by M. N. Arzu
“But the ones that do hit us hard,” Matt murmured, remembering Julian explaining to them the dangers of human drugs—both legal and illegal—to their merfolk bodies.
Adrian nodded. “They were hit hard. But it was okay, because they had it under control. The change was gradual. The funny thing was, before I knew it, I was best friends with their dealer. It wasn’t long before I was running errands. Once I shifted into my tail, I became a first-rate courier. They couldn’t figure out how I was smuggling the product, and frankly, they didn’t care.”
“You’re still smuggling?” Matthew asked, baffled. He’d picked a stray image from Adrian’s mind, but it couldn’t be true.
“Best-paying job in the world,” his brother answered with a smile. They were leaving Manhattan, and not exactly for Brooklyn. “Everything illegal pays well. By the time I turned sixteen, I was more than doing fine for myself—until Dad found out. He got greedy, and Mom more so. I didn’t realize that until years later, and by the time I left, I couldn’t recognize them. I never looked back. That was my mistake. I wouldn’t have left you there if I had known you were coming.”
He felt the truth in Adrian’s words. The regret. The need to prove things should have been different. It humbled Matt, and then he pushed it away. He didn’t know what to do with all these conflicting feelings.
“It’s not your fault,” Matthew finally said, still looking out the window. He wondered if that was why his mother told him to get lost so often. If he looked so much like Adrian that he was a constant reminder of the son who had left them. Get lost! Get lost! Get lost!
“That was only the beginning, though,” Adrian said, with false cheer. “After a while, I found other merfolk. Most deal with sunken treasure, pearl collectors, that kind of thing. Not so much in smuggling, since it can be risky for our merman status. No one wanted the Council looking into their business, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve never heard Julian talking about smugglers,” Matt said, frowning.
“Oh no, that’s Drake’s business. The Council members have very defined roles: Lavine keeps in touch with The City. Mireya does the scouting; that’s how she found you, I’m sure. Aurel and Julian keep the businesses and the cash flowing. And then there’s Drake. He deals with trouble.”
He makes them sound like the mob, Matt thought to himself, increasingly losing his awareness of Julian and his brothers as the car sped down the road.
“You must be doing a good job if Drake didn’t have you on his radar,” Matt said instead. Adrian tipped an imaginary cap.
“Thank you. I do think so myself.”
“So, that’s it? That’s the big secret you’ve been hiding?”
Adrian’s grip on the wheel hardened, but he smiled to the windshield. “As I said, that was only the beginning. I’ve been running a successful venture with a few other mermen, taking some unsavory jobs.”
“More smuggling?”
“Among other things. We were doing small stuff until six years ago, when a newcomer from The City with some crazy ideas joined us. Tried to hire us, actually. He wanted to bring the Council down.”
Matt’s veins turned to ice, red and yellow scales flowering at the back of his hands. “You met Wallace.”
“Dear ol’ Roy,” Adrian said, nodding. “We laughed at him, but we kept in touch. When he murdered Scott’s parents, we stopped laughing. In time, he expanded our business, introduced us to new contacts. But we never took him up on his crusade to bring down the Council. Nobody wanted to deal with Drake.” A dark shadow passed over Adrian’s feelings, one that Matt picked up loud and clear. “We started getting bigger contracts, a whole lot more money for a whole lot less work. Then your dear older brother washed up in the news, and we went into hiding.”
Something about Christopher brought a rather black vibe to Adrian’s mind. Maybe that’s what Christopher senses from him all the time. Why do they hate each other so much? It’s not like I’m a grand prize or something.
“You mean you stopped killing people.”
“I’ve never killed anyone,” Adrian said, offended. “I’ve sunk plenty of ships, done some paybacks, but mostly I’ve stayed with my roots. Smuggling drugs and money underwater is so stupidly easy.”
In his mind, Adrian shared with him long stretches of coast. An underwater cave that he navigated as easily as he was navigating the slow traffic of New Jersey. “Two months ago, we finally got a new contract in Brazil. There were a couple of red flags, and like an idiot, I ignored them.”
Matt frowned. “Wait, the Brazil incident? The one everyone says was a hoax?”
Adrian nodded slowly, and let Matthew glimpsed the beach, the party, the exhilaration. He’d been drunk, but not drunk enough to miss something was wrong.
“I was celebrating getting the contract. It was a fairly nice one, to tell you the truth, involving some shipments to the US. And then… Then they almost caught me in their nets,” Adrian said, pushing Matt out of his mind. “I had no idea who they were or how they figured out what I was, but I managed to disappear. Put the thought at the back of my mind. After all, I was already leaving Brazil and I had a big contract to fulfill in New York.”
“You were here two months ago?”
“The stupidest mistake I’ve ever made.”
“Did you know about me by that point? Is that when you found me?”
“By the time I came here, Wallace was playing with Scott, trying to lower the Council’s defenses. And that son of a bitch had a way with his mind, a way to get into ours…” Adrian trailed off, but Matthew knew exactly what he was talking about. Even if Wallace had never targeted him, he’d seen firsthand what he’d done to Alex, how he’d tormented Scott, how he’d attacked both Diana and Julian, and ultimately, how he’d fooled even Drake into distrusting Jason.
As he contemplated the trail of horrors left behind by a madman, Matthew realized how clearly he’d been spared. “Wallace was here to kill my family,” Matthew said, “but you asked him to let me live.”
Adrian chuckled in an almost painful way. “That was the plan. I went as far as contacting him, right on time to see how he shot Scott. I was talking to him when he sensed Scott’s mind, so brilliant, so strong.”
Two months ago, in the aftermath of Wallace’s death, Scott had insisted he’d sensed Wallace’s mind talking with another merman. Drake had believed him, but there had been no trace of any other merfolk in the whole of Manhattan back then. Not until now.
“You let him shoot Scott?”
“I didn’t let him do anything. He did whatever he wanted. I turned around, wanting to find you. Wanting to take you out of that forsaken island and keep you safe from that psychopath.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I got as far as two blocks away from Scott when they finally caught me. And that’s when things truly began.”
* * *
Nathan sat down in his dining room, a cup of coffee warming his hands. Sitting in front of him, Major White looked anything but happy about this. He could be committing treason for all Nathan knew, but White was a smart man. Something had spooked him bad enough that he was sharing classified information with them. The irony being that White didn’t know Diana was a mermaid. For all intents and purposes, he was talking directly to merfolk.
“The Navy has been conducting a shadow merfolk project for the past two months. Because it doesn’t involve the Brooks family directly, they didn’t have to go through the same channels I do. Once Drake bridged our deal to their needs, I was given clearance to oversee some parts of the diving suit project. As luck would have it, that clearance gave me access to other merfolk-related documents.”
“Two months?” Diana asked. “Is this related to the Brazil incident?”
White nodded. “I always suspected a real merman had been involved. The Navy was a step further. They were able to use the airport’s thermal scanners to identify possible merfolk. They tried to capture him, but he fled—just to pop up at JFK three d
ays later.”
“Adrian…” Diana whispered, and Nathan had to play along as if he already knew who they were talking about.
“Adrian Thorne,” White confirmed. “Mathew Brooks’s biological brother, as far as we can tell. My unit was trying to understand Roy Wallace’s role at that time, so Adrian never made it onto our radar. He never contacted the Brooks family. And when they thought they could get away with it, the Navy didn’t lose time.”
“They took him?” Nathan asked, surprised.
“Under Admiral Coleman’s orders, they detained him, yes.”
“You had just made a deal with Drake to protect them!” Diana said, outraged.
“And that’s exactly what I did,” White said, a serious look daring Diana to suggest otherwise. “And that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I won’t talk directly to Julian, but you seem to know well enough their plans that this information might be valuable to their safety.”
“Wait,” Nathan said, “isn’t Coleman responsible for Drake now?”
“Yes. The thing is, Adrian was released two weeks afterwards, unharmed, but I haven’t been able to find the transcripts of his captivity. Whatever Coleman was after, Adrian must have agreed to it.”
* * *
“They used those Tasers to grab me and throw me into a van. You can imagine that ten thousand volts of electricity put me out of commission for a few days. They thought they had killed me, so when I woke up, Coleman didn’t dare touch me. You see, they’re too afraid of killing us if they drug us, but it doesn’t mean they won’t use other tools. Plus, the man had other plans when it came to my skills,” Adrian said as Matt looked at him with fear. Fear of what had happened to him. Fear of what could still happen to all of them. “He wanted me to control minds.”
“Like Wallace?”
Adrian nodded. “Drake told White, so Coleman knew what he’d done to Julian and the others. They thought we could read human minds. At the very least, he wanted me to control merfolk minds. It took me ages to convince him it doesn’t work that way.”
“What did they do to you?” Matt whispered, searching for Adrian’s memories, wanting to share in his brother’s pain.
“They showed me pictures, Matt. They showed me pictures of you.”
In Adrian’s mind, Matt saw a metal table in a small concrete room, the bite of the cuffs on his wrists all too clear. And there, right in front of him, a dozen pictures of Matthew minding his own business were displayed. They could really have been twins.
“He was hungry for answers about your family. Imagine when I told him I had never seen you.” The car sped down the highway, as if Adrian was trying to outrun the memories. Matt hadn’t even noticed when they had taken the exit.
“He wanted answers you couldn’t give,” Matt said, getting a sense of desperation from Adrian as he’d been interrogated for hours.
“Everything I didn’t know. The City’s location, that was a big one. Our technology—I laughed so hard at that one. I told him the Council was essentially a rogue state. That those who had been born on the surface had no knowledge of our history, not even of our language. That we are second-rate citizens. He got really interested after that.” Images of Julian and Drake filled Matt’s mind. Coleman wanted them, and Adrian was more than happy to deliver.
A bad feeling—a really bad feeling—ran through Matt’s spine, from the back of his neck to his lower back, leaving a line of freshly shifted scales behind.
“What did you do?”
“The only thing I could: I made a deal to save your life.”
And there, bare for Matt to see, Adrian allowed the last week to play in his mind. Adrian had been in their home, in Julian’s study, placing a bug, some sort of listening device right at the heart of the Council. And a few days later, it had been at Andrew’s apartment. In the middle of it all, Coleman’s voice kept ordering him what to do or else…
“Everything I did was to keep you safe,” Adrian said barely above a whisper, a darker image forming in his mind. Water surrounded him in his memories, deep in the ocean as he searched for a small submarine he had to sink. “I swear I didn’t know Drake was going to be there.”
Matt’s heart almost stopped as he realized what he was seeing. The dread Adrian had felt at realizing another merman was there, but understanding that he was fighting against Drake himself had almost paralyzed him.
“It was you who attacked him!”
“I was running for my life! Do you think I was going to stay there, holding a knife in one hand and an empty explanation in the other?”
“I—I don’t understand why—”
“Coleman planned it that way. He wanted to see if he could turn merfolk against each other, and guess what? That’s rather easy to do! He dropped me off a few miles away, and picked me up later. He wanted that test sabotaged. He knew Drake was there, and he didn’t tell me on purpose. Drake ending up in his hands was just the icing on the cake.”
“You should’ve told us!”
Adrian shook his head. “I couldn’t run the risk of getting on his bad side. His goal was to infiltrate us. I had no way of knowing if he’d managed that by any other way. I finally understood that what he really wants is an excuse to openly hunt us. I didn’t sign up for that.”
“What are you going to do?” Matt said, realizing he was putting more and more miles between them and his family.
“What I came here to do, Matt. I’m going to keep you safe.”
35
Off the Record
The office was cold. Of all the things to notice as Patrick entered Julian Brooks’s large office, it was the temperature that he found the most curious. It certainly explained why Julian’s handshake was ice cold as well a moment later.
“Mr. O’Connor, it’s an honor to meet you,” Julian said, leading Patrick to sit down on the plush sofa of his executive living room. Patrick could only imagine how many powerful men and how many shady businesses had been made under the white lights of this place.
“The honor is all mine,” Patrick said, nodding.
“I was surprised about your request for an interview. It sounded rather urgent.”
“A lot of people seem to think I’m working against the clock,” Patrick said. Julian raised a questioning eyebrow. “It seems a friend of yours might be in trouble,” Patrick elaborated. “The Navy kind of trouble.”
Understanding dawned on Julian’s face, and for one long moment, nothing but silence filled their conversation. Well, he didn’t deny it, and he didn’t run you out of his office. We’re on solid ground here.
“It sounds like there are a few answers that you want to give but are afraid of their consequences,” Patrick added, going to the heart of the problem. “But maybe it really is time for the truth to come out into the light.” He openly placed his phone between them and hit record. “Mr. Brooks, I’m more than ready to hear your story. What, exactly, do you know about merfolk?”
Julian reached for the phone and deftly pressed stop. “Some of what I’m about to tell you will have to remain off the record for safety reasons. You will hear the truth, Mr. O’Connor, but ultimately, you’ll understand why there are things that cannot come out into the public light. At least not all at once.”
“The reasons why you’ve been covering up that Ray’s alive? The reasons why you’ve kept Veritas from publishing the story?”
“Ms. Banes has been an exceptionally good reporter when it comes to discovering our most guarded secret, but she’s also shown an incredible amount of restraint over sharing that news with her readership.”
“Do you mind if I take notes?” Patrick asked, going for an old-fashioned pen and notebook.
“Not at all.”
“Okay, let’s start with the beginning. When did you first learn about merfolk?”
A slight smirk graced Julian’s face. “Merfolk have always been around human culture. They’re the heroes and the demons of our sea stories, both beautiful and deadly. I’ve always kn
own about merfolk, one way or another, so that’s not the right question to begin with, Mr. O’Connor. You want to know when exactly I learned about Ray and his people.”
* * *
Something wasn’t right. As Julian started to tell the story, he also started to feel a mental pull.
“We don’t know much about them, as a society,” Julian said, trying to pinpoint what his senses were telling him. “The first time we encountered them was about twenty years ago. An expedition to the Arctic took their first photographs. They were aware of it, and they allowed it.”
“They are intelligent, then. Friendly?”
“Cautious. They certainly aren’t naïve or childlike. I don’t know why they chose us in that moment, or what their plan is, but for the past couple of decades, we’ve been slowly building up a relationship. They’ve allowed us to swim with them. At first, we thought they were as curious about us as we were about them.”
“But now you’re not so sure?”
The mental pull became a sudden void.
“Would you like something to drink?” Julian asked, cutting the story abruptly.
“Just water, thank you,” Patrick said, frowning at the interruption. An interruption Julian needed to focus his attention for a few seconds on this mental distress.
Chris and Alex were easy to find. Diana was harder, now that she’d been taking more serious instruction on how to properly shield herself. But Matt…