Echoes of the Tide (Deep Waters #3)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

T he building bathed in yellow light said PAINTED LADY in the neon glow outside of the building. She’d expected the doctor to live in a much nicer area of Gamma, but this apartment building was just run down. Even before the flooding had occurred—before the undine had attacked the city—this hadn’t been a great place to live. She could see it in the rickety way they had tried to make the building stand a little straighter. The rough supports were already falling apart.

Someone had gone to great lengths to make sure this building remained standing. And soon, all that effort would fail.

They had to get in and out as quickly as they possibly could. She didn’t want to linger any longer than she had to. They found an opening at the bottom. Not a crack, like in some of the other buildings, but a genuine opening that was likely meant to make it easier to service the building that clearly needed far more repairs than the others.

Maketes swam them up into the air, narrowing his gaze as he made sure no one was in the room they entered. But this building looked abandoned.

Considering the way the walls were already bending in on themselves, she had a good guess why there weren’t any people here. It seemed like this wasn’t safe, even for the worst criminals.

The entrance appeared to be some kind of tech room. There were plenty of old servers and huge computer parts that were all rotting here. Each one was waterlogged beyond reason, but there was a small service droid in the corner that bumped against the wall repeatedly. Poor thing was stuck on something and couldn’t move.

“This place isn’t safe,” Maketes intoned, his voice deep with worry. “We should find another way in.”

“I don’t know where his apartment is, though. I have to find some kind of a directory before we can do that.” She wriggled in his arms, trying to get free. “I can reprogram the droid.”

If she fiddled with that box on the back, the droid definitely had a map of the tower. Maybe it wasn’t as rusted shut as it looked. Usually, service droids were sent all over the entire tower to fix whatever needed to be addressed. Which meant this droid knew where Doctor Faust’s apartment was.

They were so close. She could taste it.

Maketes tightened his arm around her waist, holding her a little firmer against his chest. “Wait. We don’t know if anyone is here.”

“I can tell no one is here. And if they are, then what is the problem with getting out? They aren’t in this area.” She wiggled a little harder. “Let me go.”

“There could be danger.”

She twisted hard and then ducked underneath the water. With the added help of being very slippery, she was able to move out of his grip and kick her feet to the edge. She knew, without a doubt, he could catch her if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He let her clamber out of the water, dripping wet, and plod toward the droid that was still banging itself against the wall.

The droid was little more than a square box. Someone had put wheels on the bottom, but she had a feeling this service droid had been used as a catch all for tools. It would arrive wherever it was needed with the tools of choice, and then disappear once the technician didn’t need it anymore. Ace caught the back of it, gently holding it in place as it tried to move forward again.

“Damn,” she muttered. “You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?”

Even Tera clacked in her pocket, as though the other droid could feel its pain. It had bashed itself against the wall so many times that its screen was cracked. Shattered into jagged little shards that showed the inside wiring and the motherboard panel that was somehow, miraculously, still dry.

She didn’t even have to get the rusted back of it open. She just turned it around, held it in place with her foot, and then crouched down in front of the shattered glass.

“All it takes is a couple wires in different places,” she muttered as she plunged her hand into the shadows. “Tera, do you mind?”

Her droid clacked and then raced down her arm. The beads attached themselves to the metal sides, running up and down on the inside until they found what she needed. The motherboard was a start, but without a screen, there wasn’t a lot she could do with this droid. Unless it had a controller.

Sometimes service droids did. They broke down often, so a controller was placed on the inside. That way, someone could manually drive the little droid back to the depot, where they would get fixed. And there it was. A controller, just like she needed. Of course, it was in the farthest back of the compartment, and she hissed out a long hesitant breath as she sank her entire arm into the cavity.

“Careful,” Maketes muttered, as though he was scared if he spoke too loud he’d distract her.

“I know.”

“There are shards of glass all over that thing.”

“I’m aware,” she grunted, shifting her hand through the back pieces. There were loose bolts all throughout, and frayed wires that she was a little concerned would shock her if she got too close to them.

Then her hand closed around the controller, and she gently pulled it out. Tera guided her the entire way, clacking once for right and twice for left, until she had the piece in her hands and was free from the threat of cuts.

“You hurt yourself,” Maketes grumbled.

Peering at her forearm, she shrugged. “Just a couple scrapes. Nothing broke skin.”

He grumbled a bit more about irresponsible women and how she couldn’t take care of herself, but he stayed in the water and that was the best she could ask for. He didn’t insist that she come to him, either.

Turning the controller on, she stared down at the bare bones coding that made up the droid’s features.

“Not much here, Tera,” she muttered, stretching out one of her legs when her knee protested. “They must have taken all the droids with more detailed software.”

But with a couple more wires placed in the right spots, the droid’s controller came back online in a big way. The long tube in her hand didn’t have the keypad anymore, though. So she grabbed one of Tera’s pieces and attached it to the end.

“Can you get me into the database? I need to search for Doctor Faust’s apartment number.”

And then it was easy. The coding flew in front of her eyes, easily read after she’d spent years figuring out how to program droids. He was on one of the lower levels, thank goodness, and she knew how to find him in just a few moments.

Turning to look at the undine behind her, she knew that was likely going to be an issue. He was already glaring at her, with his arms crossed over his massive chest. He looked like he was about to tell her to get back into the water at any second.

She was a droid lover. Her entire life had been wrapped around their creation, their feelings, how people had turned droids into something masterful and beautiful at the same time. So it broke her heart a bit to turn the droid toward the pool of water. It wouldn’t survive the icy salt. But also, maybe it didn’t need to. The poor thing deserved a quiet death.

“I’m going to Doctor Faust’s apartment,” she said. “You’re going to follow me in the water because that’s the safest way for us to do this. Once I get the key, you can come find me back here.”

“It’s dangerous, Ace.”

She nodded. “Yeah, so far this entire adventure has been really dangerous. But I think that’s a risk we’re both going to have to take.”

She released her hold on the droid and watched it go careening toward him. It worked better than she could have guessed. He didn’t dodge it, because he was so surprised that there was a metal box lunging for him. So it caught him right in the chest and made him sink a bit.

Hopefully, the glass didn’t cut into him. She’d hate to be the reason he had yet another scar.

Then she darted out of the room with Tera in her grip. He wouldn’t follow her into the tower, even though he had in the others. But even if he did, she was running way too fast for him to catch up. She skidded to a halt in the hallway beyond, though.

No wonder no one was here. This tower really was falling apart. Massive beams had already tumbled through the ceiling, leaving huge pillars in her wake with dust and insulation matted around them. Wires hung in sparking ends that cascaded fire onto a floor that was so cracked, she had no idea what it used to be.

“Carefully then,” she muttered, picking her way through the pieces.

It took a little while to even get out of that hallway. A chunk of insulation had fallen onto her shoulders, and she’d never thanked the gods more for being the size she was. She was strong enough to take that hit, but other people might have folded under the impact. As it was, there was insulation in her hair and some of it had gotten down her shirt, so itchy she wanted to scratch her skin off.

But once she got through that terrible hallway, it opened up again. She was suddenly reminded of Beta. The narrow hallways were more tubular than square. Halogen lights, a particular kind of lighting that always brought up memories from her childhood, swung from one end of the ceiling. There were no windows on the walls, either.

When she was little, it used to make her nervous. But now, as an adult, all she could see was the city she had fallen in love with, and the one she missed.

Sighing, she followed the map that the droid had given her. In her mind she repeated the steps, four lefts, two rights, go straight through the four way and then... voila. She avoided all the chunks of insulation on the ground and a few more beams, but then she was here. Right in front of the apartment where the key was supposed to be.

“How do you think we get in?” she asked Tera, running her fingers along the box where a keycard should be installed.

Maybe if she had the right tools, she could get Tera to hack it. Doors weren’t all that hard to open if one knew the right tricks, but they were a little difficult to open without the right tools. She supposed she could just hit the box off the door. That was always an option. But there might be a mechanism to lock it even worse if that happened.

But then Tera rolled out of her pocket and onto the floor, hitting the ground with a hard thud. All five pieces pressed against the bottom of the door, clacking and making all the noise that it could. Taking the hint, she pushed the bottom with her foot.

And the door swung open.

“Ominous,” she muttered, before walking into the obviously abandoned room.

The whole thing had been ransacked. Every bit of it. She could tell there used to be a small living room to her right, everything in browns and beiges. A sofa had been ripped apart so much all she could see were the bones of the inside that had been under the cushions. A coffee table was little more than shards on the ground, and a hole in the ceiling had half a beam hanging out of it with water dripping onto a ripped up recliner.

To her right was a kitchen, but all the drawers had been pulled out. They were all on the floor, some of them broken beyond fixing. Even the doors were hanging off their handles.

There was a single window looking outside into the sea, and it was little more than the size of her head. But the small amount of illumination turned the entire room into a sickly yellow shade.

“No one’s been here for a really long time,” she said. Her feet crunched through the debris as she headed toward the back. “There has to be something in his office, right?”

But the door in the back didn’t lead to an office. It led to a tiny room with the remains of a bed and an open area that looked like a closet. This doctor hadn’t even had his own private bathroom in this place.

“Damn it.” Now what? Was this a dead end?

She had nothing to go on. No hope. If this entire place had been stripped for parts, someone else had the key.

But then Tera attached itself to the wall, zipped up it, and then was right against what looked like a security box. Her droid fiddled with something and then...

Holograms. More holograms.

She watched as people broke the door down, muttering things she couldn’t quite make out through the tinny recording. She sank down onto her haunches, watching as they destroyed the entire room. They were decorated in strange costumes, it seemed. Like they lived only during Halloween. Masks, feathered hats, and colored patterned clothing.

“The toy tower?” she muttered. “Why would they be here?”

A few of them carried bats that they used to break everything in sight. A few others had knives that they used to attack the couch and chair like it was a person they were gutting. But her eyes were on one of the men who was not partaking. He was a little older than the others, gray-haired, and his eyes were too aware of everything around him.

He was looking for something. While all the others were pure chaos in holographic form around her, he was the one who was the eye of the storm. She watched him move slowly, chatting with the others, pretending to be part of the fanfare. But then he slipped into the bedroom. He fiddled underneath a space where the bed might have once been and then slipped something into his pocket.

Without even looking like anything had happened, he joined the others, grabbed a bat, and started destroying things as well. Like he hadn’t just taken something very important from this room.

“Who is he?” she muttered, narrowing her eyes on the hologram. “Because he has what we need.”

She had no way of knowing other than going to the toy tower on her own. Which... wasn’t entirely something she wanted to do.

But it wasn’t like she had a choice. Ace had to get that key, and this was the next step in her plan.

Blowing out a breath, she held out her hand for Tera to hop into it. “All right. Looks like we’re going into the mouth of hell itself.”

She just had to convince Maketes to take her there.