Echoes of the Tide (Deep Waters #3)

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

T hey’d received a message. The logo on the sealed message that Byte had been transmitted was just a giant “T”.

Mira had her fist pressed to her lips, a scowl wrinkling her brow as she stared at the projection on the wall. “It’s a trap,” she said. “The moment we open that, they’ll know where we are.”

“Why would they have sent a message?” Anya asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. If they knew how to get in touch with Byte, then they already know how to track us.”

That was a sobering thought.

“If I may?” Ace asked as she walked up to Byte.

The little droid was always so kind, even when she was asking to open him up from the back. But Maketes had found a tablet to give her, one that would allow her to access the coding more easily. She had a feeling “found” meant that he’d stolen it from somewhere, but who was she to ask? She’d stolen plenty in her life.

But he’d also returned with an entire case of items for her sister and the other three humans, who now had their own section of the pod where they all lived. He had been more than kind in providing for all of them. Just as she expected, choosing to stay with him had been the best choice she’d ever made.

Plugging into the back of Byte’s unit, she scanned through the coding to see if there was a location that it was tracking. But there wasn’t one.

“Huh,” she muttered, furrowing her brow as she looked through the long scrolling nonsense of code. “That’s strange.”

“What’s strange?” Mira asked.

“The code doesn’t have a location, but it looks like...” She glanced over at Anya. “Hey Bitsy, come here for a second.”

The droid hopped off Anya’s head and let Ace plug into her back. And there it was. The same code. It was just that Bitsy’s unit didn’t have a projection capability, so the droid likely didn’t know what to do with it. She could have put the transmission on Anya’s glass, but that wasn’t really the function of the droid.

“It’s in both droids,” she muttered.

Ace leapt into movement. She raced for her sister’s room with all the droids they had saved, bursting through the door just as her sister was already standing. “Maura,” Laura was already saying.

“Don’t open the message.”

“We weren’t planning to.”

The small glider droid in Laura’s hands already had the back of it open, connected to a very similar tablet by a handful of wires. “Every single one of them has the same message, though.”

“Yeah, I was worried about that.” She slumped against the wall. “This is bad.”

Her mind raced, trying to figure out what it could even mean. Tau hadn’t sent the message to them directly. They had sent it to every single droid that was operational. That, somehow, was even worse.

Mira cleared her throat from outside of the room. “Want to fill us in, Ace?”

“Right.” She dragged a hand down her face. “Tau sent that message to every functional droid in the region, which means they have some kind of technology that tracks every droid that’s been made. Which is... insane to even consider. I hesitate to open the message. Whatever droid opens it is going to be completely under Tau’s control, is my guess. That will override any function that any droid has. I wouldn’t... I don’t know if I would open it.”

Because part of her wanted to know what the city had to say. Clearly, they knew that the undine had humans working with them.

“What if another person opens the message in the cities?” Anya asked, her face screwed up in confusion. “They won’t know who we are if they’re having people opening it everywhere.”

The young man with the glasses—whose name was Eddie—muttered, “They don’t care about other people.”

“What?” Ace asked.

“They know that people are going to open it in the other two cities. They don’t have to look at those pings, and likely already moved them out of the pool of locations they’re looking at. As far as we know, and they know, we’re the only ones who would have access to opening it who don’t live in a city.” He gulped. “It’s all laid out for them.”

“Shit,” Ace muttered. “Call the undine in. We need to talk to them.”

Anya had already turned, but then called out, “Already here!”

Of course they were. The longer she was with Maketes, the more it felt like he knew she was nervous before she even realized she was. Darting toward the moon pool, she practically ran into the room where the undine were waiting for them.

It was just Maketes at least, which made it easier to blurt out the words. “We got a message from Tau, but I don’t think it’s safe to open here.”

Bless the man she’d chosen, he didn’t even question her. “Okay. Where do you want us to open it?”

“You think we should open it?”

He hesitated. “I think they sent us a message for a reason, and we all deserve to know what it is. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a trap.” She glanced over at Mira, who looked far paler than her skin usually was. The freckles dusting her nose stood out in stark relief as the engineer gulped.

“I agree,” Mira replied. “I think it’s a trap. I think they’re going to send every bit of weaponry they have the moment that message is opened. Our own curiosity could be the death of us.”

That was all she could think, too.

But then a second head popped up through the water. This one larger. So much larger. The massive purple undine stretched up through the water, his hand landing on the floor as he pulled himself a little higher through the water.

She’d known Fortis was big. She’d seen him in the water plenty of times, and even talked with him just in casual conversation. So Ace had believed she was comfortable with the big guy until this moment.

He was massive out of the water. His hand was the size of her head, and for a second, she didn’t feel like she was safe.

“Fortis,” she said with a soft sound at the end of the word. Damn it, she needed to get ahold of herself. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Do you know what’s going on?”

He reached out that massive hand and hovered it palm up before her face. “Give me a droid. I will open it somewhere safe.”

“I don’t know that there is somewhere safe.”

He grinned, the flashing of those sharp-edged teeth enough to send terror skittering throughout her body. “It has been a long time since I’ve been invited to a hunt, little achromo. Give me the droid. Tau has been my destiny for many years.”

She handed him the glider and then pointed to the side. “That button. Hit that and the message will play. You’ll need a solid surface to project the message onto.”

“I care little for the message,” Fortis said, his eyes already swirling with those terrible colors.

He sank beneath the water and Maketes made a strangely high-pitched noise, almost like a whistle. “That big beast scares me.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“If anyone could manage Tau’s warriors, it’s him.” He met her gaze with those pitch black eyes that reflected her terrified expression. “He’s killed more than all of us combined. Fortis is unbeatable.”

“We’ll see,” Mira muttered. “I have a feeling he’s about to be tested.”