Page 10 of Song of the Abyss

Diving all the way to the bottom, she grabbed the clip and turned her body to kick off from the floor.

But then she noticed the fin. It was a delicate looking frill, just barely sticking out of the pipe that brought fresh sea water into the pool. Though mostly gray, she could see fine filaments of red running through the thin membrane. It was beautiful, a rare color in these parts. But then her gaze followed that fin to what it was connected to, and she felt her heart stop beating.

A monstrous creature lurked in that pipe. An almost human face stared back at her, glinting fangs flashing in the meager light. Though his nose was flat and his jaw broad, he wasn’t remotely like anything she’d seen before. Red edged gills framed his face, but long dark hair tangled around his features in matted strands that looked almost like tentacles.

But his eyes... Oh, those black eyes saw straight into her soul. She barely had a moment to realize that his black hand, webbed and tipped with deep red claws, was gripping the edge of the pipe. He could so easily attack her. She couldn’t even see how large he was, or guess how fast he could move, because he was deep inside the shadows of the pipe.

If she peered a little closer, all she could see was the faintest outline of a muscular chest, and that was... disconcerting.

Belatedly, terror struck her hard in the middle of her body. She felt a bit like she might vomit until the warning bells screamed in her mind that she had to run. Flee. Hide. This creature would eat her alive. Those fangs could tear her flesh from bone so easily she might not even feel it.

Kicking her feet against the bottom of the floor, she launched herself up to the surface. Run. Hide. Flee. All of those words and more kept replaying in her head.

There was an undine in her home. Alpha was supposed to be impossible for anyone to get in or out of. She knew it was. She’d been working with Ace for years on a way to get someone into Alpha without her father knowing. Yet this undine was right in the pipes.

In the very foundation of the city.

Breaking the surface, she sucked in a panicked amount of air, as though that might help her in the slightest. She was going to die. Any minute, she was going to feel those sharp teeth clench around her ankle and drag her back into the depths. Soon the pool would be filled with the billowing blood exiting her body and no one would even know that she was dying.

She should scream for help. Someone might come running if they heard her, but right now she couldn’t force herself to even make a sound. Or maybe she was making noise and she just couldn’t hear the pitiful whines that surely... surely...

Grabbing onto the edge of the pool, she hauled herself out of the water and spun around. Like she had a shark chasing her and if she placed a well-aimed kick, that would make it leave.

But there was nothing in the water. Not at all.

Still breathing hard, her eyes wide in horror at what might have just happened, she reached for Bitsy.

The droid crawled onto her head with words scrolling past her vision so quickly she almost couldn’t read them.

“What were you thinking? What is in the water? Did something try to grab you? I told you we weren’t alone. Why don’t you ever listen?”

“There is something in the water,” she gasped, her eyes still locked on the waves she’d caused as she tried to escape it. “It’s an undine.”

There was a long pause as the droid took in what she said, and then there was the strangest response from the little droid, who had always been more afraid of living than it was of being decommissioned.

“Can I see?” The words vibrated with excitement.

“What?” she gasped. “No, you cannot see. Are you insane? That thing could kill me in an instant.”

“Anything could kill you in an instant. That noise bomb you picked up that destroyed your hearing could have killed you, too. But you still picked it up. You’ve always been an adventurous person, Anya. Now let me see the undine.”

It was one of the longest messages Bitsy had ever played in front of her eyes. The robot was usually quite succinct, even going so far to shorten what people were saying. Anya had a feeling the droid was a rather lazy worker, but that’s what she got for giving the AI its own personality.

Sighing, she shook her head. “I don’t think I can get back in the water.”

“Sure you can.”

“It’s not a good idea, Bitsy! I’m already so out of breath, I don’t think I could stay under the water for more than a few seconds.”

“Try.”

Blowing out a breath, she told herself she could do this because there probably wasn’t an undine under there after all. It was just a figment of her imagination. A fish stuck in the filters that she’d thought was a massive creature.

No one could get in Alpha without her father knowing. Alpha was the safest place in the ocean for humans, and had been for almost two hundred years. The city was a prison as much as it was a home.

She slithered back into the water, her eyes on the pipe like something monstrous was going to burst out of it at any moment. But nothing moved. The fin she’d seen before wasn’t there either.

“Well.” Bitsy said as she sank into the water. “That’s incredibly disappointing.”

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