Page 43 of Music of the Ocean

That thought made Saxby’s teeth clench.

Honestly, whether it was bad luck or luck of the draw, it didn’t matter. Regardless, he’d ended up being the collateral, the acceptable loss. The human element in a chess game played by people who would never learn his name.

He imagined his captain reading off the mission specs. Had he known? Was he aware that one of his crew was about to get infected by the planet? Or was he as expendable as the rest of them?

Hadn’t Saxby heard that Captain Mollen was related to some Vice Admiral, though? That rank handled regional fleet operations and wartime tactical coordinates. In other words, they had power and lots of it.

His captain was a man whose only visible emotion was impatience, whose record was somehow spotless, but whose turnover rate for subordinates was legendary.

Saxby hadn’t been able to decide if the captain was an ice-cold professional or simply didn’t care about anyone on his ship. He thought about Indigo’s claim—that he was special.

It sounded like a line, but the planet’s defensive reaction wasn’t a lie. The evidence was right there on the map. Indigo, through the planet, was protecting him. Hell, Indigo had shown what this planet could do, something he hadn’t done before he had made his declaration.

Saxby was wanted. Needed.

He pressed his hands over his face and tried to slow his breathing. The Federation would keep sending forces. The planet would keep erasing them. It would escalate until either the ocean won or the Federation managed to get their hands on him.

And he would be stuck right in the middle, the statistical anomaly that kept both sides locked in this fatal embrace.

He looked back at the wall, at the writhing arteries of light that mapped the city’s defenses. He thought of Abe, Vance, and Kira. Of his captain, and the people he’d left behind. He tried to imagine what they thought of him.

Did they know what had happened? Were they watching the feed from orbit, seeing the blue zone expand, realizing their crewmate had become the most important thing on the planet?

Somehow, he doubted it. Somehow, he doubted the Federation had green-lighted any of this. But someone with power inside the Federation certainly had.

Indigo stood with his back to the projection, tentacles fanned and motionless, gaze fixed on the chamber’s sealed entrance.

The city’s alarm shifted from red to a warning yellow. In orbit, the Federation ship released three more shuttles. The city’s projection mapped their course, predicted impact points, and countered each with a coordinated launch of defensive drones.

A cloud of biomechanical interceptors met every shuttle. After neutralizing the last wave, the city’s perimeter rippled as an expanding shell of bioluminescence swept outward, exceeding the projected blast radius of any remaining weapon.

The glow spread, covering the entire shelf above the city, and then faded back to blue.

Inside the chamber, the alarm fell silent. Walls retracted to their earlier configuration. The map on the wall updated, showing the Federation vessels in orbit, now holding position, no longer launching any assets. Probably didn’t have any more.

The angry red grid had vanished, replaced by a tranquil blue, as if nothing had happened. For now, the threat was over, it seemed.

Indigo turned from the wall and looked at Saxby. He raised his hand, palm outward, and waited. The gesture, a simple upturned palm with the delicate fringe of webbing and the strange iridescent shading of Indigo’s skin, was a thousand words unsaid.

For a long moment, Saxby stared at it, the hand outstretched in the water between them, suspended in the warm glow of the room. It didn’t tremble. Indigo’s eyes, those unsettling cat-slit irises set in a face that was almost human, were as unreadable as the depths of the ocean outside.

Saxby had the sudden sense that all his prior choices, every refusal to commit, every moment spent keeping himself at the periphery of other people’s lives, had led him right here, to an alien city, at the bottom of an ocean.

This was always his Fate.

If he took Indigo’s hand, it was a commitment. Not only to Indigo, and not just to the city or the planet, but to something irrevocable—the idea that he was, in fact, a new type of being. It was a bridge with no way back.

He thought of the Federation, of the years spent climbing rungs, of the superiors who’d never cared, friends who’d rotated out or burned out, of the family he’d never managed to keep in touch with after he’d left Earth.

And of the months, then years where rules and regulations molded him, and he’d convinced himself this was just the way of life for someone like him. What was more surprising than the outstretched hand was the simple realization that he wanted this. He wanted to take Indigo’s hand.

He wanted Indigo.

Was it wrong that he desired the future that had been offered to him? Even if it came wrapped in bioluminescent strangeness and the certain knowledge that he’d never see his crewmates or family again.

But Saxby hesitated. The magnitude of the moment pressed in from all sides. The certainty that he could never go back and the weight of what he’d become were impossible for him to ignore. He wondered if Indigo knew or even cared.

Saxby looked at the hand before him.