Of course, no one else knew that. They assumed that the undine had done it, and if she wanted to keep her head attached to her shoulders, she would let them continue to think so.
He hissed out an angry breath, leaning back in his chair and throwing the controller onto his desk. “Damn beast. There’s no way we can patch that.”
“Are you sure?” She pointed at the section of the wall where she’d removed all the bolts. No one could see it from the drone, thankfully, but any video feedback through the water was hard to tell details. “Look right here. It’s just one panel we have to replace, and we could probably get in there.”
“Yeah, if anyone could get there.” Dennis swiveled all the way around, glowering at her. “The lift isn’t working, Mira. You know that. I know that. None of the electrical works at all.”
“Then we get one of the suits to head down there and patch it up.”
“They don’t know how, and those suits aren’t rated for any detailed work and you know it.” He sighed and shook his head. “Damned shame. All of our work is down there, and we can’t get to it. Not to mention the heads are going to have a field day trying to re-home the rest of us.”
Mira honestly hadn’t thought it would come to this. She was certain, in fact, that they would be able to fix the tunnel. That’s why she’d blocked it all off.
They could see the blast doors had held. She claimed that she’d closed it from the inside and then used one of the escape pods to get to the elevator shaft. But... They’d see the lie in that story once they got back to their section of Beta. All the escape pods were exactly where they were supposed to be.
This was why she wanted to be part of the team to fix it. If she could release one of the pods, then the ocean would do the rest of the work for her. It would be dragged naturally in the elevator's direction and anyone who wondered why it wasn’t right up next to it, would assume that the currents had caused it to drift.
Mira shouldn’t lie, because this was the problem with lying. She was dragged in every which way, trying to keep the lie going when she should have come clean hours ago.
Dennis looked her up and down, then rolled his eyes. “Listen, you’re in no state to be giving advice on this. Go get warmed up, put on some dry clothes. They set the kitchens up for us for the time being. I’ll come get everyone when they know where they’re going to put us.”
She could use a warm shower. Mira had spent her day with the other engineers, mostly in that damned elevator shaft, trying to get down to their old home. Unfortunately, that left her crusted from top to bottom with salt, stiffening her hair and clothes. She had a blanket over her head and tucked underneath her armpits, but she couldn’t let this go. Not when she knew there was a way for her to get her coworkers back to their section of Beta.
“Dennis?” she asked as he strode out of the control room.
He paused at the door, looking at her over his shoulder. “What?”
“Will they make us leave Beta?”
His shoulders rounded forward. “Every city needs engineers, Mira. Just... maybe not so many of them.”
So they weren’t going to another city, which was good news. But it also probably meant most of the engineers would end up in other jobs. Herself included, considering she hadn’t been on the team for very long.
She sank down into the wheelie chair he’d vacated and stared at the computer screens. They had drones all over the facility to keep an eye on everything, plus cameras on every external surface they could put them on. She’d always known they existed, but Mira had never been up here before.
Engineers kept to their own quarters unless there were areas for them to fix. Like she had when she first saw the undine. But this? She’d never thought there was a room with sixteen different screens, all set into an ancient silver table with so many buttons and joysticks that she didn’t know what she could or couldn’t touch.
But it seemed rather self explanatory. She peered around her, making sure that no one had remained in the room. She was still alone. Just her, a bunch of screens, and a wall of windows that looked out onto a quiet ocean. They were so high up in the tower, most likely all she would see were the whale migrations when they happened.
Oh, she bet they had a great view.
The only thing out there right now was deep blue. So much blue that sometimes it made her eyes go out of focus, like there was something massive out there just waiting for her to see it.
Shivering, she touched one of the buttons. Just a green one, since red seemed like a bad idea. One of the screens in the middle flickered, then changed what it was looking at.
Okay, so the green buttons changed cameras.
She looked around her again and then gently pressed a red button. Just to see. One camera going out wouldn’t be that big of a deal, right?
But the red button didn’t implode a camera or make it start shooting bolts. Instead, she saw an answering red blink on the same camera. Was it recording? She’d heard that the Commander liked to record whatever he found in the ocean. New species, different creatures that they’d never seen before. Whatever it was, he liked to keep a documentation of it.
Humming under her breath, Mira made sure all the red dots were turned off and poked around for a little while longer. After everything she’d done for these people, she deserved to at least see what was going on.
It took her only fifteen minutes to find one of them. An undine.
This one wasn’t the same creature she’d seen before. She was a little ashamed by the flash of disappointment once she realized she didn’t recognize this one. He had bright yellow flashes going up and down his fins as he hunched beside an oil drum. His hands were spread wide against the metal, leaning around the edge as he watched... something?
“What are you looking at?” she whispered before clicking the green button next to the screen.
It took her three cameras to see what he was watching, and then she hissed out an angry breath.
Bright blue. Glimmering in the darkness of the sea like a damned beacon saying, “Look at me, I’m back.”
“What are you doing, you idiot?” Mira found herself irrationally angry that the undine had come back. He was supposed to realize that she had helped him for a reason, and it wasn’t for him to continue attacking her home. Because that was clearly what they were doing. Both he and the yellow finned undine were peering into glass windows, then gliding away the moment they saw someone.
He was going to get himself killed. Or his friend. The Commander had recently outfitted the entire city with weapons on the exterior. She knew, because she’d helped install a few of them.
Her rage turned into concern. What did he think he was doing? He was going to get himself killed, and they had just survived. Together.
The damned beast was likely attacking their city again, but even if he was… Even if Mira didn’t want to admit it to herself, he had saved her life. She’d gotten the story out of the other engineers. Their section of Beta had run out of air, and the undine came after that. If he hadn’t gotten her out of that hallway, or if he hadn’t been there at all, she would have died.
Plain and simple.
“Damn it,” she hissed through her teeth. “I owe you, you big blue bastard.”
Mira wiggled the controller of the camera back and forth. The joystick moved, and with it, the camera. She hoped it was enough to get his attention, and she was right.
Her undine was more aware than the other. He spun almost immediately, his black eyes narrowing upon the camera she moved. Switching to the next camera, she wiggled that one. He was a pretty significant distance away, but he noticed.
The yellow finned one disappeared somewhere in their game of chase. She didn’t know why or where he’d gone, but she could only control so many cameras at once. And she owed nothing to that one.