Cleo awoke with a groan. She hurt all over. What happened? Where was she?
Feeling woozy, and oddly unsteady, Cleo opened her eyes, but found that everything was blurry. She could only make out hazy outlines of the things around her. She attempted to stand, but found she couldn't. Feeling down to where her legs were, Cleo was surprised to find she didn't have any.
Why was she in mermaid form? Was she wet?
After a quick power check with her hand, Cleo found she was, indeed, in water, though it felt weird… almost gritty, like it had something in it.
Where was she?
Then it all came flooding back. Mako. The divers. The camera. The needle.
Cleo sat bolt upright, thrashing her head around wildly. Where were the divers? Where was she? Still at Mako…?
Her vision was still hazy, but Cleo could tell that the place she was in was clearly not Mako Island. No divers were visible. In fact, nothing was. Cleo seemed to be all alone at a blank, empty ocean bottom, without any sand, fish… or anything. Starting to really freak out, Cleo wondered how long she had been asleep. How much time did she have before her dad noticed her absence? Picking herself up, Cleo started swimming in the direction she thought might be the way home. Her vision was still not fully restored, but she could at least swim in a straight line, it seemed.
THUNK!
Without warning, she rammed into to something hard.
What was with her and running into things lately?
Furious with herself for being so clumsy, she changed directions and began to swim another way.
THUNK!
Again, Cleo ran into something. Truly agitated now, she held her hand out and felt the object curiously. Something smooth and cool meet her skin, like glass.
What in the world was something like that doing in the ocean?
She stared at its still-blurry outline for a moment, trying to think of what it might be.
Maybe it was just junk?
Finding no other logical conclusion of what the mysterious object might be, Cleo once again changed directions.
THUNK!
A furious pillar of bubbles escaped Cleo's lips as she reached out her hand to feel the same smooth object again.
That couldn't be possible. She had gone a different direction every time! What was going on?
Deeply troubled and wishing her sight would return faster, Cleo decided to find out why this object seemed to be in front of her wherever she swam. Putting her hand on the object, she let her hand run across it, following it horizontally. It had to end somewhere, right?
Finally, Cleo reached it, but no open water met her fingers like expected. Instead, there was a little crease, and the wall started all over again in a different direction.
She couldn't believe it. No way!
She conducted the same experiment on the other wall, and met the same results. Swimming up, she found she could not surface; she just met another smooth wall above her. Same results occurred with the ground.
She was caged in a rectangle prism, made up of this smooth, glassy material.
Cleo felt her blood turn to ice.
There was no escape.
"Having fun, are we?" a female voice asked suddenly from a little bit to Cleo's left. Cleo jumped so hard she hit her head on the glassy cage's ceiling.
She heard the voice giggle softly. "I can see that your vision has not completely restored from the drug. Don't worry; it'll come back soon enough."
Drug? Cleo thought, pondering the women's choice of wording.
"Who are you?" Cleo asked the women fearfully, before grasping her neck in surprise. She didn't know she could talk underwater!
Then again, she had never tried.
"Where am I?" she asked after a small moment of silence, trying out this new skill. Her voice came out in bubbles and sounded higher than usual. "Where have you brought me?"
"Ah, full of questions," the mysterious women said, and Cleo could tell by her voice that she was smiling. "Let's not answer them all yet. First things first. Let's get those eyes cleared up. Carl!"
The last shout wasn't directed to Cleo, and another wave of fear for the unknown ran through her. Where in the world was she?
After a few moments, Cleo heard some rapid breathing, and then another voice spoke. "You… you called, Doctor?" It was a male voice this time. He seemed to have run some lengths to reach the women, and was out of breath.
"Yes," the women said. "Do you mind grabbing that fansy-dancy camera of yours and snapping a photo of the mermaid?"
There was a pause, then, "I already got a picture of her."
"I know," the women said, clearly impatient, "but I need you to take another one. For different purposes. The flash will clear her eyesight from the knock-out drug."
There was a pause, and then the male—Carl, Cleo remembered—murmured an, "Okay."
As he departed, Cleo could hear his shoes echo on solid ground, confirming her suspicion that he wasn't underwater… but she was. Where was she? Who were these people and what were they going to do with her? Frightened and confused, Cleo couldn't do anything but nervously twist and turn while she waited for what would happen next.
What was going to happen next? She had no idea.
And that scared her.
It turned out, what happened next was that Carl returned with his camera.
"Got it," he said to the women, who hadn't said a word while she had waited for Carl to return.
"Good," she said curtly and Cleo suddenly felt a pair of eyes on her shoulder. She shivered. She had a feeling that those eyes belonged to the women, and she wasn't sure if she liked it.
"Whenever you're ready," the women said flatly, and then a brilliant flash of light blinded Cleo for a second time.
Rubbing the stars out of her eyes fiercely, Cleo realized how stupid she had been. She had let him take a photo of her!
Slowly, her eyesight started to return to normal and everything came into focus. Cleo looked around her, finally able to completely see where she was being held, and by whom.
She nearly passed out.
She was in a huge, rectangular glass prism, filled to the brim with a deep blue, fake-looking water. On top, a large water-bottle type thing was hooked to the ceiling, releasing some kind of chemical into the water.
At that moment, Cleo knew exactly what was happening, exactly why the water had felt weird when she first woke up, and exactly what she was in.
She was in a tank.
The tank was in a huge room, filled with multiple tables crowded with all sorts of scientific equipment. It all looked very neat and sciencey, like something Lewis would like, Cleo figured.
The room was empty except for two people, a man and woman, standing before her through the glass. The man was wearing a wet suit, holding a water-proof camera in one hand and a pair of diving goggles in the other.
So this was Carl. Cleo squinted at him, recognizing his wet suit. He was the first diver she'd seen. The one with the camera. He looked fairly young, and a little out of place. Like an apprentice.
The women next to him was much taller and older-looking with long, blond hair. She wore a white doctor's lab coat over a bright pink diving suit.
The woman was the diver who had ejected the needle into her arm.
A knock-out drug of some sort, Cleo figured.
The women smiled upon seeing Cleo's fearful expression. "Hello, little mermaid," she said softly, a smile playing one her lips. Not a nice one.
Cleo simply gaped, not being able to make out words.
The pink diver's smile only widened. "Oh, where are my manners?" she laughed sarcastically, pretending to give Cleo a 'forgive me' type of look. "I haven't introduced myself. I am Doctor Bravemen, and this is my assistant, Carl Braker. And who might you be?"
Cleo, though still in shock, wisely ignored the question. If they didn't know who she was yet, she wanted to keep it that way.
Instead, Cleo pressed a question of her own. "Where am I?" she hissed. "Why did you drug me and where have you taken me?"
"Ah," the doctor said, still smiling pleasantly. "Right to the point. So you do remember the little shot I gave you over at Mako. How sweet."
Cleo merely glared stonily at her. She liked to think of herself as a pretty nice person. Not quick to judge, like Rikki, and slow to anger. But this woman was no normal human. How dare she just stand there and smile at her without telling her where she was? If she wasn't behind glass, Cleo would have punched her, here and now.
"Where am I?" Cleo asked again, her voice low and menacing. Normally, this would make Lewis take a step back in fright.
But Lewis wasn't here right now. She needed to fight her own battles.
"Tsk, tsk," Doctor Bravemen sighed. "Now that's just impolite. I believe I'm the host here, and I will tell you what you want to know only if I decide to. Are we clear?"
Cleo merely glared at her, eyes hard.
Doctor Bravemen rolled her eyes but turned, striding briskly over to a nearby table and picking up a clipboard.
"Now, to answer your question, you are in Division B on floor one of the Gold Coast Marine Research Faculty, contained in tank number 486," she read. Smiling, she looked up from her clipboard for a moment to savor Cleo's look of horror. "There," she said, smirking. "Is that the information you wanted?"
It took a moment for Cleo to find the words to answer. "R-reasearch faculty?" she sputtered.
Doctor Bravemen smiled. "Yes, my dear mermaid. The Gold Coast Marine Research Faculty. We're made of a large group of scientists and divers who find and collect mutant fish and sea creatures to bring back here to be tested and observed to find out more about them. Usually, we try to discover how they've changed into their mutant form, and why. Normally, we only manage to find cross breads between two fish, or a birth-defected double-tailed sea horse - but you, my friend, are quite the remarkable find." She smiled her evil smile again.
It took a moment for this to sink in, but when it did, Cleo felt herself sink a bit in the water.
"No…" she moaned. Their worst fear had just come true: she had been caught. She was stuck in some freak testing place, waiting to be poked and prodded by scientists for the rest of her life.
She could see the headline in the newspaper already. CLEO SERTORI—MERMAID! She shuddered to think how that would turn out. How would her Dad respond? He'd probably be shocked that Cleo hadn't told him. And her sister? She had suspected that Cleo was a mermaid before, but Cleo was able to throw her off the trail, and convince her that she wasn't one. What would she do now? Gloat probably. She wouldn't care if Cleo was in a tank for the rest of her life. Her sister would just praise her own detective skills, and rub it in Cleo's face through the glass.
Her horrible thoughts only kept progressing from there. What would Emma do? And Rikki? What if they were caught too? Now that they knew that there was one mermaid that had swum to Mako Island, the scientists would definitely be on the lookout for more. What about her mother, and Charlotte, and Lewis, and Elliott…?
Suddenly, Cleo heard a door open and shut. Pivoting her body around, she realized that Doctor Bravemen and Carl were no longer by her tank, but at a table on the far wall, writing on something Cleo couldn't see. Next to it was a door Cleo hadn't noticed when she had surveyed the room before. Now, a boy with sandy-blond hair and wearing green army shorts had entered and walked over to Doctor Bravemen.
"Doctor Bravemen," he said, addressing the evil pink diver-scientist. "I finished the assignment you gave me. The DNA matches the one of a catfish. Is that right?"
Before Doctor Bravemen could respond, Cleo yelled a single, five-letter name.
"LEWIS?"