Chapter 13
Thirteen
Proteus
This fragile, broken thing had been cracked and shattered far too many times. He hated knowing that he had some part in the breaking, and there was no way to fix what he had done.
Proteus's dreams were filled with the moments he had lost control.
He could still see the serene expression on her face, and how little she cared while he had been biting through her soft, delicate flesh.
She'd stared at him, perhaps a little surprised, but not at all reacting as though something terrible was happening to her.
She'd only been there with him, enduring the rage and anger that had absolutely nothing to do with her.
He'd been wrong to take it out on such a quiet creature. So very wrong. All she had done was stand in front of him, existing as she always had, and he'd been the monster who had taken advantage of her.
But how to make that up to her when she didn't care that she'd been harmed?
He'd sworn he would bring her somewhere to experience humanity, but the reality was that he didn't know what humanity was either. After all his years of spending time with creatures like her, he had never truly understood them. They were as much an enigma to him as they were to her.
And there was also the small issue that he wasn’t entirely sure how to get her out of the facility.
But he knew there were ways to breathe for her. Ways for her to experience the world at large and to know what it was to be elated, frightened, and yet still feel her heart race with a surge of adventure.
That was what he could give her. The experience that all humans desperately craved.
A life-threatening adventure to remind her that she was, in fact, alive.
He swam up to the facility knowing that now was the time for him to get to know her. He would bring her through the depths of the ocean, providing her with the safety she would need. She would trust him. Learn from him.
But the moment he popped his head up into the room, he knew something was wrong. There were diagrams on the screens now, equations and numbers that ran across every single surface. Neither Ellie nor Pilot looked at him as they poured over the details.
"What is it now?" he asked, already exhausted.
Ellie looked over her shoulder at him before pointing at the screens. "I didn't realize we were this deep in the ocean. I can't go out there without being in my pod."
"Of course you can."
"I cannot. I will quite literally explode."
He blinked. He hadn't thought about the depth and her body, but he supposed the pressures would be concerning.
There were very few creatures who could survive at these depths, and no matter how much she insisted that she wasn't a fragile creature, she was.
He'd need to figure out how to bring her up to the surface without killing her.
Or, at the very least, how to get her to a depth that wouldn't cause her to explode, as she so eloquently explained.
"Pilot," he ordered. "It's time for you to download everything in this room. We're moving."
"Understood."
The little droid plugged himself in and started to work.
All the while, Ellie stared at him with a questioning expression on her face.
With her hip cocked like that and her arms crossed over her chest, she reminded him of a scientist he used to work with all those years ago.
That woman had been ambitious as well, and was never afraid of the things she should have feared.
Ellie watched him with eyes that saw far too much. "What do you mean, we're moving?"
"There are other research facilities. This one lasted us only as long as it was required to. Now, we have outgrown it."
He spoke in lies, and she knew damn well that he was. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him, clearly disappointed that he would even try to lie to her like that. But then she nodded.
"Fine. If you want to move to a facility with less use, then we will do that. But it is not me making this choice."
She turned away from him, waiting until Pilot was done downloading all the information he would need on the next leg of their journey, and then headed to her pod.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"We're going into the deep sea. There is nothing else that can protect me from the pressure other than the pod.
I will attach myself to it once more, and when we reach our next destination, you can wake me.
" She sounded so brave when she said that, but he could see the hesitation in her.
She glanced over at him as she said it, and then he swore he heard her murmur, "I hope you wake me, at least."
This was supposed to be his apology to her. He was supposed to show her the sea, to show her all the things that might have once terrified her. He was going to prove to her that they weren't terrifying.
That he wasn't terrifying.
"Do you have to be asleep inside it?" he blurted, the words hanging between them.
He could hear his own hope, and it made him want to cringe in horror. There was no hope to be found here. Proteus was a god who could order her to do whatever he wanted. He should not care that she deserved to see more than this, and yet... he did.
He hated that he had hurt her. That was all it was. He felt guilt for the first time in his life, and that was why he wanted to prove to her that he wasn't the monster she thought him to be. Even if she said she didn't see him as a monster.
"I don't," she replied, drawing the words out. "Do you wish me to stay awake?"
"I want you to see the journey. To see the ocean as I do, and to understand all that we are protecting." That was it. He just wanted to give her another reason to help him.
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then nodded. "All right."
Pilot hopped in with her, muttering how he wasn't going to get all his circuits rusty again all because they got it in their head that this facility wasn't good enough.
The droid could complain all he wanted, but the truth was that they had outgrown this place.
There weren't enough hunting grounds to provide food for Ellie.
The depth would make it difficult for them to access the surface world, and they needed to be able to do that.
Drones took forever to come back to their facility, and even then, sometimes the pressure or the icy cold prevented it from happening at all.
They did, in fact, need to move. He was just using it also as an excuse to sweeten her mind toward him.
As soon as the lid closed on her pod, he lifted it up into his arms. He was careful not to loom over her as he had when he'd attacked her.
He was certain that memory was not one she wanted to think of while enclosed in a small space she could not easily leave.
Then he turned the viewing window away from himself, so she could see where they were going.
"All right?" he asked as he squirmed his way toward the opening.
Dragging the pod seemed unnecessarily loud and would likely damage it. So, he had to figure out how to move his massive body across the floor while still holding onto something in his arms. It was no easy feat.
"We're fine," she replied. Her hand pressed against the lid, and for a frozen moment he thought she was trying to open it. But she was just stabilizing herself as it rocked back and forth.
It looked like she was standing. With her hands braced on the clear glass, and a determined expression on her face, she was a woman who was ready for anything to happen.
Even if that was the pod shattering into smithereens under the pressure of the sea.
He sent out a silent prayer as his tail hit the water and he drew her into the icy cold. Perhaps if he warned the sea goddess that Ellie would be at risk, then the sea would look favorably upon the both of them. He was, after all, her favored son.
He could feel the currents gently wrapping around him, careful even with her pod as the sea peered through the clear glass to look at Ellie. He felt deep in his bones the rightness of this moment. As though the goddess of the water approved of his choice.
"Still alive?" he asked quietly, his voice slicing through the current as he headed away from the facility.
"I'll be fine once you position me better. If you don't mind, could you flip my pod over?" He could hear the stress in her voice, and immediately did what she asked.
There was a faint thump, and then he could see what the issue had been.
By turning her away from him, he'd pressed her against the lid, rather than the comfortable backing of the pod.
Now that she was facing him, she was technically looking up toward a surface she could not see.
Her back rested against the soft cushion that usually supported her while she slept.
He tried not to stare down at her face, knowing it would make her feel awkward. He certainly felt that way. Because every time he did happen to glance at her, she was staring up at him. Looking right at his face.
At some point, he could almost feel her gaze like a physical touch, running down his neck to his pectorals.
No, between his pectorals. She was looking at the shadow of his twin hearts, revealed by the glowing lights of his rib cage.
She stared straight through him, seeing the rapid heartbeats that always seemed to speed up when she was around.
"What are you looking at?" he asked as he sped them toward the surface. It would take a long time to get there, so he might as well ask.
"You. I haven't really gotten to look you over, and I figure this is as good a time as any."
"What are your thoughts, Sisu?" He couldn't stop himself from asking. He wanted to know what she thought of his body that was not just different from hers, but from any of his people's as well.
"You are unique. I've never seen an undine that looks like you.
" Her words trailed off at the end, growing a little quieter as though she didn't want to admit that to him.
"I'm ashamed to admit I have seen many of your kind.
The experiments in Tau were brutal, and none of them deserved to be pulled apart as they were.
It always made me sick when I walked by them. "
"Humanity has always experimented. I doubt we were the only people those scientists pulled apart.
" He hated it as well, but he had not been released until now.
The rage and anger at what had been done to the People of Water burned hot and wild within his chest, but now there was nothing left for him to stop.
"Your kind has always been a desperate people who would do anything to stay alive.
That is the reality of their situation. They knew if they did not discover a new way for them to live, then they would be destroyed.
Hundreds of years ago, they already knew that the end barreled toward them.
They had one generation, maybe two, and then all they knew would be completely and utterly wiped out. "
"That's a rather benevolent way of looking at it, I suppose."
He glanced down to see an odd expression on her face. Her eyes were narrowed, her jaw clenched as a feeling came over her.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It's just... You make it sound like they didn’t have a choice. Death was the only option if they didn’t do what they did, but desperation isn’t an excuse for cruelty." She shook her head. "Where were you? Aren’t you a god? Shouldn’t you have stopped them?"
He sighed and adjusted his hold on her pod.
It drew her a little farther away from him, tilting her so she couldn't look straight up into his features.
"I was trapped. Imprisoned by my own people so I could not interfere with their choices.
They wished to attack the humans, but I have always seen the use in collaborating with humans.
I argued too hard one day, and they renounced all worship of…
me. So I was stuck. Unable to help either side, no matter how much I dreamt of doing so. "
"For how long?"
"Hundreds of years." Even saying it seemed as though it couldn't possibly be true. No one could survive that. But he had.
Her eyes widened even more. "Hundreds of years?"
"Far longer than I should have been trapped."
A shadow passed over him, though that was strange. He hadn't thought there was enough light to cast one. But then he realized the glow of his own body had illuminated a massive, pale form moving past them.
She went absolutely silent in the pod, as did he, as they both watched the sperm whale move past them.
Its small eye barely even glanced at the sea god before it disappeared into the darkness once more.
Scars dotted its sides, most around its mouth where it had fought massive squid for many years.
The battles had been hard enough to leave marks.
"Wow," she whispered. "I forget how dangerous the sea is until I'm in it, and then... Well, it's hard to forget this place is terrifying when I'm just a small speck that could be killed by almost anything here."
"I would not let them kill you," he murmured. "There are few creatures brave enough to go up against me in these waters."
"Perhaps. But you would have to drop me to fight."
The spines all along his arms and back rose, lifting in deadly, poisoned points. "No, I would not."
Her eyes widened again as she looked them over. "I can see the water shimmering around those. Is that venom?"
"In a way. It paralyzes most creatures. Anything that breathes it in.
It would not affect the mammals in the sea until I cut them, and then it would make it hard for them to move.
They know better than to touch one such as I.
If they are paralyzed, they will drift to the bottom and die long before they are able to wake.
" He looked down at her, trying to soften his expression that he knew must be truly wicked.
"I will keep you safe, little human. You do not have to worry when you are with me. "
It should have eased her mind, but instead, she just stared at him. Then her hand lifted, pressing against the glass. "I'm not sure I'd call it safe, but I don't think anything other than you could kill me now that you have me in your sights."
She was right.
He turned away from the original direction he'd planned on bringing them. If a sperm whale hunted in these waters, then it was very likely there were other creatures hunting as well.
The last thing he needed was for them to be attacked on this journey. He wanted to focus on her and nothing other than that. Distractions were unnecessary when their time together was limited.