Page 93 of Secrets of the Void
"I told you, it was the right thing to do."
"And now everything is ruined,” he hissed. He stared at her as she sat up, wrapping her arms around her legs. "If they know there is danger on the surface, they won't leave. The sea will continue to fester with their pestilence that they spread through every inch of my homeland. The humans need to get out of my sea or I will kill them all and remove the sickness at its source, Ellie."
"They cannot go home if they don't understand the dangers. We have to prepare them."
"They will not return to the land because they destroyed it! It is a symbol of their shame!" he shouted. The words bounced all along the cavern, echoing back to them as though the gods themselves shared his belief.
He knew the truth. These humans wouldn't want to see the ruination of their planet. They didn't want to face their wrongs, because doing so required them to admit that they were wrong.
She shook her head. "They're still going along with it."
He scoffed. "You cannot know that. They will only return to Sanctuary to gut it for all the information it is worth, and then they will back out of the plan."
Perhaps it was his tone that made her angry as well. He rarely yelled at her like this, and when he did, it made her react as well.
Usually, he appreciated that she stood up and started yelling back. Even now, he enjoyed the redness of her cheeks and the hard clip of her tones as she gestured at him wildly.
"You should trust me!" she shouted back, her voice clipped and angry. "You should know that I have done all the research I needed to make this decision. I didn't tell them just because they asked. I looked over the whole situation before I agreed."
"And what did you discover? That they were sad and mistreated and you wanted to make them feel better?"
"Ugh!" She threw her hands in the air. "This is exactly what she said you would do. She warned me to stick to my choice, and that I would need to be strong to deal with you. Apparently, she saw right through you faster than I did."
That did it. No one else knew him better than she did, and the fact that someone else had wriggled their way into her head and told her how to think made him even angrier.
Proteus pulled himself back out of the water, dragging his body toward her with an angry growl. "How dare you take the word of someone else over me? How long have I taken care of you? How long have I proven that I will listen to your opinions if you just tell me!"
"You never listen to me! You just pretend and then do what you want anyway?—”
"I have been trying, Ellie! I have tried for?—”
"You aren't trying at all! You are pretending to try. That's not the same thing!"
He growled even deeper, the sound echoing through the chamber once more. "As if you listen to me when I speak?—”
"I always listen to you?—”
"You could have ruined everything!"
She planted her hands on his chest and shoved. It didn't do anything, of course. He was far too big for her to move, but it at least startled him into silence. Long enough for her to shout words he had never considered.
"They don't have a choice, Proteus!" She said the words right in his face, forcing him to hear every single one of them. "They're dying. All of them. The city, the people, the clones. Everyone. They don't have a choice. They have to move Above if they can. The city is overpopulated."
What she said seemed to vibrate around him. Surely that wasn't the truth. He couldn't have overlooked something as simple as overpopulation.
But then he must have. He had seen how packed Beta was when he had looked at it in passing. He hadn't even swum by the other city that was still running, because why would he? The humans needed to leave, and that was all that mattered. He could trick them. Lie, cheat, steal, until they were out of his sea for good and then he could bar them from ever returning.
Every part of him had been so convinced that he knew what he was doing, he'd never suspected that they wouldn't be able to make another choice.
"They're choking themselves," he murmured. "Too many of them are in that city, and they don't have enough food, do they?"
"No. They don't have enough resources, and they are outpacing what they can sustain. There are only two cities left, and even if they put rules on children, the clones have added another problem entirely." She rubbed her arms, a sudden chill raising all the bumps on her skin. "That's why the other scientists were so hesitant to have me around."
"What do you mean?"
"The clones aren't children. They aren't adding anything to the population other than stagnant genes. Beta has been very particular about who is allowed to marry who, and while some of my kind are new blood, they can't just keep adding in the same genetics over and over again. Food is scarce. They want the food to be going to real people. People who have been born to those who have survived under the sea for so long."
Not people like her.
