Chapter 6
He was back.
The undine.
Anya sat at her dressing table, staring into the mirror where she could see the sudden ripples in her pool. That was all she could see, and hopefully that was all the cameras saw as well.
Her father had been in his “war room” for days on end with some of his other advisors. Apparently they were concerned about the undine problem. They were certain the creatures were getting ready to attack Alpha, but they wouldn’t tell her why they thought so.
Thankfully, Bitsy had yet to go in for her checkup, and therefore was capable of hacking into her father’s system. With that little lens over Anya’s eye, they had both searched through the videos from the exterior of Alpha. And she’d watched the same undine she had seen sneaking through the pipes day after day.
Sometimes hour after hour.
She’d watched those videos more times than she wanted to admit. There was a certain power in his body as he blasted through the water. Sometimes she could see the lasers hit his sides as the command center sent the message to kill. Those pillars each contained an AI of their own as well. They scanned his body, providing more information than she thought the undine would want them to know.
He was larger than most males they had seen. Sixteen feet from the top of his head to the bottom of his tail, and broad across the chest. The AI had also noted that while he was faster than the others, he turned slower. It had been learning his movements and patterns every time he went by the pillars. But for some reason, even the AI couldn’t track him.
He was changing his patterns, she realized after watching the third clip. There was enough time between his visits that it was clear to her he was watching the pillars. Perhaps he saw the lights on the top that blinked when something got close to them. Or maybe he was watching the animals as they approached her city. She had no idea.
But watching him struggle over and over again, it made something in her feel hope for the first time in a very long time. This undine hadn’t killed her. He hadn’t even grabbed onto her, so that had to mean something, right?
He was still trying to get into the city. He was still doing something because he slipped into the pipes where the AI couldn’t see him anymore.
And this was the third time she’d seen him in her bathing pool.
Wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders, she gently pulled Bitsy off of her head. “Take care of the cameras in the bathroom, would you?”
The little droid bounced up and down once, twice, three times, and then skittered off into the bathroom. She could only imagine what Bitsy would do. Generally, her droid was good about taking orders. Especially when it came to the cameras. She made very quick work of the frustrating recorders that were in every part of her room. But right now, she needed her bedroom cameras to stay on.
None of them had a good angle of the bathroom, for privacy, because only certain people were allowed to check in on her in the bathroom. Her father was a jealous man, at the very least. Overprotective of his daughter, he didn’t want any of his men peeking in on her when they shouldn’t.
She’d never been more thankful for his boorish nature.
Anya had thought maybe the undine would return today. He seemed to come in patterns of threes, and it had been three days exactly since she’d seen him last. She had no idea how he knew where to find her, but it seemed like he always knew where she was. The first time she’d seen him in her neighbor’s house after she’d taken a swim in her friend’s home. The second time, she’d seen him here.
And now he had returned. At least, she had to hope it was him. The water moving like that wasn’t normal. Bitsy would overlay the cameras with a picture of her bathroom with no one in it. It would take a while for anyone to review the footage, so she could only imagine they would see her walking into the bathroom and then give her privacy as long as she walked out at the right time.
Even if they did check the cameras, she was hoping they wouldn’t notice that the image didn’t quite move the way it should.
Blowing out a breath, she brushed her hair back over her shoulder and then nervously tucked it behind her ears. She had no way of knowing what this undine wanted. But she was curious enough to entertain him.
Clearly, a creature with this much dedication had something to say. Anya liked to think they were smart enough to... well, at least talk? But maybe they didn’t, and that was okay too.
After all, she knew what it was like to not have the same ability as everyone else.
Padding to the entrance to her bathroom, she paused. The people watching the feed into her room needed to believe that she was going to be in the bathroom for a while. If she wanted any sort of information from this creature, then she would need to time this correctly for them to interact.
What would Ace do? Her contact in the other station—she still had no idea where Ace was located—seemed to be far braver than her. They would say something like get all the things she could possibly need and lie through her teeth. Put on a performance that would last a lifetime.
That’s why Ace had always called her the Queen of Hearts. She was supposed to be the most believable liar there was, at least that’s what Ace always said. Anya was the person everyone wanted.
Snorting, she walked back to her table and grabbed an armful of bath products. She knew for a fact no one that watched her feeds would think twice about the amount of items she carried. They would think the spoiled brat was going to take a long bath and pamper herself.
The moment she walked through the bathroom, she dumped her armful of stuff on the floor.
She could already see him. The dark fringes of his fins were sticking out of the pipe that led into her private bath. And if she peered a little harder, squinted her eyes to see better, she could see there was a face looking at her through the water.
It really was him. Not that Anya had a lot of experience with undines, but she assumed she would be able to recognize this one no matter where he was. Those scars decorating his shoulders, the dark glint in his eyes, all of it hinted at a man possessed by a plan and barely leashed rage.
Maybe that was what called to her about him. He was angry, and she was angry, and maybe two monstrous people were supposed to find each other. They’d either end up like a bomb or they would fizzle out beating against each other’s rage.
But right now, she was the one with a plan.
Crouching at the edge of her pool, she patted her hand against the tile. “Come up here.”
Bitsy hit the floor on the other side, racing across the tile with her little spindly legs moving almost too quickly. She leapt up onto Anya’s shoulder. Tiny pinpricks of metallic pain followed the droid’s sudden rush before she wrapped herself around Anya’s head and immediately put the lens over her eye.
Words vibrated around the image of the undine in the pipe.
“Danger. Undine. Do not approach.”
“Oh now you’re afraid of the undine? You were the one arguing to see him just a week ago,” she muttered, before patting her hand on the tile again. “I’m just going to get him to come up here so we can talk.”
“Talk?” Bitsy said, the word vibrating with anger. “How do you expect to talk? He is undine. You are human.”
She wasn’t really sure. But something told her this undine was coming to the city for... her. And she wasn’t sure why that was.
He seemed to think the same thing. Because with one more pat, she’d already convinced him to come out of the pipe. With a sharp inhalation, she got her first good look at him.
The AI had captured images of him swimming, but he was always a darting shadow in the dark waters, barely a hint of what he might look like. In person? The undine was enormous.
She hadn’t realized how large sixteen feet was until she was suddenly right in front of it. His broad, blunt features were creased with a frown that should have sent her running back into her room or perhaps sent pee running down her leg. His long hair tangled around his face, falling to his wide shoulders in a waterfall of darkness that almost distracted her from all the muscles that were laid out in front of her.
“Oh boy,” she muttered. “You’re really big.”
That was the first thing she said? She sounded like an idiot.
His skin was a very strange color. Gray, with dark stripes starting at his collarbone and plummeting down to join the darkness of his tail. And the red streaks! He had glowing red streaks running up and down his tail, disappearing into the water where the rest of him was coiled, some of it still inside the pipe, and it seemed like he was already taking up her entire pool.
But then she noticed his arm. Or rather, the lack of it. One arm was big and strong and had so much meat on those biceps her first thought was, “Bite”. The other? It had been cleaved clean off, right in the center of where his biceps would have been.
Anya schooled herself to not stare. A missing arm wasn’t all that surprising, considering he lived out in the ocean. He could have lost it to a fish, or a squid, or a shark. There were whales out there that were rather large as well, and aggressive if the rumors were true.
But then her eyes wandered to the missing appendage one more time, and she recognized burn scars that moved up nearly to his shoulder.
The limb had been burned off. Or rather, it had been shot off. Her kind were the only ones who were capable of doing that.
Her eyes flicked to his black ones, unmoving and dark, as he met her gaze. “I’m sorry you had to suffer that,” she said quietly. “I know the pain of losing something that was once a part of your body, and I know it’s not easy.”
At her words, he leaned a little closer. A flick of those fins at his hips and suddenly he was right in front of her. His hand braced against the side of the pool, right next to hers, and he was so close she could see her own reflection in those dark eyes.
But then he opened his mouth, and he spoke.
Bitsy sent red warning exclamation marks dancing all over the lens, but Anya didn’t read a single one. She barely even noticed the exclamation points because, as he backed up, those words echoed through her head.
She could hear him.
Holy shit, she could hear him.
Reeling from the sound of his deep, echoing voice that was so gravely it sounded like the burble of water passing by the glass, she blinked as he moved away from her. He sank a little deeper into the water, his eyes on her a little too sharp.
But she could fucking hear him.
Not a mess of overlapping sound or the knowledge that someone was speaking, but not having the faintest idea of what they were saying. His voice was so deep, she could only compare it to the sound of water underneath ice. A boom of sound that she’d so rarely heard since her accident. Loud, echoing, and so incredibly deep.
It was stupid. It was risky. It was taking her own life in her hands and thrusting it at this monster who had just showed up in her pool one day. But she suddenly launched herself into the pool.
Anya wasn’t even sure what was going through her head, other than the thought that she had heard him speak. That she could hear the tones of his voice and it had been such a long time since she’d heard the clipped movement of words. They’d been muffled for so long and she had resigned herself to never being able to understand what someone was saying, so her mind just sort of... fractured.
She’d met with the doctors. She’d met with other people like her, but so few of them were injured after they had fourteen years of hearing. Most of the people she knew were born deaf. She wasn’t born like this, and she wasn’t entirely deaf. She existed in a world between two peoples and...
Oh, she had missed hearing someone talk.
The water struck her a little too hard. Maybe she’d belly flopped, but then suddenly there was a massive hand around her waist again. The same way he had pushed her up and out of the water the last time.
Webbed fingers held onto her suddenly clinging clothing, the claws scraping against the lace of her shawl. And none of it mattered.
She braced herself against his chest, her hands on either sides of those blocky pectoral muscles where she could feel two hearts beating just slightly out of rhythm with the other. He stared down at her with wide eyes. Maybe she’d shocked him. She had no idea. All she could focus on right now was the feeling of that massive hand spanning her waist, his fingers just slightly moving against her back. And it was... nice.
Not as scary as she had thought it would be, at least.
Licking her lips, she told herself not to do it again as she noticed his gaze followed that movement. “I can hear you speak,” she whispered. “I... Just do it again. Please?”
He frowned down at her. Maybe that should have been intimidating, but the gills around his neck flared suddenly and all she could think was that they were pretty.
“Say something,” she whispered, her words a little close to begging. “Please.”
He said one word, the guttural tones breaking through the injuries in her ears and she could hear what he had to say. It was loud, probably louder than was safe for her to be around. He might even be injuring her further, but oh... Oh, the sound of a word.
“More than one.” Anya’s eyes fluttered shut, luxuriating in this moment.
He said two words.
She peeled one of her eyes open, frowning at him in disapproval this time. The undine was toying with her. He was...
Responding to every single word she said, like he understood what she was saying.
Anya froze, and suddenly all of this came into very clear focus. She was in the middle of her pool with her arms hooked over his neck. Her legs dangled in the water from where he held her up, but that massive and muscular tail brushed between her legs every time he flexed his muscles to keep them upright. His arm was around her waist, his massive hand wrapped around her back, but his fingers were eerily close to her breast. She was close enough to his mouth to kiss him.
And the undine understood what she was saying.