Page 100 of Secrets of the Void
The priest would find no lies. Only exhaustion as Proteus finally released the last tie he had to his parents, and perhaps to the sea itself. He had fought for hundreds of years to scramble back to the person he had once been, but he was so tired of that person.
For once, he wanted to rest. Of course he wanted to help them, but his purpose had always been to see the People of Water get the best life they could get. That was all.
Fortis hummed low under his breath. "What is this I see about warning us? Something to do with Above?"
"That is a conversation for all of us. For the undine and for the humans. Because it's..." He sighed. "Complicated. Everything in regards to the humans is complicated."
And for the first time in his life, he felt a comaraderie with the People of Water. There were quite a few of them around him who shared a look with each other, all of them agreeing that their mates, their humans, were a complicated bunch.
He chuckled and flicked his tail to head toward the dome, where he knew Ellie waited for him. "If you're done with all this, perhaps we should join them so we can tell you all everything we know."
The males followed him without complaint, and Proteus wondered if they would ever be comfortable around him.
He supposed it didn't matter. In the end, all he needed was her.
Forty
Ellie
Ellie floated up into the dome, helped by a very lovely female undine who was quite possibly the prettiest one she'd seen yet. Her lavender color was exquisite, and the way she had braided her hair so intricately made Ellie want to try it herself. Those braids were wrapped around each other in a way that looked like flowers that danced down her back.
With a soft smile, Ellie pulled herself out of the water and sat on the edge of the moon pool. Once she got the rebreather off her head, tearing out even more strands of hair in the process, she exhaled and said, "I really need to learn how to swim."
"Considering we live underwater, yes, you do." Anya's voice interrupted her with a soft laugh.
Ellie looked over to see that the room was full of four women. Alexia and Mira she knew, along with Anya, and the last must be Ace. The shorter woman stood off to the side, glasses perched on her nose, and a small robot in her hands.
"Hi," Ace said. "I don't think we've officially met."
"Not quite, but it's nice to meet you."
The droid in Ace's hands suddenly spasmed. It wriggled out of the woman's hands, dropped onto the floor, and headed toward Ellie with a quick movement.
"Enough pleasantries! Did you bring him here or not?" That was Pilot's voice, certainly. But it wasn't his body.
No more was the droid in the body of a crab. This was more like... well, a lobster, the more she looked at it. His body was significantly longer, although he still had quite a few legs. They were less spider-like and more centipede-like as he headed across the floor toward her.
Ellie picked him up with a delighted laugh, looking into the eyes that were still projected through a glass panel on his face. "Look at you! All new."
"I don't like it," Pilot grumbled.
Ace sighed, the sound filling up the room with exasperation. "I told you, Pilot. You'll learn how to use the new body just fine. It's just algorithms crossing. Soon enough, your directive will forget that you used to be in a different form."
He was all right. Ellie had been so certain that he'd died, and that there was nothing she could do to get him back. She snuggled him close and pressed a kiss to the top of his droid head. She didn't even know if droids could feel a kiss like that, but he certainly spluttered enough for her to think he could.
Setting him down on the ground, she patted his head a couple of times for good measure. "I did bring him. He'll be showing up soon, I'm sure."
"You should have run," Pilot muttered. "Left me here to my own devices. I would have escaped in my own time."
She smiled at him, but then looked up at the other women in the room. They were clearly holding themselves back, trying their best to give her a moment for their reunion before they all flooded her with questions.
"I think you already saw most of what I did in the files," Ellie finally said. "But there's more. There's so much more."
"There always is," Alexia replied. And then she gave her a little secret smile that felt like it was just for the two of them. "I'm glad you listened, Ellie. It seems like you figured it all out on your own, after all."
"More than that." She stood out of the water, shaking some drops from her fingers and shaking her head when Mira offered her a towel.
She told them everything else, then. About the creatures she had seen on the screens, and that she was certain Above was actually inhabited. Then she told them about the mouse she had seen, the strange dog creature that had chased her. All of them were wrong and certainly not what they had seen in the history books.
