"He was my friend."
Alexia's expression softened. There it was again, that one emotion that Ellie hadn’t been able to name. But this time she could tell it was pity.
And that made her stomach churn. She lifted a hand, pointing at the other woman. "Don't look at me like that. He was a friend."
"Droids are complicated. I'm sure he considers you a friend too, but they aren't like people. Killing them requires a lot more effort than a metal scrap through him. Wires can be replaced.Hard drives are a bit trickier, but even those can be recovered. He's going to be fine, Ellie. But we can't have him taking you out of here before Proteus returns. That sea god will kill us all if you aren't here, and we don't know where you are."
The doors opened behind Alexia, and two other droids came in. One looked like a little box on wheels. The other, a strange spider-like creation with a glass body. She thought the latter might have been the one attached to Anya’s head. The two of them froze, and then eyes popped out of the top of the box.
"Ah, perfect," Alexia said. "Byte and Bitsy will take care of him. In the meantime, will you come with me? We just got word that Proteus has already woken up. Looks like you aren't going to be helping us as much as we hoped, but we were wondering if you wouldn't mind bypassing the firewalls and getting us into the mainframe of Sanctuary? That way, we can look over the rest of the experimental documentation. Yeah?"
Her mind was spinning. Too many details all flew at her at the same time. Proteus was coming? She was thrilled to hear that. He was alive, and she could breathe a little easier. But Pilot was right there, and the droids were clearly doing something to pull his remains from behind the metal stuck in the wall. And they wanted her to do even more, when Alexia had killed her best friend.
But she had been so kind last night. The two of them had talked about so many things, and Alexia had seemed like she could be a friend as well.
Overwhelmed, she allowed herself to be led from the room into another. There were more people now. A man with glasses, a woman with a shaved head, and a few others she recognized who had been working at the facility. There were a lot of them, and none of them even looked at her as Alexia sat her down and put a tablet in her hands.
"Here," Alexia said, leaning over her and taking up all the oxygen in the room. "This is the coding all our best are struggling with. It looks like someone designed it in Tau, and unfortunately, we don't have a lot of great minds left from Tau. Just you. Now we can break through this. There are many people here with a lot of knowledge. But it sure would be a lot faster if you could do it for us."
She was breathing too hard. Even Ellie could hear her breath as though it were sawing in and out of her lungs. It was foolish how nervous she was. These people hadn't hurt her. But everyone was rushing her.
Mira marched into the room like a soldier, a rebreather in her hands. Her red hair stood up in all directions, and the black shirt she wore billowed around her body as it was tucked into the tightest black pants Ellie had ever seen. "Time's up. He's almost here."
"She can do this," Alexia replied.
"We don't have time for whatever coding you need her to do. She needs to be in the water now for all our sakes."
Alexia's hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. "I believe in her, Mira."
Those words sparked a fire in her chest. Because she could do this. She had done worse in much shorter amounts of time. "Do you have a... a..."
Ellie was waggling her fingers in the air as if she were typing and someone had already brought her a keyboard. The man with the glasses hooked it up to the tablet that Alexia held in front of her as Ellie let the code flow out of her. It was a language that Tau had created, after all. She knew how to read this. She was probably one of the few people left alive who could.
She let all of her worries drop out of her head. This was her last gift to them. This was the last bit of help she would give the humans so they could prepare. A single generation wasleft in Beta. That's all the time they had. She would give them everything she could to prepare them.
And next, she would take on a sea god because he was going to be furious with her.
"Done," she said, lifting her hands up like she was on a timer, and the team in the room whisked away the tablet. Mira placed the rebreather over her face, and she was jerked in the direction of a moon pool.
Everything was happening so fast that she almost couldn't see straight, but then Alexia framed her face with her big hands and made Ellie focus on her and not the people running through the room.
"You stay safe," Alexia said. "You hear me? That creature out there doesn't get to tell you how to live your life, or what is right or wrong. You've got a good head on these shoulders. You can choose for yourself."
"I can't swim," Ellie whimpered.
Again, pity darkened Alexia's expression before she took a deep breath. "Your man's out there, sweetheart. You won't have to."
Cold metal touched the inside of her wrist. A knife? Why did Alexia have a knife against her wrist? The metal pressed down hard enough to part the flesh, a strange stinging sensation as red bloomed down her forearm. Not enough to kill, just enough to really hurt. And then Alexia planted a hand in the center of Ellie's chest and shoved her out into the water.
The icy cold stole her breath for a moment before she remembered that she could breathe with the device attached to her face. Sucking in a deep, startled breath, she stared up at the dome that was slowly disappearing. Blood streamed from her arm, like a red ribbon reaching up for the dome that was getting farther and farther away.
A cliff's edge, Ellie realized. The rock rushed up in front of her, but not close enough for her to touch or grab onto. That dome had been over a steep drop off and she was slowly sinking beyond it.
They'd killed her.
She'd told them that she couldn't swim. Even the stinging ache of her wounded arm wasn't helping her gain enough adrenaline to try to swim harder, faster. They'd thrown her over the edge because she wasn't useful any longer.
Until a long, echoing snarl made the water around her shake. She could feel the sound of his anger and rage as he barreled toward her. A dark creature illuminated the entire sea with his skeleton glowing so brightly it almost hurt to look at him.
