“The professor and his daughter...” She cleared her throat, licking her lips before asking her question. “They didn’t seem like the kind of people who would be happy with others destroying the ocean. I saw the expressions on their faces. They were captivated by how beautiful it all was.”
In a sense, she’d be disappointed if they were proud of themselves. She was so in love with the sea, and she’d seen a kinship in the way Alys had looked at the ocean as well. There was a bit of love in her gaze.
“Alys wasn’t happy with proceeding the way they built the city. She fought against them, quite hard, and then her father eventually understood why she was so angry. It took him a while to understand. He was...” Byte paused before continuing with a harder edge to its tone. “The professor wanted to build something great. He would have done anything to see the city built the way it was, even destroy the surrounding landscape to satisfy his need to be remembered after he died.”
How horrible. It was hard to even imagine the rift between this young woman and her father. It was even harder to imagine seeing the ocean she loved so much, the one she was so fascinated with, slowly disappear before her eyes.
Clearing her throat, Mira picked at a few more of the rust pieces before turning Byte so she could reach the rest. There wasn’t much left anymore. Just a few flakes, so she had something to fidget with. “So Alys fought back. She didn’t want them to build Alpha?”
“Not at all. She still thought there were other places for them to scope out. She pushed for them to build at higher levels. Though the volcanoes would still affect people who lived in the levels above the sea, it wouldn’t affect them anywhere near as much. She even worked on a design that would have been protected from any projectiles thrown out by the volcanoes.” Byte sighed a little dreamily. “She was an impressive woman.”
“It sounds like.”
It also seemed if the humans had actually listened to her, then they would have still lived above the ocean. People could have smelled fresh air, not recycled air that hummed out of a box for their entire lives. They would have felt a real breeze, not one from standing in front of a fan. Her world would have been so different if Alys had gotten her way.
“What happened to them?” she asked, even though she feared she didn’t want to know the answer. “The professor and his bright daughter?”
The projection disappeared. Byte even shuddered in her hands before it finally clicked its hands against the sides of the box. “Professor Fairweather became a rather renowned individual. He was the first person to introduce filtration systems, so humans no longer needed to pump air into the cities. That’s why Beta is so much deeper under the sea than the others. He was an inventor for most of his life, and a majority of the objects that you use even to this day were first started by him.”
“Why does this feel like the story ends in sadness?”
“Alys disappeared.” Byte’s head retreated almost entirely into the box as it looked at her with those strange eyes, blinking. “She went off in the submarine, certain that there were more discoveries for her. And she refused to be anywhere near the people who would so willingly destroy so much. I was supposed to go with her on that day.”
“What happened instead?”
“Her father was already commissioning me to be one of the deep sea trawlers. He wanted a personal droid to be on the ground floor of the sea so that he could get direct reports rather than waiting for anyone else.” Byte’s hands tapped against its side again before retreating into the darkness of its box. “She never came back. And they never found her.”
“Surely she found land somewhere else. It would make sense for someone like her to have found another home, perhaps another group of people who had similar thoughts as her.” Hope bloomed in her chest for the woman she had never known. Then, that hope was crushed.
“They never found her, Miss Mira. They found the submarine, though. It returned as expected to the city. Empty. The top was torn off and all the equipment was ruined.”
“Torn off? What kind of creature could do that?”
Byte glanced toward the water and then back to her. “There were claw marks on the sides of the submarine. Not teeth, Miss Mira. Claws.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
Alys Fairweather had found the undines as well, it seemed. Glancing around, Mira could only hope that Alys had found herself in a similar situation. Perhaps there was a history of undines having human pets. Or perhaps Arges wasn’t the first undine to find himself intrigued with the thought of another creature with two tails who didn’t have gills to help it survive. Pity or intrigue, it didn’t matter.
“Maybe she survived,” Mira murmured. “Maybe there is hope for us yet, Byte.”
But the little robot had already ducked back into its box. If she listened very carefully, Mira could hear the projector was still going. This time inside the box, playing memories that Byte wished to watch alone.
Setting it down gently on the computer console, she gave the droid a little privacy to mourn someone who had been so dear.
Twenty-Six
Arges
Weaving between the thick coral roots and curving bridges, he sank deeper and deeper through his home. All was quiet this time. The People of Water were licking their wounds, mourning the loss of their loved ones, and trying to hide from the folly of what they had done.
No one would even meet his gaze. Arges dragged himself along the bottom, scraping his belly and scales upon the homes of those who were lost. His blood marked the water, hopefully giving their families some peace as the true leader of their pod passed by. Giving his all to prove that he missed their loved ones as well.
He should be here with them. He shouldn’t be hiding away with a little mortal who had no idea what they had done or what they had lost. That was why he’d been so angry with her. That was why he’d argued and pushed and tried to hide his feelings by allowing her body to overwhelm him.
He hadn’t wanted to think about this. About his people and their loss and their sadness that filled the sea with a bitter scent.
It was not fair that they had suffered so. But he did not see his brother either. Catching his hand on the top of their shared home, he moved into the cavernous underwater room. Brushing aside the kelp that hid their home from prying eyes, he was disappointed to find it empty. There were only the few swaying nets that they used to hold them in place when they slept. A small bag of berry shaped food that tasted sweet, Daios’s favorite, although he would never admit such a thing. And a few of their favorite woven decorations on the walls. Gifted to them by their blood mother when she was still alive.
“Empty,” he muttered, touching the edge of a tapestry that had recently been ripped.
Where had they brought his brother after his injury? He needed to be treated. That arm wasn’t going to heal itself and there was nowhere for them to bring him other than the healing centers, but he hadn’t scented his brother there either.
Had Daios gone off by himself? His brother should know better. The People of Water were strong, but even a shark would test its luck when it saw one of them was weakened.
Stupid. His brother was so stupid, and it made no sense to him why Daios was suddenly risking his life so often for something that, in the end, didn’t matter.