by M. N. Arzu
20
Adrift
For all Julian mistrusted White, he had to admit that the video was legit. There was a way that merfolk moved that could not be mimicked with computers, the same way there was a certain absence of life with CGI characters’ eyes. No matter how well crafted, how much attention to detail, something always came up as unnatural about it.
The video contained all forty-three minutes of the expedition, and it was easy to recognize Drake’s smooth movements, especially when compared to the humans’ slow ones. The divers knew they had to move carefully in order to economize energy and heat. Drake had no such concerns.
This was the second time he was watching the video, but it was the first for the rest of the Council. They watched intently as Drake deliberately slowed down and stayed behind.
“He heard something,” Mireya said, frowning.
“I think so, yes,” Julian said. “He was already guarded, but it starts to look like there was trouble until this part.”
On the video, Drake completely disappeared from the frame as the submarine followed the divers.
“Maybe the humans sent some other submarine,” Aurel said, distrustful.
“The other divers don’t seem to hear anything unusual. If there was another submarine coming, they would have all turned to look,” Mireya said, unconvinced. “It was barely deep for a merman, but they had their lives on the line there. If the Navy was ambushing Drake, they were also discarding their men.”
“Small price for one of us,” Aurel muttered.
The submarine suddenly lost some of its clarity, the first lateral light being hit. The sound of breaking glass made them all wince. By this point, Drake was visibly on the defense.
The second light went off, and a few minutes later, the main lights also went off, but here was the attacker’s mistake: The emergency lights came on, catching a merman in the act of destroying US Navy property. The camera had caught both scaled hands before they rapidly destroyed the remaining light.
“It can’t be,” Lavine spoke for the first time, fidgeting so badly with the ends of her hair that it looked as if she was going to tear them off. “None of us knew about this. How could anyone know about this?”
This being the Navy and merfolk collaboration. Aside from the obvious conclusion that a merman had indeed destroyed the submarine, they didn’t know much more. The yellow emergency lights had washed out all the colors of the scales, and the face remained off camera. The video went on for several minutes until it met its demise. The sound of bending metal left little room for speculation regarding what had happened down there.
“Was he after Drake or the divers?” Aurel asked, her silver hair framing an angry face.
“Did he even know Drake was around?” Mireya asked.
“Drake has been closing his mind off ever since Wallace played tricks on all of us two months ago,” Julian explained. “Chances are neither knew about the other until they met beneath the ocean.”
“Someone knew the Navy was testing merfolk technology,” Aurel said, “that much we can be sure of.”
“So the Navy has a leak?” Mireya asked. “It’s still one of us who went after it. They can make the exact same conclusion about us.”
“What matters here is finding Drake,” Julian said, more forceful than he wanted. “The trajectory makes sense. At the speed he was swimming, he was definitely chasing another merman, this merman, and for whatever reason, he didn’t come back.”
“If the merman didn’t kill him, then the humans did,” Lavine said, fear laced with anger. “They saw a merman going after their men and must have thought Drake was in on the plot to destroy their submarine, possibly even murder their divers.” And just because she sounded paranoid, it didn’t mean she wasn’t right.
“Major White was certainly quick to call you to dismantle any doubts that this wasn’t a Navy accident,” Aurel said, thoughtful. “He knows how it will look to us if Drake comes back in a bag.”
“If Drake’s alive, he will get in touch with us,” Mireya said. “He has far more contacts than the four of us put together. If someone knows how to survive, it’s Drake.”
“If we’re being played like fools, Drake might very well be alive, just in no position to escape their hands,” Aurel pointed out. “We never wanted him directing these talks because of how much he knows, and how vulnerable we are without his skills to aid this Council.”
“His knowledge is what made him ideal to lead the talks, and the tests,” Julian said, knowing this was a moot point by now.
“So what do we do?” Mireya asked.
“We find where the Navy was running its tests,” Julian said, “and we pick up the trail from there. Drake’s certainly a survivor, but even he can’t be in open sea for days without aid.”
“What are you going to do, Julian?” Aurel asked. “None of us will blame you if you decide to cut ties with the human world. Any of us will gladly receive your family until they’re ready to leave for The City.”
“Or at the very least until this whole thing is over,” Mireya added.
“If Major White is right and we suddenly look like we’re panicking, we’ll never get a chance to set the record straight,” Julian said with a heavy heart. “We have to solve merfolk problems with a strong will, and that means keeping my word. I cannot say if I will respect the agreement beyond tomorrow, but I’ll contact you if my sons need safeguard somewhere else in the world.”
“Very well,” Aurel said. “The three of us will remain in hiding for the time being. We should also think ahead about who can join us in this Council if Drake doesn’t come back. It will never work without a fifth voice to break our constant ties.”
It will never work without Drake, period, Julian thought. Nothing would work the same ever again.
* * *
The Honos had a history of success. Captain Armstrong had never lost a marine, had never abandoned a mission, and had never provoked an international crisis. And he was not going to start now.
“He knew something was going on, sir,” Lieutenant Lewis said with all honesty as he stood at attention in front of him. “I’m sure we’re alive right now because of him, and I’m more than willing to risk going down to get him.”
They had finally found their missing merman, drifting aimlessly not far from their position. Dr. Greensburg had briefed him on the basics of merfolk biology, which meant that he could survive down there, probably for days before starving. Ironically, his position wasn’t the problem. No one knew where the other merman was, which meant sending a man to retrieve him was risky at best, if not downright suicidal.
“Lieutenant, if you encounter any kind of problem, we won’t be able to help you.”
“I’m aware of that, sir.”
“He hasn’t moved since we located him. Chances are you’re only going down for a corpse, son. A submarine can handle that.”
Truth be told, the Navy wanted to put its hands on a specimen, and although they would rather have a live one, they were not picky about having only a dead body.
“The more we wait, sir, the higher the chance that that’s all we’ll get.”
In the past six hours, Captain Armstrong had gotten a crash course on the intel the Pentagon had gathered in the last seven months, and there were still large blanks the captain had not had enough clearance to know. He didn’t like being in this position, where his orders contradicted common sense. These creatures were dangerous, no matter what the bleeding hearts at the UN thought.
Armstrong looked at the marine closely. The man didn’t even flinch. “He must have made an impression on you,” he said, shaking his head. “You have permission to proceed.”
* * *
On the monitor, Armstrong followed the lieutenant’s descent through a camera attached to his suit. The crystal-clear image showed nothing but darkness and the luminescent rope for what felt like eternity. It took Lewis over half an hour to get close to the target, and then more than twenty minute
s to locate him.
The signal from the suit had been weakened to one-fourth of its capacity, something related to a general failure of the internal circuitry of the suit. The monitors had recorded all the biometrics until a spike on all readings had suddenly been cut short. After that, everything flat-lined. All indicators had gone to zero. If the merman had died in combat, then it would have made sense that the heartbeat monitor had flat-lined, but nothing else would have gone off the grid.
“There he is,” his first officer said as Lieutenant Lewis reached for Drake’s unmoving body. He stopped for a moment to look at him, probably deciding how best to drag him to the surface. The suit was intact from the torso up, but gone was the mask, the tanks, and the regulators. Armstrong automatically deduced he was dead, until he remembered that merfolk breathed water.
Unlike the lightning speed at which merfolk swam, humans—especially at that depth—moved considerably slower. Armstrong was a patient man, but knowing what could be lurking in the ocean made him uneasy. No merman was worth the life of one of his own.
The worst part was that he’d talked to this creature; he’d shared his ship, trusted him with his crew, helped him with his mission. As the camera moved downward and took its first look at the dark tail, Armstrong couldn’t help but feel betrayed.
Taking him under the arm and placing his head on his shoulder, Lewis started his long trip up. No one cheered. The entire U.S.S. Honos seemed to hold its breath, and forty minutes later, every marine turned to look over the rail, waiting to see what so few in the world had actually ever seen: a real merman.
* * *
Several divers waited a few feet below the surface to help the lieutenant place Drake on an inflatable boat, so he could be taken up to the ship. As both the diver and the merman broke the surface, others joined him from the boat to help with the rescue. On the deck, Armstrong followed with serious eyes.
“He’s breathing,” Lewis said excitedly as soon as he took the mask off. “I could feel his chest moving while we were coming up.”
Silently, the captain followed the procedures, still waiting for something to go wrong. It took a few minutes of careful maneuvering to get the merman onto the yellow boat. The lateral fins tangled with the divers’ equipment, shredding them at some points.
Dr. Greensburg waited with eager hands along with the medical crew. None of them had ever seen a living merman, but all of them looked like children on Christmas. It was rather ironic that everyone aboard his ship seemed far more enthusiastic about their new passenger than Armstrong himself.
They just can’t see the dangers this man represents.
Finally, Drake was placed on the deck for a preliminary check. The sun shone on the dark tail, and this close, Armstrong saw for the first time that it wasn’t black at all. It was dark gray at the top and blended into a dark blue, a navy blue, all the way to the tip.
The medics didn’t lose time. Sharp scissors cut into a million-dollar suit, revealing a hairless chest covered lightly in dark scales. Drake had tied the pants legs around his torso, and the long tail lay unmoving as four pairs of hands looked for external injuries of any kind. Satisfied, they moved as one to turn him onto his side, and cut the back free from the last remaining part of the suit.
Armstrong looked away at the sight of the red gills, and then willed himself to look again. They contracted in the same way fish gills did when fish were out of the water.
“Is he actually breathing?” Armstrong asked, more curious than concerned.
“He has a strong pulse,” Greensburg said after a moment, placing a hand in front of the nose and mouth. “We think their respiratory system changes automatically from breathing water to breathing air. It should be kicking in right about now.” A tense minute went by, and Greensburg turned to look at the captain. “Nothing.”
“Should we start CPR?” one of the medics suggested.
Greensburg shook his head. “We should put him back into the ocean, he’s suffocating.” To the captain, he added, “We could fill the tanks inside with salt water.”
Of course it couldn’t be easy, Armstrong thought. To his first officer, he ordered, “Do as he says. Lower him to the sea, and fill the tanks in the main lab. It seems it’s our luck to be stuck with the only merman on the planet who can’t breathe air.”
21
Off Chance
Awareness came and went. For a long time, all Drake had listened to was the sound of water, followed by the sound of his own heartbeat. At one point, it started to include voices, shouts maybe? Nothing made sense.
He was being moved, though by who or how, he couldn’t tell. Maybe he was going up, maybe he was lying on a hard floor. His already disassociated senses warned him that he was under attack. Hands grabbed at his body, at his tail, at his shoulders, at his chest, the onslaught making him dizzy. Exhausted from fighting for awareness, he let go.
The sense of danger followed him into unconsciousness, and it raised him hours later, when a growing part of his mind was convinced he’d been trapped. His body was completely unresponsive, to the point he couldn’t even open his eyes. Paralyzed, he willed himself not to panic and calm down. Sooner or later, answers had to come. After an eternity, he started picking up the sounds around him.
People. He heard people moving, chatting. From the darkness of his confinement, he tried to understand why he was under water, and yet people were walking around him.
This impossible riddle kept him occupied while he tried to remember what had happened to him. Major White figured prominently in his disjointed memories, along with black diving suits. Things started to fall into place after that. He remembered the microfiber at the back, suffocating his gills. He remembered the walkthrough across the Navy’s ship…the one with the Latin name...and as the words Honos flashed into his mind, he had a clear image of the large twin containers that could house sharks, and suddenly he understood what was happening here.
He was inside a tank.
How did they paralyze me? Whatever drugs they had used to capture him were of little importance right now. After all, how he’d ended up inside the tank was only half of the problem. How he was going to get out of it was far more pressing.
Lying on his side, he started with the only thing he seemed to be able to control: his breathing. Deep breaths helped him get a clearer head. The last thing he remembered was discussing with White how the microfiber over his gills was not working. Depending on how much time had passed between that and waking up here, chances were he’d already missed talking with Julian.
That’s not important, he told himself. Whatever Julian and the Council had decided in his absence, it was irrelevant to his current position. Find out where you are, figure out how to escape, and then we’ll deal with how to contact the others.
That wasn’t a plan, but having a list of general actions to follow was all his mind needed to keep going. For a few minutes, all he did was breathe, ignoring the sounds of people talking. The deeper the breaths, the looser his muscles became. His tail seemed to weigh ten times more than it should, and moving it was like swimming through quicksand. Ever so slowly, he moved his tail to the front, and was promptly met with glass. His face was probably only a couple of inches from the wall, and as he moved his main fin back, he realized he was in a very narrow tank.
They would need easy access to me, so they would place me in the smallest tank possible. Which means the water is probably no more than a few inches deep.
As time went by, he started picking up the conversations around him. They were concerned about his lungs, which surprised him, since he’d been breathing just fine. Some talk strayed into whatever the personnel was doing, and sometimes someone would call his steady stats. Finally, a couple of hours later, they started talking about the logistics of moving him from the U.S.S. Honos to some Navy research facility in Massachusetts.
That’s too far away to telepathically contact Julian, he thought, sensation slowly returning to his hands and arms. Th
e movement of the ship itself helped him disguise his own movements as he experimented with regaining control of his body.
A bone-deep ache was also setting in, adding to the mystery of what had put him into this state. No one talked about drugs or secondary effects, but that was of little comfort. As he regained full sensation in his tail, at the base of his back he was met with a sharp pain. As if a knife had been driven into his very soul. The pain startled him enough to make him jerk wildly, which looked like a spasm to the watchful eyes of the people around him.
He remained still as hands started to touch him, strangers calling his name. He didn’t react. After a while, they left him to his own devices.
A plan started to form.
If he tried to escape now, he was going to be gunned down. Even if he made it into the ocean, he’d be in the middle of the Atlantic, with no idea of how far away the coast was. Something had been done to him, and his body could be compromised far more than he thought, especially his lungs. Under those conditions, he had a better chance of survival inside this tank than attempting a suicidal escape.
Once he was inside whatever lab they were taking him to, his chances of escaping were also close to zero. He was a shiny trophy with enough information in his head that he would be stored in a maximum-security research facility. He was never going to see the light of the sun again.
No, his best chance lay in the between. Transferring him from the ship to the facility required two things: proximity to land and actually moving him. Maybe on a stretcher, maybe on a gurney. It didn’t matter.
Motionless, he bid his time.
* * *
The sight of the coast had never been more welcome to Captain Armstrong. Washington had wanted a report on the prognosis of their newly captive merman every thirty minutes. They were afraid Drake would die in transit, but the fact that he couldn’t breathe outside of a tank had complicated his transportation. So far, he seemed to be recovering well enough inside the tank that no one wanted to mess with that. Besides, fitting a medevac or any helicopter to move him was going to take longer than actually getting the Honos to its final destination.