Page 70 of Echoes of the Tide

Instead, she crawled toward the man who had been telling her every secret he’d kept.

His name was Martin. He grew up in Beta just like her. And then he’d become a rather well-known coder, someone who was particularly skilled enough to catch the attention of people with power. While he hadn’t known Doctor Faust himself, he had been the person sent to collect the key nearly a hundred years after the doctor had died.

Gamma had been flooded before that. The key wasn’t a threat. But now? Now the key was a threat, and he was the only one who knew how to protect it.

Ace slipped in the blood pooling on the floor. Her hands were coated in it now, all the way up to her wrists. But she couldn’t stop. Not when she knew there was a chance for her to get to him.

Poor Martin. She slid behind him the moment she could, leaning him against her chest more comfortably than where he was leaning against the wall. She’d known the moment that insane man had barged through the door that they were in trouble. Martin had stood in front of her, taking the slice that likely would have killed her.

Unfortunately, that act of heroism was now going to kill him.

His bloody hand found hers, clutching her in a grip that was stronger than she’d expected for a man currently dying. “The key,” he muttered, his voice almost impossible to understand. “You have to take it.”

“Martin, where is a med kit?”

“The key?—”

“I don’t care about the key right now. There has to be a med kit in here. You aren’t going to last much longer and I need you to tell me where it is.”

But she could already see the answer in his eyes. There was no med kit. He wasn’t going to point her in any direction because this tower had already used all of them. Some part of her recognized that was the likelihood, considering the people who lived here.

He shakily held up the key that he’d worn for years around his neck. “Take it.”

“Fucking hell, old man,” she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “Just tell me how to save you.”

He didn’t. Martin grabbed her hand and slid the keycard into it. He wrapped her fingers around it hard, firmly holding the key with her. “Take care of it,” he garbled, even as his eyes turned glassy.

A spray of blood soaked her feet and his pant legs. But she still tried not to look as she kept her gaze on the man who had given her everything she was looking for and also proved that the world was much larger than she’d thought.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Martin squeezed her hand one more time and then he was just... gone. Like the lights had gone out inside of him. One moment he was looking at her, and the next, he wasn’t there anymore. It was just a husk of a person lying across her legs, staring up at her with empty eyes.

“Fuck.” The stuttered word was more of an exhale than it was speaking.

She stared down at him and everything felt so wrong. He was a good man. He had been a good man. No one deserved to die like this, choking in a pool of his own blood because some madman had followed her. It was her fault. Somehow, yet another person had gotten caught up in her shitty luck.

He’d listened when she’d told him about her sister. He’d known there was a reason behind her being here, and it was far more than someone who just wanted control.

This was a man who had tried. He’d been put in Gamma for reasons that were so far beyond him, and he didn’t deserve to be here. This was a place for criminals like her. This was a place for people to go who deserved to be punished.

Not... not this.

A webbed hand broke through her stare. She recognized the yellow scales hidden beneath the blood, but everything was so cold. It felt like she’d peeled her skin off and now everything was a live electrical wire against her nerves.

This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. She was meant to get into a tower that was largely abandoned. She’d go into a man’s apartment, get the key, and leave. She’d head back to Jacob and all the people that she hated with every fiber of her being. The key would change hands. Her sister would be safe. It was such an easy plan, and now she was shaking, holding onto the hand of a dead man.

“Kefi,” Maketes said, his voice breaking through the thoughts that plagued her. “We have to go.”

“He didn’t deserve to die like this,” she mumbled through freezing lips. “He was trying to help.”

“No one deserves to die, but we all do. He died honorably, protecting someone else. Come with me, Ace.”

She didn’t know if she could let go of Martin’s hand. What happened to his soul? Had it already fled from his body, or should she stay a little while longer? Just to make sure he didn’t linger in this awful place where they ate anyone who annoyed them.

“Maura,” the sharp tones that wrapped around a name she hadn’t heard in ages made her head jerk up.

He looked at her with those black eyes, completely coated in blood. Red and black. Human and undine. It all coated him from head to toe, like some kind of avenging god who had come for her very soul. Along with the soul of the limp man who rested against her.

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