Page 98 of Song of the Abyss

Bitsy flashed a little red light over her eye, likely trying to pretend to be one of the devices that people used to see through the walls to find broken pipes. But she couldn’t put any words there or the man would see them too.

“I’m fine,” she replied, trying to deepen her voice but having no idea if she succeeded. “Just needed a breather.”

“You’re telling me. Been a long day.” He palmed the back of his neck and dropped his head. That’s when she lost sight of his lips. All of a sudden, she couldn’t tell what he was saying. Then he looked at her, and she knew he had said something she was supposed to respond to.

Fuck.

What did he say? What was she supposed to say in response? He was going to know that something was off and she didn’t belong here. She was so fucked. So...

He tilted his head to the side. “You can’t hear me, can you?”

She shook her head. Why would she lie? She couldn’t hear him, and could only make out a bit of what he was saying right now. It wasn’t like she could say just anything, and he’d believe she was realistically continuing the conversation.

“That’s all right.” He enunciated the words better this time. “My brother lost his hearing down here, too. All of us take something home from Alpha. You sure you are good?”

Nodding, Anya wondered if it would really be this easy to convince him to leave her alone.

“Night, then.”

And then he walked away.

He just walked away, and she waited a few breaths until Bitsy flared up again. “Left door.”

“Right,” she whispered before using her father’s key card to spill into the lab.

None of the technicians or scientists were here at this time of night. But she still made Bitsy do a sweep for any heat signatures before she felt safe enough to yank the stifling fabric off her face. Only then did she breathe a little easier.

They’d made it into the room where she had lost her hearing and where everything in her life had changed. She didn’t even look at the area where the explosion had gone off. All she did was walk right to the back, where she had never been. It was one of the few unlisted rooms in the schematics they had found.

Another set of words flashed in front of her eyes as she approached it, these in the reddish pink color that was usually Daios. “What are you doing, kalon?”

“This is the only time, big guy.” She flashed her father’s card and watched as the door opened. “I know it’s the middle of the night, but I’m getting tired of waiting.”

“Wait until I get the others.”

“Can’t do that.”

“Wait.” Bitsy even underlined the word, as though he had said it with more command than normal. “You will wait, Anya. It’s too risky. What if something happens while you are in there? What if your father comes in? I cannot help you from here.”

“I know,” she whispered, the words breaking in her throat. “But this is what I came here to do. Bitsy, end contact with the dome. Only provide visuals.”

“Anya wait?—”

And then the contact was severed. She felt a bit like she’d cut off one of her own limbs, but this had to be done. She couldn’t be distracted, not even by him.

Stepping into the room, she covered her mouth with her hand. They weren’t even hiding what they were doing. An undine laid out on a table, dissected. Their tail was limp on the ground, the lovely pale lavender color dulled into a shade of sickly grey in death. It was a female, she thought, considering the breasts that caused the gaping open chest to droop.

Anya couldn’t look at her for very long, so she turned the lens in that direction and closed her eyes. She counted to twenty, slowly turning her head up and down so that they could see the entirety of the woman who had been killed. And then, when her head was turned away again, she opened her eyes.

There were four cylindrical tanks on the wall opposite her. They looked like tubes, except three of them had undines in them. One already looked dead. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but there wasn’t a spark of life in the floating body. The other two were alive, though.

One was still asleep. She walked up to the tank, tears already burning in her eyes because she knew the sleeping one was probably the next one to be experimented on. If she didn’t do this in time, then this undine’s life was on her hands.

The male was so pretty. Delicate green fins fanned out around his young face, not a single mark of a scar on his features. Not like Daios.

“The dome is trying to contact you,” Bitsy said. “They are saying you should be focusing on getting the explosives. I agree. You are risking yourself every moment you are here.”

“I know,” she replied. Then she turned her attention to the last tank.

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