A/N: I know it's been forever and I apologize for being MIA. I'm so sorry and I hope this chapter is good enough to make up for being gone all this time. This is a harder story to write, but I have so many encouraging readers that I decided that I couldn't just drop it. Here's the third chapter of Torn Apart. Enjoy! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own H2O just add water.

CHAPTER 3

Rikki's POV:

"So let me get this straight," I began, "You and I are going to investigate that bag you and Will found at the moon pool, even though he told you that he didn't want you there without him?" I looked at Bella questioningly. She looked like she was thinking for a few seconds and then nodded slowly.

"That about sums it up," she said, looking slightly guilty. Cleo brushed some hair away from her face and stood up.

"You and Rikki are going out to the moon pool, and I'm staying on the shore as a look-out?" She asked, looking a bit nervous. "If there's nothing to worry about, why do we need a look-out?"

Bella shrugged. "It's just a precaution. If and when Will finds out about our little escapade, I want him to know we took every precaution to stay safe. I would do it, but I'm the only one who knows where the bag is, and no offense, but Rikki's a bit more adventurous then you are."

Cleo looked slightly offended, but then she sighed. "Fine, I'll do it. I said I'd go along with this whole thing, but frankly, it's starting to make me nervous." She looked at both of us. "What if whoever we're dealing with knows too much?"

I shook my head, "that's the last thing we should be worrying about right now. We can't change what someone knows and what he doesn't, so lets just take this one step at a time."

Bella nodded in agreement and we all stood up from our seats.

"Here," Cleo handed me a five to cover the cost of her drink and Bella began fishing around in her shorts' pocket as well. I waved them both away.

"I'll pay; don't worry about it." I said, walking behind the counter. I popped open the cash register and pulled a ten from my pocket. I was beginning to gather my change when a guy stepped up to the register. I didn't notice him at first, and I was about to leave when he cleared his throat and I looked up. He looked about eighteen or nineteen and was wearing a striped polo and khaki shorts. He had black hair and tan skin; he looked a bit Spanish. What struck me the most though were his eyes. There were a deep piercing blue and seemed harsh compared with the rest of his features. He smiled lightly at me and motioned to the menu in his hand.

"Excuse me, but what comes in your pineapple passion smoothie?" He asked politely.

I looked at the girls and saw that they were already halfway out the door.

"Pineapple chunks, pineapple juice, strawberries, passion fruit, and yogurt," I said in a hurry, anxious to get out and follow Bella and Cleo.

"Thanks, can I – " He began, but I cut him off.

" – Just a sec," I said, looking around wildly for a waitress. I spotted Trish over on the other side of the café, wiping a table. She looked my way and I motioned for her to come over.

"Can you take this man's order?" I asked hurriedly, my eyes still on the door. "I've got to go." She nodded and hastily deposited her cleaning supplies behind the counter.

"No problem. You go on, I've got this." She smiled confidently and turned to the a guy. "Now sir, what can I get you?"

I never heard if he went with the pineapple passion smoothie or not because I was out of the café before he could even answer. The girls were waiting out by the pier.

"Where were you?" Cleo asked curiously, "How long can it take to pay for three drinks? Especially when you own the place?"

I shook my head, "There was a customer, but I got one of the other waitresses to take care of him, so it's all good. Are we ready?" I looked at both of them seriously.

"We're ready," Bella replied. "Let's go." And with that she looked around hastily to see if anyone was in the immediate area, and then dived into the bay. Cleo and I followed suite and we regrouped underwater and began power swimming in the direction of Mako.

Once we arrived on Mako we lost no time in splitting up. Cleo beached herself and was dry in an instant, using her power to lift the water off her body and deposit it on the sand beside her. She entered the woods and found a place where she could see anyone who landed on the beach, but they couldn't see her. One she was ready, Bella and I headed for the underwater entrance to the moon pool. We surfaced and looked around the cavern, expecting the worse, but surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary.

"I don't see anything," I said offhandedly, trying to still my heart that had been pounding in anticipation of what we might have found. I chided myself for being so paranoid and tried to appear calm.

"Let's get out and look around," Bella said slowly, pulling herself out of the water and waiting for me to come out so that I could dry us both off. The other girls could use their powers to get dry, but it was obvious that mine was the most practical way. It was like having a super powered blow dryer available at the clenching of your fist.

We got our legs back in a few seconds and I followed Bella over to the far side of the cavern. She stopped all of a sudden, and I was forced to as well.

"There it is," she said, pointing to the dark blue duffle bag that was lodged in a niche in the wall of our cave.

"Well then lets just get this over with," I said practically, walking confidently up to the wall and yanking the bag out. I set it down on the ground and crouched down beside it. Bella sank down next to me and watched as I hurriedly unzipped the zipper and pulled the two edges apart. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff inside, just the basics for a hike in the woods. There was a small first aid kit, a flashlight, a pair of swimming goggles, a packet of matches, and a bag of trail mix. I fished around for some kind of identification, but there was nothing. No wallet, no luggage tag, no inner compartments or pockets that might hold some kind of clue. I sighed in defeat and passed the bag to Bella.

"Here, maybe you can find something," I said, standing up and checking the crevice from which we had pulled the bag. As I peered into the tiny, dark space, I saw something that I hadn't seen before. Nestled all the way in the back was a brown clipboard with several sheets of paper clipped to the front. I pulled it out and was startled by a small object the clattered out with it, landing on the ground right next to my feet. I jumped and let out a small scream.

"What? What happened?" Bella cried, standing up and looking around in terror.

"It was nothing, I'm sorry." I apologized quickly, "I just dropped this," I bent down and picked up the compass, holding for her to see.

"A compass?" She questioned, taking a closer look.

"Yeah, nothing special," I remarked, turning back to the clipboard. I hurriedly scanned over the top sheet. My heart began beating faster as I read. This person had obviously been doing some kind of research, whoever he or she had been. There was the exact longitude and latitude numbers of Mako Island written on the sheet, as well as average temperature and atmospheric pressure of the area. It looked like one of Lewis's papers, only this time it wasn't his research. I flipped to the next page and my eyes widened at what I saw. There were more notes, but these were on the moon pool, the temperature of the water, the pH, and a bunch of other figures that I didn't recognize. There was a detailed drawing of the hole at the top of the cave and some more drawings of various rocks and other natural figures inside the cave, some of which were right before my eyes, making it clear that someone had been in here for an extended period of time in order to make such good sketches. We could have swum in here at any time and interrupted him. I tried not to think about that. I turned the page again and gasped audibly at what I saw next. The last page was a printed article about mythical sea creatures. One paragraph was highlighted and my eyes flew to it right away.

Mermaids –

Creatures once thought to be nothing more than a childish fairytale told by insane sailors; mermaids are still pursued to this day by persistent scientists who are anxious to prove the world wrong. While it is true that there have been several sightings reported, only a few contain any sort of credibility. Some of the most noted are the sightings if Rachel Carter from Dublin Ireland in 2007, and Andrew Daykin from Perth Australia in 2011.

According to Rachel, she was on vacation with her family on the Irish seashore and had gone for a walk down the beach alone. There were to many rocks, so she was forced to stop unless she wanted to climb over them. "I was wearing flip-flops" Carter says, "and I didn't really feel like getting all tired." Rachel had stopped and had been sitting quietly on the sand for about fifteen minutes when she claimed she heard a scraping noise, like something was being pulled along the sand. "I was curious," says Carter, "I thought it might be a hurt animal or something." She went to investigate the noise and discovered a small clearing in the rocks just a few yards away from where she had been previously sitting. "I couldn't believe my eyes," Carter stated incredulously, "but there it was, a mermaid pulling herself out of the water and onto the sand. I was so shocked that I couldn't even say anything. It was then that she looked up and saw me. I thought she would be angry because I had obviously been intruding, but instead she looked terrified. I was about to assure her that I wasn't going to hurt her, but she disappeared into the water again before I could. All she left was a mark on the sand where her tail had dragged, the sound I had heard. But that disappeared too when the next wave washed up on shore." Carter described the creature as being obviously female, with a yellow-orange tail that seemed to be made up of hundreds of scales. She claimed that the girl appeared to be quite young, about thirteen or fourteen maybe. She had a yellow-orange tankinish top as well, composed of the same scales as her tail. Her hair had been a brownish blonde and her eyes a piercing blue. "She appeared to be completely human except for the fact that she had a tail instead of legs. From the waist up she looked just like a teenager at the beach." Carter said. It has been speculated by scientist that these "mermaids" are perhaps a bit like the werewolf legend in that they can switch between human and mer at will, and perhaps this was why the mermaid was trying to leave the water. That brings us to the sighting by Andrew Daykin of Australia.

"I was taking a hike on Mako Island a few miles off the Golden Coast," says Daykin. "I was alone and I could tell right away that there was something very different about this island. I can't quite explain the feeling I got when I landed, but it was almost like I was being watched. I never actually saw anyone watching me; though later it was the other way around." Daykin claimed to have seen a weird fish like creature swim quickly past his boat when he had first arrived on the island. "I thought it was a barracuda, or some other large fish, so I didn't even stop to think about it. Later though, when I reflected on it more closely, I realized that it had been swimming faster than any barracuda ever could." As Daykin began his hike, he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until he tripped over a stone and fell headlong into an underground cave. "I hadn't seen the hole in the ground and I just went tumbling down. I wasn't hurt, but I wasn't sure if I could find my way out." According to Daykin, about fifteen minutes had passed when he heard voices coming from another part of the cave. "They sounded like young girls." He said, "and I was surprise and relieved, because they certainly must know a way out. They didn't sound frightened or upset, so I greatly doubted that they were trapped in here like myself. Then the voices stopped. I began to move quickly, fearing that they would leave before I could discover where was the exit. I rounded a corner into another chamber of the cave and saw a pool of water perfectly centered in the chamber. There was no one to be seen and I realized right away that I had been too late. That was when my eyes caught the shape of some sort of animal under the water. Then I saw that it was no animal, but a human figure with a tail instead of legs. It was gone a split second later, but not before I could be sure that I wasn't seeing things." Daykin described this creature as once again being female, having all the same characteristics of the mer seen by Rachel Carter. The only difference he mentioned was that this mermaid had dark brown hair. Daykin says that he never saw her eyes and could not tell her age. "I was obviously shocked at what I had seen," Daykin says, "but after the initial surprise was over, I explored the cave a bit more. It was then that I saw the footprints." According to Daykin, there were at least three sets of footprints, all of which started near the pool, and then lead back to it. There were none coming from any outside entrance. "They had obviously come from the water," Daykin says, "and those footprints were undoubtedly human." Daykin says he also saw several long imprints in the sand, starting from the edge of the pool. "It looked like something had been dragged there," he says, "and then the footprints started right next to them. It was like they had left the water as mermaids and somehow become human once they were on the sand." The imprints made supposedly by a mermaid tail match with what Rachel Carter claimed to have seen and so do several other minuscule details.

So it appears that maybe mermaids could still be alive and living among us today in human form. It is unknown if these creatures have any powers supernatural, or any special abilities relating to their obviously different species. Perhaps those sailors of the old days weren't as crazed as people thought.

By Richard Lieberstein

I couldn't breath. Ireland. Mako. Mermaids. The story of our lives was written out in a publicly accessible article. Gathered, how many people actually visited , but still, it was out there and no matter how small a minority knew about it, that still meant that someone knew. No one was supposed to know. Who had been that girl in Ireland? The three girls seen by that Daykin guy, they must have been Cleo, Emma, and I. Oh god, it must have been Cleo. He had said the mermaid had had brown hair. Maybe the other sighting had been Bella, but she had never mentioned anything of the kind happening. I turned to her, all the color now drained from my face.

"Well, nothing in here, that's for sure," Bella said, putting all the items she had taken from the bag back inside. Apparently she had emptied the whole thing and looked in every corner. It didn't matter anymore. I had found enough information for the both of us.

"Why don't we just…" her voice trailed off when she saw my face. "Rikki, what's wrong?" She asked, peering at the papers in my hand. I silently handed them to her and she leafed through them. I heard her gasp as she came to the article at the end and it didn't take long for her to skim through it. She turned in my direction and just looked at me soundlessly.

"We need to get out of here," she finally said urgently, handing me the clipboard.

"You think?" I snapped. "And I suppose that was just some random mermaid that was spotted in Ireland!" She looked at me in shock. I felt bad for a moment, but I shoved those feelings aside the same way I shoved the clipboard back into its cranny. She didn't say a word as she threw the duffle bag in after the clipboard and headed for the side of the pool. She dived into the water and I quickly followed as we headed back to the beach to tell Cleo what we had found and to leave our former-safe-haven as soon as possible.

No One's POV:

After the girls left the pool, a shadow crept out from behind a curve in one of the passageways of the cave opened by the dynamite explosion several months before. The figure pulled a small object out from his pocket and held it in his hand. After looking at it for several seconds, he slipped it back into his pocket and took a few steps forward until he was right where the girls had been standing previously.

Then he reached out his hand and pulled the duffle bag out of its niche.

A/N: AAAAHHHHH! WHO WAS THAT? Hehehe….I know! LOL but YOU don't! }:-} I'm so mean! But this story is a mystery; so multiple cliffhangers ARE to be expected. Once again, I apologize for being gone for so long and I know this isn't the longest chapter and that the article took up a lot of it, but that article is crucial for later in the story so I felt that I needed to include it right away. I tried to make it sound as much like a real article as possible, even though I haven't had any experience in that type of writing. What did you think? Please review and let me know! :) Thanks for reading! Love ya! Oh and I've missed fanfic a LOT, the only thing I've been doing is PMing some of my FF friends lately, so IT'S NICE TO BE BACK! :)

Ella:)