Page 38 of Echoes of the Tide

And then the hologram dissipated. There was nothing left of him, and nothing left of the hologram either, it seemed. A little fizzle, a strange hissing noise, and then Tera dropped thesmall chip that was now smoking. The little coil of black made her realize that she was the only person who would ever know what was said on that hologram. No one else had found it. And somehow, she wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

He had told her very little, other than where the key was. Her stomach still twisted in knots, though. She was so terrified what kind of key she was getting for Jacob. A vault could have anything in it, but the warnings about Tau were clearly meant for people to heed. This was a dangerous new city, if it even existed.

“Tera?” she asked as the droid rolled up to her feet. “What do you think?”

She’d never wished she’d given her droid a voice more than she did in this moment. It clicked, rolled, clacked, did all the things it could to communicate, but she still had no idea what it was saying.

All she wanted was for someone to tell her that she was doing the right thing. That yes, this was hard. It was never meant to be easy, but she was moving in the right direction. Of all the things she’d done in her life, she had made a good choice to be here.

Get the key. Save her sister. Go back to living in Gamma where no one cared if she was alive or dead, but at least her sister was still thriving.

Yet this whole adventure had wriggled its way into her mind. Maybe she didn’t want to just exist. Maybe she deserved more than living in that clocktower, working on her droids and being covered in grease.

She touched her hair. Her fluffy hair that had been shorn so ragged at her shoulders, and she remembered that her hair had once been pretty. At the very least, she’d brushed it regularly, and it had streaks like she’d just seen the sun. She liked her hair. And she’d taken that away from herself because it was easier to forget that she was a person at all, rather than risk being seen by someone she didn’t want to see her.

Tears gathering in her eyes, she sighed and placed Tera in her pocket. “It’s going to be fine, Tera. We stick to the plan, right? That’s the only thing we can do.”

She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn’t even think about listening to her surroundings. Ace was usually so aware of everything around her. She’d had to be. Gamma was a prison, after all, and in these moments she forgot that.

A boot hit the ground hard. The almost stomp broke through her thoughts and suddenly she looked up to see a group of people standing in the doorway to the office. The woman in front had a scar down the side of her face, right through her eye that was sunken into her skull. A faint yellow ooze seemed to smear underneath, as though she’d lost the eye recently and infection had set in.

Then she smelled the rot, and Ace knew she was in so much trouble.

“Now who do we have here?” the scarred woman said. “I don’t think you belong here.”

“I recently moved into the area,” she said, trying to scramble to make it seem like she was exactly where she was supposed to be. “Sorry I haven’t been able to introduce myself before I tried to find a bed.”

“A bed?” The woman stepped into the room and nudged the broken hologram with her foot. “Seems like you are here for a different purpose than a bed.”

Shit.

She reached into her pocket and palmed the scalpel in her pocket. She really had hoped she wouldn’t have to use this, but her luck had been real bad lately.

“I guess you know more than I do,” she ground through her teeth.

“Oh, I do. We’re going to rip you apart, piece by piece, until you tell us how you got in here, where you came from, and whatyou were going to do.” The scarred woman tilted her head to the side in a very raptor-like motion. “You’re cute. It’s a shame I’m going to carve stripes off of you before you talk.”

“What makes you think I’m that good at withstanding torture?” Her hand was shaking in her pocket.

“Because I don’t want to hear a word until I’m done carving. Then I’ll allow you to speak.”

Oh, she was so fucked.

CHAPTER 16

“Idon’t like it that she’s in there alone,” he muttered, yet again. He hadn’t been able to stop saying the words since she’d basically begged him to leave her alone.

“Yes, Maketes. I believe you’ve made that very clear.”

“What are you even doing here?”

Fortis shrugged. “I am meant to be here.”

“That is not very clear, and I don’t appreciate the prophetic tone.” Maketes spread his hip fins wide, glancing toward the building again. They were far enough away that the achromos wouldn’t be too nervous or try to go to the higher window where Ace was. But that also meant that he couldn’t see her.

And he wanted to watch her. He wanted to stare at her every move just so he knew she was all right.

Fortis had coiled himself around a neon light. The bright purple of the sign only made his own color seem all the more prominent. With his tail looped through one of the words and his upper half hanging down over it, he looked like a strange serpent rather than an undine. But his hair floating around his head helped a bit to make him look more like their own kind.

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