"Through the sea?"
"Yes."
She looked at Pilot and then back at the god before her. "So you intend to put me back into the pod after all?"
Once more, confusion crossed Proteus's features. She'd never seen him look quite so thunderstruck. "Why would I do that?"
"I cannot breathe underwater," she said slowly, impressing upon him just how dangerous this was.
But he only paused for a moment before shrugging. “Surely that is fixable?”
Thirteen
Proteus
This fragile, broken thing had been cracked and shattered far too many times. He hated knowing that he had some part in the breaking, and there was no way to fix what he had done.
Proteus's dreams were filled with the moments he had lost control. He could still see the serene expression on her face, and how little she cared while he had been biting through her soft, delicate flesh. She'd stared at him, perhaps a little surprised, but not at all reacting as though something terrible was happening to her. She'd only been there with him, enduring the rage and anger that had absolutely nothing to do with her.
He'd been wrong to take it out on such a quiet creature. So very wrong. All she had done was stand in front of him, existing as she always had, and he'd been the monster who had taken advantage of her.
But how to make that up to her when she didn't care that she'd been harmed?
He'd sworn he would bring her somewhere to experience humanity, but the reality was that he didn't know what humanitywas either. After all his years of spending time with creatures like her, he had never truly understood them. They were as much an enigma to him as they were to her.
And there was also the small issue that he wasn’t entirely sure how to get her out of the facility.
But he knew there were ways to breathe for her. Ways for her to experience the world at large and to know what it was to be elated, frightened, and yet still feel her heart race with a surge of adventure.
That was what he could give her. The experience that all humans desperately craved.
A life-threatening adventure to remind her that she was, in fact, alive.
He swam up to the facility knowing that now was the time for him to get to know her. He would bring her through the depths of the ocean, providing her with the safety she would need. She would trust him. Learn from him.
But the moment he popped his head up into the room, he knew something was wrong. There were diagrams on the screens now, equations and numbers that ran across every single surface. Neither Ellie nor Pilot looked at him as they poured over the details.
"What is it now?" he asked, already exhausted.
Ellie looked over her shoulder at him before pointing at the screens. "I didn't realize we were this deep in the ocean. I can't go out there without being in my pod."
"Of course you can."
"I cannot. I will quite literally explode."
He blinked. He hadn't thought about the depth and her body, but he supposed the pressures would be concerning. There were very few creatures who could survive at these depths, and no matter how much she insisted that she wasn't a fragile creature, she was. He'd need to figure out how to bring her up to thesurface without killing her. Or, at the very least, how to get her to a depth that wouldn't cause her to explode, as she so eloquently explained.
"Pilot," he ordered. "It's time for you to download everything in this room. We're moving."
"Understood."
The little droid plugged himself in and started to work. All the while, Ellie stared at him with a questioning expression on her face. With her hip cocked like that and her arms crossed over her chest, she reminded him of a scientist he used to work with all those years ago. That woman had been ambitious as well, and was never afraid of the things she should have feared.
Ellie watched him with eyes that saw far too much. "What do you mean, we're moving?"
"There are other research facilities. This one lasted us only as long as it was required to. Now, we have outgrown it."
He spoke in lies, and she knew damn well that he was. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him, clearly disappointed that he would even try to lie to her like that. But then she nodded.
