Page 7 of Whispers of the Deep

But the water splashed out of him, rolling over her feet, and then he didn’t collapse. The opposite, in fact. He stood up straighter and those sealed nostrils flared as he took a deep breath of the limited air still in the tunnel.

“Oh,” she whispered. “You have two sets of lungs.”

Considering the dark glint in those black eyes, she had a feeling he was going to use the limited air he’d just gotten to murder her. He lifted those clawed, webbed hands, coiled his tail underneath him like a snake, and she only had a few seconds to convince him to stop.

“Hold on!” Mira shouted, holding up her hands as though that might give him pause. “Wait, wait!”

And for some strange reason... he did. He paused right where he was, his head cocked to the side, watching for her next move.

She backed toward the nearest panel of glass and pointed at it. Gesturing with her hands as she mimed what she was saying, Mira tried to explain her plan in the best way possible. “I’m going to break through this glass. The room is going to flood with water, and you’re going to pick me up and carry me to that glass box over there.”

Pointing to the elevator wasn’t going the way she wanted, because he didn’t really seem to understand what she was saying. The air was so thin now, already used up by too many people. And she’d sealed off the rest of it, which wasn’t...

Damn it, she was going to start hallucinating if she didn’t hurry up.

Adding a frantic, “Please don’t kill me,” Mira turned her back on the undine and put her attention on the wall in front of her.

The glass paneling was attached by industrial grade metal. It was almost impossible to break the glass this deep into the ocean, unless it was weakened by repeated strikes as the monster behind her had proven. He’d busted through the crack easily enough, but she thought it was probably a massive stone after an earthquake that had originally caused that crack.

Her only option was to melt the rivets. They would give, and then she could hit it hard enough to pop the panel.

Firing up her welder, she started on the bottom ones. It took a bit to melt them. They were damn thick beasts, but she got the bottom done quick enough. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck and into her eyes, blurring her vision. Speed was of the essence, though, no time to wipe it away.

Hands grabbed onto her waist, lifting her to the higher rivets.

Mira gasped and looked down at the massive, clawed hands suddenly spanning her entire stomach and hips. “Fuck, you’re big,” she muttered, before turning her attention back to the remaining bolts she had to get through.

Just a few more, and she’d be done. Just a couple more, and then she could slam her feet into the panel and knock it free.

The air was gone. All of a sudden, just gone. Every breath she took was a struggle, like she was trying to breathe underwater. There just wasn’t enough oxygen because her fucking welder was using it all up to spark the fire.

The last rivet was almost melted. Almost, and suddenly, her welder went out.

“No,” she muttered, slamming it against the glass as if that would help. She sparked it again and again, but there wasn’t enough air to get the flame going. Nowhere near enough.

They were dead. Goners. They’d find her body floating with the undine’s. Or maybe he’d still be alive, eating her flesh in a tank of his own creation.

Fuck. This was bad.

She went limp, her lungs heaving as she tried to suck in what little air there might still be. But she was getting a little sluggish now. What had her father always said about breath? She exhaled something that wasn’t oxygen, that’s for sure. And she always had to be real careful to not use her welder in areas that didn’t have enough oxygen.

Mira just couldn’t remember why, as her brain struggled to keep her heart beating.

Heavy thuds broke through her thoughts, and she watched as the undine coiled his body and struck the panel. Again. Again. It had to hurt. His shoulder already hung awkwardly out of the socket, but he kept going. Hitting the panel over and over until a little water came out from the bottom.

She was delirious enough to giggle at the sight. If she’d had more air to speak, she might have even said, “Oh look, now I’m going to drown.”

But he didn’t stop at the sound she made. The massive, powerful tail of the undine did a lot of the work as he slammed his upper body on the panel so many times that it eventually bent back like the top of a sardine can. Peeled back and jagged too, just like she’d seen some of the engineers eat out of.

The water rushed in, sweeping her body back against the wall and pinning her there until the entire world turned into slow motion. Everything floated. Her welder, her hair, the undine who glided toward her with so much grace it made her eyes sting with tears.

Oh, wait. That was the saltwater.

He moved closer to her, those sharp teeth flashing, and she wondered if this was when she would die. It would be nice to not be awake for whenever he took a bite out of her body.

Instead, he moved closer and then sealed his lips over hers.

Oh, he was cold. That was her first thought. And she was surrounded by deep, icy ocean water that already squeezed her chest and made what little air was in there come out. Mere minutes and she’d go into hypothermic shock, if she somehow managed to breathe. Somehow, his lips were colder than all that, but smooth as they slid over hers.

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