He doesntreact when theywheeltheir pain sticks intothe room doesnt moveamuscle because hedlearned long before this thatthey were beyond himinpower they couldnt killhim but he coulddo nothing to them his claws might rend tear kill one of them buthumanitywas a single entity a great angry apophisthat couldaffordtolose a hundred scales, nevermindtheone or two hisclawscould take. Theyworked around natures methods in wayshe couldnthavepredicted with a thousandmillion yearsof contemplation with theirbulletsand bandages and bigotry andbureaus whenhadthe world gottenso confusing hes dazed and sickand he knows hes not long forthis world buteveninhis rabid miasma he can smell somethng wrong inthe air something that chokedhis heart to smell more men fileinand they've gotguns and they all have thoseheavyskins on why it was so hot or maybe it was just his head that was hot it felt like swimming in lava but he inhalesagain andits like ice when he looks attheirfaces, theylook like their hearts arechokedtoo like theyhave watched sickcreatures die in their nests orlikethey put sickness there its a very human thing to have the evil one does haunt youandhaunt is the right word he thinksbecause theylook like specters hesawinthe stars they're white and wet and nervous and guilt looks likewounds in their skin he sticksouthis tongue and he can tastetheirguilt like anacidburn and theyve done something what have they done

Its always the same manwhofollows the soldiers first one baldandfat scientist and then a tallone and then another fatone and he hatesthemwith all the life he has leftbut allhishatemeans nothing becausehate cannotcrack him fromhisprison or he would be free. Itsgone anyway replaced byastonishmentand fear more fear fear fear he never knew he could be so afraid. here is someone newand soindelicateandhard this is the oldman who caughthim hauled him out of hishappiness andback intothe morass of humansandtheir dead world and the oldman's dead eyes likeice like a lakethatfroze from the bottomandkilledeverythingin it

His mouthismoving but thewaterdoesntobeyhim and he cant tellwhat the manis sayingbut ina few seconds hedoesn't needto theguns are allpointed atthewater and theguiltymen who the gods havenot yethung havetheir fingerson the trigger

But it isn't the water that he is in

they arehaulingher from the pen where they'velashed her for weeks, her healed wounds fromtheir experiments weaving upherarms

CLARITY RETURNS .

He shoots through the tank like a bullet, his mighty arms shattering the plexiglas pane that had kept him there. There's a titanic woosh of water surging into the laboratory, knocking the armed men and the scientists down. Trays of metal blades and needles are thrown down, and equipment on the far walls is soaked in the backlash of water and sputters, smoking. His clawed feet touch solid ground for the first time in he doesn't know how long, and it is like scratching a year-old itch. In the moment before he snaps into his captors, he breathes, rumbling and powerful and timeless, as he always has been. Taking his agency back feels so incredible, so unbearable a relief he almost doesn't hear the shouts of the soldiers rising, trigger fingers twitchy.

Powerful calves and thighs carry him across the room in an instant, and he's on the first man just as fast; his claws rake the man's cheek as he rips the weapon from his grasp. A bullet flies out of it at the last second and pings in a bomb of fire on the far wall. Snarling, he lifts the same man from his cowering on the floor, bloody-faced, and tears his arm away. The scream that cuts from the soldier's throat makes the spines on his back stand up as if prompted by lightning and pure exaltation.

Another man, bigger than the first, points the slanted nose of his gun towards him and squeezes off a few rounds. Three thuds hit him square in the breast, like a cleaver separating fish heads from their bodies, and blood arcs through the air in front of him as he slides backward. The hard, unreadable face of the man cracks a bit. There is hope underneath, hope that he will be saved from the gods' noose.

His webbed hand drops the severed arm of his opponent's comrade and a flash of blue light across his green flesh erases the wounds. His attacker's face, still dead and stoic erupts in a mask of horror and he screams. A leap carries him through the distance between them, and his weight smashes the soldier against the cold, soaked floor. His sputters of swallowed water turn to blood as avenging claws bury themselves in his stomach.

Something slams into him from behind and he turns to find a final soldier rushing him, roaring bloody murder and swinging a knife in his left hand.

One squeeze shatters every atom of bone in that hand, and almost hungrily his teeth lock around flesh and bone and trachea.

Three men lie dead, and he is free. The gold panes of his eyes sweep over the carnage. Water mingles with blood and concrete and gobbets of flesh. The scientists have vacated the room. Their boots left muddled imprints in the reddened liquid on the floor. Smoke and the iron barbs of blood fill the air. A triumphant, chittering roar soon joins them. It's over now. The torture is over! He only need throw E-L-I-S-A over his shoulder and exit this evil place, fling them both into the sea and then-

He'd forgotten one. It was never going to be this easy. He'd forgotten one.

Her eyes are fearful, and he can tell that she is trying to call to him, begging him to do . . . something . But what could he do now? It was over, almost as soon as it had begun.

The old man, the one who'd caught them on the docks and brought them here, doesn't even bother pointing his snub-nosed gun at him. The man knows he'll just heal whatever wounds he can inflict and then tear him apart. It won't work. No, the aging man with the dead, glacial eyes sets the weapon against her temple. E-L-I-S-A winces as the metal pushes hard against her skull and the man's vicegrip on her lithe arms flattens them against her back. He pulls her back until he touches the far wall. A modicum of realization can be seen inside the icy victory in the man's eyes. He knows he's won.

It wouldn't matter if the man shot him, but if he shot her? These would be no poorly placed wounds in her stomach. A head wound that egregious would be beyond even his miraculous powers to cure. He'd break after that, roar and scream in his tank every night, begging them to kill him. Endless centuries of his life, all worth nothing without E-L-I-S-A .

He moves very slowly, claws pointed towards the ground in submission and showing the human his palms. He can't bring his eyes to meet hers. He failed her again. The older man yells in his strange language for someone, and the ghost-faced doctors trudge guiltily into the lab yet again. The gun doesn't leave her temple as he addresses one of them, and the creature thinks he hears S-H-A-T-A-L-O-V . A name, or just another word in this world full of humans whose words meant nothing to him, no matter what the language?

The one called S-H-A-T-A-L-O-V turns to the creature and looks at him with pitiful eyes.

"You . . . you will remain in the central pen . . ." he turns back to E-L-I-S-A 's captor, asking a question. He rolls his eyes and answers back, as slow as if he were talking to a child.

"You will remain in the central pen or she will be shot. Both of you . . . do what we say or you will be shot."

The old man move slowly, dragging E-L-I-S-A by the hair to the pen and tossing her into the water. Gun still pointed at her, he motions to the creature.

Defeated, and feeling his gills burn from exhaustion and water deprivation, he doesn't argue. The weight of his failure bruises his shoulders. The creature can't argue; all his energy is gone. His webbed feet dip into the pool and then he's in the freezing, dark water up to his collarbones. Crinkling as a collar locks around his throat, his gills fold back like the ears of a kicked puppy. "You understand me, woman?" A voice that sounds like S-H-A-T-A-L-O-V says.

E-L-I-S-A has less energy than he does. She nods without opening her eyes or looking up.

Reality is slashed open by monsters in lab coats and spectacles, innards rended and twisted into terrible flesh towers, as the scientist speaks again :

"You and this creature will undergo intercourse, now. We will study, and determine if you are viably impregnated after a period of time. Do not resist."

His eyes flash open. Growls of outrage build in his throat, and he can feel his jaw clench and his shell-shattering teeth grind against each other. All the soldiers are dead, if he can just get in front of her so she can't be shot, he can kill them all, run wild through the facility and keep killing, kill all the way to the head of the snake until it's a world of just he and E-L-I-S-A - but then he sees her eyes. There's no more hate for him in them; no more outrage, no more anger, not even sadness at their imprisonment or love upon gazing at him. There doesn't appear to be much of anything there now, nothing but itching desperation. They speak to him even better than her hands could; they scream no .

No no no no no

This was it. If she'd surrendered, he had nothing left to fight for.

He checks out.

Elisa can't keep the tears and the terrified rasp from ripping its way from her throat when she feels him inside her for the first time in eternity. This should be making her happy. There's nothing. Why does it feel like she's alone, more alone than she was as a child?

His pace is slow, and against the storm of her inner turmoil she bites her lip. Ecstasy arcs through her, bolts of lightning contained in her veins with no direction to go but up. But its all black, all grey; black thunder rolling in grey veins, like the black ocean she's rolling in; buried in. She looks the creature in the eye. What felt like a thousand years ago, he'd told her it excited him, to look her right in her grey-green irises while he took her. Now it's like watching fruit go bad, to look into eyes that don't see her . Why doesn't he see her?

She feels her slit stretch tight against his long, engorged cock, heat from their bodies and the freezing cold of the water only adding to the mounting uncertainty and fear in her heart. Her spine arches in his slippery hands. All the while he thrusts away mindlessly, disconnecting his spirit from his body like he can't bear the pain. And they are watching. The scientists, the Russians who had born the instruments of her torment, who she was convinced had left their souls behind in the bloodied cobblestones of Berlin, were watching her and the creature perform this sacred act together. Why do they have to watch?! Why do they watch when he doesn't?!

Her cheeks light with shame, and she closes her eyes, trying block out the sounds of bobbing water and the slap of skin against fins. Maybe if she lets herself drown in the black ocean she'll be safe; water will rush next to useless vocal cords and she'll black out, be free from the nightmare.

But she tries something different this time.

For the first time in too long, Elisa's imagination returns. Water floods in her heart, but it isn't repressive and black, isn't representative of her torment. It's clearer than clear. Like glass it shows off every rock and pebble and plant and creature behind its surface. Now all she sees below it is the smooth, porcelain bowl of her bathtub. The room unfolds in her head as a carpet of tile and diseased old wood. In front of the window blazing with sunset, he's there, like he used to be, shin-deep in bathwater. Elisa sees things in his eyes, more emotions and thoughts than the ages could hold. She goes to him, naked, ready to fall into ancient patterns.

Her head tips back in pleasure, and the scientists continue to observe.

Elisa banishes them from her daydream. They're summoned back to whatever conscienceless pit they crawled from. Now he's holding her in her dream, chittering softly into her ear as he nips at it. She's missed this . She's home, he's home, in her arms where he belongs. There are no green candies crunching or hammers clanking or sickles slicing. Just records and waves and the delicious way she feels the shape of him bulge from her stomach.

In her dream she roars, long and loud; growling yes , I have you again , and she feels fearsomeness explode behind her ribcage again, like it had when her creature had painted her red in her living room. I am never letting go of you again and I will soak the world in blood to the core if it keeps you next to me.

Before she can stop herself, she realizes she's signing it, to him .

He stops thrusting, slowing down just enough to refocus. His eyes are deadly sharp, black and gold prongs, boring into her as surely as his cock does. Hands occupied pulling her hips to him, he can only ask with his eyes.

Me?

Yes, she signs.

Then the dream becomes reality.

He pulls her up to him, so that their chests just barely touch. Back still arched, she angles her hips and throws her bottom out, smiling up at him through briny hair and tired eyes. Immediately, a huge, long-fingered hand she has come to know well smack upon her right cheek and stays there, firm-gripped. The creature's other hand trails across her gills, which flare elegantly in the air. He's still inside her, and she watches his eyes flutter with their horizontal lids as she starts to bounce against his cock.

He's in on her dream, that beacon of the past that had kept her from breaking these past few minutes. The wonder in his eyes as he looks at her convinces of it utterly. She doesn't see the false T - 4 laboratory reflected in him. He's there with her, standing in her bathroom a million light years away, groaning and rolling in the same primal undulations he's so good at, he must have invented them when the world was young. They're one again; they have to be or that dark sea is going to kill them both. They're all they have. One dainty hand finds the back of his neck. Her palm brushes against the tips of his thrumming, electric gills as it settles like silt against his scales. The skin is hard, but pliable, as firm as he is inside her. She'd told Dmitri she had nothing left to lose, that her battle against the midnight sea was over and she'd been defeated.

They're at eye level with each other, each in the throes of lovemaking.

Elisa kisses him, slamming her mouth into his, soft lips meeting scarred ones, moaning as he pushes back, and realizes she has very much to lose indeed.

And that she won't let it go without a fight.

She feels orgasm contract her whole body like one massive muscle, and a few seconds later the warmness of his seed inside her. She thinks hazily on the words of the scientists who had been far from her mind for a while now. Viably impregnated . They must have examined her and the creature. Could it be done? It excites her. Elisa knows that the thought should have drowned her in terror; why would she want to raise children, of any kind, in such an abrasive environment as this? What would their captors do to them ?

But looking at him, at her creature, wrapping his expansive arms around her and cooing senselessly, fear is the last thing on her mind. All she's got is a sun of excitement in her head, as bright as the one that flows into her bathroom; the one that she can see even now, wrapping her and the amphibian man in promise. What if he could impregnate her? The future burns its way into her, visions of an ocean dancing with their shimmering, pale-scaled offspring.

One day.

She doesn't register much of what happens next, but somehow the bodies are dragged away, and the creature imprisoned yet again. The tank he ripped his way out of is still in pieces all over the floor, and he's housed instead in the one on the opposite wall. Elisa still trembles at the warmth of his seed inside her, and as she watches him across the room, her eyes catch his.

What now? Forgiven? His hands ask.

You and me. Together. Comes the reply. She smiles, blurry-eyed.

Blue light rings through the water on his side of the tank. Through the glass it distorts and whips whirling, wave-like patterns along the floor and every other surface in the lab. Elisa almost believes they're not trapped anymore, that they're under the ocean, watching the star and moonlight echo through hydrogen and oxygen around them.

They'll persevere, in unity and love.

If they don't, they'll die, in unity and love.

If they do, they'll find, waiting for them in the darkened rainforests . . . glory, glory, glory.