Chapter 15 #2
Ellie fell through it, and they caught her.
It was then that Proteus realized she was much younger than she was right now.
Her face was smooth and round. Her limbs were shorter and leaner.
The men grabbed onto her the moment she started struggling.
Some deeply embedded part of her realized that she needed to fight.
Even without ever having drawn breath before this, she knew to be afraid of men grabbing her. They all grunted at her waving limbs, and then one of them grabbed the tube that was still attached to her throat.
With a rough yank, he pulled it out of her body. It was shockingly long, having been lodged so deep inside of her body that he thought perhaps it had gone all the way into her stomach. Two tendrils pulled out, one for air and the other for food. And then she was breathing on her own.
Proteus was in her mind, so he knew that at this point she hadn't even learned how to talk yet. They had woken her many times before, but they'd never taken out the comfort of her breathing and feeding tubes. Now, she was surviving on her own.
And the only sound she knew how to make was a scream.
Pulling his hand away from hers, he forced himself to give her some space. The memory made something ache inside his chest, and he rubbed a hand over his thundering hearts.
He wanted to kill those men for her, and that was ridiculous because they were likely already dead. But there was no death good enough for what they had done. No death would ever do justice to the pain they had put her through.
He had promised himself and her that he would keep her safe. Even from her own memories.
"I can wipe them from your mind," he said, as though that might help. "I can remove all those memories until there is nothing left to scare you."
"I don't want them to be gone. I just want to be able to look at a stand like this and not be frightened that someone is going to put me in another glass tank and forget that they put me there." She swallowed hard and removed her hand from the stand. "I assume we need to clear this room out?"
"I intended to show you the beauty of this place. To give you the gift of your own history and the existence of so much human intelligence, even hundreds of years ago. I am sorry it brought back your memories of… that." He felt a little lost.
She shouldn't be afraid of his gift. He had been certain this facility would awaken the curious part of her that enjoyed seeking new things.
She had been so intrigued by the drones and the cameras and all the footage that he had access to in the other facility, so he had thought this would inspire the same feeling.
Thunder rumbled overhead, so loud it seemed to shake the very foundation of the room. She flinched and drew her arms around herself, tucking her hands into her armpits and staring up at the roof.
Proteus realized that she was a very small creature that he'd placed in a very big room.
She'd never been in open spaces before. Only small containment areas, tanks screwed into the ground, a pod that was barely bigger than a coffin, and limited research rooms in places that were underneath the sea so they simply could not be big.
He'd dropped her into a wide open space and told her to be comfortable with it.
Proteus was a fool to think she would be happy here, but he had hoped she would see what he did.
Breathing out a sigh, he gestured toward the sands. "Are you going to be all right here?"
"I can dig them out while you clean yourself off.
The sand is hurting your scales." She turned toward her new task with a determined expression he recognized.
"It will take a week, though. I'm very small, and I'm not sure where to put all the sand.
But this body will learn how to perform manual labor. I'm quite certain of it."
Proteus cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him. Those eyes went wide again, pupils once more blown out. "You will be careful with yourself, and you will not harm this body any more than it already has been. But I asked you a question, Ellie. Will you be all right here?"
"I'm fine anywhere you put me."
"That is not an answer." He drew even closer, incapable of looking at anything beyond her eyes. "I do not want to put you somewhere you will not be comfortable. If you need me to move you, I will happily do so. This facility was meant to be a gift. Not a place to cause you even more fear."
Something in her expression softened, and she reached up to place her hand over his. Just the feeling of her palm against his skin was electric.
All the lights in his bones lit up again. He could see the sickly yellow and green lights illuminating her face, and how they burned through her fingers where she had her hand on him.
It was the first time she'd willingly touched him. The first time he could experience what it was like to have her hand on his skin. And oh, it made him burn.
"I will be fine here," she murmured, her voice a soothing balm to the sudden ache her touch inspired. "We can work together to clear this space out."
"Together," he repeated.