Page 34 of Call of the Fathoms

In a way, at least. He didn’t quite pity this woman, but now he wanted to help her. She deserved his help.

He’d stolen everything that made her who she was. The scientists in Tau had developed her into being this perfect, unfeeling machine of a warrior who had done everything they wanted her to do. But in doing so, they had suppressed everything she was. She deserved to know what it was like to fight with rage burning in her heart, to know what it was like to choose to fight for something she believed in.

He’d been a warrior his entire life, but he’d also taught many people how to fight. This would be no different from that.

Floating around the edge of the ship, he peered down to see her ripping herself free. The bubble around her mouth fogged with all her exertion, but she didn’t seem concerned.

No, her cheeks were still bright red with anger. Another easy giveaway to notice that she was not in control, nor would she likely be in control any time soon.

“You relied on medication to make you a good guard,” he said. “How strange it is to see you lose your way.”

“I have not lost my way, undine.” She floated up in front of him, those boots giving her the boost she needed to look him in the eyes. “I can fight just as I did before. I am not any different than I once was.”

“Are you not? I can smell your anger, Alexia.”

A little cry of rage escaped her lips, and then she darted toward him. Those boots did make her swim a lot faster in the water, but even that wouldn’t give her the advantage she thought it would over him. He flipped over onto his back and let her glide right past him. She could stop with the boots quickly, it seemed. But even that was a little clumsy.

“Who trained you?” he asked, curious about her people at this point. What he didn’t expect was for her to rant and give away far more than she likely knew she did.

“I have spent half a lifetime training to keep the Originals safe,” she hissed. “I have trained on land and in water. There is nothing and no one I do not know how to fight. I have torn people limb from limb. I have killed hundreds of people. I know death well, undine.”

“Hundreds?” He flicked his tail to move out of her way again, slowly gliding backwards so she had to follow him out into the abyss. “Where did Tau even find hundreds of people for you to kill?”

“You’d be surprised how many humans are down here, and how many Tau deems unworthy of the cause.” She paused in the water, her eyes widening even as she said the words. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But it is interesting to me that Tau has a cause. Which means they are training you for something other than just keeping your Originals alive.” When she reacted a little to that, he narrowed his eyes. “Or they are training you to keep only your Original alive, but there are others who will make it difficult for that to happen. Is that what is being planned?”

“You see too much, undine.”

“What would make that even occur? There won’t be a war between the achromos. Tau already makes sure they control every single city. We’ve discovered your outposts within each one, and it was far too easy to find it within the ruins of Alpha. So it is not your own people you expect to fight.”

She raced for him, but he already knew why she was doing that. A distraction. He was getting too close.

Annoyed, he grabbed the bony arm of her exoskeleton and tore it off the suit as she passed. It was so easy to do. The metal was thin and brittle, so it shattered with an audible pop before he tossed the metallic bone into the abyss.

She froze where she was, staring down at her arm that was now exposed to the frigid sea. With only one useful hand now, the exoskeleton was significantly less helpful.

He grinned. “So it’s my people. Tau is planning to attack the undines.”

She hissed out an angry noise. “It has always been known that this sea is yours. Even before we came down here, the Originals were aware there was another species in the water. They weren’t sure how you would react to so many new faces in what had historically always been yours.”

“We didn’t like it.”

“No, you didn’t.” She shook out her still working arm and then curled the fingers. “And because of that, and two hundred years of fighting between our kinds, the Originals have had enough.”

He wasn’t all that surprised. The attacks on his people had been getting worse recently. He had seen the way ships were following the People of Water in the shallows. Even Beta, a city they should have had under their thumb at this point, was reacting a bit differently when his people swam by. Of course, there were only three cities still standing, and one of them was a prison.

There would be no allies amongst the achromos, other than those who were already helping them. If it came to a true battle, they would be far too easy to wipe out of existence.

“Damn it,” he hissed. Then he lunged for her.

Grabbing her other arm, he tore the metal skeleton off of her, leaving her only in just those useful boots and the spine piece. She barked out a swear and then swiped at him. At least this time, she actually connected. Her fist hit hard enough to leave a bruise, something he was rather surprised about. Even without the skeleton, she’d hit him hard.

But he wasn’t interested in continuing this fight with her now. She’d given him so much information. So much more than what he had ever expected he would get this soon.

On her next angry pass, he grabbed her by the back of the skeleton’s suit. There were a lot of cords and metallic pieces in his grasp now, so it was so very easy to just snap it. Her entire body jerked with the movement, but then he pulled the headpiece off and most of the spine with it. With one hand, he held her shirt, and the other, he dangled the rest of her last weapon in the water beside her. It left her bare, and the booted pieces of the suit entirely without power.

The silence that came after his rather violent yank should have warned him. But he dropped the rest of the pieces into the sea as well, still holding onto her by the front of her shirt.

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