Chapter 14
Fourteen
Ellie
Ellie had no idea how long they traveled.
For the most part, it was rather quiet. The depths of the ocean muffled all sound other than what she and Pilot made.
The robot was relatively quiet, and she only heard his legs clacking together as he readjusted himself.
Which meant the loudest noise was her own breathing and the thudding of her own heartbeat that echoed in her ears.
She'd seen the massive whale as they swam by. The scars on its face had terrified her, as had the intelligent look in its eyes. The whale had seen her. Not just recognizing that it was swimming past something other than empty water, but actually seen her.
The beast looked into her heart and seemed to see far more than she even knew was there. It even recognized that she had a soul, which she hadn't really thought about before.
Swimming through these waters gave her too much time to think.
So she didn’t. She just stared at Proteus.
A god of the sea, and a monster she hadn't thought possible to exist. He glowed in the water, his bones so visible they were almost painful to look at.
She could see each one, count the ribs that decorated down his torso, although there were a few more than a human.
She could see his hearts beating beneath them, the silhouette of all his organs so obvious that she found herself counting his heartbeats as though that would help calm her.
Something about being in total darkness except for him made the entire experience almost seem like it wasn't real. She was floating in nothing. She was nothing. And all that existed was him.
"I'm bringing you somewhere that will be better than the old facility. You will like it," he murmured, his voice ghosting over her pod and breaking through the thick clear glass.
"Are you bringing me to see the sun?"
"Better."
What could be better than the sun? Humans had tried for centuries underneath the waves to replicate that which they had lost. The sun was all they cared about.
For years and years she remembered working with Malcolm on lightbulbs that were supposed to replicate the heat of the sun, but all of them had failed.
Or at least, they had failed in what the other humans thought the sun should feel like.
She had no idea what else was worth chasing. The heat of the sun, feeling what humans had lost, it was a dream that she'd never believed would come true. What could be better than that?
She mused about the idea for a long time.
There was little in this realm that could rival such an experience.
Perhaps he wanted to show her one of the human settlements.
The original ones were supposedly marvelous, but she didn't think they would have survived the storms. Which meant it was very likely he wasn't bringing her to one of those.
Where else could they go?
Light started to break through the water around them, although it wasn't the light she might have expected.
Here she had been dreaming up beams of sunlight breaking through the surface in rays of gold.
But all she got were bright white slashes, illuminating the water for merely a split second before disappearing again.
"What is that?" she asked. "The light?"
Proteus looked above him, his brow furrowing for a moment. "The sky is angry today."
A storm, then. Ellie should have known there would be many of them, but it was still terrifying to know they were right under one.
She'd seen the reports from Tau's research.
She knew these storms could last for days, sometimes weeks.
They grew stronger and stronger out at sea, turning into monsters that would level an entire town and destroy buildings without ever slowing down.
They grew closer to a sheer ledge made of tumbled rocks.
Giant stones, larger than her head, had all crammed into each other, creating a labyrinth of multicolored stones.
Lightning made it easier for her to see the crevices that hid massive moray eels, each of them sneering at Proteus before disappearing into their homes.
"This is where you will find the secrets of your people," Proteus said. "The greatest secret they kept, in fact."
"Which was?"
"Me," he said quietly, but she heard the regret in his voice. "I worked side by side with them, creating so much that the humans have already forgotten. But I am certain, without question, that there is still some of our work remaining here."
Here? Wait, was this...
"Is this the main facility?" she asked, suddenly pressing her face against the pod as though that would get her even closer. "It doesn’t look anything like the videos the drones sent."
"It is. Here is where all the work was done, and it is here where you will find even more knowledge. So much of it I have forgotten, but you will be able to achieve an infinite amount of progress in a short amount of time. You and Pilot, you will be the ones to discover it again."
She wasn't sure how she felt about that. It was a lot of pressure to be tasked with discovering all that humanity had lost. Even a facility like this, one where so many experiments had been held, would have hidden its secrets well.
Taking a deep breath, she pressed both her palms to the glass and searched through the massive boulders for a way inside. "How am I supposed to go in?" she asked. "The rocks..."
"There is a tunnel. One you can fit through. The drones have already shown you the footage."
She'd seen that footage, yes, and knew that she could squeeze through it. But that didn't mean she could breathe.
"Proteus, I don’t know the way through well enough from that footage. I don't think I can hold my breath for that long."
Saying she didn't think she could was an understatement.
She'd watched the footage from the drone. It had taken exactly six minutes and forty-two seconds to get inside that facility, and that had been with jets propelling it. Ellie didn’t know how to swim, but she knew she could pull herself through the crevice with her hands. Still, it wasn't going to be quick.
No one could hold their breath that long. Maybe divers in the old days when there had been people training to do exactly what he was asking her to do. But she couldn’t.
"Pilot," Proteus said, his voice stern. "You have a breathing apparatus, do you not?"
The faintest scraping sound could be heard from her feet as the droid stretched out his limbs and awakened at the sound of his name. "It has not been used for a while."
"Is it functional?"
There was a long pause before Pilot grumbled, "I suppose it must be. I wouldn't know unless we tested it out."
That wasn't good enough for Ellie. She wanted to make sure she could breathe no matter how far into that crevice they went. What if she got halfway in and all her oxygen cut out? She had to know for certain that she was going to survive.
But then she remembered that she was just a doll. This was an experiment, like all the other experiments she'd been a part of. If she didn't do this, then wasn't she failing him?
At any point, Proteus could open her pod and let the ocean swarm inside her only safe place. Even open, the pod would continue to try to heal her while she died. It would run out of energy trying to stop her from drowning.
Swallowing hard, she finally nodded. "All right. Pilot, let's give it a try."
He felt like a spider crawling up her body all the way to her face. Every footstep as he climbed her torso made her skin crawl, but she would not fall apart. This was what she had been made for. It was her duty. Her job to do what she was told to do.
The droid wrapped his legs around her face, and his body landed against her mouth. A panel in his belly opened up, and she could feel a tube pressing against her lips.
"It's mostly oxygen," Pilot said, as though that was reassuring. "Now, I'm going to close off your nose."
She had to whisper in her own mind not to panic as something pinched her nose shut. He was breathing for her, though. She could take a deep breath through her mouth, and it didn't feel all that different. She was still getting oxygen into her lungs. She could still feel them expanding.
That had to count for something.
"I only have fifteen minutes worth of breathable air before there's nothing left," Pilot said, but she had a feeling he wasn't talking to her. "Open the pod up and let's get going."
Get going? But she didn't even know the direction she was supposed to be swimming in! Hell, she didn't know how to swim!
A faint hissing noise filled her ears before Proteus ripped the door off her pod. Icy cold water rushed in, pinning her against the back for a moment before she was floating. She could feel her limbs lifting on their own, moving without her permission as the ocean held her in its grip.
She wanted to speak. Wanted to tell him that he needed to close the pod back up after she left. It was designed to handle leaks, or even something like this, as long as the seal was fixed again. It could drain the water once she wasn’t inside it.
But there was no way for her to tell him to save what had kept her safe for so many years. Proteus pulled her out, holding onto her while the pod fell to the sea floor below them. It hit the ground with a dull thud, dust exploding around it as the two pieces landed far apart from each other.
Her home. Her safety.
Gone.
It felt like a hole had opened up in her chest. Sure, she hadn't been thrilled with the idea of ever going back to that unreal world that only existed in her own mind. But that had been the safe option. If the real world ever got too much, she had always had the option of returning to that place.
Now, she couldn't. The only place she could live was right here. With a monster holding her by the waist and his cold claws digging into her hips. Her reality was only what was right in front of her, and as terrifying as that was... it was also thrilling.
She looked up at him, blinking the saltwater into her eyes until she could see clearly.
"Go," he said, nudging her in the direction of the rocks.
She still didn't know where she was going. Ellie turned and looked over the rock formation, trying to remember exactly where the drone had gone.
The rocks in the footage had been very distinct. A pale white rock, visible above all the others, had set it apart from the rest. But now that she was in the water, it was harder to tell them apart.
Until she saw it.
The rock was so obvious, she wasn't sure how she hadn't noticed it sooner. Pale with striations through it, she was almost certain that the stone was part of an old building. It was crumbling apart like the rest of it, but it was so obviously different. Almost manufactured.
Breathing in deeply, she held her breath as she kicked herself toward the opening… and fell through the water all the way to the bottom of the sea.
How did people swim? She was flailing her limbs, but she wasn't moving at all. Proteus reached down, grabbed her arm, and propelled her toward the stones, where he deposited her in front of the crevice.
"You will learn to swim," he said. "But for now, get to where you can breathe."
There was air where she was going? She had to assume there was, or he wouldn't have relied on Pilot to breathe for her.
The crevice between the stones was big enough to maneuver through. She twisted, wriggling her way through the stones until she was fully inside them. Entombed within rock.
She'd thought she would be terrified with the press of stones all around her, threatening a cave-in that could crush her between the sharp edges.
But there was something comforting about this space.
She trusted that the stones would remain where they were.
Logic stated they'd been here for quite some time, after all.
A little movement from her would not make them all tumble down.
Still, as she reached for one of the rocks to pull herself forward, she was careful not to tug too hard.
It felt good to use her body. The stones were rough against her palms, abrading the skin there and giving a texture to the environment around her. The pressure of the surrounding ocean muffled all sound. She could breathe, but only barely through Pilot, who was trying to conserve her oxygen.
Ellie had to remember the exact path the drone had gone.
Otherwise she would end up stuck in this labyrinth for good.
But it made her mind laser-focused on keeping her alive, ensuring that nothing went wrong.
Adrenaline poured through her, making her muscles seem stronger, her mind quicker, her entire body ready to do whatever it took to get to the next rock and then. ..
Light.
Beams of it against the stones, even though she knew that wasn't possible. Light couldn't exist down here when the storm was raging over her head.
She pulled herself a little farther through the stones and felt the pinch of how tight they had gotten.
She had to turn her body through some of them, twisting and tugging at her hips that got stuck in another section, and then she was through.
The stones opened up here, not tighter, but giving her so much more space.
And there was light. Glimmering at the top of her head where the water met the air.
She had no idea how long she had been pulling herself through those stones, but she was here now. Staring at a surface that wasn't quite glassy at all. Almost as though a slight breeze ruffled it. That breeze turned the surface into glittering diamonds.
Pilot's legs moved against her face, and suddenly the droid detached from her skin. Oxygen now gone, she used her hands to pull herself up the wall of stones and lift her head out of the water.
She was assaulted with gold.
No, not gold.
Sand.
There was so much sand everywhere her eyes looked.
Bright yellow and illuminated by overhead lights, there were dunes lifting over everything that might have once been the remains of humankind.
Massive pillars held up the ceiling, painted in jewel tones with depictions of humans and undine alike.
Carved sea creatures swam with them up the columns, to a ceiling that was entirely gold.
Some parts of it had fallen now, as the gold foil was visible in massive chunks on the floor.
This room was beyond reason. Beyond understanding. It was so big, so tall, that the more she looked, the larger it seemed to get.
Ellie was used to Tau. Yes, there had been large rooms, but nothing like this. It was as if she clung to the side of a hollow mountain, and so much space made her dizzy.
"What is this place?" she asked as Pilot crawled out of the water with her. He shook water off himself before crawling up onto the sand.
"Welcome to Sanctuary, Ellie."