“Then she will die.” The robot was so matter of fact with its tone.

Every spine down his back rose and his gills flared wide in anger. “She will not die. You will fix her.”

“I am not a medical droid.” The tool went back into Byte’s box and the robot seemed to shrug those tiny arms. “There is nothing I can do for her down here. She should be taking supplements, eating vegetables, doing all the things that keep humans alive. You are doing none of those.”

“What do you mean?” he hissed. “I bring her food. I bring her to the caves with light. She lives, does she not?”

“Light is not sunlight! The humans have been taking supplements for years now that they live underneath the surface. The depths are not made for humans, not like your people. Humans need sunlight. They call it vitamin d, and it fuels so many important functions in their body. And fish are not food!”

“They are food!”

“Not like humans need to eat!” the little droid shouted back. “A varied diet is important for humankind. You might be able to eat the same thing every single day and still swim about with your tail flipping around, but a human needs proper food. Food that can actually sustain them. You have not brought her any of that.”

He was going to crush the box. That was the only way to ease the anger in his chest. Some part of him knew that he was angry at himself, not at the box, but it would still feel good to crush something between his claws.

Sinking lower in the water, he glared at the droid. “Tell me what I can do to help her.”

“You can bring her back to the city, so she can be seen by a medical droid and be treated for all these issues.”

“Tell me something else I can do.”

“Unless you can magically find an abandoned human home underneath the sea that is not connected to the city, then there is nothing else you can do to help her.” The droid looked at Mira, then back at him. “Am I not speaking English? Are you having trouble understanding me?”

“I understand you fine, abomination. But there are no options. I cannot bring her back to the city and I cannot find another way to heal her.”

His hearts raced. Would he lose her so soon? The guilt in that thought alone threatened to swallow him. It was his fault that she was here. And she’d told him she knew nothing. She wasn’t meant to even be here. He could have taken one of their leaders if he had been more patient and less intrigued by the glimmering light of her suit.

For all the murdering and killing he’d done in his life, he’d never harmed an innocent. In this, he knew she had no guilt to carry and didn’t deserve to die because he’d made a mistake.

Oh, he had never thought it would come to this.

He met Mira’s gaze, looking at her from the water and seeing the way the light played off her green eyes. He couldn’t stop himself from saying the words, even though he knew she couldn’t understand him. “I am sorry, kairos. Perhaps I never should have brought you here, but know I will do what I can to save you. Throughout all of this, you have been brave, and that is something to honor. Even if I have proven myself incapable of honoring much in your time here.”

He pressed a fist to his chest, watching her eyes dart between him and the droid.

Finally, she sighed. Her shoulders curved in on her body, like she was folding into a new being. “I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t feel all that sick. It’s just my joints that ache and my stomach that’s a little off, but nothing is going to kill me here. I just need some sunlight and some vegetables and I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t be fine,” Byte muttered. “You need multiple injections and perhaps a healing pod.”

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated, her words a little harder than before. “You don’t have to worry about me. Either of you.”

But this still didn’t settle well with him. The only option was to return to the depths, to Mitéra, and beg for her to allow the release of his kairos. Even if that meant his honor would be forfeit, Arges found himself willing to do it.

“I will be back,” he murmured, his voice low as he sank beneath the waves. “I will save you, Mira.”

OceanofPDF.com

Twenty-Five

Mira

Mira watched him disappear into the water again, and she felt all the energy in her body simply drain out. It wasn’t possible for her to keep up this charade any longer. She’d been trying so hard to feel like she was healthy and normal, but... she wasn’t.

She knew she wouldn’t last very long. Byte was right. She didn’t have unending time here while her body slowly deteriorated, because she needed more from every part of what kept her alive. Food. Water. Shelter. Light. All the things that humans had given up to live underneath the sea.

Down here? She would die all too quickly.

Byte shuffled a little closer to her, those metal arms pinging against the stone as it dragged itself a little closer with every movement. “You know, there are better ways to prove that you’re strong.”

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“Well, it seems like you might.” Byte settled beside her, watching her with those unblinking eyes as she put her feet into the yellow glow of the water and swished her toes there. “If you keep doing that, your toes will rot off.”

“No, they won’t,” she replied with a chuckle, surprised it could make her smile so easily. “They’ll be fine. I know everything has been a little damp lately, but at least I can dry out in this cave.”

“Where all the other undines know you are. It’s a risk for us to stay here too long. You’ll be wet again soon enough.”

“I don’t really mind it,” she said quietly. “I like the ocean. Swimming is something that I’ve always enjoyed, even though we were only allowed to do so in the moon pool where there were a hundred cameras underneath to make sure nothing would come close to us. Even the engineering wing had a small section of the ocean we could dip our toes into.”

She swished her feet in the water, watching delicate foam rise from her movements, and it captivated her. Just as it had when she was a little girl.

Byte made a little clunking noise that sounded rather like a huff. “Humans have always been so interested in the ocean. Even when I was made, lifetimes ago for you, you all had a fascination with the sea. It’s always the depths that you couldn’t understand and the creatures far beneath it.”

“You remember?” She turned to look at Byte, noticing the rust gathering on its edges. “How much do you remember?”

“Everything.” Byte picked at one of those rusty pieces. “I told you, I was meant to be a record keeper. I remember everything that happened in those old days. The beginning of our journey underneath the sea. The first construction of Alpha and the secondary constructions of others.”

“How?” She pulled her feet out of the water and gently picked Byte up. “How do you remember all that if you were mapping the sea floor?”

“Transmissions. Even underwater, there are ways for droids to keep in touch with each other. I have many memories of those early times.” It tapped the side of its box, and the little projector appeared off the top of it. “Would you like to see?”

A glimpse into a world long gone? She would be honored to see what the droid had archived, but even more than that, she just wanted to see how people used to live.

“Why don’t you show me while I clean off some of this rust? There were a few chemicals in the back that haven’t degraded yet. I think I should be able to get you shining so the rust doesn’t get any worse.”

She placed Byte on top of the computer console and gathered her things to clean it while the droid settled in. She watched as it flicked through memories, speeding through some and then dismissing others. But eventually, it settled on images to project that immediately captivated her.