Opening her mouth, she started at the beginning. "I don't think Proteus ever wanted me, really. He said the sea led him to my pod, but I think it was just luck."
The whole story came out. How she'd woken in that other facility, with Pilot and Proteus looming over her. How she'd been trained for her entire life to be useful, to seek out a master, and that she'd thought she'd been helping. But the more she helped with his plan, the more she realized he would do anything to get the humans out of the sea, and that he didn't care about the threats to them along the way. He was rushing through everything.
And then she told them about what she had read in that woman's journal. In her Original's journal. What she had seen in the sands with the cameras that Proteus hadn't been telling any of them about. And how nervous it all made her.
She purged the story from her soul, knowing that he would be so, so angry at her.
Thirty-Three
Ellie
Ellie hadn't thought that telling the truth would hurt so much. She'd tried her best to tell the story as accurately as she could remember it, but at the end she still felt like she had done something irreparably wrong.
It didn't matter that Anya thanked her profusely. The words, "You might have saved a lot of people, Ellie. Thank you for telling us," was a small consolation prize for what she knew Proteus would say.
She had gone against everything that he had told her to do. It was a direct order. He'd made it very clear that he didn't want any of the humans to know about the cameras or the creatures. He hadn't even wanted them to know what the real reason for the facility was. He wanted them out of the sea, and any lie they had to tell to get that to happen, he was happy to tell.
Had she ruined everything? Their time in that golden temple made her feel like they had built something special between the two of them. There might have been a future if she hadn'tscrewed up by telling the humans what he hadn't wanted them to know.
Anya had taken notes. It wasn't like Ellie could say she'd made it all up. She’d told them too much in far too much detail.
Alexia stood, cracking her neck from side to side before jerking a hand toward another exit from the room. "Come on, Ellie."
"Wait," Anya said, tapping her pen on the tablet she held in her hand. "I have a few questions. While she's here, we might be able to get through a couple of the encryptions that have been stopping us from accessing more documents. If you don't mind, Ellie, could you perhaps help us with?—”
"No." The harsh snap of Alexia's voice was firm, and it was very clear she would not accept any arguments. "Ellie is going to rest. We have a day or two before Proteus finds us here, and the others are preparing for that. She needs to sleep."
Without even looking at the other woman, Alexia grabbed Ellie's arm and hauled her out of the room. They headed down another glass hallway, this one decorated with silver fish that darted over the top and then disappeared on the other side. Ellie tried to focus on those, but all she could think about was how her guts felt like they were twisted inside of her.
She'd done something terribly wrong. And there wasn't any chance for her to crawl her way out of that. Proteus would never speak to her again.
Humans thought of her as a monster. That had been clear with the others working in the facility. They didn't even want to be around her. So where did that leave Ellie?
The one person who had treated her like a person would be so angry with her, she wouldn't be surprised if he just ate her and was done with it. If he spared her life, he wasn't going to stick around and talk to her. Which meant Pilot would leave with him.
Then she was stuck here. With people who thought she was little more than a droid herself. No one wanted to be her friend. No one talked to her. They'd just order her around, and she'd be forced back into the same role she'd been in before.
Doll.
Not even real.
Tears burned in her eyes as Alexia brought her to a room that was furnished with a pretty bed. It had a lovely quilt on top of it, clearly made with loving hands. The amount of colors and textures and patterns on it were obviously not even meant to go together. They were only there to be riotous and colorful. There was a workbench in the corner with all kinds of gears and scraps of metal, and then paintings on the wall. All kinds of paintings of undine, the sea, fish, and a sky that the artist had likely never seen before.
"You can sleep here," Alexia said. "I doubt Mira is coming home anytime soon."
In a daze, she sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to ground herself. The quilt was soft underneath her fingers, at least. It felt good to rub her fingers over the edges.
Her heart was thundering so hard in her chest. Every pound sounded like Proteus’s voice, telling her not to say a word to the humans. She should try to control her breathing. Or at least try to drink some water. But every time she even tried to count her breaths, all she could think of was one word that kept repeating over and over in her head.
Betrayal. Betrayal. Betrayal.
Alexia pressed a button on the wall. A door hissed closed, leaving the two of them trapped inside the room together.
Ellie stared up at her, wondering if maybe now was the time that she was going to die. After all, she'd told them everything she knew. Her usefulness was entirely and utterly gone. She had no reason to be kept alive in the plan moving forward.
But Alexia leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. "What is going through that head? I can see your thoughts running over your face."
"It's all right. You don't have to ask me if I'm okay."
