Katie felt incredibly nauseous. Her stomach twisted and roiled in her gut like a furious tempest. Her head was buzzing and her limbs felt numb and weighed down. When she finally braved opening her eyes, she immediately squinted and winced as the bright light sent a flash of pain behind her eyes. Her body ached and she still felt shaky, but she carefully pushed herself up in the shallow water she found herself lying in.

Bringing her free hand to her face, she rubbed at her eyes and blinked blearily before groaning loudly. “Dammit, what did they hit me with?” she muttered to herself. She knew she had been sedated, but it had been so fast. It had overwhelmed her senses all at once. She’d barely even had time to register the pain in her neck before it felt like someone had injected her with liquid nitrogen. It had been agonizing to feel her body flood with frigid cold, but it had only lasted a few torturous seconds before she had collapsed. She shivered. She never wanted to feel like that again.

“It is called A7-P43-AxTin.”

Katie squeaked and lurched backwards in the tiny pool she had been left in. It was not lost on her that it was a plastic wading tub meant for small children. Blue, with cartoonish purple dolphins and green crabs painted over its surface, and it was filled halfway with water. As she looked up in the direction of the voice, she felt her heart stall in her chest and she licked her lips nervously.

She was in what appeared to be a study, with a desk and a filing cabinet, and a large bookcase jammed full of various textbooks. Some were well-worn with cracked spines, while others looked brand new. There was a gurney and some ominous medical equipment pushed up against one wall that made Katie’s stomach flip. Sitting at the desk, looking at her, with his feet up, was Dr. Auldon.

Though her first instinct was the ingrained fear, Katie forced herself to set her jaw and she glared at him. “What?”

Dr. Auldon rolled his eyes and repeated himself. “It’s derived from a highly potent sedative, but I’ve modified it based on extensive research to specifically target the complex nervous system of mermaids. You were all given the trial dose and I will say, it worked better than I anticipated. Feeling any side-effects?”

Katie bared her teeth and hissed at him.

“Now, now, Katherine, there is no need to revert back to such barbaric ways now. You’d finally returned to English, I thought it progress.”

Katie’s snarl faltered and she frowned. “What do you mean?” she inquired tentatively.

“You were talking in your sleep,” he observed. “Though not in any human language, so I cannot fill you in on the details of the various squeaks and clicks to leave your lips.”

Katie shifted her weight and drew her tail close to her body. The water in the pool was stagnant, but a little chilly, and she shivered. “Where are we?” she demanded finally. The effects of the sedative were beginning to drain from her body and she was feeling a little more clear-headed. This did not look like any office or area of Lemuria and she anticipated they were being moved. Her heart thudded in her chest painfully at the thought of being back in America. She was pretty sure she was forever scarred by the place, even if her poor experience had been sequestered to a single state.

Dr. Auldon leaned back in his seat and quirked a brow at her question. “Does it matter?” he inquired in a bored tone that made Katie bristle and growl.

She bared her fangs and snarled at him. “Yes!” she snapped. She flicked fin and sent water flying across the floor. “What do you want? Where is everyone else?”

Auldon sighed and shook his head. “They are not here,” he replied.

Katie flinched and shifted her weight. She did not like the way her gut squeezed when he said that. “Where are they?”

“They’re safe,” Dr. Auldon replied. “Lemuria was robbed. Your guardian angel from last time had a hand in that.”

“Lukshia?” Katie frowned and shook her head. “No…no, she betrayed us; she told me herself. Why would she help the others get away? And…and if you know where they are, why aren’t you helping go after them? I would have thought Lemuria would prioritize that?”

Dr. Auldon shook his head. “I know where they are,” he agreed. “I never said Lemuria did. And frankly, I could not care less about their location. A broken mermaid and her hyper-aggressive parents who are past their prime anyway are rather quite useless to me in the long run. The bonded pair are a loss, but I doubt – short of keeping him sedated, which will only depress her – we were never going to get close enough to study the infant or train them properly. The other one-”

“Riley,” Katie cut in with a growl. “They all have names.”

“Riley,” Auldon consented. “Would have been ideal to keep. Difficult to train, but colourful and exotic. She struck me as having a knack for showing off. But I’m not in the business of training performing mermaids anymore.”

Katie’s frown deepened and her brows knitted together as her face scrunched up. “I do not understand what you mean. Isn’t that your job?”

“You didn’t hear? I was demoted after that little disappearing act you girls pulled. They were going to give the whole operation over to Dr. Patron if this recovery mission went smoothly, but now he’s off the project as well.” Dr. Auldon scoffed and shook his head. “Off the project,” he muttered. “As if there would even be a project if it were not for my research, my experiment. You are the greatest scientific accomplishment Lemuria has ever produced. They have tried a few genetic experiments in the past, but they have always been tube-grown and always perished. You are a surviving – no, flourishing – specimen that brought them fame and recognition in so many circles that they never would have otherwise achieved. You don’t belong to them,” he hissed. “They cannot just assign you a new lead when you’re my creation.”

Katie wanted to growl and protest that she didn’t belong to anyone except herself, but Dr. Auldon was practically seething and she worried what would happen if she antagonized him further. Instead, she pushed herself up higher and met his gaze evenly so he would know she disapproved without actually voicing her thoughts.

It wouldn’t have mattered, because he wasn’t actually looking at her. He took a breath and seemed to compose himself. His breath whistled sharply between his teeth before he began to speak again. “To add insult to injury, they were going to allow him to take over. As if he has any right to my accomplishments. No matter, that’s been taken care of. This mission has been far from smooth. But I wasn’t going to allow some faceless stranger to take over either.”

At first, his words confused her, but then realization began to dawn on her. “You helped,” she whispered. “Luna, and Riley, and the others…they’re free because of you.”

Dr. Auldon finally glanced at her and inclined his head. “I may have leaked the license plates of the transport van and provided an indication as to the where and when the move was going to take place. I played no active part,” he refused.

Katie could only stare at him for a moment. Then she shook herself and snapped her jaw shut. It could still be a ploy to placate her. “But I do not understand why you would do that,” she responded. She was unable to keep the suspicious tone out of her voice. “Where are they really? And if what you say is true, what do you expect from us in return?”

Dr. Auldon shook his head. “I expect nothing from your family, Katherine, except for them to stay well away from Lemuria from this point on; but I imagine they fully intend to do just that.”

Katie swallowed the lump that was rising in her throat. It felt like swallowing a large pebble. “Then what is it that you want from me?”

There was a few stale heartbeats of tense silence that dragged out as Dr. Auldon pursed his lips. He sat up further in his chair and swivelled it to meet her gaze. She forced down her fears and lifted her chin in a silent challenge. She had made herself a promise that she would not back down or cave to him ever again. There was nothing more he could do to her or her family – short of killing them – that he had not already done. They had all made that promise before they put their plan into action.

Finally, Dr. Auldon inclined his head towards her. “I’m impressed with the change in you, Katherine. You’re not cowering anymore and you’re asking better questions too. The answer to this particular one is quite simple, however. I want the same thing I’ve always wanted from you; your compliance.”

Katie bared her fangs and snarled. Her sail flared as she rolled her shoulders and she felt her fingers curl into fists. “Never again,” she snapped. “I refuse to play this game with you any longer. It is time for new rules. I will not do what you demand of me any longer, and if you dare threaten anyone I care about ever again, I promise I will make you regret it.”

Dr. Auldon nodded. “You’ve changed,” he observed.

Katie hissed. “Of course I have changed. You were there, you were responsible if you recall. I have just decided to embrace it and you are going to have to deal with it.” Her heart was hammering in her chest as she issued her threats. She had decided that she was no longer going to allow herself to be controlled, but that didn’t change the fact that Dr. Auldon still had many numerous ways of punishing her rebellion and she had allowed herself to be manipulated so many times over the past year or so that it was hard to shake herself of the fear that had been instilled in her very early on. But she refused to back down.

Dr. Auldon slipped back into a frustrating silence as he tapped his fingers against the desk. Each tat-tat-tat of his nails wound Katie’s nerves into a tighter ball. Just as she was about to snap at him, he spoke again. “You’ve gotten bolder. But that doesn’t change our situation, Katherine. What is your cooperation going to cost?”

Katie had not expected him to attempt to bargain with her, but she merely hissed at him in response. “The only thing I want is to be far away from you, permanently. Another minute in your presence is another too long.”

Dr. Auldon nodded and resumed tapping on the desk. “I’m afraid you’ll have to tolerate my company a little longer,” he replied finally. “I’m not going to threaten you and I’m clearly not going to be able to negotiate with you, either. So how about an appeal to a debt owed?”

A bubbling heat boiled in Katie’s stomach and she pulled her lips back to snarl at him more furiously. “I owe you nothing,” she spat. “After everything that you have done, I-What?” she broke off when he began shaking his head.

“The debt is mine, Katherine,” he sighed.

Katie frowned. Dr. Auldon had not gotten up from his seat and the momentary break in hostility allowed her to notice the slump of his shoulders and the deep frown lines that crisscrossed his face. He suddenly seemed so much older and worn down.

“W-What?” she fumbled.

Finally, Dr. Auldon shoved himself up out of his chair and walked around the desk towards her. She hated how practically being on the floor put her at such a height difference with the man that it caused her heart to squeeze in her chest.

Thankfully, he kept his distance and merely leaned against the font of the desk. “I’ve sacrificed a lot for my work over the years,” Dr. Auldon said. “My marriage, any major friendships, I am estranged from most of my family, and I have little in my life outside of my work. You were just one in a long line of sacrifices I made, and that I would make again. My life has always been dedicated to the sciences, to research, experimentation, and advancements. That is who I am, who I have always wanted to be, and there has been no cost too high in pursuit of that. Lemuria is arguably one of the most prestigious and advanced research tycoons in the world. Working for them has given me the room and resources to explore my capabilities as a scientist without restraint. I have done things people would otherwise only see in a pulp science-fiction novel.

And yet, I am risking all of that now, for you; a girl I barely know, because you have become so valuable that they tried to screw me – which I won’t stand for – and yet, I’m not even contemplating keeping you here. You are the jewel of the genetics field and any researcher with half a passion for sciences would be a damn fool to even consider dumping you in the ocean – tracker free – never to be seen again.”

“I-” Katie’s voice died with a strangled gurgle as she bit her words back when he held up a hand to silence her. She decided to acknowledge the silent demand if for no other reason than she was feeling so baffled that she wanted to hear what else he had to say.

“Make no mistake, Katherine; I do not regret my choices until this point. There are a few things I would change, but I would ultimately still put you through all your misery again if I had to. The thing is – for the foreseeable future – I don’t have to. Short of keeping you quarantined in a hidden lab, never able to release any of my findings, I have very little use left for you. I don’t have a hidden laboratory or the funding to bother, so while there is always more to study, at this point, it would simply be pointlessly cruel, and I don’t believe in pointless practices.”

Katie frowned as she mulled the new information over. She was hesitant to believe it, but she couldn’t prevent the spark of hope from igniting in her chest and fluttering like a fragile butterfly. She just wanted to be free of Lemuria’s clutches and learn to live the life properly that she’d originally had forced on her. She wanted to learn to be a Mer for real. And more desperately, she just wanted to go home to her family. “But I don’t understand,” Katie chose her words carefully as she spoke. “If your intent was just to let me go; why bring me here at all? Why not just leave me with my family?”

As she posed the question, Dr. Auldon straightened up and began to cross the room. He placed a hand flat on her head briefly as he passed and Katie frowned as she ducked away from the gesture. It almost felt like it was meant to be gentle or endearing, but he had spent plenty of time reassuring her that the closest he came to caring for her well-being was as a research project or as a side-show circus attraction.

“I fully intend to, just not quite yet. First, there are some problems to be fixed and a situation to be rectified. A debt to be paid, if you will. I acknowledge that several of the choices made for you have drastically affected your future. Previously, you had a stable environment, so it didn’t matter. Now, it does. So I’m going to solve the problem.”

Katie frowned at the rather cryptic response. Solve the problem? Did he mean her tail? “Do you mean like…reverse this?” she inquired as she flicked her fin. Her heart began to race in her chest at the thought. Early on, she would have given anything to go back to being human. But she’d gotten used to having the tail now and she wasn’t so sure that was what she wanted. She sighed. Tail or legs, she still had a hand in each world and she didn’t know how to choose one or the other. Her future career, all of her former passions and dreams required a human form, and it would mean she could go back to a normal life with her mom and Lewis and not have to worry about what people would do if they saw her. But she was still considered legally dead and she knew that nothing would feel normal anymore, and she’d grown to love some of the new freedoms the tail granted, even if the limitations were rather imposing sometimes.

Thankfully, Dr. Auldon saved her from having to make that choice when he shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. The omega gene is far too dominant to reverse the effects and even if it were possible, your body would not survive the physical trauma a second time.”

“No, I suppose not,” Katie agreed. She shuddered at the thought. The initial transformation had been agonizing. She didn’t want to imagine what it would feel like to have her body cleave in two like the tail would have to. “Then what problem are you intending to fix?”

“There’s more than one,” Dr. Auldon replied. He had been rummaging in a closet and now pulled out a squat camera stand with a video camera already perched on it. “But we’re going to start with a little home movie.”

When he set the stand down, it tilted to one side and Katie stared at it for a moment before covering her mouth to smother a snort.

Dr. Auldon raised a brow at her and she shook her head as laughter began to overtake her. “That’s just the saddest little tripod I’ve ever seen!” She bowed her head and her shoulders shook as she cackled to herself.

“You behaving foolishly,” Dr. Auldon scolded.

There were tears in Katie’s eyes as she glanced up at him and promptly burst into another fit of giggles. “I can’t help it. I have been fighting all this time not to be intimidated by you and now you’re talking about solving problems and taking control, but you plan to do it with a tripod that doesn’t stand up straight and a video camera that looks thirty years old? I just…it’s funny!” Katie knew now was far from the appropriate time for her outburst of amusement and that she shouldn’t antagonize Dr. Auldon when he was relatively calm right now, but she could not help it. After everything that they had all been through the past while, Katie could not help relishing every small opportunity to laugh when they were presented to her.

“I’m glad you can be so amused about it,” Dr. Auldon stated flatly. “Can we begin now?”

Katie took a breath and forced herself to sober. She was still uncertain about whether or not she should be going along with any of this, but she was curious. She leaned forward and dragged the tripod closer to the lip of the kiddy pool so that she could fiddle with the knobs.

After a few minutes of fussing, she set it back where it was. She’d lengthened the legs a little and tilted the camera in the stand to help offset the still-prominent lean. “I think that is the best it is going to get,” she announced. “What exactly are we filming?”

“Whether you like the notion or not, Lemuria still owns you. They own you and your little blue-tailed friend. So if you want to keep your freedom and live unhassled, there needs to be more motivation for Lemuria to drop this project than there currently is for them to pursue it. I want you to tell the camera the behind-the-scenes story. The truth, right from the start.”

“You want to blackmail them?” Katie realized. “Would that even work?”

Dr. Auldon nodded. “There are a lot of trade secrets and backroom deals that go on with an organization as vast as Lemuria. They don’t want any sort of scrutinous lens being directed over them. You and your mermaid friends are valuable cash churners, but you’re small pennies compared to the global network that has been built over the last few decades. They’ll drop you before they risk exposing all of that.”

Katie nodded as she mulled his words. It made sense and she couldn’t see any other use he could have for video documentation of her real identity, so she doubted he was trying to double-cross her with it. It was going to be painful to rip those wounds open again, but if it would ensure her safety and the safety of her family and friends, she was willing to brave the pain one more time. “Alright,” she agreed. “Let’s do it.”

Dr. Auldon nodded. “Leave my name out when you tell it,” he instructed as he bent over the camera.

Katie frowned. He had played such a huge component in her misery that she wasn’t sure she wanted to spare him. “Give you a get-out-of-jail-free card? Why would I want to do that?”

“For two reasons,” Dr. Auldon’s voice turned sharp as he glowered at her. “The first is that I’m giving up my career for you, I won’t go to jail to help you as well, so you do it my way or you’re on your own dealing with Lemuria. And the second is that they will never believe I would incriminate myself in a blackmail file, so they’d call it a bluff instantly.”

Katie took a deep breath and slumped on the exhale. Like it or not, she probably did need his help. She would rather not go up against Lemuria on her own – not with her family on the line – and despite the bitter sting of her last conversation with Lukshia, something stuck in her mind. She did need to make the choices best for her loved ones, and they did need help. If Dr. Auldon tried to betray them, she still had the last component of the story to tell, though she hoped she wouldn’t need it. She dipped her head at him to indicate she was ready. “Okay. Roll it.”

***

Katie had been reduced to tears halfway through the recount. By the end, she felt as though she’d had her insides vacuumed out and replaced by a hollow sorrow. She sniffled and wiped her eyes on the bridge of her hand. Dr. Auldon plopped a hand on her head and Katie looked up with furrowed brows. The man had a creased frown on his face and while he was too stoic to read, Katie wondered if he actually did feel genuinely guilty.

“You’re obviously distressed and if you need a minute, we can wait,” he began. “But the sooner we address the second problem threatening your future, the faster you can be returned to your family.”

Katie sniffed and shook herself. “I just want to go home.”

Dr. Auldon nodded. “Then let's finish up as quickly as possible. I’ll have to pick you up.”

Katie nodded, but she was barely listening anymore as his shadow fell over her and she let him hoist her out of the water. Unloading everything that had happened had left her with nothing more than an abyssal feeling of incredible loneliness. She missed everyone dearly. She didn’t know where her mom or Lewis were, or if they were okay, but she desperately wanted a hug from them both and to just know that they were safe and didn’t have to be separated ever again. She wanted to hear Luna’s gentle laughter – the carefree kind that only slipped free when the younger girl felt safe – and she wanted to see Riley’s impish grin and endure her playful, comforting nature. They were all the family she chose to love and she needed to be with them.

She didn’t realize just how tightly she’d been clinging to Dr. Auldon until he began to awkwardly pat her on the back. She wanted to pull away, knew she shouldn’t be seeking comfort from the man who’d caused so much of her misery, but she felt weak and alone, and there was no one else to cling to.

“W-what is this second issue anyway?” she inquired shakily as he began to lower her down. Her tail sunk into the soft, foam topper of the medical gurney that had been shoved up against the wall earlier. Katie felt concern rise like bile in her throat as Dr. Auldon took advantage of her previous half-aware state to push her down until her shoulders hit the mattress too, and then he buckled a strap across her waist. At that point, the concern escalated to panic and she tried to sit up, only to be shoved back down with a second restraint tightened over her chest and pinning her arms to her sides.

“Relax,” Dr. Auldon instructed as she opened her mouth to argue with him. “Katherine, you nearly died less than two weeks ago. It all stems back to a problem you’ve had since the start; an inability to produce the necessary hormones your body needs for survival. You’re not absorbing or utilizing the necessary nutrients you should be naturally obtaining from your diet. You didn’t back at the oceanarium, you didn’t with your mother, and you still aren’t now, so it is not a question of environment or diet. The problem is within you as an individual, a flaw in your transformation that I have been looking into since shortly after it was completed.”

Katie shook her head and pulled at her restraints. This felt all too familiar and her throat closed as she struggled for air on the verge of a panic attack. “Let me up,” she begged through gritted teeth.

Dr. Auldon shook his head. “Just listen,” he instructed. “Your mother gave me a very valuable final piece of the puzzle while you were unconscious. She suggested that perhaps you have a malabsorption and you do. Your body is not correctly absorbing the nutritional value from your diet that you require. Looking at it from that angle – as something broken, not something missing – I’ve been able to finally finish that research and create a fix for you. You’re going to need it. It won’t take long to implement and test – twelve hours at the most – and then you can return to your family with no more concerns about your body failing on you without warning or explanation.”

Katie tossed her head from side to side while fresh tears streaked down her cheeks as she watched Dr. Auldon begin to fiddle with some tubing. “Please don’t do this,” she pleaded. “I can’t do it anymore, it’s too much. No more tests, no more untried experiments, no more needles; I can’t stand it anymore. It hurts. It’s frightening. I just want to go home, please.”

“If I don’t fix it, you are going to die prematurely and put your family through the same stress that you just did,” Dr. Auldon replied as he pressed an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. Katie squirmed and tried to turn her head away, but he kept it pressed firmly to her face.

On instinct, she held her breath.

Dr. Auldon sighed. “Katherine, you cannot hold your breath forever and you are only delaying the inevitable. I am sorry that this is distressing you further, but you do not have a choice in this matter. I have worked too hard over the last several years on this project to allow you to die off incompleted and imperfect simply because you are afraid of one more injection. You are not a foolish girl, if you want to live a full, free life, this is the price you have to pay,” he instructed sternly.

Katie clenched her jaw and struggled not to cough and sputter as her lungs began to burn. Finally, she could not fight the need any longer and her chest heaved with a desperate inhale. Just as quickly as the pressure lifted from her lungs, a haze descended over her mind and she began to feel heavy. “Please,” she whispered, but her mind grew too foggy to form any more words.

Dr. Auldon patted her arm as her body took another breath and another, and she grew heavier. Sleep beckoned her and she knew there were only seconds before it claimed her. Her racing heart was only helping to spread the sedatives through her body and she could not focus to calm herself. “There you go. Just relax, Katherine. Things are different this time. It will not hurt. You’ll sleep and when you wake up, you’ll feel better and you’ll be with the people that you love.”