Page 32 of Echoes of the Tide

“What do you mean?”

“I can see all those thoughts racing through your mind, but you’re distracting yourself from what you have to do. The key, remember?”

“Right, the key.” She remembered. It was the only thing she had to focus on.

Her sister. The death of her only family. She had to stay as focused as she possibly could so that she didn’t lose this one opportunity to keep her sister safe. And then, maybe if she did a good job, Jacob would let her fade into the background.

He’d never let her go. Gamma was her home now, even if she could get out of it. No other city would take in a criminal like her. She was stuck there, and keeping Jacob happy was the only way to make sure that her family remained safe.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I know where to go.”

“Good.” He stretched his arms over his head, and suddenly all she had was a wall of chest muscles in front of her. Then abs, as he stretched higher, then scales that were so bright yellow they looked like maybe they were made of gold.

She had the odd thought that she could sell those scales and make a good amount of money before he was coiled again like a snake.

“I have to go back into the sea,” he reminded her. “My scales will start peeling up if I stay out here any longer. Do you remember where you left your wetsuit?”

“We don’t have time for that. Go back into the ocean and keep an eye on me from out there. I’ll be fine.”

He gave her a rather unimpressed stare. “I’m not leaving you.”

“A bodyguard wasn’t the deal. You were supposed to bring me here, but then the rest of it was up to me.” She took a stepback from him, crossing her arms over her chest. “No one even knew you could get inside this tower, let alone that you could be out of the water for long periods of time.”

“Well, achromos don’t need to know everything about us.” He sighed. “I do not believe it is safe for you to be alone in this tower.”

“I’m sure it’s not, but I can take care of myself. I’m used to being surrounded by criminals, remember?”

She needed him to leave. She needed to get her head screwed back on straight because it wasn’t normal to look at an undine and want to lick him. It wasn’t normal to look at her friend like that, and that’s all they were. Friends.

He must have seen that panic in her expression, because he finally gave her a curt nod. “All right. I’ll be just outside, though. And if you think I can’t break one of these glass windows, you are very wrong.”

They both knew it was a lie. The undine couldn’t break the glass, because they’d tried countless times. That was part of the problem. They couldn’t get into the cities to destroy the humans, and the humans couldn’t stay in the water all that easily to fight them.

She watched him open the door and slither out into the hallway, all without even looking around. Like he wasn’t afraid of her people. He didn’t care if someone was lurking out there, because he would kill them if they tried to attack him and... well, she supposed that was accurate. He would kill them. He had already.

Ace took a few seconds to breathe and then pulled out the little bead droids from her pocket. “All right, Tera. What do you think? Can you get me there without being seen?”

Her droid clicked together multiple times before she let it down onto the floor. They all zinged in separate directions, and then out the door in a line as she opened it. They all disappeared,half in one direction, half in the other. And while she waited, she took some time to steady her emotions. She had a job to do. She had to search for that key and Doctor Faust’s office.

That was it. There was nothing else in her brain. No thoughts of handsome undine, no dreams of friends who might become something more. Nothing at all. Just silence.

By the time Tera returned, she was back to herself. Her droid seemed pretty confident it knew where to go, especially since all of its pieces were back together.

“I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be,” she muttered, then turned to grab one of the remaining scalpels from the table. Just in case.

With that in her pocket, she headed down the brightly lit halls. Tera guided her, clicking and clacking in front of each split in the hallways before quickly choosing a direction. It was easy to get lost in this place. There were no markers. She could see the shadows on the walls where there used to be signs or paintings, but someone had taken them all down. So now, the only way to get through the labyrinth of the medical pavilion was to know where one was going. Thankfully, she still had the map. But it was easy to get turned around.

Then they reached their first obstacle.

Tera was so confident, it careened around a corner and then froze. She could see the little gears working quickly to pause it, even using some of the magnetic force to pause itself. Which could only mean there were people in the hall now.

She pressed her back against the wall, listening for any hint of a conversation. And there it was. Voices. Both men and women, talking about nothing all that important. But they were talking, and that was enough for her to change direction. Tera zipped back the way it had come, and Ace was forced to nearly run after it before she lost the droid.

They did that a few more times, each time finding more and more people coming out into the halls. Apparently, she should have tried this earlier in the day. Or perhaps in the dead of night.

Ace cursed her own bad luck. Every single time she tried to get somewhere, there were people. She was getting farther and farther away from her goal, no matter how many times she tried to go down the same halls in the hopes that people had moved on.

Until she had to stop and catch her breath, so she happened to hear what some of them were talking about.

---