Page 42 of Echoes of the Tide

Rocks dug into the back of her thighs. A faint dripping sound echoed with wet plops in a rhythmic quality that already grated on her nerves. Even the smell wasn’t like the cities she’d been in. She was used to smog and the scent of bodies, or at the very least, metal. The air here was… crisp. And then, as she lifted her head and waited for the slanting world to stop spinning, she realized there were stalactites surrounding her as well.

She was in a cave. Nothing here appeared to be even remotely human. The cave wasn’t even that large. It was maybe the size of her living quarters in Gamma, enough to walk around and maybe take fifteen paces in one direction before she’d hit a wall. In the dead center of the room was a pool of water. Glowing with a gentle green light, there was floating algae that seemed to shimmer in the dim light. It was enough light for her to see, but that was all.

She was all alone with the soft sound of lapping water and her droid.

“How did we get here?” she whispered, the words sounding too loud in the echoing space.

Tera was quick to clack against itself and then suddenly her droid zipped toward the water. She didn’t even have the energy to chase after it, hoping that her droid wouldn’t launch itself past the stones and sink to wherever the bottom was.

But it didn’t. Tera found itself a small patch of sand and started... writing? Was her droid writing out words? She had noidea it even knew how to do that. Ace sat there in stunned silence as her droid methodically took the time to write out words in the sand.

Undine.

So, Maketes had brought them here. With the thought came anxiety that swelled and crashed over her head. Where was he? He had brought them here, but he wasn’t still here with her. Had something happened to him? Had the tower crumpled to the sea and injured him?

She crawled on her hands and knees toward the droid. A wave of nausea threatened acidic vomit at the back of her throat, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t puke here, not when there were so many questions that needed to be answered.

“How?” she asked, then shook her head. “Too many words. How did I breathe?”

Wiping away the sand, she gave Tera a blank canvas to write. And her droid did. It zipped around, the letters perfectly straight and neat as it worked to write out another single word.

Neck.

“My neck?” The pain. Tera must be referencing the pain.

She lifted her hand, only to freeze as the droid clacked loudly against its pieces. It raced to write another word, then another.

Don’t touch.

“Don’t touch it?” Of course she was going to touch it now. She pressed her fingers to the skin, feeling the tiniest hole there that was covered with a sticky liquid.

All the blood drained out of her head. She was suddenly so dizzy, while tiny speckles dancing in front of her eyes. What had he done to her? Was that the pain? He’d done something to her neck, and she had no idea what he had done, but she wasn’t dead, so he’d done something so she could breathe underwater or some other madness.

Where was he?

Swallowing hard, she put her hand back onto the sand to balance herself. “I’m going to puke.”

Another word etched into the sand.Don’t.

She let out a little puff of laughter. “I don’t have a lot of choice, Tera. Please move.”

Her droid bolted so far away from her she thought she could hear it on the rocks only moments before she threw up. There wasn’t much in her stomach, but apparently there was quite a bit of salt water, which was a horrid taste on her tongue. Stomach acid and salt. She’d never be able to eat another salty thing in her life.

Expelling all that water helped settle her stomach. She could think a little more clearly and manage the terror a bit better. She was in a cave, but she wasn’t a fainting damsel in distress. She would make this work for herself because she had no other choice.

“Okay,” she muttered, pushing herself back until she was kneeling in the sands rather than on all fours. “Okay, you can figure this out. You’re not dead yet.”

But what was there to figure out? She spent the better part of what must have been an hour just staring into the water in front of her. Because she was stuck here. Swimming wasn’t an option. Even though it was far warmer here than it had been in Gamma at night, she didn’t want to get wet. What if it got a little colder? What if she was wet and shivering and then slowly just succumbed to hypothermia?

All the ways that she could die played in her head. And then all she could think about was that if she died, so did her sister. She was the only one who knew that the fucking key was in Doctor Faust’s home, and she was the only one who knew where his home was. If she died, then no one would get the key and her sister would die too. Jacob would do it. He liked killing people.

But also if she got in that water and tried to figure out where she was, then she would definitely die. Because that was the open ocean. If a shark didn’t get her, then an undine would. The depthstriders had surrounded Gamma, all she could imagine was that they would rip her apart like she’d seen happen before. Besides, it wasn’t like she could swim to Gamma on a single breath of air. She was stuck.

With all of those thoughts came the fear that she was alone. Maketes should be here with her. He was ridiculously good at being where she didn’t want him to be, and yet, the one moment she needed him, he wasn’t here. It made something in her break.

Tears welled in her eyes. Not from the grit and the sand, but because she was terrified something had happened to him. What if the suction from the sea had injured him? What if one of those people in Gamma had fired off one last parting shot? There were so many holes in her memory, she wouldn’t have the faintest idea if something had happened to him.

And then the water rippled again. It moved like there was something coming to the surface and she froze. Just kneeling there with her knees aching and her heart in her throat. What if it was a depthstrider? What if it was another undine who wanted her dead?

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