The little droid muttered "oh," about thirty more times before it unplugged itself and turned those elongated eyes to him. "This is a clone. In Tau, there were many of them used to keep the Originals alive. But after Tau fell, most of them were brought to the other cities to start their new lives. Some were to remain frozen, like this one, as they would overrun the cities with their numbers. But it was also thought to be kinder to not have clones of the same person running around in the same area. Mentally, they weren't sure that the clones would do well with that."
"Or anyone else in the city," Proteus murmured as he looked her over.
He had seen all of this on the screens while Pilot had shared with him the last two hundred years. But it didn't explain why the depthstrider had given him one, or why the sea had seemed so pleased that he had.
He was disappointed. The clones were empty vessels. Shells of people who had no memory or personality. They were children who had been allowed to grow adult bodies without ever actually developing.
"Useless," he muttered, turning away from the pod. "I do not need a servant who has never been awake. This is not helpful at all."
"But this one has been awakened," Pilot said, and then started tapping on the glass to activate some message. "Look for yourself."
Proteus leaned over to read the logs that were actually legible this time and realized, yes. This one had been awakened. Many times, in fact. He could see there were almost a hundred logs of this pod having been opened and the person within it awakened.
Knowing humans, if it had been logged that many times, then she had been awakened at least double that.
"Why would they have done that?" he murmured.
Pilot tapped a few more times on some of the messages and then there it was. An explanation. He wasn't very quick at reading the human language—it had been centuries since he'd even tried—but it came back to him fast enough.
Not only had this woman been awakened for a few days at a time, it appeared... "She's been... downloaded? What does that mean?"
"It means they were using a simulated environment to teach her," Pilot replied. Even the droid seemed confused. "Apparently they were creating a space where she could exist and learn and... well, frankly, mature. All in her mind. She was a real person, wandering through a fake world, until whoever had these codes woke her up."
"Who had the codes?"
"I don't know."
So she had been learning as if she were awake. Growing and doing who knows what in that simulated environment. That was a lot of time for any one person to have been groomed into a weapon, or even worse that he couldn't imagine. The people in Tau weren't known for being kind to the clones. Her kind were used for all sorts of things, from what he had watched on the personal surveillance from the city itself. He wondered what this one had been used for.
"Find out who it was," he said as he slunk back toward the open hatch. "I need to feed."
He wouldn't waste any more time on a fictional woman he would never understand. This clone was a person; that much was clear from her logs, but he had no idea what kind of person she was.
That's why he had a droid.
Proteus followed the whims of the sea then, floating through the waters and finding a recently deceased whale. Quite a few predators were already there, but they saw the size of him and felt the energy of hatred that poured off of him, and they didn't bother him all that much. One of the bigger sharks shoved him when he started to feast, but when Proteus turned toward it with the gaping maw of his mouth fully revealed, the beast slunk away.
A shame, really. He could have used a fight.
But the salty blubber eased the hunger that had been gnawing at him. He devoured pieces of the whale, consuming them until his gullet was so full he could feel his belly extend. And then he felt his strength return.
The power he had been missing flexed throughout his entire form and... yes. He was back to himself. He could feel the sea bending to his will now. He could feel the muscles that were always so strong filling back out. He could go for months without eating now.
Endless.
Enduring.
The kind of creature that was almost impossible to kill.
Grinning perhaps a little too wide, he returned to the box in the sea that kept his captive. Soon enough, he would enact his plan. Soon enough, he would discover what this woman knew and what she had been trained to do.
He slipped inside and approached the coffin, where Pilot had plugged himself in again. "What did you discover?" he asked.
"One of the Originals had woken her many, many times. It's not entirely a good finding, but the man was a very remarkable scientist. He downloaded technical skills into her mind. She's particularly good at computer science and mathematics, although most of what she has learned will not be helpful here. She is used to much newer technologies than what will be required to connect us with Above."
"But the understanding of such things will not be beyond her?"
"Doubtful. She would be useful enough to do what you need." Pilot hesitated though. He could hear there were more words in that response that the droid wasn't telling him.
