Page 101 of Echoes of the Tide

Then the smell hit her. Basil and herbs, the scent of loam that always clung to Laura no matter where she was. Green things and pottery. All the scents that had always made her think of her sister, even after the years it had been since they’d seen each other.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she finally hugged her sister back. Years of sacrifice. Years of pain. Years of torment and fear and sleepless nights. They all flowed away as her sister held her and she held her sister back.

“It’s you,” Laura whispered. “I never gave up hope. I knew you’d come back.”

Tears burned in her eyes and then fell. But this time, they weren’t sad tears. They weren’t tears that were born of frustration and anger. They were happy tears.

Finally, everything that she had done mattered.

Squeezing Laura even harder, she then leaned back so she could look at her sister for the first time in years.

“Look at you,” Ace whispered, running her fingers underneath Laura’s eyes. “You have wrinkles now.”

“You should talk. You look even more like a criminal than the first day you left.”

“I can tell you aren’t sleeping enough. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

Laura laughed. “So do you.”

She wasn’t taking care of herself, but Ace was here now. Ace would take care of her, just like she always had.

“Come here,” she whispered, tugging her back into her arms.

All was right in the world. All of it.

“I’m not as brave as you,” Laura murmured. “The undine are terrifying. They brought us here, and I was certain it was because of everything we’d been doing. But I remembered that you always were different. So no matter what the others said, I held out hope.”

“The undine are the reason we are together.” Ace made eye contact with the second man and woman that also joined them. The two looked like brother and sister, with dark hair and dark eyes that had seen too much. “They are the ones who listened. They are the ones who fought for us. And now, I will do everything I can to fight for them as well.”

The other humans looked at each other in doubt, but Laura pulled back and grinned. “Look at you, always breaking the mold.”

Ace shook her head, trying to clear it of all the questions that were there. “What do you mean you thought the undine were taking you because of what you were doing? You’re a gardener?”

Laura’s expression turned sheepish. Her sister held out her hand and then drew Ace into the other room. There were countless droids that had come with them, apparently. Ones that fit in pockets, ones that were similar to Byte. Even a few gliders that were currently out of the water and being worked on. Theroom smelled musky and metallic, just as her old workroom had. For a moment, Ace was right back there.

Working in the droid depot with her shitty boss, but her fantastic coworkers. The two siblings she almost recognized. They must have worked there as well when she was in the depot, just not in her department. And the other man...

“You used to program droids,” she muttered, then shook her head. “Laura what?—”

“You were right,” Laura interrupted. “Beta was corrupt from the top down. There were too many rich people and not enough shared wealth. After they locked you up, there were a lot of folks who felt just like I did. We all got together and realized this was far too important to ignore. We had to keep going. We had to keep doing what you were doing. Steal from those who wouldn’t even notice the loss of money, and then redistribute that wealth where it needed to go.”

Ace could hardly keep up with what her sister was saying. “You were always too afraid to leave the garden because the plants might die.”

“They did.” Laura’s expression hardened. “And everyone who killed them suffered.”

Where had her baby sister gone? In her place was a woman who had seen the problems in her own city and she had taken every step to fix them. Whereas Ace had just wanted to see if she could do it, Laura had done so much more than that.

Stunned, she looked between all the people before her and coughed out a little laugh. “Well, aren’t you all the bravest people I’ve ever met?”

Laura shook her head and then gestured for Ace to sit down at a table next to the glass. “Tell me everything. I want to know what happened in Gamma. Why are the undine working with you? How did you start working with the undine at all?”

She sat and blurted everything out. All the hardship, all the terrors. She kept her relationship with Maketes at a minimum, but it was rather hard to do because halfway through her storytelling, he appeared behind her. The glass was the only thing that separated them, and though she could see her sister and her friends get nervous, they relaxed once they realized he wasn’t going to bust through the glass.

She ended the story by putting her hand against the glass where Maketes was. “The undine are a beautiful people. They are more similar to us than I ever gave them credit for.”

Laura grinned. “I know. We saw your message.”

“What message?”

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