Page 104 of Song of the Abyss

“No, she didn’t want to marry me.” His face warped, as though he was trying to pretend to be sad. “But when your father tragically died in a horrible diving accident, she had nowhere to go but to crawl her way back to me. And she would have been the perfect bride if she hadn’t taken the coward’s way out and slit her wrists in that fucking bathtub! If she wanted to die, I could have made her a martyr, but no. She had to take that from me as well. Thankfully, I had a replacement ready to go.”

Bitsy circled the gun in her father’s hand and put up the word “click”. He’d taken the safety off the gun. He was going to shoot her. He was going to put a bullet in her head and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“Mom killed herself?” she whispered, taking one step back as though the words hurt her. But really, her head was reeling with all this new information. “You’re not even my father?”

“No. It was easier to tell you that I was, though. Kept you real quiet over all these years.” He gestured up and down her body with the gun. “You look just like her. The golden dream of Alpha. Proof that our city was born in nothing but beauty. Years ago, they would have worshipped you as a paragon. Perhaps they would have said you were sent to us by god himself. Do you know that? You’ve always wielded that beauty so well. Just like her.”

No. She hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted any ounce of her looks, nor had she ever wanted the attention.

“But then I went and touched something I wasn’t supposed to,” she whispered. “And I wasn’t perfect anymore.”

Bitsy threw up an image of someone giving another person a hug, and she’d strangely forgotten that the droid was even on her head. She was so used to reading the words from her father’s lips that she hadn’t noticed she was reading the words transcribed in front of her. She’d just... existed.

Her shoulders rounded forward in defeat. And the General’s head tilted back with a laugh that she knew must be cruel and cutting.

“Yes, you ruined that a bit. But surprisingly, people seemed to love you even more after your little mistake. Strange, I had thought it would prove that you were just as broken as we all thought you were. But no. They loved you because you were a little broken bird who needed them to put you back together.”

“I was never broken.” She curled her fingers even more tightly around the scalpel blade, as though to remind herself that she wasn’t defenseless. “I became so much stronger. It’s a shame that you haven’t recognized that, General. But allow me to tell you that I am far more than you could ever dream.”

“That’s good to know. I’ll tell them all those were your last words. They’ll love that.”

He pointed the gun at her head again, and she had the feeling that now was the time. That everything was about to happen and if she was right, she had saved them all.

The soft smile on her face gave him pause. “What are you grinning about?” he snarled.

“You don’t know everything, General. Even though you like to think that you do.”

“I have my eyes everywhere. Even in your little pod. I know they’re coming for you, and we will be ready to mow them down with all the gunfire that exists in this city. I will destroy them and become the General that no one ever forgets.”

“Right,” she replied. “If only I hadn’t set off the bombs.”

“What bombs?” His face twisted in a snarl and he turned, giving her the smallest window of time.

Anya spun and ran. She darted behind another table before turning it onto its side. She could feel it shaking, and could only assume that her father was shooting at her. But she was behind enough metal to keep her safe for a few moments, pressed against the wall as she was. It was the best chance for her to survive the coming explosion.

As she whispered a countdown to herself, she let memories of her few moments with Daios play through her eyes. She’d tried so hard not to think of him through all of this, because if she got lost in those memories she wasn’t certain that she would ever do it.

But now she could remember the soft surprise in his eyes at her touch. The soft way he’d brushed his fingers through her hair. The wide-eyed expression he got when she touched him. All of those wonderful memories as she counted down with Bitsy.

Love you, appeared on her screen.

Touching her fingers to the small droid on her head, she whispered, “I love you too, you know.”

The words hovered above her eyes as the countdown hit one. And then everything exploded.

38

Daios

He’d nearly made it to the city when he noticed there were others. People of Water who he did not recognize, all of them swimming toward Alpha with him. He had made it so quickly. How were others able to join him?

They must have been lying in wait, he realized. Maketes must have done something, but he couldn’t focus on what his brother had done at all.

There was a hole in one of his hearts that bled. One of them beat for the other, because half of him had died the moment that bomb went off. She was gone. He was so certain of it that even the lights on his body wouldn’t work. She was dead, and he had to find her body to bring her home.

He watched the other undines join him with a numbness that spread throughout all of his fins. He could hardly swim at all. Everything felt rather mechanical, as though the sea goddess herself pulled the strings of his body to move him forward. Not that he wanted to.

Would she be limp in the water when he found her? Already he could see the blood surrounding her like a graceful dress of crimson. She would float down within the glass of the city, a creature trapped beyond measure. Golden hair would coil around her head, stained red with more blood as her graceful spine would curl in on itself.

---