by M. N. Arzu
“I did?”
Julian nodded. “Take Chris and Matt spying on the Council. Not the best example of how you bring rebellion to our house, true, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t learning valuable lessons from that particular incident.”
A shadow passed over Scott’s already stormy eyes. “I can’t do that anymore. My mind is useless for it.”
“You can do plenty of everything, Scott. You seem to think that because you’ve lost your telepathy, you’ve lost what makes you unique, when in truth, all of you is unique. You make us stronger by just being with us. You’ve taught me lessons about parenthood that I hope one day your own sons make you sweat.”
That brought a fleeting smile out of his stoic son. “I’m learning to watch people,” Scott confessed. “I was already good at it, but I think I need to be better. It’s the way I can help you.”
“You don’t need to protect us—”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t think Adrian is a good match,” Scott said, that zigzagging logic of his taking Julian for a ride.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Something about him isn’t true.”
“Adrian has a right to keep his secrets and his privacy the same way we do. He’s definitely uncomfortable with the idea of the Council and of Matt growing up with me. Maybe that’s what you’re picking up.”
Scott sighed, frustrated. “I don’t know. The way he looks at Matt—the way he isn’t Matt…” He trailed off, unable to find the right words about what had him worried. “He’s not a good match.”
“If he really isn’t a good person to allow around your brother, then he won’t be allowed. I can promise you that,” Julian said, locking eyes with Scott, who nodded. A moment of silence sealed the deal, and then…
“So, was it a big fight? When my parents left, was it a big fight with their own parents?”
And just like that, they were back to talking about grandparents and old history, but Scott’s words burned into Julian’s heart. He didn’t think Adrian was a good match, either.
18
Capsized
Major White was keeping a detailed record of Drake’s daily activities; his diet, his interactions with Dr. Greensburg, and certainly his every word. So it was a bit surprising to discover Drake had a dry sense of humor, which White suspected was related to the stressful days aboard the U.S.S. Honos.
It was certainly going to be hard to explain why Drake was offhandedly calling his diving team members Huey, Dewey, and Louie. At least all three marines had nothing but praise about the suits and were looking forward to the final test in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, Drake didn’t quite feel the same.
“We have plenty of confidence in your design,” Dr. Greensburg said, showing Drake and White the stats. “It’s working better than expected.”
“It’s not functional for me,” Drake said as the major came closer to look at Drake’s discarded suit on the table. “I’m not saying the design doesn’t work, just that I can’t really work with it comfortably.”
“Is there something we could do to make it better?” White asked, while Drake went over the microfiber on the back of the suit.
“I need to cut it open, but it will be too obvious for the marines if I show up like that. I’ll make sure to be the last going in and the last going out. With a little luck, they won’t notice. Meanwhile, I need to replenish my calories before the dive.”
“We’ll be right with you for breakfast in a few minutes,” White said with a nod, as Drake walked out of the lab.
“How much do you think a merman needs to eat on a daily basis?” Dr. Greensburg asked out loud, not really expecting an answer. If merfolk were regularly deep diving, White imagined that it would take a good deal of food to keep them going. On the surface, they didn’t seem to eat more than the average human.
Sometimes, he was amazed at the amount of information they’d gathered about the Brookses in such a short time, to the point that he could give a good estimate on their food intake without a second thought.
“Anything interesting from the suit?” the major asked as he turned his tablet off. His daily report could use any details he could find.
“I’m still processing yesterday’s biometrics. He does have an athlete’s body. It’s certainly worth comparing him to the stats we collected for Ray, who’s much younger, and was confined to a bed. I was quite impressed with the way he moves in the water, you know? How he makes sure to merge well with his companions? No sudden moves, nothing that would give him away as anything but human.”
White nodded in agreement. So little gave them away, it was scary. “Everyone would love to know how fast they can actually swim,” White said, looking at the doctor’s screen, “but I’m fairly certain Drake won’t give us a demonstration.”
“The suits are really something,” the doctor said, adjusting his glasses. “The applications alone for extreme weather, or even space suits, are mind boggling. Heck, they could make a fortune by selling it as extreme sports wear.”
They already make a fortune by more mundane means…
“Hmm… You know, doctor, what I wonder is how they came up with the idea of this suit. Where else are they applying anti-sonar technology?”
“You think they’re arming someone else?”
“Can’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind.”
* * *
The third time was the charm. With a bright new day and two recently open gashes at his back, Drake could finally breathe in peace. Although his tank was half full, he felt a whole lot lighter by breathing through his gills instead of the regulator.
Down and down they went, the submarine following their slow descent into darkness, while his three companions checked the equipment, and the ship’s crew gave them instructions through their earpieces. With all the testing and revisions they had planned, it was going to take them an hour to reach their destination, and another couple to go up. Since the risks were almost nonexistent for him, Drake’s mind had a lot of thinking to do while lazily moving down.
The last time he’d done any meaningful dive had been twenty years ago, when his own daughter Milla had been practicing to get to The City. It had hurt to the very depths of his soul that both his children had decided they wanted to go, but he’d made sure they would make it.
Ace had been barely talking to him by that point, and Milla had been playing the peacekeeper during that last descent. He treasured each and every inch they’d gone through together as a family, no matter what rifts had already been opening between them.
On the other hand, he was grateful that both his children were away from the government. They could come up to the surface and start anew, a luxury the Brooks kids were not going to have.
Veritas Co. hung heavily over his head. The independent news media knew too much, and they would hold that information for only so long. Drake wondered how wise it would be if the world knew that Ray was Christopher Brooks. Maybe not a Brooks… maybe Chris can take on a second identity that would be more palatable than a rich guy from New York City.
No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t see a clear way for Christopher to come clean with being Ray. He did, however, acknowledge that telling the story that Ray had survived would do wonders for public opinion, but only as a last resort. Veritas was going to publish this story sooner or later—probably a lot sooner than later—so they needed to make sure that Gwen and Andrew were covered in the narrative. Andrew was easy, no one had heard of his involvement as a physiotherapist. But Gwen was an entirely different problem.
If they said that she knew, and had been lying to the public all this time, it would carry a backlash of unforeseen ramifications. If they said she had been dispatched before Ray woke up, she could claim that she didn’t know. But then, how does this story end? Ray was let go into the ocean to never be seen again?
Researching Gill McKenzie’s father had been interesting, if not for any other reason than the legal angle. Paul McKenzie had a well-respe
cted legal firm that had sometimes aided Brooks Inc.’s own legal arm. Still, McKenzie was thinking of bringing a personhood case as an independent lawyer, not as a part of his firm.
What would make Mr. McKenzie happy, though? What would make an avid SWIMMER back down? What kind of story would give a happy ending to Ray and a nice clean answer regarding why he wasn’t present anymore?
Ray needs to stay dead, Drake concluded thirty feet lower, while the divers took time to move down. They were about to cross the danger zone where the suits would make a difference. This was the real test. Drake’s legs ached to shift into a tail, and he maintained control of his body by letting his scales shift beneath the suit. At this depth, his entire body was lightly covered in scales. By the time they reached their destination, they would be hard scales. All but his face. Covered as he was, he was not worried about any showing up. Beneath the mask, he felt his ears itching to elongate themselves. He sighed, still annoyed with his body.
At the back of his mind, something snagged his attention away from the depth gauge. A sixth sense telling him to watch out, instead of an actual merfolk mental current.
Alert, he went through the possibilities. A shark encounter was not unlikely, but rather bad luck. Jellyfish would be a nightmare. Large predators or small, something was circling them, he just knew it. He turned around, but the light of his suit could only reach so far. Absolute darkness met his narrowed eyes, and as he made a complete turn, the only sounds that came to him were from the submarine and the divers themselves. Looking down, the lights of the sub leading the way hurt his sensitive eyes.
The three marines went down without a problem as he stayed behind. He would never turn away from a gut feeling. Closing his eyes, he listened again. The sound of the small submarine drowned out anything else, and a minute later, he opened his eyes in frustration.
“Is everything all right?” Dr. Greensburg asked in his ear. He’d been stationary for more time than was necessary, and the surface crew had noticed. He kept swimming down, until he reached the submarine’s cameras, and signed everything’s okay.
He went deeper, the red, green, and yellow lights of his teammates impossible to miss. On his back, the cuts on his suit stretched across two of his gills, letting him breathe deeply.
Nothing else happened for the next fifteen minutes, until he was startled out of his skin by sudden applause in the control room. The four of them had reached their goal. The submarine blinked a couple of times, as if giving them a job well done message, even if they remained calm and collected. A mistake at this depth—any mistake—would be deadly.
Celebrations will have to wait, he thought, looking up to the distant surface. I’ll breathe easier once this is done.
Ten agonizingly endless minutes later, after a thorough check that everything was okay, Louie started to go up first, followed by his other two friends. The submarine started to go up slowly, and Drake took a long look down at the abyss that was staring right back at him. His body knew something his mind didn’t, and he didn’t like that one bit.
He decided to play bodyguard by lagging a few feet behind his colleagues. How much he wished they were all merfolk so he could talk to them telepathically.
“There seems to be something going on with the sub,” a crew member said twenty minutes later on their earpieces, his voice not worried but rather curious. “You might see some unexpected behavior.”
Drake looked up, right on time to see one of the lateral lights blinking and then going off. His gut told him to move away, but the only thing down here was the four of them, and the submarine could wait for a surface inspection. If something was really going on, his priority was the humans, and a busted submarine light was not worth dividing his attention for. He slowed down and waited.
Fifteen feet further up, another light went off, but the glaring main lights made it impossible to see if something was happening.
If you need to retreat off camera to shift, you’ll have to move behind the submarine. White had told him that. The empty darkness that surrounded them was perfect for an ambush, but the closest place to hide was behind the submarine. To do a thorough inspection, Drake would need to shift into his tail, but he didn’t want to give his teammates an unwelcome surprise.
The tanks on his back weighed a ton. The suit strangled his every cell. Every fiber of his being prepared for an attack that he couldn’t see, couldn’t even imagine how to defend against.
Above, he watched Huey, Dewey, and Louie stop.
Come on, keep going, keep going. He started swimming up as well, faster than he should, but he didn’t like his surroundings anymore. As he reached the marines, the three of them were looking in the submarine’s general direction. By the looks of it, one of them had seen something there.
The main light of the submarine suddenly went off, and the emergency lights automatically came on, startling the man who had been cutting the wires. And right there, beneath the spotlight, a red-and-yellow tail was plainly visible to all four divers. A merman was sabotaging their sub, and it didn’t take them two seconds to understand why he would want the cameras off. Caught, the merman smashed the emergency light with lightning speed, and in the second before the light flickered out, Drake saw the face of their attacker.
Matt?
The lights of their suits became the only source of light, along with the luminescent rope. All three humans held to the rope as the main command exploded in their ears with questions on what had happened to the sub. The surface crew hadn’t seen the merman, and the divers could not sign the whole situation back, either.
The marines were not stupid. Their position was dangerous—deadly so—but they didn’t panic. Shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, they formed a triangle to see in every direction, assessing the situation. Huey signed to him to join them, but Drake had other plans.
His tracer’s mind was looking for the merman. He was intently looking for Matt’s mind, even if he knew his nephew couldn’t be the one behind this. Not only did Matt have no business being here, he wasn’t nearly as accomplished at shielding his mind as this one.
Slowly, he moved towards the divers. If they were not in a panic now, it was because of years of training and cool heads. But having their fourth member suddenly shifting into a merman right in the middle of an attack might be a little more than they could handle.
Still searching for the sabotaging merman with his mind, Drake reached the divers and signed them to look at him, and then at his legs. He signed that everything was okay, and then felt the seams of his suit tear apart as his legs fused into a tail. At this depth with the poor light, it looked as black as Julian’s, not exactly the merry colors of friendship.
Louie moved back, but Dewey stopped him. The three of them stared at him for a few seconds, until Drake signed for them to continue up. Nodding once, Huey started moving, and so did the others. They probably didn’t know if the other merman was friend or foe, but understood enough to know Drake was not a menace. That was all that mattered.
Without the need for the human charade, Drake deftly let the tanks go, along with the mask. The remaining bottom part of the suit got in the way of his lateral fins, making maneuvering difficult. He circled the divers in a slow upward spiral, watching at the void with no hopes of seeing anything the humans wouldn’t see themselves.
In their ears, command was telling them they were dispatching emergency divers in case an accident had occurred. The trackers on their suits gave their positions away, and since they were ascending, the Navy knew where to meet them. They only had to reach the midpoint.
What do you think you’re doing? Drake sent to the other merman, waiting for recognition, for any kind of hint about his enemy’s location. Do you even know who you’re dealing with?
There! Not a thought, exactly, but awareness. Enough traces of a mind for Drake to follow. Not too far, but not too close. I can’t leave the divers here, it’s still too deep.
Maybe the merman would go. He had been as
startled to see Drake as Drake had been to see him, which made absolutely no sense. Why would this merman come to a secret Navy test of merfolk technology if he didn’t know a merman was involved?
How did you even know where we were?
This time, the merman didn’t take the bait, closing his mind as tight as before. Soon, sunlight would reach them and the darkness would not be his enemy’s advantage. But that was still some twenty minutes away, and the divers needed to stop and decompress before that.
If you attack these humans, you’ll be attacking the Council itself. Just—go. Get out and go back to wherever it is you came from. You don’t—
The noise of warping metal reached them then. Underwater, the sound travelled faster, and although distorted to human ears, it came perfectly clear to Drake’s. That sound could only come from one thing, and the surface crew confirmed it: “We’ve just lost the sub altogether.”
Drake closed his mind completely, and swam fast and deep into the ocean. This was no misguided merman playing with fire. This was a deliberate attack. He pressed his chest and the lights on the suit died down. Above, his teammates kept going, the lights on their suits and the rope a target for the whole ocean to see.
With powerful strides, Drake moved away from them, and then listened intently. The merman would come for either the divers or Drake, and he was willing to bet he would go for the weaker prey.
The suit irritated him, and breathing was still hard through the only two openings. Although the legs had torn open to let him shift into his tail, the torso was firmly in place. He couldn’t take it off here, but he did try to remove the useless pants legs wrapped around his waist, so his lateral fins could properly work. Fleetingly, he wondered what Dr. Greensburg’s readings on his body were.
“Mr. Drake, you have to return to the rope. You’re too far away from the rest of the team. Any emergency—”
He took the earpiece out, aware that every distraction could cost him any advantage. A flash of a thought reached him, the intent to attack too close to do much other than lunge in the general direction. He heard the sound of a speeding merman and felt the current move above him.