Page 22 of Call of the Fathoms

She sat in front of him and remembered how he’d asked her why she was feeling. His words still echoed through her mind, but worse, it was her own thoughts that seemed like they were real people speaking all around her.

“You’re broken. You’re feeling. You’re thinking.”

The worst one was the quietest, but she could hear the tiny murmur, “Maybe it’s time to go.”

Rage burned through her. She was not a weak-willed woman who would listen to these foolish thoughts and the folly that came with them. She was a warrior who would fight until her very last breath and shewould not give up this easily.

With a cry of rage, she thrust him out of her mind and staggered back into reality. The cold hit her first. At some point, he must have turned the heater off of her exoskeleton. Her entire body was freezing, icy in a way she hadn’t felt for ages. Teeth chattering, she glared at the undine who wasn’t hiding in the back of her mind now. He was still coiled around her, looping histail like a snake around her entire body until she couldn’t even move her arms.

“Fuck you,” she spat out. “And stay out of my head.”

Already his eyes were glowing again. That whirling kaleidoscope of colors that had called to her originally, but now she knew what it was.

Alexia turned her face away from him, hissing out a breath when a clawed hand cupped her jaw. He was trying to force her to look at him. He wanted her to have to stare into his gaze because he wanted to steal even more of her memories. But they weren’t for him. They were for her to suffer through alone.

A voice chirped in her ear. “Oxygen at fifteen percent.”

If she didn’t get back into her ship, he was going to drown her. And he knew this. He understood her language. His hearing seemed far too good to not have heard the warning along with her.

She wiggled her fingers. Her arms were pinned by his tail, but she thought if she could get her hand to just rotate, then she might grab her knife. It was heated, just like the rest of the exoskeleton. She just needed to distract him long enough to grab it.

“You like to paw through my memories?” she said. “Seems like something an undine would have to do. You damn well know I’m not going to tell you a single thing, not even if you torture me.”

That clawed hand moved up from her jaw to the mask attached to her face. Alexia struggled a little harder as he squeezed it and the glass creaked.

His hand could crack through her only oxygen and he would drown her right here, right now.

The undine leaned ever closer, that open maw of his sharpened teeth coming ever closer. “Do you want to see howlong you would last with me torturing you, virago? I think we both might enjoy it.”

There! She grabbed onto the handle of her knife, hit the button to heat it, and twisted it into his tail. He let out a little sharp sound, but then his tail only tightened even further. Thankfully, that worked in her favor. The heated blade sank deeper, bubbles rising from where it was boiling through his flesh.

Finally, he relented. The coils dropped from around her and it gave her just enough time to hit the other button on her suit that fired up the shoes. Propelling herself away from him was easy. But she was so frozen it was hard to get back to her ship. She overshot the entrance and nearly ended up on the wrong side before grabbing onto the opening with an achingly cold hand.

An echoing roar of rage seemed to shake the very ocean itself as she hauled herself into the ship.

Water dripped from her body in a river as she sealed the door. Coughing, she yanked the mask off her face and breathed in the stale air within her ship. It would get better as the filtration was used more. They hadn’t used a ship like this in a very long time. Breathing heavily, she avoided hitting any of the important buttons as she struggled to stand.

It was a small battleship. Just enough room for her to walk five steps to her bed, five more steps to storage, and five other steps to the pilot’s chair. A tight space, no doubt, but it would do well enough.

“Computer,” she called out. “Turn the exoskeleton offline.”

“Affirmative.”

The suit opened, and she staggered out of it. Soaking wet in her skintight black suit and shivering, she rushed to the pilot’s chair and sat down.

“Now, where are you?” she hissed. “I’m going to light you up with as many lasers as this ship can shoot.”

But she couldn’t find him. Again. He was so good at hiding in these murky waters and there was only so far her lights could break through. Somehow, it seemed almost more dusty than it had been when she’d first exited the ship. She narrowed her eyes, ignoring the drip of saltwater from her hair down into her eyes.

“Come on. Show yourself, you big bastard.”

A small flicker of a tail. That was all the warning she got. Then she opened fire. Over and over she shot into the darkness, hoping that at least one of them would catch him. She’d already shot him once, stabbed him, but she really didn’t know if that was going to be enough to take him down. He didn’t seem easy to kill, that much was certain.

When she stopped shooting, she inhaled in the sudden silence. There was no way she’d killed him. He was too strong.

A thud echoed throughout her ship. She looked up just in time to see his grin once more where he was attached to the roof of her ship. He gave her a little smirk and then seemed to yank on something.

The lights in her ship flickered. Was he...

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