Page 37 of Call of the Fathoms

“I wouldn’t ask you to. Nightmares are nightmares. I’m not trying to be...” He sighed, and bubbles erupted from his gills in a giant wave that obscured his face from her sight. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“You’re not very good at it.”

“I think you’re not very good at accepting someone is trying to make amends when they hurt you.” Fortis shook his head and then rolled his eyes as though he couldn’t quite stand her. “I’m trying here. Tell me about your nightmares.”

“I don’t want to talk about them.”

Again, more bubbles of frustration. “Then why bring it up?”

Why indeed? Some part of her must want to seek comfort, even from this horrible man who had done so much to frustrate her. Their relationship thus far had been one of hatred and pain, but... Well, maybe she could change that.

Alexia bit her lips, rolling them together for a few moments before relenting. “I don’t know how you looked into my memories like you did, but I think it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t born. I was made.”

“That much I gathered.”

“In Tau, there are no babies. No one is birthing new humans, and no one is creating families. There are the Originals and there is...” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “Everyone else.”

He turned his face so he could look at her. Already she could see the colors swirling in them, as though he wanted to peer through her mind so that he could live what she had lived.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered. “If I don’t want to tell you, then I shouldn’t be made to do so. Don’t take this choice away from me.”

Their gazes held for a few moments longer, but then he looked away. Immediately she could feel the pressure lifting, like a hand had been taken off the back of her neck.

Slumping back in the chair in relief, she took a few deep breaths before continuing. “I was created to guard the Originals. Every part of me, every strand of my DNA, makes me good at that. It’s all I’ve ever known. They made me in a test tube without a single hand of kindness. They flooded my brain with everything I was supposed to be from day one. And then when I was not exactly as they wished for me to be, they changed me with medication that made me better.”

“I can see how that would be difficult.”

“I am not the first Alexia,” she admitted. It was hard to even say the words, but that it was the truth. “I’m the seventh. The first six were deemed so unworthy of the job that they were decommissioned. My model has always been... willful.”

That’s what they told her, at least. The previous Alexias were too opinionated, and that always got them in trouble. They’d been decommissioned quickly, but then some scientist figured out what had made them so willful and they changed that genetic strand. This version of her was much more biddable.

“My genetics were taken from the very first guard that Harlow had over two hundred years ago. Apparently, she was much smaller than me, but capable of learning how to fight and protect Harlow. That’s all I was created for and now...”

There wasn’t any reason for her to be spewing all of this to him. Maybe she was just feeling raw. Every part of this experience had stripped away who she was. Her medication was gone. Her safety was removed. Even the knowledge that she would have regular food was gone. She was adrift, just like he wanted her to be.

“And now?” he prodded, making her talk more about this awful sensation in her chest. “How do you feel now that you are freed from all that?”

“Broken,” she whispered. “If they are as bad as you claim—and I am certain they are—then I took part in that. I helped them create monsters like me and I helped them hurt people.”

Memories flooded forward, pressing against her mind so fast she hardly had time to even think about them all. Holding down a young boy so they could extract DNA from him and then send him out into the abyss. Hundreds of reborns, all of them destroyed because of stupid things like a rash or a cold that would have gone away on its own in mere days. Training children to fight when they should have just beenheld.

Because that’s all she had ever wanted when she was their age. She’d just wanted someone to hold her.

When had she closed her eyes? By doing so, she’d locked herself inside her own mind with those memories. The moment she opened them again, she looked into dark eyes that saw straight through her.

“You were protecting someone,” Fortis finally said. “You were doing what you thought was right. What they told you was right.”

“No one in Tau is doing anything because it is right,” she whispered. “Not a single person in that place. They do it because they want to do it. The longer I am away from that place, the more I see that kindness offered to even the Originals is often veiled. Everyone wants something from everyone else. I don’t know how to be the person you’re asking me to be. It is nearly impossible for me to be kind. All I know is how to protect the wicked.”

“Protecting anyone is kind, even if they are not good people. You saw what others could not. Even if that was the merestglimmer of light in the darkness.” He shrugged. “I’m sure even Harlow has good moments.”

A startled laugh erupted from her lips. “Good moments? Harlow has nothing like that. The woman is a menace.”

“Is that so?”

“She’s a spoiled brat. Everything is about her, but it’s always about the Originals. The mere idea of the world existing without her in it is just foolish to imagine. She hates everyone else and is so jealous when someone gets anything that she does not have. She’d rather murder than allow another person to have any gift or item that she couldn’t get her hands on.”

Now that she had opened the tap on what she thought about Harlow, she couldn’t stop spewing all the hateful words. “She once had me murder a scientist because he said blonde hair was his favorite. Just because she didn’t like it that his favorite color wasn’t the same color as her hair. She told me to snap his neck and then waited while I did it. That’s who Harlow is. A petty, jealous child who never had to grow up and likely never will.”

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