Page 17 of Whispers of the Deep

Three other men were joining her. She had the belated thought as she was smashed against the side of the tunnel. She just had to make it until they got here.

Mira reached to the belt around her waist and tried to grab her serrated knife. It wouldn’t do much against a shark, but it might keep her alive. Or at least, make the creature think twice.

Whipping out the blade, she blindly struck but soon realized that every one of her attempts to hit something vital was stopped by what felt like a... forearm?

Twisting, she tried to turn in the water, but the damned deep sea flippers on her feet made that hard. They were built for long, graceful movements. They propelled her through the water quickly, but she had to be in control of her body.

Peering down, she saw a thick forearm wrapped around her waist. The darker skin, the slight yellow speckles that she’d not quite been expecting to see, and the thin fissures of bright blue that glowed like veins on top of those clawed hands.

Damn it, she knew exactly who had her in his grasp.

The undine, the idiot who had come far too close to the city and now he was grabbing her in the water?

Mira fought with even more intent. How dare he? He thought he could attack her outside the city? They had a deal. Or at least, some semblance of a deal. She’d saved his life. He saved hers. They were even. The damned thing needed to leave her alone.

Twisting in his grip, she finally spun herself around in his arms. But now he was holding onto her suit and she couldn’t wiggle without risking damage to the material.

If she somehow got away, there was no way she could explain the claw marks on an expensive new piece of equipment. Besides, she needed this suit to stay alive down here. The pressure, the cold, all of it would kill her instantly.

Nervous, she punched her fists into his ribs, but he didn’t budge. Didn’t even look down at her as he swam her far away from this place and toward who knows what.

Speaking of... She craned her neck to look at where they were going and all she could see was the edge of the cliff where Beta had built their city. A cliff that dove deep.

Real deep.

“No,” she said, her voice warped through the rebreather. “No, you can’t take me down there.”

She didn’t know what was that far underneath the waves, but that didn’t matter. She knew what the pressure would do to her. She needed a better suit, a much better mask, and if they kept going like this...

Mira struggled again, slamming her hands over and over against the muscular prison. “Stop! Listen to me, I can’t. We can’t. I don’t know how deep you want to go, and I have no idea how far down that even goes. I’m an engineer, not a pilot. But listen to me, undine, I can’t!”

He didn’t pay her any mind. She stared up at him, wondering how much it would hurt if she grabbed a handful of his gills. But then she remembered the knife in her hand. Stupid. She was so stupid when she panicked.

Fear controlled her body. Fear of the unknown, the depths of the ocean, of the blackness behind her and how the currents seemed to work in his favor. They were already at the lip of it, already so close to the abyss that opened like the maw of a massive sea creature.

And she had no idea what he wanted from her. Only that his kind killed hers.

She reacted. Mira slashed out at him with the serrated blade and felt his shock ripple across her body. His fins flared, his arms loosened, and those gills around his neck puffed out like some fancy collar she’d seen in the history books.

But then she was falling. No, she was floating away from him and a current had snagged onto her. She didn’t have any way to control herself, nor did she know where it was taking her. Only that the current ripped her out of his arms and down over the edge.

“Fuck,” she grunted, screaming out a growl of anger at the end of the word.

She kicked her feet, flailed her arms, anything to stop the rioting movement of her body tumbling down into darkness.

Her flashlight illuminated dust particles and a rock wall. That was all she could see, and even then, it swirled around her as she wildly spun through the water. Dust turned gold, then red, then white as all the light disappeared other than her own. Color was hard to see or decipher. And then the rock wall fell away too.

She had the unnerving sensation that she no longer existed. There was nothing around her, no sense of ground or where she might be. Just nothingness that even her light could not penetrate. Particles came and went. Little dust motes that floated by her. She swore at one point she stared into an open mouth full of teeth.

There was nothing. Just her and the open darkness of the abyss. She did not know where up or down was. She couldn’t even hazard a guess. But she had the image of herself as a single speck of dust on a blank canvas of darkness and a monstrous being beneath her that she could not see.

And then suddenly her back struck something hard and unyielding.

Mira turned. Her legs tangled together as her long fins caught on each other, but somehow she reached out and grabbed onto the rock she had hit.

It wasn’t much. But it existed. It was sturdy, and that was enough right now. Breathing hard, she could hear the gears at the back of her head churning to make enough air for her to gulp down, but it wouldn’t last forever. She hadn’t built it for someone to breathe so frantically.

Fingers digging into the rock, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to control her breath. In and out. She couldn’t count to five on the inhale, but she could count to three. So she did that ten times before switching to four, and then slowly focusing on the rest of her body.

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