Page 13 of Whispers of the Deep
Or... maybe he had.
Frowning, she looked down at the computer screens before she looked back up at him. Circling one hand in the air, she gestured at the room they were in. “This room is where these come from.” Then she turned her hand into a gun shape and fake blasted it at him.
That made his eyes narrow, but he still didn’t move.
She didn’t know what he wanted. He clearly recognized the weapons they used to get the undine off their city walls. So why was he not swimming off into the distance to go do whatever it was they did all day.
“Come on, man,” she muttered. “You have got to go.”
Then he pressed a webbed hand against his chest and drew it back toward her. He repeated the motion, as though he wanted her to see or understand something that he couldn’t convey. But she didn’t know what he was trying to say.
He wasn’t thanking her for anything, that much she knew for certain. He didn’t know the cameras were attached to the guns. And he definitely didn’t think she’d saved him. Maybe she had in the beginning, but then he could have left her for dead.
She cursed. Right, that was the correct way to think. He owed her now, because they were even up until this point. He would have died in the tube with her. She’d gotten him out, he had gotten her to the lift. They were even. And now she’d gone and helped him again.
“Fuck me,” she muttered, looking back at the door to make sure no one had come in. “You need to leave. Both of us are going to be in serious trouble if anyone realizes we’re trying to communicate with each other.”
He did the motion again, looking a little frustrated this time before he swam even closer to the glass. She stood, the chair rolling behind her into the room. But she felt like a magnet pulled her closer to the glass and then he put his hand flat against it.
She stared at that palm, so unlike her own. His fingers were massive, long, and tipped with those deadly claws. The webs between his fingers were thinner than she’d thought, and light pierced through them.
Without thinking, she reached up and put her hand on the glass as well. The size of his hand dwarfed hers, but for a moment, she let herself believe that she could feel the coolness of his skin through the glass. Like that icy touch could reach her, even in here.
“Hey, Mira!” The sound echoed down the hall, but they were too close for comfort.
Flinching away from the glass, she turned to stare at the door, her breath ragged in her lungs. Someone was going to see them. They were going to see him, and every part of her screamed that she couldn’t let that happen.
“Go,” she hissed, but when she turned, he was already gone.
Licking her lips, she pressed herself even closer to the glass and peered out into the ocean. He wasn’t there, though. Not even a trace of him.
“Ohh, Mira,” she muttered to herself. “You seeing things, girl? I didn’t think the pressure got to people if you’ve spent your whole life in the ocean.”
“Hey, Mira?” One of the younger engineers poked his head through the door. “You got a second?”
“Considering we’re all out of commission for a while, yeah.”
“What are you looking at?” He walked up to her side and looked out the window. She couldn’t remember his name, but knew that his whole face lit up when he smiled. She’d always thought he was handsome. And tall. Tall always made people more handsome.
“The ocean.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled, then rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Guess there’s a lot of it to look at.”
“Sure is. What did you want?”
“Oh.” His eyes hardened a bit, but then he leaned forward like he didn’t want anyone else to hear what he had to say. “Do you remember the new suit the techs were working on? I thought... Well, with your little project...”
“How do you know about my project?” She reared back, looking him over again. She hadn’t told him about that, had he?
“People talk.” He shrugged. “Look, I thought with one of those new suits, and if your project is working, we could probably get that glass wall fixed. Pretty easily, actually. The drones could carry the new plate over and then it would just be sealing it from the outside.”
“What new suits?”
He grinned, and she just knew he was about to get her into a lot of trouble.
Six
Arges
