Chapter 19
Nineteen
Proteus
His plan was going to work. Proteus was certain of that.
This room had started as nothing but the remaining trash of the humans, and now it was an impressive atrium that would take the breath away of most who entered. Sure, there were greater and more impressive areas in Alpha. But apparently, that city had been destroyed.
None of the underwater cities had channels like this. None of them allowed the People of Water to move through the walls so that they could work side by side with scientists who desperately needed their knowledge and information. Together, they could start their work anew.
He watched as Ellie finished her last bit of work.
She had been coding the last few bits that would put on a show for those he intended to summon here, but apparently there was something wrong in the mapping up there.
The holograms would work in their favor.
Projections on the walls and throughout the area would show the humans and undine what he planned for their future.
Seeing it would make them bend to his ways much easier than not.
They would also be able to try it out for themselves. He longed for the moment when he could see his own people swimming through the channels again, each of them imparting wisdom that was necessary for their human scientists to understand what it would take to do what they wanted.
If only they were so lucky. He could not wait to see what would change with these people, or how they would continue the work he had started over two hundred years ago. As long as the humans were no longer in the sea, he could finally rest.
Ellie peered up at a higher part of a channel, clearly seeing something he didn't. There were creases on her brow now as she looked up at it, and he was suddenly struck again by how intelligent this human was.
He'd met geniuses before. He'd worked with them for ages long before he had ever met her.
But that expression warmed something in his chest. Perhaps the stasis in his prison had changed some chemical makeup inside of him.
It wouldn't be surprising. Being alone for that long was bound to change how he saw the world.
Still, even looking at her made something in his chest heat in a way it never had before.
She was so attuned to detail. She stared at the channel and then finally he saw it too.
A mere drip. A small one, nothing that most people would have been concerned about, but his little Sisu noticed it and she would not let it stand.
"It's not a leak that would threaten those who are within it," he said, his voice tinged with amusement. "You can leave that alone."
"I think you're wrong. It's leaking from a seam, and I think if we added any pressure to it, the whole thing would break." Her frown deepened. "But it's all stone. I don't know how to fix stone."
Pilot chirped from where he was working on the hologram show. "Bring some metal and weld it into the stone. All you have to do is hammer it in place, and then it'll stay there."
"Right," she muttered, already looking for a piece to do exactly that.
She shouldn't have been doing any of this. He appreciated how much she wanted to help him, but Ellie was far more delicate than most humans. She hadn't been using her body for very long. Her arms were still weak, and her legs were shaky even with the bare minimum effort.
Of course, clearing out the sand had helped.
In the week and a half that they'd worked on that project, he had seen her body changing.
Her muscles were slightly more defined now.
She was able to continue working for a bit longer every single day.
But he was concerned about how deeply she slept and the dark circles under her eyes.
She needed more rest than he did, and he feared he would run her ragged long before she was ready to stop working on her own.
Sighing, he shook his head and watched as she gathered all her supplies and climbed up one of the channels.
She'd done this a few times already. Dry as a bone, the channels were mostly chutes that would eventually hold running water.
Although the water would be slow moving, it helped to keep oxygen in the gills of those who floated in them.
She crouched right above the broken part, muttering under her breath. For a moment, she disappeared from his sight as she laid down to look at the damage underneath and peered at the leak before her head popped up once more.
"If I weld metal here, is it going to hurt their scales?" she asked.
He asked the pertinent questions. How thick was the metal? How high did it stick up? And they both decided she would melt the edges, first to make sure it had a good seal, and second to make sure that it didn't cut anyone when they were up there.
He listened to the sound of the crackling welder, and for a moment, time seemed to waver. Pilot tested the holograms, and Proteus stared at all the images of the scientists who once worked here. It was like he had taken a step backward.
Proteus remembered so clearly being here as they built this facility.
He remembered what it was like to listen to all the engineers working, the intelligent dreamers who had wanted to make a better place for humans to live, the environmentalists who truly believed it was possible.
Their voices had echoed throughout the rafters in calls for hope and discoveries that would change everything.
Their voices had gotten quieter over the years.
Roadblocks, as they called them, stopped them at every turn.
From politicians to the rich and famous, so many people tried to stop them from saving this planet until it was far too late.
The world was part of an agenda. Saving it had to serve someone before it could be saved.
He hated how sad all the brilliant minds here had gotten every time they had been forced to stop what they were doing. Their work had gotten so close so many times, and yet then they were forced to not even use some of it. Heartbreaking, really, but he knew where it ended up.
Those in power wanted the world destroyed. Because they had thought they could control the destruction themselves.
They'd been wrong.
The welding sounds stopped, and Ellie poked her head back up with a triumphant grin on her face. All the holograms faded away as Pilot muttered about something not working, and Proteus himself was forced to come back into the present.
"Did you fix it?" he asked, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.
"Of course I fixed it. It wasn't that hard, really." She stood, wobbling a bit precariously before catching herself. "I think it should be better now. Can we test the water again?"
"If you'd like."
Proteus kept his eyes on her as she moved down the chute.
It wasn't entirely safe for someone like her.
Though it wasn't all that steep, it could still be slick as the insides were worn smooth. She needed to be sure-footed and careful, and those weren’t traits Ellie had.
She was clumsy, and often times distracted.
Like this instant.
He watched as her foot caught on something within the chute and she tripped.
Already he could see what would happen playing out.
Another engineer had fallen just like this in the early days.
There were two tiers for her to fall onto, just like the man had.
His back had made a sickening crunch that had haunted Proteus for days on end.
Humans were so fragile. Their bodies were so easy to break.
With a whip of his tail, he propelled himself forward.
Just in time, he caught her. His arms took the brunt force of her impact as she toppled over the edge of one chute and nearly killed herself on the wall of the next.
The backs of his arms hit the stone hard enough to make him grunt, but it wasn't nearly hard enough to break his bones, which were so much stronger than hers.
He tucked her in closer to his chest, holding the warmth of her skin against his and breathing out a long sigh of relief.
"What were you doing?" he finally hissed. "I told you to be careful with yourself. Was that being careful?"
His eyes couldn't look at enough of her.
They trailed down her throat, down the green shirt that really was far too transparent, to the denim skirt which had likely tripped her up.
It was too long. He was going to tear the offensive thing at the thighs so that maybe she could walk around without tripping over herself every second.
Teeth bared, he stared down at her wide-eyed expression and waited for her to defend herself. Lately she'd been arguing with him, and he hadn't corrected her. It was healthy for her to push back at him for some things. But this? This he knew he was right about.
Instead of arguing with him, she lifted her hand and pressed her palm to his cheek. "Did you know you have freckles?" she whispered.
"I have no idea what those are."
"Little dots across your cheeks. Freckles are usually from the sun, but I highly doubt you've been in the sun that often." Her thumb ghosted over the peak of his cheekbone, and his entire body heated at the touch. "You're almost handsome, you know. If not for..."
Her words trailed off, but her fingers didn't. They smoothed over the harsh lines down his cheeks, the ones that were always there no matter how much he tried to hide that his jaw could unhinge and he could likely have swallowed her whole.
He was not the same as the other undine. He'd always known that.
Humans weren't usually the type to find the sea folk handsome. The fact that she looked at him and saw anything that was possible to find pretty was a shock to his entire system.
He couldn't stop holding her. Couldn't put down the warm body that heated him right down into the depths of his ancient bones. She saw him as a man. As a creature who had been with her for so long, perhaps, but also as someone who was handsome. Someone who was kind.
Her fingers pressed against the seams of his cheeks, and he obliged her unspoken question.
Proteus opened his mouth, allowing his jaw to fall open even more, his chin peeling away from the rest of his body so his mouth could open up completely and she could stare down into the depths of the many teeth that spiraled down his throat.
"You are terrifying," she whispered, but then he felt her reach inside of his mouth and gently touch the tip of a very sharp tooth. "But I don't feel fear when I look at you like this. Does that mean something is wrong with me?"
He closed his mouth so he could speak. "No, it just means you are more curious than the average human."
"I took it for granted that you've been calling me human all this time. I remember Malcolm saying that most people under the waves called humans 'achromo'." She stared at him expectantly, wanting to know why he used different words than the People of Water.
"I am not undine," he decided on saying. "I am not them, and they are not me. I am something other, just as you are something other."
She hummed low under her breath. "I suppose that makes sense. You certainly don't look like any of the undine I've seen before. And you worked with the other scientists for years here, didn't you?"
"I did."
"Maybe you picked up on more of their language than you're giving them credit for." And then... a blinding smile.
It was like staring into the sun when she was this happy.
Her eyes scrunched up and her nose even wrinkled as she grinned at him.
She was just happy. Happy to see him, happy to know that he was using words that she could understand.
Happier than he'd ever seen her and he had no idea how to process her beauty.
He should put her down on the floor and get back into the icy cold depths. Perhaps those would cool the feelings that rioted inside of his chest that were as unfamiliar as they were tempting.
But he didn't. He couldn't force himself to release her even as his head dipped closer and closer to hers. He couldn't stop himself when he was breathing over her lips, inhaling the air she exhaled.
"Ellie," he whispered, and the sound of her name on his lips made all the spines on his back raise. "You are unlike anyone I have ever met."
"You've been gone for two hundred years. It's just because you haven't spoken to anyone in a very long time."
He met her gaze, so close that he could see little flecks of gold hidden in them. "No, it's not that."
He surged forward and kissed her. It was inevitable that they would do so. From the first moment he'd seen her as more than just a tool, he had known he would devour her lips. He'd been dying to know what she tasted like, beyond the sweet metallic flavor of her blood.
But Proteus hadn't expected the little breathy moan she let out to tempt him as thoroughly as it did. Kissing a woman like this was sacrilege. Surely she would feel violated that a mouth like what she had just inspected was touching her.
Ellie surprised him at every turn. She curved a hand around the back of his neck and drew him even closer. Pressing her torso to his, she seemed to try to crawl her way inside him with her lips and teeth and tongue.
This was the unpracticed kiss of a woman who had never done this before. She'd been denied physical pleasure for such a long time, it all came rushing to the forefront as she kissed him like a woman possessed.
He was only a man after all, so he kissed her back just as wildly.
A deep groan burned in his chest, rumbling out of his throat with all those razor sharp teeth as he consumed her. Still, there was a need in the back of his head to chew rather than just lick, but he silenced it quickly.
There would be no more pain for her. Not from him, and not from anyone else.
When he finally drew back at the loud sound of clanking from a very irate droid who was displeased with what was happening, Proteus touched his forehead to hers and breathed out a sigh.
"I do not—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. "Don't ruin this moment with words, Proteus."
So he didn't. He just held her until he had to let her go.