Page 10 of Secrets of the Void
Steve never read anything. She wasn't even sure he could actually read. "I wanted to know what's happening in Tau. Ihaven't heard from Malcolm in a while, and I'd like confirmation that everything is all right in the real world."
Then, something even stranger happened. The same side of his face with the wandering eye started to droop. His mouth pulled down, like wax melting off a skeleton beneath. Then his head started tipping to the left as well, but his voice never changed. "Everything is fine in Tau. I would have been informed if there was anything wrong."
"I think there's something wrong with you," she whispered as she slowly stood. "Maybe we should reboot the simulation. Can you do that?”
Her chair disappeared. The one she had been sitting in was suddenly gone. And then all the screens flickered on and off, each of them showing a city on fire. Tau flooding. Bodies floating in the water and blood turning the ocean red until it was all she could see. Death. Destruction. Danger.
"Nothing is wrong," he said again, his body limp and slowly sliding onto the floor. "There is no reason to be alarmed. I am certain the system would reboot on its own if there were something... wr... wrong..."
Everything went dark.
It only did this when she was waking up. There was no world for a little while. Just her, locked in her head and the body that wouldn't wake until her pod let her. It was a terrifying silence that she had never grown used to.
Was this what all the other clones lived in? Were they also aware, stuck in their own heads as they wasted away into madness because no one allowed them to even open their eyes?
Panic started to set in. She could feel her heart thundering in her chest, racing as though it might be able to flee out of her body and leave the rest of her behind. It didn't want to be here either. It didn't want to suffer in the darkness and silence and pray that someone might find them.
A sharp prick hit the side of her neck. The only time that happened was when she was indeed waking up. Which meant all of that had been a nightmare. She would request that Malcolm allow her to look at the pod, because something had clearly gone wrong with the programming. Or perhaps this was all a test. Perhaps he wanted to see what she would do when she was afraid.
He was always testing her. That could definitely be the explanation.
Maybe clone bodies reacted differently under pressure, and he wanted to see how high her cortisol levels went. Or maybe there was an algorithm update that needed to happen, and he hadn't realized that doing it before she was awake would cause such nightmarish reactions within the programming.
So many explanations raced to the front of her mind because if she didn't explain it, then it was simply a cruel man wanting to hurt her.
She wouldn't even entertain the possibility that something might actually be wrong. She couldn't think that the images she had seen on those screens were real. That people were dead and that Tau... Tau was no more.
Where did that leave her? What did that mean for the girl stuck in a tube that would keep her alive no matter the cost?
Ellie opened her eyes, praying to a god she didn't believe in that everything would be the same. And it mostly was. There were bright white lights over her head, screens on all the walls surrounding her. It was all the same. Exactly as she had left it.
Except... Now there was a dark shadow looming over her. A shadow with long dark hair, eyes like the deepest depths of the sea, and a wide, split mouth that opened up to reveal long, sharp teeth.
"The princess finally wakes," he said, and his voice was the abyss coming to claim her.
She screamed before she could even think to draw breath.
Five
Proteus
Proteus hadn't expected her eyes to be quite so strange. He had seen human eyes throughout most of his life. Humans were, in general, boring. The People of Water called them achromos, the colorless, because to them there were so few colors of human. The undine scales were every color under the rainbow, and some of them exhibited multiple colors at the same time. So he thought he had seen it all when it came to her species.
But her gaze was almost clear. Those eyes were so blue they were nearly white, clearly affected by some kind of drug or strange blip in her creation. The clones were made rather carefully, though. He'd seen how much work and money went into their lives, so he doubted anyone had made such a grievous mistake.
This must simply be how she was. Strange genetics aside, it was almost uncomfortable to look into a gaze that clear. It was like she looked through him into the soul beneath, one he wasn't all that certain he had.
They were two beings created by something much bigger than themselves. They should never have been created, most likely. Whoever thought they should have existed had gone against the laws of nature to bring them about.
What a strange feeling to experience a sense of kinship immediately upon meeting another creature. Proteus had never felt that way before.
Her strange eyes opened even wider, wider, and then she screamed.
The sound blistered through his thoughts, pushing him away from her with an almost physical force. She had no magic or power that he could feel, but that voice of hers was ear-piercing. He couldn't think. He couldn't exist with that insanity of sound reverberating through his head.
Planting his hands on either side of his skull, he reeled away from her. His tail made it hard to flee quickly, and he couldn't see where he was going. The hatch suddenly seemed to disappear, and the sound made every bone in his body ache.
He wanted to kill her. He wanted to slam the top of her coffin down upon her head and end the sound of her voice for good. He needed her silent. He needed the quiet and the calm that had been in this room only moments before her awakening. The fear of him would shut her up, he was certain of it. But he couldn't make her fear him if he was careening away from her at the first sound of her terrified shriek.
