He spoke as he asked his questions, but she could see he was talking about a fish. And then he touched his hands to his ribs, then to her feet.

“You think the bones in my feet are like fish ribs?”

He nodded, then mimed snapping something between his hands.

“Fragile,” she snorted. “I guess they would look easily breakable in comparison to you.”

His gaze turned calculating. Pointing at her, he mimed the breaking motion again.

“I’m not as easily breakable as my feet, no.”

He gestured all around them, at the cave, the water, the rusted metal in the back, then pointed back at her.

Pride made her want to tell him that she was fine. That nothing in this place would break her, and she was made of tougher stuff. But the reality was that she knew she wouldn’t last long in here. It was a wet, damp cave with very little promise that air would even stay where it was. She had no idea how old the pipes were that stretched up to the surface, or if the power would eventually go out.

She could probably fix the generator a couple of times. There were enough spare parts lying around that she could make something work. But that would only last for so long.

So, with her pride smarting, she replied, “This place makes me a little more breakable. Being cold and wet means I could get sick easier. There are no vegetables, only the fish you bring me. So I will eventually not have enough of what I need to eat, and I’ll likely die. If you have something you want from me, Arges, you probably need to ask sooner rather than later.”

His brows furrowed and his expression grew troubled. Without another word, he sank beneath the surface and disappeared.

She sighed, watching him go with a strange mixture of relief and worry.

“Byte?” Mira asked. “How much of that did you get?”

The lid of the box popped open. “We’re now at exactly four point two percent. That was a good conversation, Mira!”

Groaning, she fell onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m never getting out of here.”

OceanofPDF.com

Sixteen

Arges

Arges was rather horrified to realize how fragile she was. He’d thought those strange tails were a problem right from the start, mostly because they didn’t bend in the water the way they should, but he assumed it was some past injury that had made her defective.

Now he’d touched them.

Now he knew her tails wouldn’t ever bend, because there was a thick, straight bone preventing them from ever bending the way his tail did. What had she called them? Legs?

The word was immediately matched with something grotesque in his mind. Achromos who wandered about their homes on stiff tails that couldn’t bend no matter how hard they tried to do so. Legs that defied all logic.

But along the current of that memory was the feeling of her warm skin. No scales, unlike his tail, more like touching his own chest. She’d been so soft. Delicate to touch and pliant underneath his hands. She’d let him lift those legs up, and stare at her feet, as she’d called them. She had trusted him to touch her, even wore that smile on her face, and he was... humbled.

She’d let him touch her. And oh, it made him burn.

Even now, far from the cavern through the ocean currents, he knew this was becoming dangerous. He should return to his pod. He should listen to how her kind had caused more trouble and how many more of his own had died.

Arges desperately needed to get a hold of himself. He needed to remember that their species had been warring for centuries for a reason, and not that he was a weakling who wanted nothing more than to touch more of that soft skin.

The current buffeted him away from returning to her cave, and he knew what it was saying. He had drifted too far from his mission. He was supposed to be learning more about her kind so that he could destroy them. Not so that he could become fascinated with them.

But even with that knowledge, even knowing the sea herself was against this oddity in his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering more about her people. She’d explained how fragile they were, and that worried him. So, she couldn’t stay in that cave. He couldn’t keep leaving her there when the cold and the wet could kill her.

He’d never had a more difficult pet in his life.

Although he couldn’t consider her a pet anymore. Or even a mission. Arges rolled his body through a current, switching to another and joining a family of stingrays that eyed him. Their dangerous barbs at the ends of their tails remained flat, though, so he ignored them to get lost in his own thoughts again.

Mira was a person. She talked, and he understood her, and she told him all manner of ridiculous stories from her kind. Perhaps, in time, he could converse with her. The robot clearly didn’t have a handle on his language yet and didn’t seem to be making much progress.

He could use that to his advantage.

Ignoring that his stomach twisted at the mere thought of using her, he made his way back to her cave. He needed to move her. If she was going to get sick and die before he got what he wanted, then he had to do something about it.

Could she be lying? Yes, of course. But he didn’t think she was.

She was strangely honest. Easily speaking about her people and kind whenever he quirked a brow in question. She acted like there were no secrets she knew or that there was anything he shouldn’t know about her kind.

Like she didn’t realize how he would use this information against her people.

Troubled, he swam through the crevice into the cave. But as he took a deep breath to steady himself, he froze at the bottom. He could smell someone else had been here. One of his own people, with the faintest hint of sulfur and ash.

A depthstrider? Certainly not. Their kind rarely came out of the deep, and they wouldn’t dare overstep their bounds when they could smell his scent here. Arges had made certain it was very clear whose cave this was.

Which only left one other person. There was only one in his tribe who reeked of the depths, of the endless layer of gasses that hid yet another layer of the ocean from prying eyes.

“Daios,” he snarled.

His brother had been here. He had stared up at the achromo through the currents, and she likely didn’t even know he’d been there. Lurking in the depths, like the predator he wasn’t supposed to be, Daios had likely thought about stealing what was Arges’s.

And then his blood turned icy.

What if his brother had killed the achromo? What if he hadn’t been here and his enraged brother had ended this job for Arges?

His gills flared wide in worry and all the lights along his tail flashed bright and hot. He wouldn’t stand for it. No one would take Mira from him, not this soon, not when she had just ignited the spark of interest in his chest.

With a flick of his tail, he launched himself to the surface. Splashing loudly, he whipped his head around in the air. Searching for her. Hoping and praying to every ocean god out there that would listen that she be right where he left her.

A startled shriek echoed through the cave, and he had to dodge a launched rock that would have bludgeoned him. Though the projectile should have angered him, all he could muster was a relieved sigh.

His feisty achromo was still alive, then. No one else would dare throw a rock at his head.

Mira pressed a hand to her chest, her face startlingly pale. “Arges! You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing, splashing around like that? I thought you were some deep sea squid who finally decided I would be a tasty snack.”

Luckily for her, he was not. But he hadn’t even considered that there were plenty of creatures here who would happily take a bite out of her.

Swimming closer to the edge, he held out his hand for her. “Come, achromo. I cannot keep you here when it is so clearly dangerous. I would like to keep you alive.”