Page 12 of Whispers of the Deep

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.

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