow that moved with menacing intent and she’d been so certain it was going to attack them. She’d imagined the terrifying moment when there was nothing but flashing teeth and darkness as she was stuck in the mouth of a massive creature who only thought with its stomach.

Then she’d swum beside the shark that was larger than Maketes, and somehow, she hadn’t been so scared. It had only taken a few moments and then all that fear had loosened. And then she’d touched it. The rough skin was something she would never forget in her life. How could anyone? The shark had looked her in the eyes with that black gaze and she’d felt so seen.

Not that the beast had looked at her and recognized only that Ace existed. But like the shark had looked into her soul and measured the weight of her worth.

The undine still held her with her back against his chest. The power in his body was something to marvel at if she had the time to do so. And maybe she did. Maybe she could take a moment to sink into the reality that while this man should despise her and her people for everything they had stolen from the undine, he had protected her. He’d given her the gift of releasing her fear, and that was humbling. She’d only ever been able to do that for herself. And here he was, swimming into her life with the intent to just help her.

Maketes’s arm tightened around her waist as they moved closer to the top of the building. “You are sure this is where you need to be?”

“No, I don’t know where we’re supposed to go. I have a name for an office to go into, because that guy was the last one to have the key. But that’s all I know.”

She felt something shifting against her back. Looking over her shoulder at him, she realized that must have been his gills fluttering against her spine.

Then a muttering grumble echoed behind her, “That man had no plan whatsoever.”

“I’m starting to believe the same thing.”

“He wants you to fail.”

Maybe he did. Maybe Jacob had a larger plan than just this, and it was that he wanted to kill her sister. She had no way of knowing. He had always kept her out of the loop, only using her when he thought he absolutely had to, and she knew that wasn’t from the kindness of his own heart.

As Maketes spun in the water, whirling them closer to the opening, she found the words spilling out of her lips. “I don’t think Jacob cares about anyone but himself. He was imprisoned after killing a lot of people. So many people that I don’t think he even knows how many he killed. He walked into a group of women, children, and men, set a bomb, and then left. Right in the middle of a busy shopping center.”

Maketes twitched around her, his entire body flinching and then hardening as though he had turned to stone. “He killed innocents?”

“No one in Gamma is without fault,” she whispered. “Even me. I took from people who didn’t deserve to be taken from." But she hadn’t, not really. Those people were wealthy, capable, and wouldn’t have noticed that she’d taken that much if their financial advisors hadn’t caught her. She’d stolen from people who could lose money and not even notice.

She might have given it back if she hadn’t been caught. The guilt had been eating her alive. Now? Now she just wanted her own revenge against the people who had put her in Gamma. The people who had taken her away from her sister.

“When I first started talking to Anya,” she started, pressing herself back against him for warmth and strength. “All I could think about was punishing the people who had locked me up. I wasn’t like everyone else in Gamma. I wasn’t a hardened criminal, and it was an offense that should have been forgivable. I just stole some things.”

“My people do not throw away our own, not even the ones who have made mistakes.” Then a low growl rumbled through him. “But people like your... Jacob? We cut the poison from our bloodlines quickly.”

“As you should. We do the same, in a way. But I didn’t think I belonged with all the others, so I was very quick to judge. I wanted to tear Alpha down and all the people who had made it seem like I was less than they were for doing what I had to do to survive.” She shook her head, focusing on the looming building in front of them. “And I did it. I took them all down, scattered them to the seven seas, to an unused tower in Gamma, and back to Beta, where they will be forced to work. I succeeded, and I punished them all.”

Some angry part of her was happy about that. She shouldn’t be. She’d ruined more lives, all for the sake of revenge. There were likely innocents caught in the mix and some people had died. Ace should feel bad about it.

But she didn’t.

“A true warrior knows when to let go of the losses and celebrate the victories,” Maketes said as he paused in front of the glass. “You won. You did what you said you would do. This is a good thing. You deserved to have your needs met.”

She was glad he didn’t turn her around. As it was, she could see the image of them in the glass. She looked awful in his arms. A strange bubble of a human being who had no right to be here, with a monster surrounding her as though he were hunting her. But his words went right through her heart and deep into her soul. When had anyone else ever told her she deserved anything?

“Now I don’t know what to do with myself,” she whispered, her gaze locked on the image of them in the glass. “I am floundering on who I want to be now that I have done what I fought to do for so many years. So I’m still here. Still working with Jacob. Still trying to figure out who I am now that everything is over.”

She could see his arm tightening. Felt him draw her closer to his body, and how there was barely restrained power in his touch that suggested he wanted to hold her even harder. “Then we will figure it out together, Ace. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Why did that hurt so much to hear him say? Why did she want him to turn her around and rip this stupid helmet off?

“Friends,” she repeated. “Of course we are.”

Even though that felt so wrong to say. He hadn’t been her friend when he was helping her destroy Alpha. He hadn’t been her friend when they’d stayed in touch, learning more about each other’s cultures while it was still easy for her to pretend he was just another human. She hadn’t wanted to be friends then and admitting it to herself now was hard enough.

She’d never say these words out loud. Because he wanted to be friends. Just like everyone else always wanted to be friends with her. The think he desired more? That was an impossible dream that neither he nor she could entertain.

Swallowing her emotions down, she pointed to the tear in the building. “Do you think that’s big enough for us to get through?”

“I think I can make it bigger if we have to.”

“No, we can’t. If we make it any bigger, then the pump system might not be able to drain the water. We’ll flood the whole place.”

His hands were so delicate on her as he pushed her toward the tear. The water held her for a few moments before she started to drop like a stone. And even then, he was there to help. He grabbed onto her hips, holding her against the opening so she could yank herself in. And then he was right there with her. Moving her limbs so no metal touched her, making sure her suit was intact even as he swam in the tight space behind her.

All the while, she schooled herself to remember this wasn’t what she thought it was. Sure, they’d talked for a long time. She knew a bit more about his life than the average person, but nowhere near what Anya knew. They’d only exchanged a few messages every day, and that did not mean they’d made any more of a connection than a complicated friendship.

She needed to get out of her own head. This was an undine. A monster. A deep sea creature who likely was going to continue killing people and saw no issues with her having been the cause of an entire human city being destroyed.

It was silly for her to even think he wanted anything more. His careful hands were merely because he thought she was weak. He wasn’t guiding her through the water because he didn’t want her to get hurt anymore than a normal friend would. Their banter back and forth was just because he liked to talk.

Forcing herself to remember what all the other people in Gamma had said about Mira and Anya, she reminded herself of the hatred that others felt for those who sided with undines. She wasn’t a monster fucker. She wasn’t one of those women who fell to the evil attentions of creatures that were never meant to mate with humans.

She was not an animal. And it was wrong to look at him as anything more than that.

The twisted metal surrounding them soon gave way to an opening. Ace moved closer to the light a little too quickly, because she expected him to grab her when the current did. Unfortunately, he didn’t. With a sudden sharp tug, she was ripped through the metal shards and bits of glass before spilling out into the room beyond with all the water that had created a tiny waterfall.

She tumbled so fast that she cracked her head against the floor. Or rather, her helmet. And with that hard strike, all she could see was the crack that formed all the way across it.

“Shit,” she hissed, sliding to a stop as the water seemed to hit a smaller drain system and disappear. The entire room was wet, though. At least she knew it was unlikely anyone else was in the room. No one wanted to be this close to an area of the pavilion that was literally draining sea water into it.

But damn it. Damn it. She needed that helmet and now it was cracked. She couldn’t go out into the ocean with the helmet, now. Even if it could withstand the pressure, there was still the risk that it would fill with water and that she’d drown. If she wasn’t careful, then she would die even with Maketes holding onto her.

Ripping the helmet off the suit, she tossed the useless thing across the room with a sharp scream of rage before she realized where she was standing.

The center of the medical pavilion. The Heart, as it used to be known. This was where all the rich people would have gone to get their treatments, while everyone else waited downstairs for hours to be seen. This was luxury, and what she had seen before was just plain.

There weren’t hard plastic seats here. Thick, plush couches had sunk into themselves with water damage. But they were still a beautiful beige color. The ceilings weren’t so short, instead, they were cathedral ceilings at least sixteen feet tall with glass skylights that revealed more glowing neon signs above her head. The few flickering lights that still remained showed the floor was once perfectly white, although now it was cracked in multiple places.

Opulence lived on, though. The chandelier was hanging by a thread above her head, but it was so beautiful, with chains of glass hanging and reflecting rainbow light. The lobby all surrounded a massive stone fireplace. Real stone, with irregular circles and gray mortar that lasted to this day. The desk at the front was white stone as well, rising out of the floor like it was all one singular piece.

Standing there amongst all of it, she felt a bit like an alien. This wasn’t her world. It wasn’t the world she’d ever been apart of long before she was sent to Gamma. In reality, she hadn’t even realized this existed. No one should live this comfortably when people in Beta had little coffin-like pods to sleep in.

Taking a step farther into the room, she looked over the crack in the wall. It was right through the heart of what had likely been a beautiful mural. But now, all she could tell was that it had once depicted an under the sea scene. Like they didn’t get enough of that.

Walking away from the section of spraying water that cast a cold chill into the air, she approached the main wall of windows. Placing her hand on it, she found herself bathed in a glowing blue light. The nearest neon sign had an arrow pointing farther down the tower with twin turtles on either side. ARCADE, it said.

But that glowing neon light wasn’t the only one she could see. There were countless others. So many of them that she could hardly guess at their numbers as they disappeared into the distance. The entire sea was lit up before her eyes. Her view of Gamma had always been rather limited to what she could see from her clock tower. But this? This was a sprawling metropolis of a city and she hadn’t even realized it was there. She’d been here for almost two years, and she hadn’t known there was so much more to this place than she’d thought.

Two levels below her, she could see the glass bridge that connected this tower to the next. There were people down there, about the size of her thumb, they were so far away. Soon enough, those people would realize that someone else was in their home. Someone they needed to get out of here. But for now, all she could do was stare at them.

Until she realized that she was staring and that at any point, they could look up. That was all it would take for her to be in the worst position possible.

Gasping, she reeled away from the window and started stripping out of her diving suit. Water sprayed all over the white floor, speckles of dirty sea water and dirty silt tinging the droplets dark. Her boots came off next, and she padded barefoot across the floor to the front desk.

“There has to be a registry,” she muttered, walking around and reaching for the top drawer.

Nothing of use. Just a few remaining pieces of an eraser and what looked like old chewing gum.

She tried the next side drawer, but that had nothing in it either. The other side drawer? That one was locked.

Hissing out a breath between her teeth, she grabbed onto the handle and anchored herself with her foot braced against the desk. She’d use her entire weight to open the damn thing if she had to. If it was locked, that meant there might be something useful inside.

She didn’t even hear the groaning from the wall she’d entered from. Nor did she think to pause at the grinding sound of metal and the rushing blast of water that seemed stronger by the moment.