"I'm not asking if you're okay. I'm telling you to speak to me. Get through all those thoughts. You have to talk them out, or they're going to fester." She lifted a hand and waggled her fingers. "Come on."
That anger bubbled in Ellie’s chest again. She didn't owe this woman anything. She didn't want to tell Alexia all of her deepest and darkest secrets.
An ugly side of her soul awakened, and the words that came out were cutting and harmful. "You don't have to take care of me just because I look like an Original. I'm not one of them."
"Why would I want to care for an Original?"
"I know what you are." Ellie couldn't stop herself. The venom kept pouring out of her mouth. "You were designed to take care of people like me. But I don't need you to take care of me."
"Maybe that is part of why I feel the way I do about the clones, or maybe it's because I’m just like you." Alexia took a few steps into the room, taking up so much space with the sheer size of her body. "Did that ever occur to you? Neither of us is the original of ourselves. I am the seventh generation of Alexia, and there was an eighth that I killed myself. So when I knew the clones were going to be woken in the other cities, I knew I had to take care of them. Because I remember what it was like. Waking up out of that tank, hitting the cold floor, no one caring in the slightest that I was terrified and alone."
Ellie shuddered. The same memories ran deep in her own mind. She hated them. Hated what had been done to all of them.
Alexia crouched in front of her, her knees on the well worn rug. "You feel like you betrayed him. Is that it?"
Miserable, she nodded. It wasn't the same as admitting it. Not really. Not if she didn't say the words.
"You didn't. You're allowed to have your own thoughts, and you looked at the situation with critical eyes. No one can say you didn't think about what you were telling us. Do you know how few people would even remember that much detail?" Alexia slowly reached forward.
Ellie watched the woman's hand approaching hers and had the thought that she should stop her. She shouldn't be manipulated by the thought of a calming touch, but she was. She very much was.
She wanted to know what it was like to have a friend. A friend who wasn't a droid. A friend who could grab her hand and tell her that everything was going to be all right.
Blowing out a breath, she met Alexia and laced their fingers together. They stayed like that for a little while. Ellie felt as though she was clinging onto this monolith of a woman who had certainly never been afraid in her entire life.
"You did the right thing," Alexia said. "No matter how hard it felt like it was to do. Creatures like him... If I've learned anything about the people who live underneath the water, it's that they have a hard time seeing past what they want. He sees a future for his people, and I don't think he's wrong about it. He knows how much destruction humanity has brought. He has seen what we can do, and if he's anything like Fortis, then he has seen what we will do. And he wants to stop it."
"But what if he's right?" Ellie whispered. "What if he was correct and the only way to bring that future to fruition is by not letting any of us know what is to come? Or what is out there?"
"We will all still see the sun." The firm statement echoed throughout the room like a vow. "Some humans might stay below the waves, but I'll be honest. Things are getting tighter. Food. Space. All of it is getting harder and harder for the rest ofus. That's why we were so suspicious when Proteus showed up. We need this more than you or he will ever understand."
And maybe that was a blessing in disguise. It sounded like the humans in the cities didn't have a choice. They had to move out, or overpopulation would kill them all.
"How much time do you all have?" she asked.
"Another generation," Alexia replied. "Maybe. Now that there are only two cities surviving, and one of them is mostly still a prison city, there isn't a lot of room. Beta wasn't big to begin with. We can house some people here, but not as many as we'd like. Space is a luxury that none of us have when we can't breathe in water."
Ellie rolled it over in her mind. She realized two things at once.
Proteus was wrong.
And humanity had no choice but to go Above.
She nodded a few times, her thoughts telling the story that neither side had told each other. Proteus wanted them gone, with good reason, so he hadn't told them the entire truth. But Alexia and her people had been desperate. So they hadn't told him that they needed this to be true, because if they did, then maybe he would take this as an opportunity to punish them.
All of it was so jumbled and such a mess. But she also wasn't confident that either side would tell each other the truth if they were put in the same room together. So much animosity ran between them that it would be hard for either side to trust the other.
Scratching the back of her neck, she said, "I see there are a lot of problems. We all need each other, though."
"Yes, we do." Alexia nodded towards the bed. "Why don't you lie down?"
"I'd like to keep talking, if we could."
Something happened in Alexia's eyes. An emotion that Ellie couldn't name, but one that softened the hard woman's expression. It was like a mother realizing that a child of hers finally wanted to speak with her again.
Alexia braced a hand on the floor and then lowered herself onto it. She pressed her back against the bedframe, staring at the door as though keeping watch over Ellie. "I can keep talking to you. But why don't you lie down, still? There's going to be a lot more questions tomorrow, and we'd like to get as much information as we can before Proteus gets here. I'm sure he's going to take you away from us again."
"He might not." She lay down on the surprisingly comfortable bed, dragging the pillow closer to her. That also was so soft it was like she was lying on a cloud. "He can be reasonable."
