Sliding his hands down her arms, webs trailing across the delicate skin underneath her wrists, he moved his body off of her. She almost protested. He watched her eyes flash in disappointment before she drew her hands back down to catch the blanket that slid. He caught the slightest glimpse of endless pale skin before she hid herself yet again from his gaze.
“Scan her,” he grumbled to the box. “If there is something wrong with her, I wish to know.”
Why? He had no idea. He should be happy if she was getting ill. That was the purpose of his mission, after all. Learn what he could when she was this weak and then learn how to fix what her people had broken. That information would be significantly easier to get from her if she were weakened.
Still, he didn’t want to see her harmed. If only because he so admired her bravery and ability to survive despite everything that he’d thrown at her.
Byte dragged itself a little closer to her with those short arms. The metal clunked again, clicking and whirling as a new tool he hadn’t seen erupted from behind its head. He hissed and sank deeper into the water as a new light emitted from the strange device. Green and slicing, it broke through the air and traveled up and down Mira’s body.
“As I suspected,” Byte muttered. “You’ve been hiding your health from us.”
Hiding what? Mira looked fine. Maybe a little rattling in the lungs, but that must be something fairly easy for achromos to fix. It was easy for him to address.
“You would have visible injuries if you were mortally wounded, would you not?” he asked, hating that he couldn’t actually converse with her. “Surely it would be easy to see.”
But it wasn’t, apparently. Byte chittered a few times before whirring again, that light running over her body again. And Mira? She wouldn’t even look at him.
“Severe vitamin d deficiency,” Byte said. “Significant vitamin depletions in multiple other forms. Significant fiber loss and blood pressure is far too low. You’ve been sick for a while, Mira. Why haven’t you told us that?”
Arges let out a frustrated huff. He didn’t know if the strange robot could understand him, but he had to try. “What can I do to heal her?”
“Bring her back to the surface,” Byte replied.
“You know I cannot do that. There are questions that need to be answered, and she is the only one who can answer them. She will remain down here until we get what we want.”
“Then she will die.” The robot was so matter of fact with its tone.
Every spine down his back rose and his gills flared wide in anger. “She will not die. You will fix her.”
“I am not a medical droid.” The tool went back into Byte’s box and the robot seemed to shrug those tiny arms. “There is nothing I can do for her down here. She should be taking supplements, eating vegetables, doing all the things that keep humans alive. You are doing none of those.”
“What do you mean?” he hissed. “I bring her food. I bring her to the caves with light. She lives, does she not?”
“Light is not sunlight! The humans have been taking supplements for years now that they live underneath the surface. The depths are not made for humans, not like your people. Humans need sunlight. They call it vitamin d, and it fuels so many important functions in their body. And fish are not food!”
“They are food!”
“Not like humans need to eat!” the little droid shouted back. “A varied diet is important for humankind. You might be able to eat the same thing every single day and still swim about with your tail flipping around, but a human needs proper food. Food that can actually sustain them. You have not brought her any of that.”
He was going to crush the box. That was the only way to ease the anger in his chest. Some part of him knew that he was angry at himself, not at the box, but it would still feel good to crush something between his claws.
Sinking lower in the water, he glared at the droid. “Tell me what I can do to help her.”
“You can bring her back to the city, so she can be seen by a medical droid and be treated for all these issues.”
“Tell me something else I can do.”
“Unless you can magically find an abandoned human home underneath the sea that is not connected to the city, then there is nothing else you can do to help her.” The droid looked at Mira, then back at him. “Am I not speaking English? Are you having trouble understanding me?”
“I understand you fine, abomination. But there are no options. I cannot bring her back to the city and I cannot find another way to heal her.”
His hearts raced. Would he lose her so soon? The guilt in that thought alone threatened to swallow him. It was his fault that she was here. And she’d told him she knew nothing. She wasn’t meant to even be here. He could have taken one of their leaders if he had been more patient and less intrigued by the glimmering light of her suit.
For all the murdering and killing he’d done in his life, he’d never harmed an innocent. In this, he knew she had no guilt to carry and didn’t deserve to die because he’d made a mistake.
Oh, he had never thought it would come to this.
He met Mira’s gaze, looking at her from the water and seeing the way the light played off her green eyes. He couldn’t stop himself from saying the words, even though he knew she couldn’t understand him. “I am sorry, kairos. Perhaps I never should have brought you here, but know I will do what I can to save you. Throughout all of this, you have been brave, and that is something to honor. Even if I have proven myself incapable of honoring much in your time here.”
He pressed a fist to his chest, watching her eyes dart between him and the droid.
Finally, she sighed. Her shoulders curved in on her body, like she was folding into a new being. “I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t feel all that sick. It’s just my joints that ache and my stomach that’s a little off, but nothing is going to kill me here. I just need some sunlight and some vegetables and I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be fine,” Byte muttered. “You need multiple injections and perhaps a healing pod.”
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated, her words a little harder than before. “You don’t have to worry about me. Either of you.”
But this still didn’t settle well with him. The only option was to return to the depths, to Mitéra, and beg for her to allow the release of his kairos. Even if that meant his honor would be forfeit, Arges found himself willing to do it.
“I will be back,” he murmured, his voice low as he sank beneath the waves. “I will save you, Mira.”
Twenty-Five
Mira
Mira watched him disappear into the water again, and she felt all the energy in her body simply drain out. It wasn’t possible for her to keep up this charade any longer. She’d been trying so hard to feel like she was healthy and normal, but... she wasn’t.
She knew she wouldn’t last very long. Byte was right. She didn’t have unending time here while her body slowly deteriorated, because she needed more from every part of what kept her alive. Food. Water. Shelter. Light. All the things that humans had given up to live underneath the sea.
Down here? She would die all too quickly.
Byte shuffled a little closer to her, those metal arms pinging against the stone as it dragged itself a little closer with every movement. “You know, there are better ways to prove that you’re strong.”