Page 1 of Echoes of the Tide

CHAPTER 1

“You know you’re worthless, don’t you?” The voice haunted her in moments of silence.

It was the same voice that always interrupted her moments of peace. The sound of her father hissing right before she’d been arrested. Of course, Ace had been arrested a lot of times. But those words were from the first time her father had realized that his daughter was beyond saving.

It wasn’t like Beta gave them a lot of opportunities. He’d been a man of few words and fewer talents, which meant he ended up working the odd jobs that literally anyone could do. Jobs that didn’t pay well. Her mother had been out of the picture for years, which left just Ace and her sister to pick up the pieces.

Laura. The prettiest girl in all of Beta, who never had to worry for a single moment because her bulldog of a sister had always been right behind her.

Sighing, she shook her head and tried to dislodge the old memories. They didn’t serve her now. She had to focus on the droid in her hands that needed repairing.

And still, the words came.

“Did you see Laura’s sister today? Looking more and more like a man every day.”

“A man? Hilarious. Those broad shoulders are there, but she’s got an ass on her. Some thick thighs, too.”

“That mug don’t ruin it for you?”

“Turn her around and it won’t be an issue!”

Snippets of conversations she’d overheard nearly every day walking with Laura, and that hadn’t mattered in the slightest. Until it had been her own father saying it. And then, all of a sudden, it had mattered.

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, before hissing out an angry breath when they slicked over her skin and left a burning sensation in their wake. Grease. She had grease on her fingers because she was working on the damn droids, like always. It was so easy to forget. But that was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

Grease monkey. That had been her nickname before she’d been arrested that last time, and now it still was. Grease monkey in the city of Gamma, where they sent all the miscreants to rot.

A light tap on the glass in front of her brought her back to the moment. She wasn’t in Beta with everyone laughing at her. She was right here, in the clockwork tower of one pillar in Gamma. And she had a job to do. Because her job was the one thing that defined her.

Her room was filled with bits and pieces of droids. Metal bobbins, wires, panels of droid pieces, all scattered around the floor haphazardly around her. A small cot in the corner was the only homey thing in the entire room, but then again, how was she supposed to make this homey? It used to be an attic. Empty, with a dented metal floor and heavy beams making up the walls and ceiling.

She’d chosen it for the giant circular window, though. Back when Gamma had first been made, this place had been a testament to the immaculate talent of artists. But then it flooded, and after it was turned into a sort of prison city. More like anexperiment to see if they could throw people away without the guilt of murder.

The circular window had large bars through it, like the face of a clock. Hence the clockwork tower name that she’d given this place. Outside of that window was a small floating droid.

It had a cylindrical body, nearly a foot in length, with large flippers on either side that flapped in the water where it hovered. It wasn’t much of a droid, but she’d put it together for one reason and one reason alone.

Hurrying over to that wall, she hit a button for an arm to grab the droid. Rigging that thing had been a lesson in patience—Ace was no engineer—but soon enough, it grabbed onto the droid. Drawing the whole thing in through the pressurized chamber outside, she eventually got her hands on the droid itself.

“There you are,” she muttered, carrying the dripping metal to the back corner where her workstation was set up. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Plopping it down on the table, she ignored all the water spilling onto the floor. All she cared about was the chip in the base of this droid that would give her the small details she needed to stay alive in here.

Grabbing the chip with stiff fingers, she inserted it into another box-like droid and greedily stared into the grainy screen.

Her sister stood in the same room where she usually was. Laura had become a gardener in the time since Ace had last seen her. The projection showed so many plants surrounding her sister, and she looked so happy. There was always a smile on her face these days. The room was decorated in art nouveau styles, with golden carvings of people surrounding her as she sat down on a bench and grinned at her plants.

This was the life that Ace had traded everything for. A chance for her sister to be something other than a grease monkey like her.

Touching a finger to the image on the screen, she blew a kiss to the only person who had stuck around after all her fuck ups. “Love you, Laura. See you soon.”

She said the words every time the droid came back with new footage of her sister. Maybe because she was surprised the droid hadn’t been blasted out of the ocean yet. No one in Gamma was supposed to have any kind of interaction with people outside of the city.

But she had already broken the law more times than she could count. Why not break it a few more times?

Replacing the droid before anyone realized it was missing, she returned to the job she was supposed to be focusing on. “Right,” she muttered, sitting down and staring at the smashed droid. “You’re supposed to be in one piece by the end of the afternoon.”

Which she couldn’t do by herself. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a string of magnetic beads that were anything but that. All the criminals here thought she kept a necklace with her. But Ace was significantly sneakier than that.

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