by M. N. Arzu
None of it was right.
The closer he got, the less Matt let him see. “Come on, Matt. What’s going on?” he whispered, gripping the wheel as he navigated the unfamiliar streets of New Jersey.
Matt didn’t answer, but Chris knew his brother had heard him. He stopped asking questions and concentrated on the route, finding himself on the outskirts of the city a few minutes later.
The diner was missing half the letter N, which made it read Direr. It had last been painted roughly twenty years ago, and it certainly didn’t care much for the cracks on its window, or the duct tape on the front door. The jingle that announced Chris’s entrance jarred him, and he anxiously looked everywhere until he found the black hair of a hunched figured in the corner.
“Matt!” he half shouted, but Matt only seemed to flinch in his seat. “Matthew, I’m here,” Christopher said as he reached him, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. It somehow deflated him, as if Matthew was getting ready for the inevitable. “Matt, are you okay?”
Matt’s gray eyes finally looked up, haunted and resigned. Chris could read the struggle in them, the struggle to find the right words, the struggle to explain why he was sitting in a diner in New Jersey, wearing a disheveled jacket and an empty soul.
“Hey… What happened?” Chris asked, taking a seat in front of him. When Matt wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t even look at him, he changed tactics. “What are you wearing?”
“I took off—I took off with only what I was wearing last night. A truck driver gave me a lift—gave me the jacket. He thought I was going to get cold.” The words were there, but there was no inflection, no feeling. Matt kept looking at the table. “He also gave me a pair of shoes… I told him I’d pay him back. I don’t think he believed me.”
“That was…nice of him,” Chris said, trying to catch Matt’s eyes. Trying to understand why his brother had clearly left everything behind—phone, shoes, money—and had ended up here, of all places, wanting only Christopher to see him.
“We were right,” Matt whispered. “We were right to distrust him.”
“Julian said the Navy took him. Did something happen to him last night?”
“Everything that has happened to us, everything, Chris, you getting attacked, Wallace showing up, Scott losing his telepathy, the whole mess with the media and the government and people knowing about us—everything is because I’m his brother.”
“What are you talking—?”
“I’m the reason for it all!” Matt said in desperation, tears forming in his eyes, rage coming out of him in waves. “I’m the reason Coleman got him to spy on us, and if Drake hadn’t pulled that thing on TV, he would’ve taken you all, as well. He said everything he did, he did for me. I’m cursed with him and now I’ve cursed you all.”
Chris stood up, and Matt looked at him with fear in his eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said, extending a hand to Matt. He didn’t move. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, or what’s going on, but you need to come home with me, okay? We’ll figure this out.”
“I don’t—I can’t—I don’t belong there, not right now. You don’t know what he did, you don’t know what he said, you just—”
As Matt talked, his mind finally opened to Chris’s, and he showed him. He showed him Adrian’s voice talking about the Navy. Adrian’s smile, Adrian’s laugh, Adrian’s happy memories of their family, Adrian’s smuggling stories. And then he showed him The Deep C, and the dreams about the fish tank, and the million photographs that threatened to drown him. Except it all came out in flashes and loosely connected threads, crashing in a storm of feelings that dragged them both down.
Chris wanted to gasp. Wanted to shut the door to the mental roller coaster Matt was sharing with him. He wanted to reach down and shake reason into his brother’s brain. But he couldn’t. Not to Matt. Not ever.
He leaned forward instead, one hand on the table, and the other on Matt’s shoulder, and quietly said, “Listen to me carefully, okay? I’m your brother. We are your family. All the blood in the world won’t change that. Nothing will change that.”
He moved forward to hug him, but Matt lunged at him, gripping him with enough force to leave bruises behind. Desperation bled with every tear that escaped him, even if Matt ruthlessly wiped them off on Chris’s shoulder. They stood like that for ages.
Two booths down the diner, a waitress was wiping away tears as she held a coffee pot, the only witness to their emotional reunion. In the background, a news station kept talking about Ray’s release. Outside, a faraway ambulance rushed to some emergency.
The world should’ve stopped spinning by this point, but it hadn’t.
“Come on, Matt. We really need to get home.”
* * *
For all the significance this day would have in both merfolk and human history, Julian couldn’t follow the news. Drake was on his way here and Matt was home, though his mind was miles away. Julian had barely gotten a few words out of him, and Chris had tried his best to complete a rather disturbing picture, but Julian knew enough.
Adrian Thorne was in so much trouble, both with the humans and the Council, that no ocean was going to be deep enough to hide him. I hope you’re running as far away and as fast as you can, knowing we will find you.
“How is he?” Scott asked, subdued. He’d silently walked to stand beside him, both of them looking at the skyline.
“I don’t know,” Julian answered honestly. Chris was still talking with Matt, and Alex had kept an eye on the news and the SWIMMERs. It was the only reason why Julian had taken a momentary break.
“Families can be hard…” Scott said, sounding unsure. “Is it really family if you don’t know them?”
Tough question from a tough kid. “They can be the beginnings of a family, I’d think,” Julian said. “After all, we were strangers once, all of us, but we’re a family now. It takes time and a certain balance, and a few misunderstandings, as you’ve experienced by now. But blood…blood is only part of the equation, Scott, and it’s not even the relevant one.”
Scott mulled it over, his blue eyes matching the clear blue sky outside. “I wouldn’t know what to do if my grandparents showed up at the door. I thought I knew what blood means, but now I’m not so sure.” He turned to look in Matt’s direction, and then looked down at the floor. “I don’t know how to help my brother,” he confessed, barely above a whisper.
I don’t know how to help him, either, Julian thought, placing a hand on Scott’s shoulder. He noticed with no small amount of pride that it was the first time Scott had referred to any of them as his brothers. “We’ll take it as it comes, okay? Matt needs to find his way out of this on his own, but it doesn’t mean you can’t help him by being there.”
“I should’ve warned him,” his youngest said, frustrated.
Julian shook his head. “I keep telling myself I should’ve stopped him, too,” he agreed, receiving a questioning look from Scott. “But the truth is that Matt needed to know Adrian in a way you and I will never understand. Sooner or later, their paths would have crossed.”
“You think—” Scott started, just to be interrupted by a loud growling, courtesy of his stomachs.
“When was the last time you ate?” Julian asked, amused.
“I’m sick of eating,” Scott murmured, miserably turning to the kitchen.
“It will pass soon!” Julian called to him. Scott only hunched.
How strange the world was today that in losing one brother, Matthew had earned the assurance of another. It took every ounce of self-control not to intrude in Matt and Chris’s conversation. He was desperate to gauge the path of destruction Adrian had left in Matt’s heart.
In the distance, Drake’s distinctive mental signature warmed him, and he had to believe that things were going to be all right now. He just had to.
* * *
“…the emergency meeting took place in Paris, as the European Union arranged for a basic declaration of rights for merfolk, while
the White House…”
Nathan was barely keeping up with the Sunday news, while a dozen newspapers were sprawled all over his living room. He’d come home after three days of being both at the UN offices and then at sea, marveling at the way Drake moved. After that, Diana had been swept into several press releases which had ended late yesterday night.
With a few hours of sleep and a new pot of coffee, Nathan was catching up on the latest developments, thinking about the next steps to come.
I have to contact Drake and make sure he’s all right. The UN committee needs an update, and while I’m doing that, I have to check the press release for—
The doorbell rang, and he frowned. He wasn’t expecting company. In fact, he barely had time to be here.
A huge grin split his face as he opened the door. “Higgs! I was starting to wonder where the Navy had stashed you!” They briefly hugged as Higgs laughed.
“I was wondering that myself, actually. But you know how the military is: Paperwork. Debriefing. Confidentiality agreements. Getting on the bad side of Admiral Coleman. I was dropped off at my apartment not an hour ago, but it seems I missed quite the global revelation.”
“So much has happened since Thursday, it’s hard to believe anyone could’ve missed it,” Nathan said, turning the TV to mute. “At this pace, I’ll be swimming in work for the next ten years. The UN committee was ready to send a search party for you, too. We’ve just been busy dealing with the world and the upcoming talks.”
“They’re finally moving forward with the talks?”
“Oh yeah. I just need Drake to be back in the game in a few weeks.”
“How is he?” Higgs asked, serious. If there was something Higgs never laughed about, it was his patients’ care.
“I haven’t been able to talk to him, but Diana assured me he’s doing okay. He was able to breathe right on time for his grand entrance into human history, but it doesn’t mean he’s had a full recovery. Andrew picked him up from the beach once Coleman released him. He told me Drake slept most of the trip.”
“I wanted to pay him a visit, but I don’t know where things stand with human-merfolk relationships. At the very least, Gwen should check…on…him… What the hell is that?”
Nathan turned to see the TV, where one of the dozen videos Drake had released was playing out. One of the three where Higgs also starred.
“Oh… I think the first thing you should know is that you’ve become a world-renowned merfolk scientist in the last seventy-two hours.”
* * *
Awareness came slowly. Sleep still wrapped itself around him, and for the longest time, Drake could not figure out what he was supposed to notice. He slightly moved just to find an aching body, and when he pressed his head against the pillow a moment later, he started laughing.
He was free.
His back pained him, his stomachs fiercely growled, and his mind went on overdrive about the dozens of tasks he had ahead, but he couldn’t stop laughing. He hadn’t realized how much he doubted his plan till this moment, when he’d succeeded.
He lay on his back looking at the ceiling, enjoying the feeling of his bed. Late afternoon sunlight filled his room from the large windows, and a thousand scales shifted on his body as he lazily stretched. It had been decades since he’d actually jumped out of the water to essentially do pirouettes in midair, but he still had the touch—and he had no doubt the world had loved it.
Well, Coleman can’t say I didn’t deliver with putting on a goddamn show for the cameras. In reality, Drake had done it so there could be no doubt that a merman was doing this. No human could have pulled it off: The height, the speed, the flexibility, they were all merfolk traits.
He exhaled. He’d rationally known the enormity of what he was doing, but now that he was safe and had the advantage of hindsight, he wasn’t so sure he’d done the right thing. So much could go wrong in the immediate future, and he was drawing a blank on all relevant information. I need to catch up on current events.
Julian’s presence tentatively touched his mind, unsure if Drake was already awake or not. Before Drake could answer, Julian opened the door, bringing a tray laden with heavenly smelling food to his room.
“You must be starving,” Julian said, placing the tray beside the bed, while Drake sat up, wincing as his muscles protested the change in position.
“Well, now that you mention it,” Drake said, as Julian helped him with a few pillows. “What time is it?”
“About 3:00 p.m. You’ve been sleeping for almost twenty-four hours straight.”
“And I could sleep for another twenty-four, if the world wasn’t catching on fire.” Drake reached for the tray, wincing some more. “I need to pay Gwen a visit. The tracker they placed beneath the burn on my back needs to be taken out. Besides, we need to monitor how the UN is handling this, before we can start thinking of starting the talks. Plus, I’m sure the SWIMMERs are not going to be easy to contain now that I’ve gone public. Not to mention the Navy with—”
Julian chuckled, stopping Drake mid-list. “What?” he asked.
“You’ve been awake for five minutes, and you’ve already compiled a list of urgent matters. We felt so blind without you.”
“The Council is completely capable of carrying on without me,” Drake said, frowning. “The fact that we could pull off this plan without even talking to each other is a testament to that.”
Julian shook his head. “I really thought I had lost you,” he said, whispers of grief and fear still coloring his mind. Drake let go a ghost of a smile.
“You should’ve left, Julian. You promised,” Drake said. He’d meant what he’d told his friend the day he’d left: I’m not worth your life and much less your children’s.
“I almost did. I knew the chances of your survival were already slim, and that by leaving I would only make it harder for you to come back. Major White knew it. When he called to tell me they had lost you, I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He was desperate for me to stay. And he said—he said that if we left, then everything you wanted, everything I wanted for my sons, would be gone. And I believed him.” Julian turned to look back, as if he could hear his children.
“In that moment, I saw it so clearly, Drake. If I had taken them, they would have been hunted for the rest of their lives on the surface. Them and all the other merfolk out there.” It was easy to follow Julian’s mind as he imagined a world where merfolk were hunted on every corner, where his sons were already on the hit list of every US operative out there.
“I didn’t have anything to go on but White’s promise. It was the only path that had any glimmer of hope that we could survive. That our lives up here wouldn’t go up in smoke. And that maybe…that maybe you would come back.”
Drake nodded, thoughtful. He didn’t like the gambles they had both been taking with their lives and those around them, but they had been necessary. And, in the end, they had paid off.
“We do have a real problem on our hands, Julian. Admiral Coleman is not going to let us go without putting up a good fight.”
“It’s not only enemies we’ve made these past days,” Julian said, reaching for the TV remote. The news was displaying a large protest in Japan.
“…several of these marches have taken place this weekend to highlight the importance of protecting merfolk. While security experts warn that the intentions of these beings are unknown, several hundred organizations have pledged millions of dollars in ocean conservation efforts. Meanwhile, all US coastal cities have declared…”
“The world was watching,” Drake said with a smile. “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be noticed. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if I was transmitting at all.”
“I don’t think the world will stop watching ever again,” Julian joked.
Drake nodded. “So, tell me, what did I miss?”
43
Insights
“We literally have the world knocking on our door,” Jeff said with his eyebrows raised as he was looking
at something on his computer in the conference room. “Well, our servers, but you know what I mean.”
“And we haven’t even released the MRI results yet,” Kate said. Her boss had been reorganizing a gazillion times how and when they were going to release each and every piece of the merfolk puzzle. The world was already going crazy with what they had shown, so they were saving their best pieces for a later publication.
She’d interviewed three different doctors for the MRI article she was writing, and they all agreed that the scarred tissue was consistent with the test results the UN had released of Ray’s tail injury seven months ago.
So Christopher’s on the mend, she thought as she looked up a few medical terms. When she thought about it, it was so weird that she knew so much about a man she’d never met.
“Ms. Banes? Someone’s here to see you,” their assistant said from the door, and a towering Patrick O’Connor barely waited for her to be out of the way to get into the conference room.
“Patrick!” Kate said, all smiles and good vibes. “I was wondering when you were going to show up!”
“I’ve been waiting for Brooks Inc. to show up, actually,” Patrick said, placing his briefcase on the table and extending a hand to Jeff. “With the Navy taking all the credit for Ray’s recovery, we have a lot of straightening up to do.”
“Yeah, about that. Ken wants to hold the story.”
Patrick looked up, frowning.
“We want to see what the Navy will do as the cracks start to show. And, to tell you the truth, we also want to see if Julian Brooks is willing to publicly correct the authorities on Ray’s story.”
“But the story isn’t Ray’s release. The story is that merfolk are an advanced underwater society that already know about humankind. Julian Brooks told us last week how he made first contact with them twenty years ago, and we’re yet to say a word about it!”