Underground_A Merfolk Secret

by M. N. Arzu

  He had no illusions that this transmission would go unnoticed the same way the other one had, so he had more reason to make this one count. A couple of days ago, when he’d been helping his favorite marine trio install the communication system, he’d noticed that the software that ran video allowed for the user to select pieces of the feed and cut them into individual files. It was the only reason he was attempting this, since video files were dreadfully heavy to send over a spotty Bluetooth connection.

  Ten-second videos were manageable, though, and as he went through the timestamps, blindly selecting minutes of his days under the watchful eyes of the Navy, he wondered what Julian would think once he got this message.

  With a little luck, we’ll get a good laugh out of this someday, he thought, specifically looking for video of Higgs interacting with him. Higgs was the link between the UN and the Pentagon, and as much as he liked the man, he hoped Dr. Higgs wouldn’t mind the publicity he was about to get.

  Twenty minutes later, he watched as the seventeen files started to slowly upload on their way to Julian. He had no idea if all would make it before the connection was lost, but by this point, exhaustion was creeping into his mind. He needed to sleep, badly, and once he saw the first file had been sent completely, he moved away from the glass wall and into his corner.

  Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.

  * * *

  Julian’s phone announced a message. This close to midnight, it didn’t seem possible that it would bring good news, so he looked at the phone with trepidation. The subject read Proof of life, and air rushed out of his lungs in relief as he watched the video. Drake looked well and active in some sort of aquarium pool. The medical equipment Dr. Higgs had requested from Brooks Inc. was still in transit, but it seemed to be headed somewhere on the East Coast.

  The second video was a surprise. That Drake would take the time to send him an extra reassurance that he was doing okay was odd, but welcomed.

  By the time the tenth video arrived, Julian had long realized this wasn’t about calming the Council’s nerves.

  First you contacted the SWIMMERs to tell them Ray’s alive. Now you’re sending me a dozen videos of your captivity. What kind of puzzle are you sending me, Drake? Where do you want me to go with this?

  And then, suddenly, it all made sense.

  32

  Encounters

  Lewis woke him up once again, but his shaking was insistent, urgent even. Drake had the distinctive feeling that it was also earlier than his usual 9:00 a.m. wake-up call, and the fact that the lieutenant was already giving him the wrist keyboard didn’t bode well.

  He didn’t feel as slow as he had the last few days, but it still took him a second to get his bearings. His stomachs growled insistently, and he fleetingly thought about talking with Higgs and changing his diet.

  Lewis signaled for him to go in the observatory direction, and then—strangely—wished him good luck. While his human companion swam up to the surface, Drake swam horizontally to the glass that separated their two worlds. The digital clock read 5:57 a.m. He’d been expecting a reaction from his nocturnal crusade last night, so he was prepared for trouble.

  And trouble was more than waiting for him.

  The man who stood in the middle of the observation room commanded attention as well as discipline. The white uniform was in sharp contrast with everyone else’s dark clothes, and the insignias on his shoulder gave him the rank of admiral.

  I was wondering when you were going to show up, Drake thought as he descended to be at eye level with the man who held his future in his hands. He had no doubt that breaching security protocols had brought Coleman to his figurative doorstep.

  They looked at each other for a moment, and then Drake gave a slight nod of his head, a sign that he knew Coleman was above him.

  Good morning, Admiral, he wrote.

  Coleman walked closer to the glass, green eyes unblinking. A strategist deciding his next move in the invisible chess game they’d both been playing since the moment Drake had agreed to board the Honos.

  “Good morning, Mr. Drake.” The words appeared on the monitor facing Drake. “It’s been called to my attention that unauthorized messages were sent yesterday to a third party. You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

  Drake smiled, a not-so-innocent smile. I believe those might have been mine, Admiral. In accordance with our agreement, I took the liberty of notifying the Council that I’m alive and well. They’ve been lacking proof of life for the past five days.

  That was a perfectly reasonable explanation that neither of them believed, but it looked well on record. Coleman could argue all he wanted that Drake was lying, but he had sent those videos to Julian, and they had not offered him any means of communicating he was alive. They would chalk it up to miscommunication, even if both men knew better. It just happened that Coleman had no idea why Drake had done what he had done—and the admiral hated it.

  “This isn’t a game, Mr. Drake. You’re here both for your safety and medical care, as well as to explain to the US Navy what happened last week. You are not authorized to have any external communications, and much less to take any liberties with anyone or anything in this facility.”

  Am I a prisoner?

  “That’s up to you. Pull another one of these stunts and you’ll know the true meaning of prison.” Coleman got so close to the glass that Drake could read the admiral’s lips before the words were typed on the screen.

  “You’re real smart, Mr. Drake. But so am I.”

  * * *

  “I still have my doubts you can pull off Drake’s plan on such short notice,” Mireya said over the computer, a sentiment that had crossed Julian’s mind a few times too many.

  “We’ve already placed the pieces in position with both Veritas and the SWIMMERs. This is the final move before there’s no return.” By his side, Diana nodded. They were at her apartment, drafting the many answers they needed to have once the world knew of Brooks Inc.’s involvement with Ray. “We need to push Patrick O’Connor in the right direction. We have to stick with this plan now more than ever.”

  “Nathan has notified the United Nations of the SWIMMERs’ information regarding Ray being alive, and how he thinks there’s another merman involved,” Diana added. “We need to bring the UN gently into this chaos, or they won’t back us up. Julian’s tentative start with the talks is going to sweeten the deal a whole lot.”

  “Just make sure your cover remains intact,” her mother warned, and Diana nodded. “I do have some rather disturbing news to tell you, Julian,” Mireya said, clearly unhappy with being the messenger here.

  “What is it?”

  “I finally tracked down the scarce evidence of what happened in Brazil. The merman involved was no other than your Adrian Thorne, though I have no idea what Matthew’s brother was doing there.”

  On the computer, Mireya shared a screenshot of Adrian walking down a street at night, a beer in one hand and a phone on the other. All kinds of alarms went off in Julian’s mind, but he couldn’t jump to conclusions here. Not when it meant taking away Matthew’s only relative.

  “Are we certain he was there?”

  “Positive. This was taken three hours before all hell broke loose on that beach. From what you’ve told me, Adrian seems the type to pick fights and storm out of a party.”

  Diana raised a questioning eyebrow at Julian. “I didn’t quite put it that way,” he said.

  “Everyone who’s against the Council is a troublemaker in your eyes,” Diana said to the screen, earning a disapproving look from Mireya.

  “Anyone who ends up causing us trouble is, by definition, a troublemaker,” she answered. “This incident certainly has cost us resources in time, money, and anxiety. If he’d been captured, it would have been us, the Council, who would have rescued him. Not that he understands that, of course.”

  “Well, we haven’t exactly heard his side of the story, have we?” Diana challenged, and Julian fel
t the discussion rapidly getting derailed into more stormy paths.

  “Okay, ladies. We don’t know much about Adrian, and he certainly didn’t break the law by attending a beach party in Brazil. It doesn’t seem to have scarred him, since he hasn’t brought that up with me or with Matt, as far as I know. I’ll ask him, but it’s good to know that no merman is in the hands of any government. Do we agree?”

  Diana looked away, and Mireya sighed. He wondered what had transpired between the two of them in the week Diana had spent in Argentina, and then let it go.

  “We should know if Adrian left any loose ends that we need to tie up,” Mireya said, taking the conversation back on course.

  “I don’t think Adrian would jeopardize Matt’s safety if he thought he had trouble following him,” Julian said, frowning.

  “You said he doesn’t trust the Council, Julian. You think he would trust you with whatever mess he might have left behind?”

  Diana opened her mouth, and Julian raised a hand. “She has a point,” he told the younger mermaid. “I’ll talk with Adrian. Hopefully, there’s nothing else for us to do with this incident other than close it down. In the meantime, I have to call our allies. Set up Mr. O’Connor for one final push.”

  * * *

  Gwen had some serious doubts about Julian’s plan. Beside her, Andrew definitely didn’t.

  Andrew had shown up a couple of days ago at Gwen’s apartment with the news that he was joining the I-publicly-know-a-merman club. She understood why his side of the story mattered, she just had no idea why he was so enthusiastic about it.

  When Julian had called yesterday to explain what his working plan was, she had been even less understanding of Andrew’s wide grin. She was changing one fake story for another—a story she knew so well by now she could almost believe it had happened—one where Ray had died.

  “You’ll be able to tell the truth now,” Andrew said as he pressed fourteen on the elevator, where they would meet one Patrick O’Connor. “You can now say how he didn’t die, but forget the part when he told you who he really was. I’ll take the story after that.”

  “You don’t know how it is, Andrew. Everyone will tear apart all your words, and if you change one single detail, the whole thing falls down in your head. You think you know the story until people start asking you if he had sharp teeth or needle teeth.”

  “You didn’t say he had perfectly human-like teeth?”

  “Sure, and the evolutionary nuts go crazy with it, because there are all these implications about how a merman eats underwater. Every single detail matters, Andrew, and you don’t know the whole story. I mean the whole story as I’ve been telling it.”

  The elevator doors opened. She still had to remember and write down all those stupid details people had been asking her about since Ray had been pronounced dead. “We’re going to miss something,” she muttered.

  Andrew stopped walking. “Gwen. We’re going to tell the truth. Not the whole truth, granted, but Julian said this had to be as close to reality as it can. We rehearsed all day yesterday. Stop worrying about it. We’re about to tell the world this amazing experience we had, and open the doors for merfolk to live with us. This is good news.”

  She stared at him, and sighed. She’d forgotten how optimistic and upbeat Andrew could be. Besides, he cared about Chris a great deal, and till this day, Andrew had been instrumental in giving Chris back his legs’ mobility and resistance. He deserved to be known, he just didn’t know the dark side of fame.

  “It’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s going to be called a liar from here to China.”

  “You’re going to be a hero, Gwen.”

  She rolled her eyes and rang the bell. Tell the truth, he says. Somehow, I doubt it’s going to set me free.

  * * *

  Patrick needed a perfect timeline. The events Kate had shared with him yesterday were plenty and answered a lot of questions, but they did not make an airtight explanation about the whole thing. He still had many blanks about what had truly happened with Ray at ORCAS, and worried about where he was right now.

  He’d seen enough about the world and its cruelty that he feared for the life of someone so different—and so useful—as Ray. From the moment he’d seen the breaking news about merfolk being real, Patrick had wanted to find out the truth. He needed to know what they thought, how they lived, how different they were from human beings, because deep down he hoped they were better than humanity. That another civilization had to be better than the war-torn cities and knee-deep corruption that permeated the world.

  Six months into this investigation and he’d found plenty of odd things and much to be disheartened about, especially when it came to Ray’s fate. He’d joined the SWIMMERs more out of curiosity than a source of information, but when his credentials reached Paul McKenzie, he’d been contacted to do a thorough investigation, all expenses paid.

  What had surprised him was the number of people that McKenzie had been able to gather. The research McKenzie was working on, the legal aspects of giving merfolk rights, was no laughing matter. And if what Kate had told him was true, that merfolk were human-level intelligent, then McKenzie had more than a theoretical case in his hands.

  Slowly but inexorably, merfolk had taken over his life. Not only about what had really happened to Ray, but what was going to happen in the future. He was at the beginning of the biggest story in human history, and he couldn’t wait to know more.

  Careful, Pat… You start running before walking with this, and you’re going to fall hard.

  He sighed. He was fact-checking Kate’s claims, but it was a slow process. He was looking at weeks, possibly months, of following leads and finding willing witnesses. Who knew where Ray would be by the time he was done?

  The doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and hardly a soul knew where he was staying in New York. He opened the door to find a couple standing there. He had no idea who the man was, but the older woman had an entire dossier on his computer: Dr. Gwen Gaston stood in front of his doorframe.

  “Mr. O’Connor?” she asked.

  “Dr. Gaston,” he said, practically stunned.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “Something needs to be done about Ray.”

  * * *

  Patrick O’Connor was a tidy man. His tiny apartment lacked any personal touch, which probably meant his stay was only transitory. Andrew had looked him up on the internet, and had been impressed with the amount of reporting the man had done. It had made him a little nervous, too.

  But that’s okay, he’ll expect you to be nervous, Julian had said. Just remember that you helped Ray, not Chris, and everything else should fall right into place.

  He could do that. He could forget Christopher’s name for an hour or two.

  “So you lied,” Patrick was saying as Gwen recounted the story for the second time. Patrick knew her, of course. Whoever had a passing interest in merfolk had to know about Gwen.

  “Indeed. It was the only way to guarantee Ray would survive. Everything was getting politicized. Too many people in power were showing too much interest. And you gotta remember Ray was in critical condition. He wasn’t up to lengthy interrogations, much less in any shape to swim around.”

  “And he wasn’t talking?” Patrick asked for the third time.

  “He understood us,” she said for the third time as well. “He just wouldn’t talk. Until Andrew came along, he wasn’t even engaged.”

  Patrick’s clear eyes centered on Andrew for the first time, and the predator that lurked inside of them gave Andrew pause.

  “He wanted to get better. I was his ticket to that,” Andrew said, nodding.

  “And you’ve been treating him for the past months?” Patrick asked, skepticism written all over his face.

  “He was making progress until he was taken away two weeks ago. He wanted to leave, he was ready for that,” he said, looking at Gwen. This was the complicated part, the part where he actually lied. “With his wounds heal
ed and his newfound willingness to communicate—Look, Mr. O’Connor, he was untouchable before because no one wanted to mess up his recovery. But now they could be doing anything to him.”

  “We’ve been talking with Julian for the past weeks,” Gwen added, frustrated. God, you’re so good at this, Andrew thought in awe. “He’s afraid that if we go public with this information, not only will the Navy deny it, they will sink it as a conspiracy theory and they will never have to release Ray at all.”

  “Is that really why he’s afraid?” Patrick asked offhandedly.

  For one single moment, Andrew thought that Patrick knew. That he knew Ray was Christopher and that Drake was the one really trapped with the Navy, and that Julian was doing this whole circus to get his friend out.

  “You have no idea how hard Julian has fought to keep Ray safe, Mr. O’Connor,” Gwen said with a hard look.

  “But how would you know?” Patrick asked, sifting through his notes. “You said once Ray left ORCAS, you stopped seeing him altogether.”

  “We consult with her all the time—” Andrew said.

  “I stay updated on Ray’s progress—” Gwen said at the same time. She looked at him, and then rephrased, “I stay updated on Ray’s progress since they consult with me all the time.”

  Patrick raised his eyebrows, clearly sensing something was off here.

  “He trusts me,” Gwen said at long last. “Julian trusts me. Dr. Higgs is Ray’s primary care doctor, but Julian wanted me to help Higgs from time to time, okay? The fact is, Ray doesn’t need an ER trauma doctor anymore, but he does need friends. Social relationships. He’s the only merman who’s spent any significant time with us, and we need to make sure he’s getting a good memory of his trip to land.”