From Chapter 6: Farewells and Findings

Her eyes caught a glimpse of light and Mac moved in that direction, hands still up.
They met something cool and slick and hard.
And familiar.
“Gods, no,” she breathed as she stopped. Mac stared ahead until her eyes burned, gradually making out details.
She might have been looking through a porthole into abyssal depths. The lights she could see were indicators on shapeless panels, pulsating greens and blues and yellows. They were stacked in a pyramid arrangement, the other sides and top beyond her view. The dim flickers reflected from the waving arms of anemones, the lacy fronds of sea fan and tube worm, flashed from the back of a small white crab. They were residents of a rising mound of pale bone, stacked before the pyramid like an offering.
Whale bone, Mac identified, sagging with relief.
Some of the glow marked the edges of swaying spirals of kelp. The immense plants grew up into the darkness. Between, darker shadows teased, sending back glints of moving green or blue or yellow, as if the artificial lights caught knife blades slipping through the forest.
Salmon.
Mac pulled back, only now aware of the throb beneath her feet, and braced herself.
The Sinzi-ra had rebuilt her tank.
She’d counted on it.
“I’m here,” she announced, proud of her clear, firm voice. “Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol.” She wasn’t talking to the trapped things. She was talking to what she couldn’t see. Yet.
Silence. A curious octopus tiptoed towards her, its huge eyes unblinking. After a long moment of mutual scrutiny, the mollusk made its decision about the Human and suddenly jetted backwards into the dark.
“You talked to me before. Here I am.” Talk? Mac’s hands became fists. She remembered all too well how the Ro’s version of speech had seemed to rip through her skin and burn itself into the flesh beneath. “In case you’re confused on the topic, I’m not dead.” She replayed that last bit mentally. Another gem of interspecies communication.
The darkness developed chill fingers, pressing against her face, working their way down her throat. Mac wrapped her arms around her middle and cursed her imagination. “What do you want from us? Answer me!” she ordered, careful not to shout, but her voice echoed.
An echo complete with the tinkle of small silver rings.
Mac turned as far as she dared, unwilling to put her back to the tank and what might -- she dreaded as much as hoped -- might be hiding inside. “Anchen?”
A ball of translucent red ignited between them; Mac assumed it was some kind of portable light. It cast a warm pink glow over the Sinzi-ra’s white gown and skin. The great topaz eyes remained in shadow. “Hello, Mac,” Anchen greeted her.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you ...”