Sophie ran a hand through her disheveled hair, swiping some of the grimy locks back off her face. She had been far too distracted by the events of the past few days to have bothered with proper hygiene and she was in rather desperate need of a shower. She’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail two days ago, but between her frantic pacing and sleeping upright in a chair, most of her hair now fell around her face in sweaty clumps and the elastic was barely hanging from the back of her skull.

She couldn’t be bothered to fix it. She glanced at the phone still clutched in her hand. Dr. Auldon had told her he could be to her in about an hour. She had made the call almost fifty-five minutes ago, and her nerves were shot as she watched the seconds tick by. She pushed herself out of her chair and moved by Katie’s side once more. Her daughter’s breathing remained labored, mechanical. The steady tone of the life support equipment filled Sophie’s ears and drowned everything else out. She had brushed Katie’s hair earlier – although it was now getting to be quite late – and now she tucked one of the loose strands back. She was worried about her daughter developing bed sores like this, but was too afraid to attempt moving her on her own.

She felt tears begin to burn in her eyes again as her gaze wandered over Katie’s pale, prone form. Her skin was gaunt, sunken in over her bones and had taken on an ashen shade. She was losing far too much weight to be healthy and Sophie wanted desperately to get her on a high calorie diet to help rectify it, but she was no longer certain Katie would wake, or that the scientist who hurt her would not simply whisk her off regardless. She could not imagine him caring enough to nurse Katie properly, just so long as she lived; quality of life would likely not matter to him beyond that.

Sophie bit her lip and gulped as a heavy lump rose in her throat. The sound of the machines was overwhelming, and the sight of Katie’s crippled body was too much. She turned quickly and fled the room. She pulled the door shut behind her and then leaned against it. She slid down the wood until she was hugging her knees. Burying her face in the denim of her jeans, Sophie broke down into heavy sobs once more. Her heart was squeezed painfully in her chest, and her throat had tightened until air whistled past her lips with every breath. She felt like she was being closed in on from all sides, and had to wrestle to keep her panic on a tight leash.

“Miss Brooks? Miss Brooks, are you alright?” Sophie barely registered the voice or flurry of hurried footsteps until there was someone crouched down in front of her. There was a warm hand resting on her elbow, and Sophie stared ahead into the face of one of the guards at the front gate. Austin, she recalled. His coffee skin sparkled with perspiration – it was a hot day, she reckoned though she had not been outside – and his face was wrinkled with concern.

Slowly, she nodded and he rose back to his feet and offered her a hand.

After a moment, she reached out a shaky hand and took his. He was a rather burly man, so it was no surprise when he easily tugged her to her feet. She stumbled and then he was grabbing her other arm to help hold her up until she regained her balance.

“I’m alright,” she assured him in a watery tone as he continued to hover in front of her. “It’s been a hard day, but I’m okay.”

“Do you need a few minutes? I can maybe distract your guest for a bit until you feel more composed?” he offered.

For a split second, Sophie was confused before what he was saying dawned on her. She had informed the front gate that Dr. Auldon would be coming, but had requested that someone escort him down to her when he did arrive. She hadn’t wanted to leave Katie long enough to go wait for him to get here. She peered around Austin to get her first look at the monster who hurt her baby. He stood taller than her, but not by too significant an amount, with a balding head and tufts of black and gray hair fanning over his ears and continuing further back around his head. He had a pair of glasses that were slumping a bit on his nose, and he regarded her with a calm, almost bored expression.

That surprised her. After their earlier conversation on the phone, she would have expected a more triumphant or mocking look at her currently distraught state. He was tapping one foot impatiently against the tiles of the floor though, and that made her anger bubble a bit more. He was hiding his entitlement, but he was doing a rather poor job of it.

She sighed and clenched a fist at her side before releasing a breath and forcing herself to relax. He was dressed in a business suit, and was carrying a single briefcase, and this was her territory more than his. She still had a few advantages, and getting hostile or defensive first would not aid her situation.

She gently waved away Austin’s offer. “I will be fine,” she assured him as she quickly wiped her eyes. “Thank you for showing him down, but I’ll take it from here.”

Austin dipped his head and stepped back. “If you need anything further, just give the front a call,” he offered.

She nodded her thanks and watched him retreat back down the hall before she stepped up to the scientist still lurking about. She gritted her teeth and swallowed down the burning hatred scalding her throat long enough to offer him her hand. “Dr. Auldon,” she greeted. She tried to keep her tone civil, but failed to remove the edge from her voice entirely. “Welcome.”

“It’s good to meet you in person, Miss Brooks,” he agreed as he accepted the hand and squeezed it a bit too firmly for a friendly handshake. “I must say it seems I’ve caught you at a particularly low moment.”

“Forgive me if I do not live up to any expectations,” she replied tersely. “This has been a trying time.”

“I imagine so,” he agreed with a solemn nod, but there was a grin tugging at his lips that caused Sophie’s eyes to narrow. She couldn’t quite understand what he could possibly find so amusing. “But you have not struck me yet, so I suppose as far as expectations go, you have surpassed them.”

“Believe me, I want to,” she hissed back, her decorum faltering. “But that won’t exactly help my daughter.”

“No, it won’t.” Dr. Auldon’s tone remained casual as he plucked his glasses off his nose and rubbed the lenses with the corner of his gray tie. After a moment, he replaced them on his face and pushed them up on the bridge of his nose before he refocused on her. “Speaking of, I was under the impression we were on a pressing timeline, Miss Brooks?”

Sophie sighed and nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed as she waved her hand for him to follow. Her feet felt heavy as she led him back to the door she had previously collapsed in front of. She hesitated for a moment. It was far too late to change her mind now, but the second she opened this door, he had access to Katie once more, and that gave her pause.

Finally, she grasped the handle and pushed the door open to lead him inside. It was not a very large room, and the medical equipment tending to Katie took up over half the space along with the bed, but there was still more than enough floorspace for them both.

Sophie averted her gaze away from Katie, unable to stomach looking at the frail state her daughter was in at the moment. Instead, she regarded Dr. Auldon for his expression. The twitch of the grin that had been on his face earlier had now slipped and was replaced with a pursed frown. His eyebrows knitted together as he approached Katie with his hands behind his back. Her fin was flopped uselessly on the end of the mattress, the color having faded to a purple-gray over the vibrant shade it used to be, and the membrane had begun to flake and peel. The scales on her tail were now more fist sized patches dotted across than a proper plating, and the cracked skin beneath was mottled and yellowed. The rest of her skin was ashen and sunken in over her bones, and Sophie had dressed her in a loose tank top so that the numerous wires dipping beneath the collar wouldn’t be hindered, but she no longer had enough scales to preserve her modesty, and Sophie refused to have this doctor in to examine her child in that condition.

He was standing at her side, and Sophie tensed – but made no move to stop him – when he reached out and brushed his fingers over one of the small patches of scales. Another of the dulled purple plates came loose under his touch and he picked it up. After applying a bit of pressure, it snapped in his fingers.

“I don’t understand this level of deterioration,” he muttered. “We kept a close eye on Katherine’s vitals during her transformation and for months afterwards. It was highly successful, and her body thrived in the water better than we could have anticipated. For her to be reduced to this state, this quickly…it doesn’t make any sense.”

“We’ve done everything we can think of,” Sophie admitted. Her fingers clenched into fists once more and she struggled behind the man’s back, but a broken strangle laced her words instead of the bubbling anger. “The bloodwork has always been clean. Her levels keep dropping, despite giving her supplements, but there’s no sign of a virus or infection. We were thinking it could be a parasite, perhaps, but we can’t find it and antibiotics haven’t done a thing. She just kept getting worse and worse.”

“What makes you suspect a parasite?” Dr. Auldon inquired as he turned back to face her once again.

Sophie shrugged. “I honestly don’t know enough about medicine to tell you. But if I had to gander a guess, I would imagine that pulling her from a sterile, controlled lab environment to the wilds of the ocean opened her up to the risks of infections, diseases, and parasites. Since we can’t find an infection or proper signs of a disease, a parasite was our next logical assumption because it’s clearly taking everything from her body. Whatever it is, it’s aggressive.”

“It’s possible,” Dr. Auldon agreed. “I’d have to run some tests. I do hope you see now, the foolishness of your brash actions Miss Brooks. Katherine was safest back in her enclosure, where her water was filtered, and her diet controlled. She should not have been exposed with her untried immune system.”

Sophie growled softly and shook her head. “I would argue she’s safest with people who love her, rather than those desiring to exploit her and perfectly willing to harm her in the process. I may not be a doctor, but I know malnourishment when I see it, and neither of them were healthy when they got here.”

“And yet, here we are,” Dr. Auldon countered. He turned to face her, and his hard gaze was stern and neutral, making her feel rather like a scolded child. It was not a feeling she cared for, and Sophie lifted her chin as she stared back. “Do not misunderstand, Miss Brooks, it sounds like you did your best to take care of our mermaids – that was a lovely home by the way – but they really are better off in the care of those who know enough about them to look after them. They are delicate, complicated animals. I understand you did not have anything to do with stealing our assets, but the right thing to do would have been to call us right away to come collect them.”

“Don’t you dare patronize me,” she hissed. “You don’t get to lecture me about the right thing to do, when you’re the reason my daughter didn’t come home one day. You kidnapped an innocent teenager and made her the victim lab rat for your pet genetics project. Your illegal experiment, might I add. And you physically and psychologically tortured two children all for the sake of what, a tourist attraction? I am not in the wrong for trying to protect them from you.”

Dr. Auldon blinked slowly and seemed completely unfazed at her words, despite Sophie’s clenched fists and powerful shaking. It was taking every scrap of her self control not to lunge at the cocky man. “If you’re quite done with your little fit now,” he replied. “We can continue this little ‘right and wrong’ contest later. There are more pressing things right now. Has the littler one been showing any signs or symptoms? Did you isolate them?”

Sophie wanted to hit him. She really wanted to hit him, but instead she forced herself to take a breath and refocus on what really mattered at the moment. “No,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Luna was fine the last I saw her. We tried to keep them distanced at first, but they’ve become rather dependent on one another and it wasn’t possible to keep them completely separated. But she’s shown no signs of becoming ill.”

“Then I would probably rule out anything contagious,” Dr. Auldon stated as he turned back to Katie for a moment. He pushed some hair out of her face and carefully turned her head to the side. “You say her gills haven’t been working?”

“We thought maybe the water would help her,” Sophie began. “But her gills opened and oozed a yellow-green pus, and she started coughing up water. She nearly drowned. We stopped trying after that.”

“It’s so bizarre,” he muttered. “In all the years we had Suzie, she never showed any signs of something so drastic. The occasional stomach bug or light cough, but nothing extreme. And that she’s not showing symptoms...she would have been the one of the two I would have suspected would have grown sick being re-exposed to the ocean. Her immune system would not have been properly developed because she was so young when she was brought to our institute. She’s fine?”

“Thriving physically,” Sophie replied. “She’s been gaining the weight she needs and started to get more energetic. It’s been good for her,” she added with an edge. The man was not getting Luna back, no matter what Sophie had to do to protect the younger Mer. The last thing the traumatized child needed was more time in unethical captivity.

If he noticed her veiled warning, Dr. Auldon didn’t acknowledge it. “Do you have a lab here? I’ll need to run some bloodwork for myself if I’m going to get an idea of what’s going wrong.”

Sophie sighed and brought a hand to her head as she rubbed her temples. The stress of the day was beginning to give her an impressive headache. Though she supposed it could have just as easily been the lack of sleep. “Yes,” she replied. “Two doors down. It’s nothing as high tech as I’m sure you’re used to, however. We don’t exactly have need of a bunch of high-grade medical equipment and machinery.”

“Never mind that, I simply need to be able to accurately analyze a blood sample,” he explained. Sophie watched him set his briefcase on the chair she’d been essentially using as a bed the past few days. He clicked the latches open and then withdrew a capped, empty syringe. Sophie watched him carefully as he uncapped it and swabbed the point with a sterilizing wipe. He drew a vial of blood from Katie’s IV, but it seemed to take a little longer than it should have to fill. Sophie did not know how to accurately read the EKG machine, but she knew Katie’s heartbeat was growing weaker with every hour. Her daughter probably wasn’t going to last much longer and Sophie was beginning to think it would be a miracle if she even did live long enough for Dr. Auldon to implement a cure.

Once she was certain that the vial of blood was the only thing he wanted from Katie, she allowed herself to look away and grabbed a folder off the bed. It was sticking out a bit from its place half-tucked beneath the pillow. She handed it to him. “This might help as well. It’s the results from all the tests run so far.”

Dr. Auldon grunted his thanks and flipped it open to silently peruse the pages. After a few moments, he closed the folder and shook his head. “I wish you had called me sooner. With this level of deterioration, I don’t know if she can fully recover at this point,” he stated. He flipped the folder open once more as if to double check something. “Credit to your veterinarian, however. These tests are very thorough. However, there’s one thing missing from here that I would like to check on with this sample. Show me this lab of yours.”

Though she was reluctant to leave Katie again for any length of time, Sophie knew the man needed to be able to run his tests. She had asked him to come here, and however much she loathed him and feared the situation would spiral out of her control; it would have been for no reason if she did not allow him the means to do his job, and she did still desperately want him to heal her daughter.

With a reluctant sigh, she led him back down the hall and indicated the door. It required an access pass, so she swiped her own card for him, but lingered in the doorway rather than following him inside. There was nothing she could do in there, and she would rather stay where she felt at least slightly useful. “I’m going to remain sitting with her. I trust you can find your way back?” she inquired with a quirk of her brow. She knew he could, Katie’s room was still in sight, but it made her feel a little better to get to be just as condescending right back. That feeling didn’t last long, however, as her feet itched to rush back to her daughter.

“I’ll manage somehow,” the man responded dryly.

Sophie nodded. “Just don’t wander,” she ordered. She didn’t give him a chance to respond before she turned and practically fled back to her daughter’s side. Katie hadn’t changed, was still deathly pale and small looking beneath all the life support, but at least the beeping of the machines was still steady. For better or for worse, Katie was still hanging in there. Sophie chewed her lip as she sunk down into her chair once more. “Well, we’re in the thick of it now, Kid,” she sighed. “I’m starting to think perhaps I made the wrong choice, but when you’re a parent, your mind looks for every possible option, every possible action to protect your child. You’re adopted, Katie, but you’re still my baby and I love you dearly. Whatever happens, forgive me for not letting go, okay? Maybe one day you’ll understand what this feeling is like, although I hope you’re never in a position as bad as this ever again.”

She reached out a hand to cup Katie’s cheek and began to gently stroke over the skin with her thumb. There was no reaction from her daughter, and Sophie did not anticipate one, but it felt better to have contact.

Sophie found her mind wandering aimlessly, and she stayed that way until the door swung back open and signalled the scientist’s return. Sophie jerked from her thoughts and lurched to her feet as he entered. There was a puzzled look on his face as he gripped the readings of his blood tests, and his frown only began to deepen. “It makes no sense,” he muttered.

“You can’t find anything either?” Sophie pressed.

Dr. Auldon glanced up at her as though he’d forgotten she was even there. “No, I know what is causing her body to fail, what I don’t understand is why. I suppose it’s something we’ll have to worry about later. Tell me, where is the little one?”

Sophie shook her head. “Not here,” she replied. “You’ll never see her. I’m not handing that poor child back to you so that you can continue to abuse her again.”

Dr. Auldon shrugged and set the papers aside. “Well then, Miss Brooks, it’s been a pleasure, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. Without Suzie, what’s left of your daughter is going to die. I can save her, but not without the genetic soup housed in Suzie. The very same that we used to create her, she needs again now, and I can’t make it without the spinal fluid of the blue mermaid.”

Sophie’s heart plummeted and she swallowed a thick lump in her throat. That couldn’t be the case. She couldn’t have taken that big a risk for nothing. “I don’t understand…” she murmured. Tears welled in her eyes and she hated that she was showing such a weakness in front of this man. “What exactly is wrong with her?”

Dr. Audlon sighed with exasperation as though she were an idiot child pestering him with a million pointless questions. “How do I put this in… simpler terms-”

“I’m not stupid,” Sophie hissed. “Just tell me.”

The scientist raised a hand to rub the corners of his eyes, pushing his glasses up as he did and then letting them flop back into place on his nose. “Within Suzie, and we assume within most Mer, there is a special genome we call the Omega gene; it’s what we used to transform Katherine.”

“She’s mentioned,” Sophie agreed. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yes, well, the thing that needs to be understood is that it is more than simply a piece of their blueprint. While there is a genetic tag, a chromosome if you will, that we are referring to, there is also a hormone and a count that we classify under the same name for simplicity because they are inherently all the same at a composition level, just with different jobs. The chromosome is part of the genetic map, the hormone helps them function, and the body consumes it additionally much like we would protein or sugar. When the Mer body is stable, there is very little consumption that goes on, and they produce what they need naturally through their diet. Except your daughter, who does not. We believed we gave Katherine enough excess based on Suzie’s consumption rates to last her life, but it appears we miscalculated. For whatever reason, she’s become unstable and her body is quite literally eating itself in search of a sustenance she cannot produce. Imagine it like burning through fat stores when unable to eat, except there was very little fat stores to begin with, and now her body is consuming muscle, bone, and scale alike in search of what it needs.”

“So she’s starving,” Sophie attempted to sum up.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Dr. Auldon agreed. “And the only meal that will sustain her, comes from the spinal fluid in Suzie. You understand now why I need my younger specimen in order to save this one’s life?”

Sophie did understand, and she swallowed as a lump rose in her throat; it didn’t help. She bit her lip and felt tears begin to water in her eyes once more. Her fingers curled in and out of fists and she closed her eyes as she took a deep breath and grit her teeth. She had made herself a few promises before she allowed herself to go through with this desperate plan. When she reopened her eyes, she met Auldon’s gaze firmly and surprised herself with the steady tone of her voice despite how shaky she felt. “I appreciate you coming all this way and going through the trouble,” she began. She paused long enough to walk around the cot Katie was laid out on. “But you might as well go now. Sorry, but I will not be bringing Luna here. I made a promise to my daughter that no matter the sacrifice, that little girl would never see the inside of your institution again. I won’t go back on that now.”

Taking another breath as she steeled herself, Sophie felt more tears begin to flow as she bent down and reached towards the plug of the life support cable. It was time to let go now like Katie had begged her to do, several days ago now. It broke Sophie’s heart, and she knew her next action would haunt her for the rest of her life, but she forced her fingers to wrap around the plug.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Auldon demanded, though his tone was calm and not at all concerned like Sophie had expected it to be.

“What I should have done instead of calling you,” Sophie admitted. She bit her lip. Despite herself, she was hesitating. She took another breath and decided to give herself to the count of three. This was hardly like pulling off a Band-Aid, but she needed to treat it as such or she would never go through with it.

One. She heard Dr. Auldon’s footsteps clacking on the tiled floor as he began making his way around to her. She ignored his approach. She could pull the plug faster than he could stop her anyways.

Two. The sound of her own drumming heartbeat began to drown out the rest of the world until it felt like she was trapped in a roaring vortex. Her throat closed and she was certain she was going to be sick by the end of it all.

Three.