Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,29
anyway.
She let out a slow, wistful breath. “Just in case I didn’t believe in aliens…”
Beside her, Sting let out a hard grunt that she felt the center of her chest. “You didn’t believe in me?”
Though her brain knew better, her hand reached out of its own accord in response to the undercurrent of hurt in his tone. “I have to believe in you,” she said. “Since you’re right here.”
Maybe he wasn’t lying when he had told her that Titanyri were engineered to feel nothing, but the taut muscles in his forearm relaxed under her fingertips. “Right here.” He jerked his chin out across the open expanse. “But we need to be right there.” The central tower that pierced the wheel and reached toward the cavernous ceiling somewhere in the darkness above gleamed with its own light like an abalone shell. “How much do you believe in me?”
She sidled a half step closer to him as he advanced to the edge of the cliff where they’d emerged. She wrapped her fist into his harness. “I haven’t zapped you on purpose yet, have I?”
His grunt this time was softer, but it reverberated through her whole body as he pulled her close, as if he didn’t care at all about the risk of being hurt. “Gill,” he reminded her. “And hold on.”
He launched them off the ledge toward the dark water below.
She braced for impact, her teeth tight on the gill, but with Sting’s big body wrapped around her, they sliced through the water as if it were welcoming him home. Which she supposed it was, in a way.
Once submerged, he let her go under her own power. The water was cool but not cold—although she knew it would eventually sap her warmth—and mineral soft on her skin. When she opened her eyes, there was almost no salty sting, and the pearly glow emanating from most parts the ship gave her enough of a view that she longed to explore the exotic setting. But when Sting handed her the end of his tow rope, she remembered they were here with a purpose.
As he hauled her across the space the emptiness of the wedge, she realized how empty it was. At one time there might’ve been hundreds of Tritonans fleeing their war, seeking a better place. Until they had crashed here and now she and the other Wavercrest syndrome sufferers were all that was left of their diluted blood.
Her heart ached. Even those who’d escaped hadn’t been able to truly leave behind the trauma of their war. But at least those holes torn in the fabric of their society had left a space for Marisol and Ridley to start a new life.
No room for her, of course. She’d only make more burned-out holes.
When she blinked hard, maybe the salinity of the water went up the barest degree. But she wasn’t crying, definitely not that.
Sting’s powerful stroke propelled them quickly across the wheel to the center where a submerged stairway led to a door that took them up into the airy antechamber at the base of the spire. She spat out the gill and disconnected herself from Sting as she glanced around. All the handbooks and the universal translator she’d been given didn’t tell her everything about Tritonan language and culture, but she understood the language of loss clearly enough to translate in the graffiti etched along one wall: So much water and yet my tongue withers with the thirst for home.
Tears prickled in her eyes again as she tagged along behind Sting. Once inside the spire, he led them down another set of spiraling stairs that plunged into the waters again at one point only to emerge again into another airy chamber—lower than the water-filled one?—until she felt completely turned around.
Finally, at a sealed portal, Sting held up his wrist datpad to an iris beside the door and spoke a complicated code. The portal irised open with a faint sound of reluctance.
“Data gel is the one thing we don’t have the time or components to re-create,” he told her. “Whatever gel survived here is old, but the Diatom should be able to reconfigure the synthetic neurons it needs to patch the gaps left by your electrical storm.”
She groaned. “I fried the poor ship’s brain.”
“And we can fix it,” he said. “At least enough to get back to Tritona.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “For you to get back to Tritona.”
His blank stare never changed. “That’s what I said.” He crowded her toward another portal.