Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Ellie
Ellie still didn't understand the plan. He wanted to prove that he was a god to these people, who should have worshipped him for centuries, but they had forgotten him. She understood that part.
What she didn't understand was why anyone like him needed to prove that he was what he said he was.
Just look at him. Even the undine had to realize there was something different about Proteus.
Ellie had seen their kind before. She'd stared at them hanging in the tanks at Tau, and even helped take notes about dissections.
She'd seen them a hundred times, if not more than that.
Proteus was not them. Just the sight of him was enough to know that, but it was even more than his looks.
It was the way he moved. How he spoke. The strangeness of his gaze and the way he could see straight through her.
The determination to fix what had been broken, and the dogged way he continued forward until the end.
Proteus knew what he was doing. He had been in the past, and he had lived for such a long time. Anyone who didn't believe he understood how to fix this world of theirs had to have lost a few of their marbles.
Pilot muttered under his breath, checking the last few modules he had programmed to make it even more impressive when their visitors arrived. "Are you ready?" he asked.
"As ready as I'll ever be." She was hidden behind a makeshift wall, but one that would never be seen by someone who didn't know how the shifting sands worked.
The door that led into the room was hidden behind a sand dune.
All she had to do was hit the right buttons to make sure that the manual process of the holograms was where it was supposed to be.
But something didn't feel right about this. It wasn't getting people to worship him in the way he deserved. This was all smoke and mirrors. Parlor tricks that entranced the mind, but meant absolutely nothing.
Shouldn't these people see him for what he was and make their choice from there? She'd always thought worshipping gods required some sort of faith. Proteus should tell them who he was, show them the old sites of worship, and let them decide on their own.
"I can see your thoughts ticking away in that head of yours," Pilot grumbled as he made one last tweak. "It's too late to back out now. We're here for a reason."
"What if he's wrong?"
"Then he's wrong." She swore there was more to what he said, though.
The droid agreed with her. He'd been taking his time programming those holograms. She knew they were easy to make, even easier to summon up the old data that allowed other people's images to be used.
And yet it had taken a very long time for him to prepare for this.
Narrowing her eyes, she pointed at the little crab that hopped down onto the floor with a soft bang. "You are hiding something from me. What's your real opinion?"
Pilot seemed to sigh, a real feat for a droid, and then looked at her. "You and I both were designed to follow orders, were we not?"
It was as if he'd stuck an arrow through her heart.
That was the truth, what he said. She had been designed to follow orders.
She'd been told her entire life to do what other people said and not to question why they wanted her to do so.
She was a puppet. A doll. Someone who had never had to think for herself.
But this... She knew this was wrong. Deep in her gut, she knew that anyone who had survived this long outside of the cities, the very people who had brought down the vast and seemingly all powerful Tau, would not fall for a story like this.
They would see the holograms for what they were. They would know that they were being tricked. This would all crumble down upon their heads, and she wasn't sure there was another way to come back from it.
So she waited, as she was supposed to. But she turned on the few cameras that had survived all this time so she could watch the waters burble and churn as Proteus arrived.
He pulled himself out of the water, his massive length snaking out of the opening for what seemed like an endless amount of time before he coiled himself in the center of a podium that had once held a massive cylindrical tank.
It gave him the perfect stage to lord over all the others that would come here to see the truth of the god who had summoned them.
Ellie felt like she was the only one who could see him for what he really was, though.
Maybe even Proteus himself didn't realize how wonderful he could be, and how much his sheer presence made others feel like they needed to bow down and worship him.
The waters stirred soon after him. He hadn't led their guests here, though. He'd sent a message.
Or rather, he'd had Pilot send a message.
So, the people arriving knew that this facility was here.
What they didn't know was that the facility was alive now.
Breathing just like it had in the old days.
A living Sanctuary, full of potential that she knew they would realize. They didn't need a god, they needed...
Hope.
Everyone alive now needed hope and to see that there was a future in this world, and in the Above. They needed proof, not someone to tell them what to do. They needed a choice.
Just like she had needed the choice for all those years.
Swallowing hard, she opened up the coding for the holograms and began to change them.
Proteus would be furious. He was going to be so angry with her, and she knew that rage was something she wasn't prepared to handle.
She'd seen him angry before. She'd lost her arm to him already, and now there wasn't a convenient pod to put her back together.
But she had to try. She was the only one who could understand how these people felt. Maybe Pilot could in some manner. She supposed the droid knew what it was like to be ordered around when he knew an easier way to do what he had been told to do.
Ellie glanced up to see the group of people who had arrived.
There weren’t nearly as many as she thought.
Clearly, there was the big purple beast Proteus had spoken to before, but there were only three other undines who had arrived with him.
Blue, red, and yellow, the four of them took up the entire space in that small pool.
Then she saw the others. Her fingers stilled where they had been typing in the new protocols for the holograms. Four women got out of the water. Four human women.
They all wore wetsuits, similar to what Ellie had worn when she'd first woken as well.
They pulled mechanical pieces off of their faces, and their determined expressions were as terrifying as they were inspiring.
One stood ahead of the others, revealed to be a redhead as she pulled the hood of her wetsuit down.
She spoke, and Ellie could hear her through the wall as her voice rang throughout the entire hall. "I do not believe in gods. Therefore, I want to know exactly what you are and why you think you can tell us what to do with ourselves."
A thrill of excitement ran through Ellie's body. This woman didn't even seem afraid as she stood up to a creature who looked like Proteus. How was she so brave? How was she so willing to protect her own, even in the face of a terrifying beast like him?
"Your people never worshipped me," Proteus replied, his voice thunderous and deep. "But your mate's people did. They have always been smarter than humans."
She knew this was when she was supposed to turn the holograms on.
This was when she was supposed to turn the entire room into a futuristic madhouse that would overwhelm their senses and give Proteus the upper hand.
She had no idea what his plan was going forward from that.
Likely, he had some harebrained idea that he would overpower them in some way.
Instead, she rushed through the last bits of the new protocol. She timed it so she had a few moments to speak, and then left her post.
"What are you doing?" Pilot whispered quietly at her as she headed toward the door.
She wasn't all that sure. For the first time in her life, Ellie didn't have a plan or someone else telling her what to do. All she could do was go with her gut. She grabbed a folder where she’d been gathering her own research on the way out.
The sharp plastic edges bit into her chest where she pressed it into her sternum.
Letting the door swing open, she stepped out into the room with the rest of them.
So many eyes swung in her direction, but it was the eyes of the other women that she was most interested in.
The redhead stood in the front still, tall, and muscular.
Beside her was a pretty blonde, a rounder woman with glasses and short cropped hair, and then a monolith behind the other two.
The last woman was massive and stood heads taller than Ellie had ever seen a person stand except. .. except...
"You," the tall woman said. "You're awfully familiar."
Ellie pressed a hand to her chest. "I believe my Original may have been, yes. But I am not who you think I am."
The tall woman pushed to the forefront of the crowd, and Ellie remembered people like her. They had been guards, personal guards of the Originals, and genetically altered to be the best at their job that they could be. They were impressive warriors, but they had been trained to be like that.
The woman might have stalked all the way up to her if Proteus's tail hadn't lashed out, catching her in the chest and throwing her back into the water. It didn't escape Ellie's notice that the purple undine was the one to reach for her as she fell.
"No one touches her!” Proteus hissed, but then he turned on her, rage burning in his eyes as he hissed, "What are you doing?"