Chapter 6 #2
"Me." A wide grin split across his face again, his mouth impossibly wide and full of jagged, sharp teeth.
"Tau has fallen. Most of your kind have been released from their pods, brought to other cities to learn how to live as real people.
Some of them are still frozen. And then there is you, little Ellie.
Dropped into the pit of the sea as a sacrifice to an old god who has only just awakened. "
No, that was something out of a story. He was trying to scare her.
She looked over at the droid, a creature that shouldn't be able to lie.
Pilot looked back up at her and then slowly nodded his entire body.
"The man you speak with is Proteus, son of the ancients.
Lost god of the People of Water. He has been summoned to bring about a new age in our world.
You will be the one to help him. Along with myself, of course. I was the one who woke him."
Ellie noted a small bit of pride in the last bit of what he said. As though the droid wanted to remind her that she might have the attention of a literal god right now, but that didn't mean she was the one who had saved him.
She was a pawn. Someone to do work for other people when they needed work done. It was the same role she had always played.
But somehow, this felt a lot more dangerous than what she was used to.
Her nostrils flared on an inhalation. She could do this. She knew how to pander to powerful men who gave her only a few moments of life. Ellie would suck out the marrow of every opportunity she had to be alive and not in a simulation. She just had to figure out where the marrow was here.
"You want me to help you?" she asked.
"You are going to do so whether you want to or not," Proteus replied.
Son of the ancients. She had no idea what that meant. But she had already recognized that he wasn't the same as the other undine she had seen. He was more than they were. Stronger. Powerful. Different in a way she likely would never truly understand.
"Then I will help you as you wish," she replied. "How often will I be awake?"
He stared at her as though the question confused him. It took him a long time to reply, and she could see it was like pulling teeth for him to even answer. "You will be awake until the task is complete."
"Malcolm..." He tensed, and she knew already that this was a conversation she shouldn't have. "I am used to being placed back in my pod once my work has been completed."
The droid on the control system snorted. "Well get back in that pod then. It's going to take me at least a day to find all these hidden codes that I couldn't even see. Damned droids. They had to make everything hard. I don't understand why they did this!"
Damn it.
She'd been awake for such a short time. All she wanted was to explore the room a little more, maybe stay awake to watch the water that was revealed from the hatch on the floor. She'd stare at a wall if that's what they wanted to do, anything not to go back to that simulation.
But Proteus didn't argue. And if he was the one she had to listen to now, then maybe he was saying he wanted her back asleep again. She headed over to the pod, smoothing her hands over the sides like she had a million times.
The cushion was comfortable inside. Even if she wanted to lie on her side, though, the machine within the pod would turn her to the optimal position.
It would hold her in place if she struggled.
Ellie had lain inside for so long that the indent of her body remained.
The glowing lights would turn off. It would be slightly too cold for comfort the moment she got inside, and then it would inject her with the drugs that would keep her pliant.
The lights would turn off, and the simulation would turn on.
Licking her lips, she looked up at Proteus and said, "My simulation was wrong while I was in there. I believe it was damaged. Did my pod fall?"
He nodded. "You fell all the way to the deepest part of the ocean. The lava field you were resting on may have damaged some of the circuits."
"It's nightmarish in there now." He had told her not to lie, so she told him the truth. That simulation had frightened her, and the idea of going back into it was even worse. She wouldn't beg him, though.
She knew begging didn't help. No matter how prettily she did so, as Malcolm used to say.
He sighed heavily, then his gaze flicked away from her to the droid working on the code. "I do not care what you do, human. If you wish to stay awake and suffer through the mind-numbing annoyance of watching Pilot work, then you may."
"I..." She shouldn't thank him, either. But she did shut the lid of her pod and sit down on top of it. The cold top made her thighs ache, and goosebumps rose all over her skin without a blanket.
Still. This was the best she'd ever felt.
She wasn't asleep. She was here, watching a strange droid working with code and knowing a monster was at her back.
What clone could ever say they'd experienced this?