by Sarah Porter
The humans in that helicopter were ordering her to destroy San Francisco.
The air shook with another high, sustained scream, and then another. The mermaids in the net were starting to go into convulsions as their tails began to dry out. The net rocked and heaved in the air high above until it looked like a single shapeless, tortured animal.
For a few seconds there was nothing Luce could say. Around her other mermaids gaped with the same staggered hopelessness she felt herself; beside them the standing water-wall buckled a little more, and odd blobs and sashes of water began to tumble down its brilliant flank.
“Luce,” Jo begged beside her, “just tell everyone to stop singing! Just let the wave go! Even you said we could kill to save other mermaids! You said so! And we don’t have any choice, not when they’re . . . when we’re . . .”
The mermaids were being tested, Luce realized.
Whoever was ordering them to release the wave understood perfectly well what the consequences would be. For some strange reason, the humans in that helicopter wanted the Twice Lost Army to kill—to kill as many people as possible.
“Hold the line!” Luce screamed. “It’s a trick! They want us to kill everyone!”
Yuan was there, but closer to the bridge—thank God Yuan was suddenly there, gazing at her with a look of appalled understanding—and Luce saw her nod sharply once before she dived, pulling two other mermaids with her. Luce could hear Yuan shouting down the line, “It’s a trick! Defy them! Get back in your places and sing! No brave mermaid would ever take orders from a human! Show them that! Defy them!”
Oh, Yuan. No one is like you. No one else could be so strong.
“But Luce . . .”
It was Jo, pointing up now with one wild white arm, biting at her other hand until droplets of ruby blood burst through the skin.
“Hold the line! Keep singing!” Luce shrieked again. At least some of the mermaids nearby seemed to be singing to the water again, dipping under the bridge as they sang, though the wave was tilting now and fissured at its top into uneven, jutting swags.
Luce’s head throbbed with the shivering screams of the mermaids above her. Her face was slick with tears as she turned to join the mermaids singing under the bridge. No matter what, they couldn’t let the wave collapse. Not even if those mermaids in the net had to die—to save thousands of human lives.
Jo grabbed her arm, jerking Luce back so sharply that she gasped.
“You now have exactly two minutes. Lower the wave completely within that time or the captives will all die.”
There wasn’t even a way Luce could offer herself in their place. She could scream until her throat ruptured; the helicopter’s crew would never hear her.
“Luce!” Jo shouted in her ear. “They’ve got Catarina!”
The net jarred again, and suddenly Luce saw red-gold hair like a rivulet of liquid fire pouring through its holes. One of the frenzied, shrieking voices far above suddenly brightened and clarified, catching Luce’s heart in a shining net of its own. Jo was right. That could only be Catarina, tangled and quaking with the other captives.
If Luce didn’t order the Twice Lost to unleash the tsunami, Catarina would die in agonizing pain within minutes.
And she would die believing that Luce hated her.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luce couldn’t move. The bay might as well have locked up completely, become an endless sheet of ice gripping her. All she could do was gaze from that fiery trace of Catarina’s hair dangling against the white sky, to the soaring water-wall under the bridge, to the ragged skyline of San Francisco. On the shore some people were fighting to crush their way onto the already dangerously overcrowded bridge or to run up the hill—though if the wave was released, they would certainly never manage to run far or fast enough to save themselves. A few humans were taking advantage of the confusion to dive into the bay. Luce could see their arms splashing up through the salt water as they swam doggedly toward the mermaids, though they were still quite far away. They would drown, too. The air around Luce’s head pulsated with screams and the violent percussion of helicopter blades—and there seemed to be more helicopters now, including some that were whirling rapidly toward the one carrying the net.
The mermaids in the net shrieked and spasmed. Luce knew exactly what they were feeling: a white pain like needles made of pure sun drilling in on all sides, pain so piercing and terrible that thought and hope and breath were all extinguished. But it was still in Luce’s power to save them. They were still alive.
“This is your final warning. Release the wave now.”
Yuan’s human friend, Gigi, was alive too, though, probably on the shore nearby. So was the man who’d spread his jacket over the murdered mermaid. So were countless humans whose hearts Luce couldn’t guess at: hearts that would vanish forever under an onslaught of water strong enough to lift trucks and level buildings—if Luce gave in and obeyed the helicopter’s insane command.
Already some of the singers were surfacing again, their voices fading away in a kind of dazed mutiny. Without them, the water-wall sloped precariously. Then one watery swag broke free and plummeted into the bay. The surface rose in an abrupt, fifteen-foot swell that lifted Luce and Jo and the others skyward and dropped them again. It raced toward the shore, broke into countless flying shards of foam, grabbed people and threw them like twigs. And that was only a small piece of the water the mermaids were supporting, a single loose scrap of sea. Any more than that . . .
Luce heard herself singing. The song broke through her awful entrancement, and she saw other mermaids turn to stare at her. She felt her new strength touch them as their voices rose again, and then their strength flowed back into her. A circuit of shared power woke the deep green waters. Her throat felt thick and knotted, but the voice that tore through it was vibrant, sweet, and powerful. Tears streamed from her eyes, joining the sea. Luce sank below the surface, her song a hovering cry for everything that was lost, for those who were dead and those who were dying now. She saw the Twice Lost holding hands in that endless chain below the bridge, their heads thrown back and fins shimmering. Yuan was there, fiercely corralling uncertain mermaids into the line, passionately driving her voice into fusion with those hundreds of other voices. There were Opal, and Jo, and Graciela, all singing, all reaching out their hands to other mermaids, urging them to keep going—no matter what happened.
Even if the song came out like sobs, even if it wavered, it still held. And with the song their towering wave oscillated and jumped . . .
But it didn’t fall. It didn’t fall.
The screams of the netted mermaids were gradually ebbing away, thinner and lighter. Luce gagged for a second with the knowledge of what that meant—then forced her voice into the song again. The others were singing more loudly too, and now along with the infinite grief in that song there was a new tone of defiance, sad and calm and still somehow ferocious all at once.
Luce closed her eyes, feeling herself suspended in an expanse of water and music made one. Almost all the screams had slipped into silence now. The glassy darkness surrounding her filled with the knowledge that Catarina was almost surely dead—and that Luce herself had made the choice to kill her queen and her friend.
Her song twisted on like a living thing, vital with determination. But while her voice still lived, Luce was sure her heart hadn’t survived.
∗ ∗ ∗
A rattle of gunfire burst through the immense upwelling song. Lost in numbness beyond grief, Luce could only feel a dull chill in place of fear. That helicopter’s crew was enraged by the mermaids’ disobedience—of course; of course, those lunatics had started shooting in frustration. Soon the bombs would fall, and the water would burst with crushing waves of energy. For some reason those people up there wanted San Francisco destroyed, and they weren’t about to take the mermaids’ no for an answer.
It was all over, then. Everything she’d tried to do was about to be obliterated. In a dark, mournful way Luce wondered ho
w many of the Twice Lost would die and how many would flee before there weren’t enough of them left to sustain the wave. Maybe, just maybe, they could buy some of the humans onshore enough time to escape from the inevitable cataclysm.
She’d killed humans before, Luce thought dreamily. It seemed fair enough that now she would die trying to save at least a few of them. And then Catarina was dead because of her, and soon Luce would die too; that seemed right as well. She almost smiled as she reached out her hands, touching the water around her as if it were an enclosure of glossy diamond. As the guns cracked again Luce’s voice rose to meet their outbursts, wild and sweet. There were no words to her song, but it was still shaped by an emotion so strong that the music seemed to take on language: I accept it, I accept it, I accept . . .
“Luce!” It was Yuan. Luce wouldn’t stop the song until a spear or a bomb stopped it for her, but she opened her eyes to gaze at Yuan, trying to reassure her without words. You can leave, you can live, but I’m staying. I accept this. “Luce, something crazy is happening! Those helicopters—they’re shooting at each other! Not at us!” That made no sense, Luce thought hazily. Yuan obviously didn’t know what she was talking about.
Yuan pulled at Luce’s elbow, and Luce resisted her, suddenly stabbed by fear again after that long cold lull. It wasn’t death that horrified her, but the thought of seeing Catarina’s lifeless body swinging in the sky. “Luce, this is important!” Yuan gasped. “We have to understand what’s happening—we can’t just ignore it! You can’t.”
Yuan leaped, grabbing Luce around her ribs, then spiraled her tail so forcefully that they both rocketed to the surface. Yuan actually caught Luce’s short hair in one hand, jerking her head back to make her see . . .
Two helicopters waltzed around each other, rising, dropping and swooping with balletic grace. Strangely, Yuan was right; they didn’t seem to be shooting at the mermaids under the bridge or even paying any attention to them. Behind the two aircraft the clouds had parted, showing long sinuous sweeps of bright blue sky, and the spinning propellers cast ribbons of reflected sunlight into the air. The spectacle would have seemed mesmerizing, even gorgeous, if it weren’t for the net full of dead girls dangling horribly from one helicopter.
Serene if it weren’t for the staccato gunfire that spat abruptly, slicing straight across the helicopter’s tail.
The helicopter carrying the net sputtered as the bullets cut through it, as its tail sheered away and plunged into the water in a ring of spray. It seemed to stagger in the sky, crippled and shocked, then began descending in a long wobbling fall like a bird caught in a turbulent downdraft. The victor hovered just above, watchful and threatening, as its prey dropped toward shallow water. The net touched down first, then the wounded copter sank in defeat just ahead of it. Small dark boats converged on the spot.
Beside them the wave still held, tall and unyielding.
There was a disturbance in the water behind them. Luce glanced around, confused, and saw one of those human swimmers nearby, her arms flailing with exhaustion. A golden, chubby girl, her drenched clothes flopping around her. She pulled her head up, gasping, trying to say something—and Yuan gave a piercing cry and caught the girl in her arms. “Gigi! Gigi, are you crazy? You should have been running uphill as fast as you could! What would have happened if . . . if we hadn’t managed to—you would have drowned, and—”
“I couldn’t let you go through that alone, Yuan! How could you think for one second that I would? Oh, God!”
Alone? Luce thought wearily. Had Yuan really felt alone until Gigi arrived?
Where was Nausicaa now?
And even if he was angry or disappointed in her, why had her father still not come to look for her? Luce knew she’d done horrible things as a mermaid—but hadn’t she earned his forgiveness yet?
And Dorian? Could he be thinking of her now?
Luce stared back toward the circle of boats surrounding the downed helicopter. People were loading blanket-wrapped corpses onto the boats. And one of those veiled bodies was Catarina’s.
Who was she, what was she, now that she had allowed her friend to die?
31
Always a Price
The larvae tank wasn’t nearly as luxurious as the tank where Anais lived: it was an uncovered glass enclosure half-filled with bubbling salt water, set in the center of a bland white room. There was no need for the soundproof barrier that sealed Anais from the world. Larvae’s attempts at singing weren’t much more than eerie, dissonant squeaks that didn’t threaten anyone. The tank contained a small artificial shore, crudely formed from coated plaster, so that the larval mermaids would have somewhere to sleep, but apart from that there wasn’t much for the mushy little creatures to do. Charlie Hackett, who was extremely proud of his growing reputation for handling the captive mermaids well, had brought them a few random toys: pink plastic dinosaurs with glittery eyelids and docile smiles, a teething ring with a row of bright beads sliding in an endless circle, a battered Barbie doll in a golden swimsuit. As he entered their room, rolling the small gurney in front of him, he saw half a dozen larvae tussling in the tank, their stubby pastel tails flopping as they wrestled. They were squeaking fitfully, and after a moment Charlie Hackett recognized the source of the trouble: one especially temperamental larva had the Barbie and wouldn’t let the others play with it.
That made his decision easier. Because what he had to do now was definitely the worst part of his job. Coming back from yet another shopping expedition—they’d sent him out that afternoon to replace some of Anais’s broken belongings—he’d been disheartened to find the order to select one of his small charges for an experimental treatment. And they hadn’t even left him any time to check in on Anais, to refresh his mind with an infusion of her bright beauty. “Now, Snowy,” Charlie murmured. He’d named the troublemaker larva Snow White for her pale bluish skin, midnight hair, and beautiful sapphire eyes. “Now, Snowy, you know we’ve talked about this. You have to learn to share with your friends, and if you can’t . . .”
Something in his tone warned her. She looked up at him, burbling apprehensively, and dropped the doll. Her deep blue eyes rounded in wordless appeal. The others trilled out airy, piercing cries and shrank away from her into the corners. They’d seen more than one of their small companions carried off before, though he’d been careful to keep them from knowing what happened next.
Charlie Hackett grimaced. He needed to hurry up and get this over with, before those yearning eyes got to him. He sank his arms into the water, up to the elbows, and gripped Snowy by the waist as she tried to wriggle away. She pawed his hand softly and crooned. Trying to talk him out of it in the only way she could. He looked away from her plaintive little face and hefted her, swinging her dangling silver fins clear of the glass, and plunked her down on the gurney. She was already emitting a series of harsh, quick, bursting shrieks. He pinned her expertly with one hand while he used the other to bundle her tail in a pile of dripping, salt water–soaked towels that would protect it from drying out too soon, then turned to the task of strapping her to the gurney.
He couldn’t stand those eyes, their frantic blue gaze lapping at his face like hungry waves, and he draped another towel across the top half of her face to stop her from gawking at him. That helped a bit, though she was still shrieking. Her muffled fins thudded rapidly against the steel like a dog’s wagging tail beating at a chair. As fast as he could, Charlie Hackett spun the gurney around and thrust it ahead of him.
An older, drab-faced man and an older grayish woman stood up a bit awkwardly as he charged through their door. Both of them wore lab coats, and a rolling table of equipment waited beside them. The woman already had the syringe in her hand, holding it not far from her own cheek. Her face was tight and perturbed, and—unusually—she didn’t greet him as he entered. The skin around her eyes was purplish, crumpled and heavy. The man was making notes in a black logbook. A video camera, pointing downward, was positioned over the taped markings that sh
owed where the gurney was supposed to park. With only a tremor of hesitation, Charlie Hackett rolled the larva to the correct spot. Then, without thinking about what he was doing, he caught Snowy’s tiny, spongy hand and squeezed it protectively.
He’d already watched four larvae die in this room, and he had no faith in the potion in that syringe. Snowy had at most twenty minutes left to live. Her tail thumped on and on, a nervous stifled drumroll, but at least her shrieks had died down to a whimper.
That wouldn’t last, of course.
“Her name is Snowy,” Charlie Hackett said. “Snowy.” Naming her—forcing these doctors to know her name—was the best approximation of courage he could manage.
The man glared at him imperiously, but the woman gave a weary nod as she approached, her needle glinting in the pallid light. This business was taking a toll on her, too, Charlie Hackett noted with some satisfaction. It was only fair that she should suffer for what she was about to do. For an instant he was tempted to tell her so, loud and clear. Then he looked down and obediently turned Snowy’s arm outward for the injection.
“Snowy,” the woman breathed out. Tentatively she touched the larva’s damp shoulder then twitched her hand back with evident repulsion. “Snowy, it’s going to be okay. I have some medicine here for you that will help you feel better. All right, hush now. You’re going to feel . . . just a little poke.” The needle slipped into the larva’s arm, the plunger depressed, and the silver tail kicked so violently that a drenched towel slumped off the gurney and landed on Hackett’s ankle with a squelch. Snowy started yowling. It didn’t sound quite like a normal baby’s cry; it was shriller, stranger, touched by a hint of unnatural music: a noise that made human flesh quiver and shrink.