Page 69 of Whispers of the Deep
But the smile on her face... It was one of so much love as she looked down at his hands on her belly.
The memory was ripped from him, and he felt it tear away from his mind like he had been clutching it close to his chest. He wanted to look at it a little while longer. He wanted to see them together. Just like that. The happiness on both of their faces had been so far from anything he’d ever experienced. And he... he wanted it.
A second future barreled toward him, striking him even harder than the first. He saw himself and his pod. He saw Beta falling in the distance and knew they were chasing the small escape bubbles that achromos used to get out of their city when anything went wrong. His brother, one armed and angry, speared through the glass of one such bubble. It shattered, and he heard the muffled screams of those within it.
Maketes swam ahead of him, zeroing through the water with all the speed of lightning as he slammed against the side of another bubble. His people descended upon it, ripping the glass open and yanking out achromo bodies that writhed in their grips as they drowned.
And him? He moved toward one of the escape bubbles and froze above it. He saw himself staring at Mira. He saw her glaring back at him, one of her welders in her hand.
“Stop,” he cried out at the image of himself. “Don’t do it.”
But he did.
Arges watched himself wrench the glass free and yank her out. He saw the spear sliding through her soft flesh where he had just seen their child. She hung suspended in the water by only his weapon. And then he watched as she turned her welder on and tried to burn him through his chest. His kind were too strong for it, so she would be the only one who died in this battle, but he would wear her scar over his heart in more ways than one.
The visions faded, and he was spat out by the ancient onto the foggy, sulphuric seabed around them.
Hissing, he coughed out whatever strange poison had flowed through his veins. “What was that?”
“Your futures, warrior.” The ancient shifted, its massive fin placed on the ground too close for comfort. “There is benefit and loss in both futures, Arges. You are the only one who can choose. Lose her, or lose your people’s dream.”
“I will lose neither of them.”
“You have to lose something,” the ancient chuckled. “No one has ever beaten their own fate.”
As he forced his tail to move, forced his body to rise from the dirt, he vowed that he would be the first. He would keep them both.
Because he wanted that future with her. But he also wanted to see her city fall.
Twenty-Seven
Mira
Mira waited for him for quite some time. She even caught herself a fish, although the whole situation was more luck than skill. She’d trailed the poor thing through the glowing lights until it was finally so tired that it just... stopped swimming.
She still felt terrible about it. Like she had blood on her hands that she couldn’t ever get off. Quite literally, at some point, because she was sitting on the edge of the rock with fish blood and guts on her hands as she cleaned it out to eat.
Even Byte stayed silent the whole time she hunted. They both mourned the life that she hated she had to take.
Then she felt even more guilty as she ate it, because the poor thing tasted horrible. She hated the taste of fish. She’d had it so many times in the past few weeks that she was certain she would never want to eat it again after this ordeal. All she wanted was to taste chicken, or egg, or countless vegetables for the rest of her life until she could forget how awful fish tasted and smelled.
Gagging a bit, she set it down by the water and stared up at the ceiling. “I should tell him.”
Byte stirred out of its stasis. “What?”
“I should tell him I can understand him.”
The silence that came after her declaration was almost enough to make her second guess herself, but she steadied her resolve. She couldn’t keep lying to him, or pretending that they couldn’t converse. It was wrong. Mira had never been a liar, and this made her into some kind of monster.
It wasn’t like she was a spy sent by her people to learn more about his kind. She was just an engineer who had found herself in a rather difficult situation.
So when he finally returned, she rolled onto her side on the cot and stared at him. She searched his eyes, as though there was some balm for the terrible way she felt in his gaze.
He watched her in return, those dark eyes so large in his head. She’d thought those black eyes were soulless the first time she’d seen him. She remembered how unnerving they were and how she’d thought he looked like a shark watching her. But he wasn’t. He was just another person who didn’t deserve to be lied to.
Maybe she was sick. Maybe she was dying. Because these thoughts weren’t the thoughts of a person who had fought against his kind for her entire life.
“Byte finished the upgrade,” she said. “The translation chip isn’t entirely complete, but I installed it. I can understand you now. Almost every single word you say.”
