Chapter 10
Ten
Ellie
"I'm really not sure that's the right way to do it," Ellie said. She was seated on the lip of her open pod, devouring yet another of her flavorless nutrient packets.
No one had offered to feed her here, and she was a little concerned with how many she was going through.
Maybe there were other pods they could find, though.
If the clones were taken out of them, wouldn't they eject the pods out into the sea?
They were useless once the people who resided within were taken out.
Sure, they could recode the parameters to bond with someone else.
But it didn't sound like there were any more clones to put in them.
If she could find those pods, then she could easily pull the nutrient packets out of them herself. And there were other bits and bobs that would be useful. She didn't want to dismantle her own, just in case they needed to put her back in.
The chair was the only place to sit unless she sat on the floor. But that was usually damp because of Proteus. So she’d taken to sitting on her pod to stay as dry as possible.
"Of course it's the right way," Pilot argued with her.
She discovered she enjoyed annoying the droid now that she had been given leeway to live her life. Not that Proteus had said such a thing explicitly, but it did seem like he didn't mind if she was herself. And in doing so, she had discovered that it was fun to tease Pilot.
The tiny crab was very uptight. It was obsessed with rules and the right way to do things. It was disgruntled when she was anywhere near it, but mostly when she pointed out the flaws in its plan.
Of which there were many.
"I thought droids were usually smart," she said as she tossed her empty nutrient packet behind the pod and then headed over.
Pilot was working on a plan to get them into the facility that had not been in use for centuries. Unfortunately, that meant that there were a lot of rock cave-ins where the entrance used to be. Tapping on a screen that showed a pile of rubble, she asked, "Where did you get this footage?"
"It is from a surveillance drone I still have access to." A tiny foot pressed a bright red button, turning the screen off. "Don't look."
"The more rocks we pull from that, the more likely there will be another cave-in. We cannot, and certainly should never, play with that. A cave-in on the outside could cause the entire inside to be destroyed." She arched her brow. "Or do you disagree?"
"Of course I disagree! I wouldn't have suggested moving the rocks if I hadn't looked at every possible angle." All eight legs moved it in a circle until Pilot stared up at her with those flickering eyes. "You clearly have no thoughts in your head at all if you believe I would risk his life."
Well, he had her there. She didn't think he was likely to risk Proteus's life. For whatever reason, the droid was oddly loyal to the massive creature who terrified her.
She picked Pilot up from the console, turning him in her hand to look him over. "You know, I could take care of this rust for you."
"Get your hands off me! You—” Pilot blinked. "You could?"
"Do you prefer he or she?" she asked. "Just another odd question. I don't feel right thinking of you as an it."
"I prefer he. Now what were you saying about getting the rust off me?"
She walked over to her pod with him in her hand.
"There's a great number of tools in this pod.
Most of them are there to help keep me alive, but also many of them were with the intention of anticipating all manner of strange happenings that could occur if I were in the pod.
Besides, what if something broke? It knows that it could wake me and I would be able to fix some things from inside the pod itself. "
Ellie leaned over and stuck her hand into the area where she usually lay.
She just had to get the right angle, and then her hands closed around a small rod.
It was particularly good at dealing with rust. She supposed its purpose was to assist if the lid was ever rusted shut and she needed to get out in an emergency.
Then all she'd need was a damp cloth, and she thought she could get Pilot looking brand new.
She showed the droid her tool. "The liquid inside eats away at rust, but it is sensitive to metal."
"It's not liquid," Pilot said in awe. "Those are nanites."
"I don't know what those are."
"Tiny robots, just like me. They have one programmed task for their entire existence. Amongst droids, they're the stuff of legends." He made a sound that was almost a sigh. "Of course you'd have some of those if you were from Tau."
She almost laughed when he said that. "Come on, Tau didn't have everything that everyone wanted."
"Yes, it did."
He seemed so certain that it even made her pause for a moment. "Well, then I guess I'm glad I can share it with you. No one deserves to have rust impeding their movements for centuries on end. How much of it do you think we'll need?"
"Not much at all. They should be able to do their work without either of us needing to help them."
She sprayed some of the liquid on him, and maybe it was filled with little robots like he seemed to think was in there. She still wasn't convinced that was what it was.
Holding the droid up in her hand, she watched the rust start to peel off of him like red dust floating down from his body. "Why are you able to feel things? I don't think I've ever met a droid who could."
She could tell he could feel things so powerfully that he even looked uncomfortable when she asked the question. "I..." Pilot cleared his non-existent throat. "My creator wanted me to feel emotions. He wanted me to be more human than the others."
"Why?"
"Because he thought every living being deserved to feel everything deeply."
Something in her twisted at that. She believed this scientist meant the best after what he'd done, and that was sweet. "What was his name?"
"Dr. Fairweather," the droid murmured. "He was a very sad man. His entire life. Never did tell me why."
And no one would likely ever know. But she thought about Fairweather and his sadness, and wondered if that was why he'd given this droid a personality. Perhaps he had been lonely. Perhaps he'd lost someone very dear to him. So he'd created another person to be close to.
Water flowed over her feet, ice cold and immediately making her shiver.
"Proteus," she scolded. "I thought we talked about you at least announcing yourself so I didn't—”
She froze and stopped talking the moment she saw him.
There was a different kind of light in his eyes as he glared at her.
An anger and a bone deep pain that she tried very hard to recognize but couldn't. Usually there was at least a person in those black eyes that she could relate to, but she couldn't do that at all today.
She stared into the eyes of the abyss. If she stared too long, she feared she would fall straight into his gaze and never be able to crawl her way back out.
Swallowing hard, she tried to back away, but her hips instead pressed against the pod. "Proteus?"
He did not reply as he rose out of the water. His fins were all on display, flared out from his face and sticking straight out. Spines rose on his arms, down his back, and his clawed hands were tense.
"Pilot," she murmured quietly. "Get in the pod."
She heard the little droid trying to move, but she wasn't going to risk its life. Instead, she hit the button to close the pod and sealed him inside. At least there, she knew he would be safe.
Proteus came out of the hatch, one hand over the other, clearly hunting her across the room. She kept her eyes on him, as any prey animal would do. She moved slowly, carefully, trying not to catch too much of his attention while also being very aware that she was his sole interest.
His gaze never wavered from her. He never looked anywhere else. It was rather terrifying to be trapped in his gaze like that, because she wasn't entirely sure what to do about it.
"Proteus," she said again, lifting her hands to show him she didn't have any weapons. "Talk to me."
There was no talking with whatever beast that was in front of her, though. This wasn't even him. She didn't see any part of the man she knew in that gaze. All she saw was a nightmarish beast who had risen out of the murk to attack her.
"Stop," she whispered, but she already knew what was going to happen.
He lunged. Time seemed to slow as the massive bulk of this sea beast rushed toward her, and there was nowhere for her to go. She couldn't run or fight back. She was stuck exactly where she was.
He struck her with a surprising amount of weight. For one moment, she was airborne. Then Ellie's back struck the floor hard enough to force all the air out of her lungs. She lay there with him on top of her, staring up into a massive mouth full of teeth.
To her horror, his mouth split open. The sides of his mouth, the area from his chin and down his throat, dropped open to reveal rows and rows of teeth. Not just one set, not just the ones she'd seen when he smiled, but at least ten rows of sharp teeth going all the way down his throat.
She had the insane thought for a moment that it almost looked like a flower blooming until those teeth closed around her arm.
Before she remembered herself, she screamed.
Ellie tilted her head back and let out a sound of pain that bounced against the walls of this strange facility in the sea.
But then she remembered that pain wasn't something she was supposed to feel.
She wasn't allowed to cry out like that because she wasn't really a person. Not a real one.
So instead, she ground her teeth and forced herself to get through the pain.
She'd be fine. It didn't matter if he bit her arm off and ate it.
There was nothing and no one who would care if she died.
At least she had helped him a bit. She had figured out the binary code that would have stood in his way for a very long time.
Ellie's existence was to serve, and she had done so well. That would be her memory.
The teeth sawed through her arm, and she could feel it ripping and tearing through her flesh.
Against her palm, she could feel his tongue moving against her, swallowing her blood and flesh.
He intended to eat her. Eat her arm. Why would he stop at the limb, though?
He was going to devour her whole, and that. ..
Made her sad.
She whimpered, trying hard not to make a sound. But then Pilot threw himself against the clear lid of her pod, and the loud bang seemed to be the only thing that got through to Proteus. He froze, his teeth embedded in her flesh.
Something cleared in his gaze. She suddenly saw more of him.
The god who had been so haughty and yet so confident that she was a real person.
She watched as he realized what he was doing, that her arm was jammed down his throat and that Pilot was locked away.
That they were sitting in a pool of Ellie's blood that was growing more and more concerning.
He lurched away from her. Her arm slid out of his throat with a wet sound, flopping down at her side, completely useless. She couldn't even feel her fingers, but with that amount of blood it really wasn't surprising.
The horror on his expression was, though. His eyes had widened. His breath came in rapid pants. Proteus closed his mouth, becoming the man she knew once again.
"Ellie?" he whispered, clearly horrified by what he had done.
"It's fine," she said, trying to make it a little easier on him. "I'll be okay."
"What do I do?" Clearly he wanted to come to her, but he worried it would scare her. His hands stretched out, those long, eerie fingers stretching like shadows across the floor toward her. "What do I do to help you, Ellie?"
"It's all right." Her vision was skewed. Everything was a little blurry, and she swore she might be seeing double. "I'm just a doll. I'm sorry you broke me, but a broken doll can still be played with."
Everything in her wanted to tell him not to kill her. Even without an arm, she could still be useful. Her mind was what Malcolm had honed. She could still read the code. She could still help him figure out his plan. She could still argue with Pilot and be the person she had been learning how to be.
"Ellie, what do I do?"
Why was he repeating the same question over and over again?
She blinked, and he was leaning over her.
Or no, she was lying down now. Had she fallen?
That was embarrassing. She'd been hurt before, and Malcolm had been so angry that she had reacted to the injury at all.
He'd told her she needed to pull it together and then put her right back in her pod to heal immediately.
Oh right. Her pod.
"The... The..." Why couldn't she talk? That was so ridiculous. She pointed to the pod with her only good hand, which was somehow also covered in blood.
He scooped her up in his arms and moved toward the pod so quickly it made her head spin. Or maybe that was the blood loss. It could have been that too.
He shoved the lid off and Pilot almost flew out of it, but laid her down gently. She almost didn't feel it when her back hit the soft cushioning within.
"Now what?" he asked, his voice clearly worried. "What do I do, Ellie?"
She tried weakly to reach for the lid. He needed to close that, or she was going to die. She wasn't entirely sure that there was a way to fix a dead body, although she was a clone. A lot of things could be done to someone like her. She hadn't tried it personally.
He seemed to understand what she needed, at least. The lid closed over her head, sealing her into the pod that would know what to do.
Already she could feel it whirring on. The strange sensation of the metal skeleton moving beneath her, shifting to prep her for surgery. A prick on the side of her neck warned that she was about to go to sleep.
Her last sight was him looming over her pod, a dark smudge with his hand on the clear surface. He looked worried.
She hadn't thought he would look so worried.