Page 90 of Whispers of the Deep

He heard it before he realized they were going to attack him. Spinning, he flicked his tail and shot forward, but the net still caught his fluke. Struggling, he had to slice through the cords before another reached around him. Then another. Then there were hands, ripping and tearing and pulling until there were ropes around his neck, around his arms, up and over his tail. All of them binding him to the ground. To anchors he had not seen before.

Straining against his chains, he could feel the muscles of his neck bulging as his gills flared to suck in more air. Mitéra floated above him, giving directions to what had once been his pod.

His brother was with them. His red brother, full of so much rage since the day he was born. But this time, Daios looked down at him with sadness and pity. As if to say it didn’t have to be this way. We could have stopped this together.

“Not him,” he snarled. “Mitéra, if there was ever a time you respected me, you will not send him.”

His hearts raced, thundering in his chest with anxiety because he knew if Daios was sent to her, that Mira would be dead the moment she laid eyes on him. His brother would destroy everything that he held so dear.

“Not him?” Mitéra’s bell hair undulated, pulling her a little closer to his bound body. “Then you may choose, son of my soul. Choose who ends the achromo.”

So they were going to kill her. No matter what, Mitéra wanted her dead, and this wasn’t... It wasn’t right. She didn’t deserve to die because he had chosen life with his kairos.

Frantically, he searched the gazes of everyone in his pod. Someone who would know there was a mercy to pity.

Gaze locking with Maketes, he knew his brother would do the right thing. He trusted this light-hearted brother of his to know what he was saying.

“Maketes,” he said. “He has always known that there is beauty in forgiveness.”

His yellow finned brother seemed to hesitate before nodding. “I will show her swift mercy, Arges.”

It wasn’t enough for him to feel any sense of reassurance, but he could only pray to the ancients that they sent Maketes to her with kindness. Otherwise, he had already lost the best gift the sea had ever given him.

He had failed his people. He had failed his mate.

This rotting future reeked of despair, and he had no idea how to fix it.

Thirty-Five

Mira

Mira poked at the small incision on her neck. Whatever the tendril of his had emitted was impossible to get out of the hole. Byte had told her to stop touching it, that he had permanently changed her body as well as his own. If she pulled that goo out, there was no way of healing it back up. She could breathe strange for the rest of her life or she might fill her lungs with blood and drown in her own fluids.

Realistically, she wanted to avoid both of those options. But that didn't mean she wasn't going to poke at it and at least look.

It wasn't a gill, that much was certain. She didn't think that was even possible to change her so much that she grew gills. Not without surgical intervention. But still, it was a strange looking dark dot on her neck that maybe looked a little like a gill.

"What do you think I should do?" she finally asked, turning around to look at Byte.

"About what?" The little robot hadn't had much to say for a while now. It was silent, scanning her often and then disappearing back into the box like it had a tiny lab in there with which to look over the documents of her changes.

"I... I don't know." Mira finally left the mirror to sit down in front of Byte. "About everything."

"I don't think you have a lot of choice in any matter as of yet."

"I could go back to Beta."

Byte snorted. "You couldn't get back to Beta. You don't even know where it is."

"No, but you do." The droid froze, and she knew she'd gotten it backed into a corner. "Of course you know where it is, Byte. You have the entire ocean mapped out in those memory banks of yours. You could get me to Beta, to Alpha, Gamma, even a few of the forgotten cities that have long been flooded. There are probably a thousand places you keep in that head of yours that you could tell me to hide in. So why aren't you?"

It grumbled a few times before muttering something so quietly she couldn't quite make it out.

"I'm not sure why you aren't helping me more, but I think there is a good reason for it." She tapped the side of the box gently. "So why don't you just tell me?"

Byte sighed, and a few clunks echoed from inside the box before its projector appeared. On the glass of the dome, and emitting out into the water, it showed the blonde woman it had before. "You remember her?"

"Alys Fairweather, the woman you served before she disappeared."

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