Sophie frowned as she heard the squeaky door handle turn. Luna was sipping happily on a smoothie while she and Katie hovered over the puzzle.

She turned in time to see the door swing open and what she saw immediately set her on high alert. Riley, her tail completely exposed, sat swaying in her wheelchair. There was a massive bruise across the side of her face, blackening her eye, and blood dribbled down the corner of her lip. That wasn’t the biggest concern. Instead, what caught Sophie’s eye was the blood oozing from beneath her gliders, tightly folded over her body. It flowed down her sandy scales, coloring them a deep ruby.

“Sophie…I am sorry. I need…a little help…please,” Riley’s voice was faint, pained, and a little slurred. Sophie saw her falter and had to lurch around the table to catch her as she fell out of the chair. Riley coughed, her eyes rolling back. Sophie got a good look at the devastating stab wound in her abdomen. Right through the previous scar. Sophie sucked in a breath. She snatched the phone off the table and began dialing.

Two rings and then an answer. “Hey Soph, what’s up?”

“Prep for surgery,” she responded, feeling her heart thumping frantically in her chest. “I’m heading down to you. It’s Riley.” She hung up and began scooping the injured girl up into her arms. It was then that she finally noticed the other Mer. A boy. He looked a few years older. “Who are you?” she inquired.

The Mer stared her down a moment. “Torren,” he replied finally. He offered up no further statements and Sophie decided that stories could be exchanged later.

“Are you injured?”

Torren shook his head. “Nothing serious. Worry about her.”

Sophie spun the wheelchair around and nodded to it. “Come with us. Use that if you can,” she instructed, not willing to leave the other girls alone with this Mer she knew nothing about.

Thankfully, he didn’t argue, and after a moment, he was wheeling it back down the hallway towards the elevator. Sophie hurried after him. “Hang in there Riley,” she whispered as she rushed the injured Mer down to Lewis.

Lewis was in his office when Sophie made her way down. She brushed past him in order to lay Riley out on the cot he’d set up. Her shirt was soaked through with blood. “What happened?” Lewis demanded.

Sophie shook her head as she stepped away. “I don’t know. It looks like she was stabbed.”

Riley moaned softly, her gaze fluttering. Lewis moved beside her and gently peeled away her gliders. “Soph, can you put pressure on this?” The request was strained and spurred Sophie into action. Soaking a cloth in lukewarm water, she folded the fabric in half and pressed it to Riley’s torso, over the flaps of punctured flesh. She kept firm pressure on the gaping wound, her teeth grit with worry. There was a lot of blood. Too much. The thick towel was already beginning to soak through.

A low moan ghosted past Riley’s lips and she stirred slightly, the pain clearly rousing her. Ice blue eyes slit open slowly and fixated on Sophie, but the woman suspected Riley wasn’t totally conscious, because there was no recognition in the Mer’s gaze. After a moment, Riley’s eyes rolled back, and her eyelids slid shut as she fell limp again.

Lewis had administered an I.V. into her hand, and now practically shoved Sophie out of the way in order to begin working on his patient. To avoid feeling useless, Sophie turned towards the unknown Mer still sitting in Riley’s discarded wheelchair.

“Are you injured?” she asked again as she crouched down in front of him. The boy sported a dusty, brownish red thatch of hair. The long strands fell in his eyes. Most of it was slicked with water, plastered to his neck, but a few drying strands stuck out in wayward directions. His skin was tanned and speckled with dark brown tones. The scales that coated his tail were a deep red, like an inky pool of blood. They didn’t end at his waistline either, but instead stretched up his sides, near to his ribs before finally giving way to skin. His shoulders were bare, but scales coated his arms from the elbow down, like long, fingerless gloves. He looked a few years Riley’s elder, but not by much.

He shrugged at her question. “You worry more about her. She in poor state.” He spoke slowly, picking each word a few seconds apart and Sophie began to wonder if perhaps he was new to the language.

Sophie nodded. “I know. And Lewis is going to do everything he can. But you and I aren’t much help right now. I can, however, see to less serious injuries and there’s no sense letting things become critical. That just creates more work for Lewis.”

There was a moment’s pause, then the boy sighed and lifted one arm. There was a series of small punctures down the flesh part of his arm and along one side where the scales didn’t cover. “Should not have grabbed from behind,” he muttered vaguely.

Sophie frowned but didn’t respond right away. Instead, she leaned closer for a better look. “Most of these are shallow. They’ll need to be cleaned, and one or two might need a few stitches, but you should be alright. What did this?”

It only took a moment to find some disinfectant in Lewis’s cupboard. Soaking the corner of a cloth with it, Sophie knelt back down and began to dab over one of the puncture wounds. The Mer sucked in a sharp breath, his lip curling, but did not move or protest. “A quib is responsible. Small group of Mer. Usually younger, strike out on own, wishing to prove their competence. It is meant a right of passage in some pods. Mostly it has become excuse to bully and maim any travelling alone.”

“Another Mer did all of this?” Sophie muttered.

“Three of them,” Torren corrected. “I caught the end bit of the tussle. She handled them well enough on her own, but the one got better of her in the end.”

Sophie glanced up at the operating table. Lewis was blocking most of her view, but one of Riley’s arms dangled over the edge, fingers hanging limply, coated in drying blood. She sighed. Her heart was taunt with worry, but distracting Lewis would be a bad move. She jerked her head towards the wheelchair. “Lewis is going to need space to work. I’ll take you back upstairs and finish up with these punctures.”

Katie and Luna were perched on the sofa when Sophie got back to the apartment. Both watched the door with widened eyes. In the chaos, she’d almost forgotten how startling a scene it must have been. There was a sodden, red tinged towel on the floor accompanied by some smears lingering on the tile. An attempt to clean some of the blood that spilled over the floor when Riley had first entered.

Wordlessly, Sophie pushed the wheelchair into the living room and helped Torren onto the other couch. “Lay out on your back. Let me have another look,” she instructed.

The springs on the couch creaked slightly as he complied. “What a strange texture,” he murmured as he pinched at the couch cushions. Sophie took a seat on the edge and continued cleaning out the small wounds. The rubbing alcohol had to sting, but the Mer barely made a sound about it.

“You are Mer,” Luna breathed. She’d leaned so far forward on the other couch that Sophie was a little amazed she hadn’t toppled over.

Torren glanced over at the two then, one eyebrow raising. “Indeed. As are you. I did not know so many were drawn to this human den.” He seemed to be speaking more comfortably now. His attention shifted to Katie and a frown twitched on his lips. “She is Mer, but what are you? You look the part, but you are not one of us.”

The tone was almost icy and Sophie paused in her actions. Katie pulled back a little. “What do you mean?”

Torren was silent for a moment. He pursed his lips and shrugged. “There is something off about you. I cannot quite place what it is.” He tensed slightly as Sophie passed her cloth over one of his deeper puncture wounds.

“Sorry,” she said as she began to dab a little more gently. “Torren, Katie’s story is a bit of a long one. You might be sensing something off about her because she wasn’t exactly raised a Mer.” She set the cloth aside, satisfied that she’d gotten to each nick along his flesh. “I think these are okay without any stitches. But one or two are going to need to be covered. I have a roll of bandages in the bathroom. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She’d been crouched down longer than she thought and her knees creaked with protest as she forced herself upright.

Voices floated down the hall as she made her way to the bathroom. “Another Mer. You live out in the ocean. It has been so long. What is it like? Where do you sleep and what do you eat? Are you from a pod? What are they like? Do you live close to here?” Sophie smiled softly at the jumble of questions that tumbled from Luna’s lips. The girl was barely giving herself time to breathe between inquiries, much less give Torren a chance to answer.

Returning with the bandages, Sophie found that Torren did look a little overwhelmed, and Luna was leaned even closer to him over the edge of the couch. She placed a hand on the youngest Mer’s shoulder. “Luna, maybe slow down on the questions for now, okay? There’s a lot going on. I’m sure there will be plenty of time later for you to talk to Torren, okay?”

Luna’s smile slipped instantly, her posture slouching, and she slowly sat back again. “Okay,” she agreed.

Her crestfallen tone made Sophie wince. “I know you’re excited to meet one of your people, Luna, but let’s take it one step at a time. Right now, we’ve got some pressing things going on. When there’s been time to breathe, I’m sure Torren will tell us his story.”

Torren nodded and the tips of his fin twitched lazily as he shifted to a bit more comfortable a position. “I am becoming increasingly more interested in yours,” he declared.

“Lift your arm,” Sophie instructed. When he complied, she began to wrap the bandages around the worst of the lesions. “There. That should do it.”

Torren lowered his arm and then dipped his head at her, but said nothing. She chuckled. Mer. So far, the personalities were so diverse and yet so similar at the same time. Now that her immediate list of tasks was finished, worry began to claw at Sophie’s heart. She rose only to sink down into her armchair with a sigh. The waiting game was never pleasant.

“Mom?”

Sophie’s head lurched up from it’s bowed position. Katie had started calling her that when she got back. Before, it had been almost a term of endearment in high emotion settings, but was now used more common place.

Katie’s eyes glisten more brown than green at the moment, concern clouding the irises. “Are you okay? Was that…”

Sophie sucked in a breath. “Yeah. It was.”

Katie blinked slowly. “We are okay up here, if you want to go down.”

A smile worked slightly at the corners of her lips and she shook her head. “I’d only be in the way down there. Best to keep out of Lewis’s hair for now.”

Torren’s eyebrows had dipped down to knot together above his nose. He glanced between the two and shook his head. “Your story grows more interesting still. You were raised here, I imagine, by humans. That might explain what is off about you.”

The statement was directed at Katie, who promptly burst into a fit of giggles so violent that Luna jerked with surprise and stared at Katie with a cocked head. “Buddy, until a few months ago, I was human. How’s that for a plot thickener?” It would be heartwarming to see Katie joke a little about it, if it weren’t for the slight strangle in her voice as she made the statement. No one else seemed to pick up on it, however, so Sophie chose to remain silent about it for now.

“Were human? I do not understand.” Torren frowned.

“It’s a long story. A depressing one. Let’s not get into it now. But that’s probably what it is that seems to be bugging you about me. I’m not a natural born Mer.”

“That would definitely explain a few inconsistencies. I would like to hear more about this history of yours. It seems impossible.”

“Torren?” Luna ventured cautiously. She chewed her lip. “Are you going to stay a while?”

Once again, Torren’s fin began to twitched faintly. He was silent for a moment, as if mulling the concept over. “I will linger a little while. There is much out of the ordinary going on and I would observe some of it. But for how long, I cannot yet say.”

Even the nod of her head oozed disappointment, but Luna didn’t protest. “Do you think…perhaps that…would you be willing to teach me a little while you are here? Katie too if she wishes. I have been away from the ocean for so long. I do not remember my pod, my history, or much of my past. I wish to know who I am, what I am a part of. I want to learn to be Mer again.” Luna’s lip trembled and she bit it, her eyes massive and glistening as she poses her request.

Sophie’s heart went out to the girl. None of this had been easy on either of them, but Luna struggled with so much. The weight of not knowing must have been crushing her slowly. Despite the nightmares, the trauma, the uncertainty, the child still managed to smile and Sophie desperately hoped that perhaps this Mer could help her connect with her past a little.

“It is a sad fate for one so young. I imagine you have quite the tale to tell as well. I do not know if I am the right to teach you. I was born far from here, where customs are very different. But if there is knowledge I can impart that will be of use, I am more than happy to provide it. For now, the hour grows later and I would feel far more comfortable out in the waters for the night.” Torren turned to face Sophie. “I do not know if I can find my way back to where I came in. I would ask assistance back. I will return on the dawn if allowed.”

“Of course,” Sophie agreed. “I can show you back down.”