Page 58 of Echoes of the Tide

Turning the controller on, she stared down at the bare bones coding that made up the droid’s features.

“Not much here, Tera,” she muttered, stretching out one of her legs when her knee protested. “They must have taken all the droids with more detailed software.”

But with a couple more wires placed in the right spots, the droid’s controller came back online in a big way. The long tube in her hand didn’t have the keypad anymore, though. So she grabbed one of Tera’s pieces and attached it to the end.

“Can you get me into the database? I need to search for Doctor Faust’s apartment number.”

And then it was easy. The coding flew in front of her eyes, easily read after she’d spent years figuring out how to program droids. He was on one of the lower levels, thank goodness, and she knew how to find him in just a few moments.

Turning to look at the undine behind her, she knew that was likely going to be an issue. He was already glaring at her, with his arms crossed over his massive chest. He looked like he was about to tell her to get back into the water at any second.

She was a droid lover. Her entire life had been wrapped around their creation, their feelings, how people had turned droids into something masterful and beautiful at the same time. So it broke her heart a bit to turn the droid toward the pool of water. It wouldn’t survive the icy salt. But also, maybe it didn’t need to. The poor thing deserved a quiet death.

“I’m going to Doctor Faust’s apartment,” she said. “You’re going to follow me in the water because that’s the safest way for us to do this. Once I get the key, you can come find me back here.”

“It’s dangerous, Ace.”

She nodded. “Yeah, so far this entire adventure has been really dangerous. But I think that’s a risk we’re both going to have to take.”

She released her hold on the droid and watched it go careening toward him. It worked better than she could have guessed. He didn’t dodge it, because he was so surprised that there was a metal box lunging for him. So it caught him right in the chest and made him sink a bit.

Hopefully, the glass didn’t cut into him. She’d hate to be the reason he had yet another scar.

Then she darted out of the room with Tera in her grip. He wouldn’t follow her into the tower, even though he had in the others. But even if he did, she was running way too fast for him to catch up. She skidded to a halt in the hallway beyond, though.

No wonder no one was here. This tower really was falling apart. Massive beams had already tumbled through the ceiling, leaving huge pillars in her wake with dust and insulation matted around them. Wires hung in sparking ends that cascaded fireonto a floor that was so cracked, she had no idea what it used to be.

“Carefully then,” she muttered, picking her way through the pieces.

It took a little while to even get out of that hallway. A chunk of insulation had fallen onto her shoulders, and she’d never thanked the gods more for being the size she was. She was strong enough to take that hit, but other people might have folded under the impact. As it was, there was insulation in her hair and some of it had gotten down her shirt, so itchy she wanted to scratch her skin off.

But once she got through that terrible hallway, it opened up again. She was suddenly reminded of Beta. The narrow hallways were more tubular than square. Halogen lights, a particular kind of lighting that always brought up memories from her childhood, swung from one end of the ceiling. There were no windows on the walls, either.

When she was little, it used to make her nervous. But now, as an adult, all she could see was the city she had fallen in love with, and the one she missed.

Sighing, she followed the map that the droid had given her. In her mind she repeated the steps, four lefts, two rights, go straight through the four way and then... voila. She avoided all the chunks of insulation on the ground and a few more beams, but then she was here. Right in front of the apartment where the key was supposed to be.

“How do you think we get in?” she asked Tera, running her fingers along the box where a keycard should be installed.

Maybe if she had the right tools, she could get Tera to hack it. Doors weren’t all that hard to open if one knew the right tricks, but they were a little difficult to open without the right tools. She supposed she could just hit the box off the door. That was alwaysan option. But there might be a mechanism to lock it even worse if that happened.

But then Tera rolled out of her pocket and onto the floor, hitting the ground with a hard thud. All five pieces pressed against the bottom of the door, clacking and making all the noise that it could. Taking the hint, she pushed the bottom with her foot.

And the door swung open.

“Ominous,” she muttered, before walking into the obviously abandoned room.

The whole thing had been ransacked. Every bit of it. She could tell there used to be a small living room to her right, everything in browns and beiges. A sofa had been ripped apart so much all she could see were the bones of the inside that had been under the cushions. A coffee table was little more than shards on the ground, and a hole in the ceiling had half a beam hanging out of it with water dripping onto a ripped up recliner.

To her right was a kitchen, but all the drawers had been pulled out. They were all on the floor, some of them broken beyond fixing. Even the doors were hanging off their handles.

There was a single window looking outside into the sea, and it was little more than the size of her head. But the small amount of illumination turned the entire room into a sickly yellow shade.

“No one’s been here for a really long time,” she said. Her feet crunched through the debris as she headed toward the back. “There has to be something in his office, right?”

But the door in the back didn’t lead to an office. It led to a tiny room with the remains of a bed and an open area that looked like a closet. This doctor hadn’t even had his own private bathroom in this place.

“Damn it.” Now what? Was this a dead end?

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