Chapter 37
The undine loomed over her. No, not undine. Depthstrider. He was breathing hard, all of his gills flared wide as though he had forgotten he had a second set of lungs that could help him breathe easier here. Regardless, it mattered very little. He was going to kill her, and maybe she deserved it.
Her people had been the ones to hurt him. Her people had been the ones to capture him, bring him to this place, and then force him to watch them experimenting on all of his friends. Perhaps family. The woman on the table behind her was someone who had a life before this.
A life Anya’s people had stolen.
He lifted a hand to her neck, those deadly claws dragging down her skin in fine pinpricks of pain. She’d already disconnected all communications with Daios and the others. She didn’t want them to see her die. Not like this.
But then the depthstrider touched Bitsy gently and turned. He leaned down to pick up the axe she had broken him out of his case with and dragged himself toward the other undine.
She thought to ask if he needed help, but she recognized the posture of his body. He had to do this, just like she had to let them out. An alarm suddenly blared over their head. Delayed, of course. But someone had figured out that the undine’s cage had been broken and soon enough, there would be swarms of people in this room with them.
“Hurry,” she said, her throat aching with the sound.
She didn’t have to say anything. The depthstrider coiled his tail underneath himself, pushing up to a great height but still able to use his body like a weapon. Unlike her, it only took him one strike to break through the glass.
The other undine fell to the floor with a wet slap. Water rushed out of this one too, but she was prepared for it this time. Grabbing onto the legs of the table weighted down with the massive dead body above her, she held on until the water had stopped flowing.
Blowing out a long breath, she dragged herself upright. Her leg was on fire where she’d been sliced with that stupid tool. Who knew what had gotten into the wound, but did it really matter? Her father wouldn’t let her live after this.
The depthstrider picked up the other undine in his arms. Somehow, the sleeping male looked so small in the arms of the other.
She pointed to the disposal shoot she’d wedged open. “I already opened it for you. I don’t know if you can understand me, but you have to go now. I can distract them long enough for you to get out.”
But not enough time for her to get out. Her father would send countless people to this room. There was only one way these undines would get out, and that way was her. Her cover was blown. Now, she could only hope that she’d set enough bombs off to do some real damage.
The depthstrider nodded, almost as though he understood her, and then slipped into the shoot. She could already hear boots outside the room in the metal halls, so she waited until the last possible moment before yanking out the metal she’d jammed it with. The shoot closed with a finalistic thud, and she knew this was it.
She was going to have to distract a group of men and women who had been told to stop her at all costs. Lives depended on it.
The doors slammed open. Metal struck metal, the room shaking with the force of it as she turned to look at the last person she had expected to walk through the room with a wall of people behind him.
“Hi Dad,” she breathed.
The General stood in the central area of his research lab, face beet red, so angry that he didn’t know what to do with himself. His eyes scanned over what she had done. The broken tubes. The way she leaned against the table with the dead body, obviously injured. His eyes saw everything but back to the room with all the weapons.
Because why would she go linger in the room that had caused her permanent damage? Why would she ever risk herself like that again? To him, she was still a foolish little girl who had too much pity for creatures he hated.
“Anya,” he said, clearly trying his best to not yell at her. “What have you done, child?”
“I’m not a child. And I set them free.”
“Why?”
“Because they are people. They have intricate cultures and lives that we do not understand. And because you were cutting them open while they were awake for your own sick and twisted games. I don’t know why you want to rip something living open while it can feel every single cut, but I refuse to let you do it any longer.”
His face got more and more red with every word she said. But then he played right into her hand. “Everyone out.”
The soldier beside him turned in surprise. “Sir?”
He must have been her father’s newest brainwashed recruit. The man not only thought he was right where he needed to be, but he was also openly questioning her father in front of other people.
Some soldiers never learned.
“Get out,” her father snapped. “Do not make me tell you twice. This is a family matter.”
In the days when she was afraid of him, she would have flinched at the words. As a child, he would have taken these moments to add to the bruises that no one could see. But she was a grown woman, and she knew what freedom tasted like.
The memory of that was enough to fight for. Even if she would never taste it again.
Anya curled her hand around a scalpel still on the table. If this required her to get her hands dirty, then she would do that. Her father had it coming to him.
It took a while for everyone to filter back out through the doors, but then they were sealed into the room together. Her father’s expression changed from one of chiding annoyance to downright rage.
“First, you’re back from the dead,” he started, his voice deep and rough. “Then you’re freeing experiments? I have to ask, daughter, how did you find out what was happening down here?”
“The undines talk.”
“No undine makes it out of this room alive, so you’ll have to do better than that.” He took a few steps toward her, only to raise his hands and pause as she brandished the scalpel at him. “That little pigsticker won’t do anything, Anya. Put it down.”
“No,” she hissed, adjusting Bitsy so she could see both the lens and her father easier.
“Did you think I wasn’t aware of your contact outside the city? I’ve had you watched since you were just a little girl. I know everything you do.”
She would not rise to that challenge. Bitsy was bugged often, of course, but she’d fixed her every time. “You have no idea what I do in my spare time.”
“Ace?” He lifted his eyebrow. “Your little friend in Gamma? She’s already been taken care of, I hope you know. I sent men to remove the problem the day you got back.”
The first inklings of panic rose in her throat. She could feel it squeezing like he’d wrapped his hands around her neck. “You don’t know who Ace even is.”
“No, Anya. You don’t know who Ace is. I know exactly who she is, where she lives, and how long she’s been helping you. Just like I knew where you were when that monster stole you away from me. But it worked, you see? I had a daughter who gave me every reason I needed to keep fighting against the monsters in this sea. You could have stayed with them and I would have left you alone. As much as a man can leave his daughter alone when she’s fighting on the wrong side of a war.” He shrugged. “But you had to come back.”
How much longer was there on the bombs? She knew it had to be under twenty minutes. It had taken her a while to get the undines out of the tanks. But how long had it actually taken? It felt like only a moment, but she had to have wasted more time than she thought.
“Of course I came back,” she said. “After they told me what you were doing, I knew I was the only one who could stop it.”
“Stop what? The death of two undines?” The smile twisting his lips was downright cruel. “They’re going to swim off and maybe live a couple more years, certainly. I’ll just catch more.”
“I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you can’t do that.”
“I’m sure you will. You always were an obstinate fool.”
That’s when she noticed his hand was at his waist. His fingers toyed with the handle of a gun. And what was she supposed to do? She had to keep him talking.
“Are you going to shoot me, Dad?” She threw the words at him, because they were her only weapons. “Really? Your daughter?”
“It’s a shame that you got it into your head that the undines were actual people. When you returned, I saw the footage of your kidnapping and it was obvious they had brainwashed you. The alarms went off and what a horrible feeling I got in my stomach. A sickness like I knew I was about to lose my daughter. I found you down here dead after you tried to release them, and they killed you on the way out.” He shook his head, taking the gun out of his waistband and pointing it at her head. “But the city will always remember you.”
“Why?” she asked. Some desperation in her knew she was about to die, but she had to understand the reasoning behind it. “Why kill me? Why go to all this trouble?”
“Because I have always needed a figurehead!” Spit flew out of his mouth. “Your mother never understood that, either. I pursued her for years. Years of me telling her that I would become the next general and she would stand by my side. Only the greatest generals in the history of Alpha had wives as beautiful as her. I would become a god in their eyes with her at my side!”
“Mom didn’t want to marry you?” She didn’t really care all that much, but this would keep him talking.
“No, she didn’t want to marry me.” His face warped, as though he was trying to pretend to be sad. “But when your father tragically died in a horrible diving accident, she had nowhere to go but to crawl her way back to me. And she would have been the perfect bride if she hadn’t taken the coward’s way out and slit her wrists in that fucking bathtub! If she wanted to die, I could have made her a martyr, but no. She had to take that from me as well. Thankfully, I had a replacement ready to go.”
Bitsy circled the gun in her father’s hand and put up the word “click”. He’d taken the safety off the gun. He was going to shoot her. He was going to put a bullet in her head and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
“Mom killed herself?” she whispered, taking one step back as though the words hurt her. But really, her head was reeling with all this new information. “You’re not even my father?”
“No. It was easier to tell you that I was, though. Kept you real quiet over all these years.” He gestured up and down her body with the gun. “You look just like her. The golden dream of Alpha. Proof that our city was born in nothing but beauty. Years ago, they would have worshipped you as a paragon. Perhaps they would have said you were sent to us by god himself. Do you know that? You’ve always wielded that beauty so well. Just like her.”
No. She hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted any ounce of her looks, nor had she ever wanted the attention.
“But then I went and touched something I wasn’t supposed to,” she whispered. “And I wasn’t perfect anymore.”
Bitsy threw up an image of someone giving another person a hug, and she’d strangely forgotten that the droid was even on her head. She was so used to reading the words from her father’s lips that she hadn’t noticed she was reading the words transcribed in front of her. She’d just... existed.
Her shoulders rounded forward in defeat. And the General’s head tilted back with a laugh that she knew must be cruel and cutting.
“Yes, you ruined that a bit. But surprisingly, people seemed to love you even more after your little mistake. Strange, I had thought it would prove that you were just as broken as we all thought you were. But no. They loved you because you were a little broken bird who needed them to put you back together.”
“I was never broken.” She curled her fingers even more tightly around the scalpel blade, as though to remind herself that she wasn’t defenseless. “I became so much stronger. It’s a shame that you haven’t recognized that, General. But allow me to tell you that I am far more than you could ever dream.”
“That’s good to know. I’ll tell them all those were your last words. They’ll love that.”
He pointed the gun at her head again, and she had the feeling that now was the time. That everything was about to happen and if she was right, she had saved them all.
The soft smile on her face gave him pause. “What are you grinning about?” he snarled.
“You don’t know everything, General. Even though you like to think that you do.”
“I have my eyes everywhere. Even in your little pod. I know they’re coming for you, and we will be ready to mow them down with all the gunfire that exists in this city. I will destroy them and become the General that no one ever forgets.”
“Right,” she replied. “If only I hadn’t set off the bombs.”
“What bombs?” His face twisted in a snarl and he turned, giving her the smallest window of time.
Anya spun and ran. She darted behind another table before turning it onto its side. She could feel it shaking, and could only assume that her father was shooting at her. But she was behind enough metal to keep her safe for a few moments, pressed against the wall as she was. It was the best chance for her to survive the coming explosion.
As she whispered a countdown to herself, she let memories of her few moments with Daios play through her eyes. She’d tried so hard not to think of him through all of this, because if she got lost in those memories she wasn’t certain that she would ever do it.
But now she could remember the soft surprise in his eyes at her touch. The soft way he’d brushed his fingers through her hair. The wide-eyed expression he got when she touched him. All of those wonderful memories as she counted down with Bitsy.
Love you, appeared on her screen.
Touching her fingers to the small droid on her head, she whispered, “I love you too, you know.”
The words hovered above her eyes as the countdown hit one. And then everything exploded.