Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Proteus
Proteus could feel the disturbance between them.
He'd told Ellie to focus on downloading all the data she could from this facility.
Most of it would be useless, but if they could return easily and access the feeds, or access the feeds in the other facility, then it would be much easier for all of them.
He didn't enjoy returning to this haunted place. He swore that he could still hear the voices of those who had once worshipped here. The low humming used to drive him crazy, and he swore their spirits still sang through the waves.
Now, he waited for her to finish her work while watching the screens. He hadn't told her that the suspicious new species had returned.
Whatever it was, it was long, although not as long as an undine. Proteus paid particular attention to its body, trying to understand what the differences between this new beast and their underwater counterparts. It was strange to see that there was another being capable of adapting to this world.
The two males he could see—at least, he assumed they were males—were tall where they stood.
He even tried to mimic their poses but found that he couldn't. How they were standing like that, he would not understand.
Their bodies were made differently. Their tails, although it seemed impossible, were stronger than those of an undine.
With broad, flat chests, they looked very similar to the People of Water.
But there were no gills marking their ribs, only the dotting of scales that disappeared into their tails.
Those scales looked different from the ones on their tails as well.
Almost as though they wore armor. When one turned, he could see that the scales went up their spines, protecting the area there that was susceptible to attack.
He couldn’t tell if that was hair or a snake hood on top of their heads. The image was too small.
They seemed to converse, although they mostly spoke with their hands. The gestures were almost familiar in a way, as though if he stared long enough he could understand what they were saying.
None of it mattered. He would not tell the humans about the creatures that lived Above, nor was he interested in it pausing his plans. The humans would leave the water. He would foist them upon this new species, who had yet to see them.
They were intricately linked, after all. These creatures might not understand how linked they were just yet, but they were. The snake-like beings had come from the humans, and it seemed to him that the humans were more likely to be their problem than his.
"Proteus?" Ellie asked, her voice soft with questions.
He turned to her, softening his expression as he knew he had been staring at the screens as though he wanted to break them. "What is it, Sisu?"
She pointed at the screen he'd been glaring at. "I don't think they're going to let us go into their world. We're going to have to tell someone. To talk to them. To let them know that maybe... maybe they can learn from us just as we learned from the undine."
"Do you remember what you read in that book?" he asked. "The journal from the scientist?"
"I know they were trying to splice human and animal genetics so they could create life. Obviously, they succeeded."
"But the journals never said they did. You read it to me.
You said that all they created were more monsters.
And that as far as those geneticists were concerned, none of the species they created retained human thought.
They were creating beasts, not men. What makes you think those creatures are even capable of speech? "
He lied.
To her.
Something dark and ugly twisted in his chest because she didn't deserve that.
Ellie had given him everything and more.
She had always worked with him, not against him.
Never once had she betrayed his trust or who she was.
She had proven time and time again that she was valuable in his plans. In his life.
Lying to her about this betrayed the trust they had been building. And he knew it. She did too.
She stared at him with those pretty, pretty eyes, and he knew that she recognized what he was doing.
Maybe she had seen the same thing he'd seen.
Maybe she could tell that they were conversing with their hands as well.
But all she could do was stare at him. Those pretty eyes boring into his soul as they willed him to admit that he knew more than what he was telling her.
But he couldn't. Not to her. Not to anyone. This plan had to go exactly as he wanted it to go.
Those creatures in the sands were an issue. They were a wrinkle in his carefully cultivated blueprint, which he had spent the latter part of two hundred years figuring out. He was the only one who knew how to save this planet, and he was damn well going to do it.
Even if that meant he had to lie to her.
That truth sat in his stomach, uncomfortable and bubbling as though he had eaten too much rotting meat. Gruffly, he reached out a hand for her to take. "We have to get going," he said. "I apologize, Sisu. It's a hard life being bound to me."
"Bound?" she said with a soft smile, but it was one that didn't reach her eyes. "Am I bound to you, Proteus?"
He thought so. He willed it to be so. She was the only one he would admit to wanting to keep alive, and he fully intended for her to be by his side until the day he had to let her go.
Solemnly nodding, he drew her against his chest and pressed her to his hearts. There, at least, he knew she was alive. He could keep her with him, even if he was a lying, devious fool.
He made sure her mask was on tightly before drawing her into the water. Proteus still didn't trust the breathing apparatus, so he took a moment at the surface, skimming below it, to make sure that she could breathe.
Apparently, she shared the same concern. It was almost as though she were holding her breath before she finally forced an inhalation. When it worked, she gave him a thumbs up, and he sank deeper into the waves.
They headed back toward the facility where the others waited for them.
He knew this was one of the last moments they had alone together, and he refused to waste it.
Not when the awkward silence between them made him feel even worse for what he had done.
She knew. He knew. And he wanted to fix what he could.
"Do you know why I call you Sisu?" he asked quietly, his voice a low murmur as he propelled them through the water.
The kraken let out a low moan behind them, and he could hear the sounds of an old ship shifting underneath its weight. The great beast sounded as if it was warning him not to give so much away. That she didn't deserve to know the nickname he had given her so early.
"I don't."
"Names like this are an old tradition among the People of Water.
They have given names, with a meaning that is always the hope for the child.
But then, those who know them, really know them, give them another name.
It is that name they are called by only those who.
.." He almost said those who loved them.
Because if he was even capable of the emotion, that was how he felt about her.
She had proven to be a light in his darkness, and he wasn't sure how to verbalize that. He wanted to tell her that he did, indeed, love her. That his broken, torn apart soul had seen something in her that made him want to stay a little longer.
It wasn't a feeling he was used to. Or a feeling that he wanted to admit just yet.
So instead, he shook his head to clear the thoughts away and continued speaking.
"Sisu is a word for someone who endures.
It's quiet strength, grace under pressure, a determination to continue no matter how hard it gets.
It is what I saw in you from that very first moment when you looked up at me after I had destroyed your arm, and you told me you had survived worse.
You are all of these things and more, Ellie.
Far more than you give yourself credit for. "
She sucked in a long breath, and bubbles obscured his vision. For a moment, he thought he had insulted her, but then she reached up and pressed her hands to either side of his face.
Proteus allowed her to turn in his arms, so that they were looking each other in the eyes as she said, "You have the ability to be so sweet.
As crushing as you can be, as horrible and tempestuous and maddening, you somehow reach inside my soul and piece back together all the things you break. I don't know how you do that."
He drew her closer so he could press their foreheads together. "Because I desperately wish to keep you," he whispered. "The thought of losing you is almost..."
Proteus didn't know how to verbalize it. He was a fool. An idiot. She needed to hear the words out of his mouth, and he needed to tell her how she turned all of his world to starlight.
Swallowing hard, he tried to do his best. "When I was a young boy, first created, first learning how to swim in this seemingly unending sea, I remember being in a certain area of the ocean for a while.
It was where it was safe to swim, but I snuck out.
In the middle of the night, I ended up in the middle of a storm-worn sea.
But there was a small area of calm. So small that the currents still plucked at my tail, but in that center, there was nothing but stillness.
That is how I feel when you are with me, Sisu.
I can only see you and the knowledge that we will continue forward. No matter what."
Bubbles erupted again, but this time they surrounded his face and hers. He could feel them tickling the underside of his chin, almost making him laugh with the sheer joy of it all.
Her in his arms. The sea finally bent to his will. His plan nearly perfect.
All of this would take time. He knew that.
But he could live for centuries more to make sure that the humans did exactly what he wanted them to do.
No matter what, he would keep her, he realized.
She would stay with him, and together...
Together they would do whatever they wanted.
They would rule this sea, and they would make everything theirs. For good.
But when had anything good ever happened to him?
Proteus felt the first strike against his side with a strange sense of déjà vu. There was a spot of pain, delayed as it was because his mind raced to keep up with what had happened. Another in his tail. Then a third. A fourth.
Blood bloomed in the water. He had forgotten that his blood even looked like that. A strange crimson mix of red and black, a combination of what should not be. He stared at the plumes that obscured his vision of her and felt his hearts racing.
His first thought was fear that she had gotten hurt. He held her a little harder, hearing her soft sound of pain as he crushed her against him a little too tightly.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his tone frantic. "Ellie!"
But then something hit his arms as well. Two somethings that were stronger than he could fight against. Something was in the water. Something that turned his mind a little foggy, and he couldn't quite focus on what needed to be done.
It was a mistake to loosen his grip on her. But she made that soft sound again, that sound of pain as though he was hurting her, and he'd promised that he would stop doing that.
The moment his arms relaxed even slightly, she was ripped away from him. More bubbles exploded out of her, and he swore he heard her scream. It enraged him.
Fire burned in his chest with a fury that his attackers could never have anticipated. Screaming a feral roar, he wrenched an arm out of the grip of one and reached for whatever had pierced through his tail.
His hand came away with a harpoon coated in some kind of venom. The shimmering liquid glimmered in the meager light of the sea. A crack of thunder rumbled overhead, lightning illuminating the entire scene before him.
The blood that bloomed around him had hidden the undine that surrounded him. In the stark white light, he could see their forms. Massive males, each of them. Scarred from years of battle, one with a metallic arm that was still holding onto Proteus's.
And in the distance, another undine had an arm wrapped around Ellie's waist as she struggled to get free of them.
Again he roared, but the poison worked fast. Suddenly he wasn't here. He was back in time when the undine had imprisoned him, and when he had been so certain that they would never betray him.
He would get them to work with the humans. Their future wouldn't be one of ruination and despair.
But then the undine had attacked. They'd used the same poison, he remembered.
The cold sensation of death crept up his tail the same way it had then.
The whispering words of the ancients in his ear, screaming at him to struggle, to fight, to not let them destroy all that he had worked on for so many years.
His free arm was grabbed again. A purple and white face, one with markings of black tears down his cheeks, appeared through the blood.
Calmly, the depthstrider grabbed onto the harpoon in his hand and plunged it back into his tail. "Only for a while," the depthstrider said. "Not forever this time."
But he was already sinking. Sinking deeper and deeper into the cold sea that always welcomed him with her embrace. She whispered in his ear that she would keep him safe, but he burned with hate. The undine had betrayed him again.
"Don't you know?" he said through numb lips. "Killing your gods never lasts long."
"We're not killing you," the one missing an arm snarled. "We're just getting you out of the way until we get the truth."
What truth? He'd told them everything. He'd given them every single thing they could hope for, and yet they were still betraying him. Still killing him. Still stripping away all that made him who he was.
"Here is good," the depthstrider said. "It'll take him a while to wake up, and by then, we'll be gone."
The one missing an arm looked down at him, and the others released their hold. He was drifting, floating above an abyss, glaring into the eyes of this male who held him by one arm.
The red undine allowed him to dangle for a while, and then said, "He'll hunt us to the ends of the sea to get her back. It's what I would do, after all."
Then he dropped Proteus into the void.