Chapter 15
Fifteen
Proteus
The old paths into the Sanctuary were no longer open.
Time had collapsed the tunnels, so it took him a little while to figure out how to get back inside.
Eventually, Proteus grew tired of waiting and just shoved the stones out of his way.
Sure, there had been a few more cave-ins that were more annoying than they were deadly to one as large as him.
The stones were easy to move. They just took time. And all the while, his mind wandered back to the little human who had been unable to swim.
She had surprised him.
But then again, many of the humans he had met couldn't swim. They were all so terrified of the ocean, uncertain when an undine would appear and drag them into the depths, so many had decided to forgo ever learning how.
He hadn't even thought about it when he ripped her out of that pod.
He'd been wanting to destroy it since the first moment she'd asked him not to put her back inside of it.
Yes, the healing capabilities were useful, but also very unlikely to be needed again.
He'd already decided he didn't like it when she was hurt.
Liked it even less when he was the one doing the hurting.
Which meant he was going to keep her safe for the rest of her days.
No one would ever touch her again. Not even him.
She was the safest person on this planet now. A god of the sea himself was going to keep her safe, and no one would take her from him.
Finally, the rock wall gave way, and he entered the room that had plagued his dreams since he'd been captured.
This had been where it had all started. This was where he had been so close to making a truce with the humans and learning how all of them could benefit from each other.
But that had all crumbled because of greed from both sides.
This had once been a facility that would have rivaled the dreams of the gods.
He remembered it being full of light and technology.
All the equipment that they had struggled to make work had taken up nearly every free space.
All of it was in use. All of it was used to research more and more incredible things that would have helped the ocean and the land at the same time.
Now, the equipment was gone. He poked his head out of the water to discover an empty room.
The channels that used to be filled with water were still attached to the walls, at least. He would be able to move about the room once those systems were turned back online.
They were little more than giant troughs that surrounded the area, but they had been useful back in the day, so he didn't dry out.
The other undine who had helped him were also more likely to use those.
Comfort was paramount while helping the humans.
Everything else was sand. He could see there was a small section of wall that had been blasted into the building, although it was hard to see that it was a hole at all, as the sand filled that so much it looked like it was part of the room.
But he knew there hadn't been a door there, and the massive amount of sand in that area suggested that was where most of it had come from.
The wind he couldn't guess at an origin for, however. Perhaps there had been windows. He honestly did not remember.
So many of his memories had been worn away by time. But this place should have been glorious. It should have made a human heart stir with awe. These ragged remains wouldn’t impress anyone.
"It's... magnificent." Ellie's voice carried through his thoughts.
Immediately he found her. She'd gotten out of the water, dripping wet in that strange black suit, and was sitting on one of the sand dunes.
Granules of gold clung to her legs and arms, but she sat there with wide eyes, staring at everything around her like it was all the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
He tried to see it through her gaze, but all he could see was a ruin. This had once been a place of knowledge and learning, where so many people had flocked to try their experiments to help this world.
"There is nothing left," he murmured, trying very hard not to destroy this moment for her. "But it was once magnificent, yes."
"Once?" She finally looked at him, and he swore there was a glow in her eyes that he'd never seen before. "Do you not see where we are? This place is beautiful, Proteus."
He did see where they were. The room was beyond his saving, but her.
.. He could see the beauty in her. With her hair slicked back from her face, she was all pointed angles and harsh features.
Her cheekbones were so sharp they could cut glass, and the hollows of her cheeks would likely have made other people think her face was drawn.
But her eyes were glowing, and the way she looked at all the destruction around them as though it had hope?
He'd never seen anyone prettier in his life.
She was a perfect example of why he had helped her people all those years ago. What he saw as nothing but useless junk, she saw as an opportunity. Humans were ever so good at seeing refuse and making it bloom.
"Beautiful?" he repeated.
"Did you know sand was dry like this? I never knew. I mean, I'd seen it outside, of course, but Tau never had sand that we could touch inside of the city." Something wiggled in the sand in front of her, and he realized it was her toes.
She'd buried her bare feet in the sand and then done the same with her fingers. Ellie drew up fistfuls of the stuff and let it rain back down in a waterfall of colorful gold. Her gaze was pure wonder at the sight of it.
Then she scooped another handful, and he could quite literally hear the sound of her fingers striking metal. The echoing, hollow sound filled the facility they were in, and it made both of them freeze.
Metal. That meant...
"Dig it up," he said, already pulling himself out of the small area where he had been able to float.
He didn't care if the sand scraped his sensitive scales, or if it tore through the membranes of his tail.
Pain didn't matter. There was metal, and that meant there was so much more here than he had thought.
Breathing hard, he arrived at her side as she started to dig. She used her arms like shovels, a smart woman who knew how to move sand quickly until it was revealed.
The first console.
It wasn't much of one. Sand had done its damage, likely from the wind that had blown it in here with the force of a hurricane that had eaten away at the metal. But it was there, and they could make it work if they wanted to use it again.
He stared at Ellie. Her pupils had blown wide as she looked at what they had revealed, and then she looked back at him. There was a strangeness to her features and the way she looked, something that he had not quite been prepared for. Almost as though she was afraid of what they had found.
"This place..." she whispered, the words slow and drawn out. "What was it?"
"The same as all facilities were. A place of research and learning. Why do you look like we have just uncovered a body?"
She smoothed her hand over the top of the panel.
It was rather flat and circular. Now that he was looking at it, he still didn't understand why that would scare her so much.
The sand that covered it had eaten away at the smoothness, leaving behind rusted pieces that picked at her skin and left little red marks when she lifted her palm.
"This is where a test tube would go," she replied.
"I have seen these my whole life. Giant glass tubes, with people hanging inside of them.
The clones lived in them until we were grown enough for someone to wake us.
I've even seen the undine within them. Horrible, hanging people and creatures, none of them aware of where they were.
They slept without knowing how much danger they were in. "
Now he understood. She had memories of a place like this.
And for the first time since meeting her, he wanted to look into her past. He could. At any point. Proteus had always looked at her as a creature beneath him. She was simplistic, a human; their futures and pasts were never worth looking at.
But with her, he wanted to see.
Sliding his hand over to hers on top of the panel, he pressed his palm against the top of her hand and pinned it to the abrasive surface.
All it took was the slightest focus, and then her gaze was locked on his eyes.
He knew what was happening to them, because he had given the same gift to a single bloodline who still lived beneath the waves.
Not the depthstriders, but something even more. Those jellyfish-like people had eyes that looked like a rainbow of colors. Just like his. People fell into them, unable to look away from the beauty of their gazes, but also trapped within the future that he would pull from them.
But this time, it was the past. He tumbled into her memories with her, watching as though he had been there at that very moment.
He saw her in the test tube, as she described it, although he would have called it a tank. She was suspended inside of it by some kind of liquid that looked rather thick even to the naked eye. Scientists surrounded her as she watched them.
She wasn't asleep in this memory. Her eyes were open wide with fear.
There was a strange contraption around her mouth, and he recognized it was meant for breathing.
No one in the room even looked at her. They were all there, of course, wandering around and doing their jobs, but they didn't care that she was terrified.
One of the women walked up to her tank, a clipboard in her hand that she didn't look up from as she hit a button on the outside of the tank. Three men approached as the liquid drained and the front of the tank opened up.