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Beyond the Depths

Chapter 6: The Merfok and Their History

Clockwork, the Tribe Elder, held Phantom's wrist tightly in his steel grasp. They had stormed beyond the underwater canyons and into the open sea. Phantom struggled to keep up, his green eyes wide with confused fear.

"Where are we going?" Phantom asked tentatively, gazing over his pale shoulder. The canyons of their home were distant specks now. He began to worry that they were treading into shark territories.

"What I have to tell you," Clockwork declared, "cannot be overheard by anyone else in the tribe. This must stay between us, is that understood?"

Phantom swallowed hard, his gills flaring in an odd nervousness. "Yes."

And then Clockwork released him. The waters surrounding them were dark with only meager rays of early sunlight to flicker against their scales. The black scar down Clockwork's eye seemed to be an abyss, casting no reflection, distorting his face into a glare.

The younger mer began to worry even more. "Am I going to be exiled if someone finds out? Am I freak? What did I do wrong? I couldn't even control—"

"—I know you could not control it," Clockwork cut in, crossing his arms, "because you were ignorant to this ability. Now tell me what happened, down to the last detail."

Phantom fell silent, eyeing his guardian. And then he began to tell his story—of how easy it was to give into the hunger, of how he'd hunted down a human girl into the ship, of how he turned human and was attacked by Undergrowth. With greater hesitance, he told of the girl whose name he could not pronounce well in the merfolk tongue, but who had saved him and shut him away in a closet of strange, soft materials until the feeding was over.

He neglected to explain that he had licked the girl's wounds of his own poison, or that they had clung together, or that he had cried upon eating the food she had found for him. These were intimate things, and suddenly there was a chasm that had never existed before between him and his guardian.

Clockwork gave him a flat look, as if knowing that he was still hiding something. "And this human girl was not the only survivor?"

Phantom said meekly, "I heard voices from within the ship. She told me to leave before they saw me."

"So you do not know how many humans live that know of us?"

He shook his head. "Maybe there were more still hiding, but most were gone."

Clockwork pressed, "But the girl was the only one who saw you transform?"

The younger mer's face tinged in an odd blush, and he turned away. "No one else saw."

And with that, the Tribe Elder fell deeply silent, eyeing his charge with a tired reluctance. The currents of the ocean passed between them, eddying their hair and fins. Phantom thought that perhaps Clockwork would kill him for letting the humans stay alive and endangering the tribe's secrecy. It made sense that Clockwork would choose the open darkness of shark territory to commit such punishment.

"Am I going to die for letting them live?" he asked tentatively.

The older merman sighed. "No. But you must understand," he pressed slowly, "that I have withheld certain information from this tribe to ensure our survival. What you know, what you have experienced, threatens that status quo."

Phantom blinked. "Information?"

"You know that I have abstained from every human hunt despite my hunger, correct?"

The charge nodded slowly, eyes tightening.

"And why do you think I made that choice?"

The merboy looked a little bewildered. "You've always given more credit to human life than the others have."

Clockwork smiled, but it was harsh and lined with sadness. "Yes, an unfortunate result of ignorance. Had the others known of our origin as a species, they would not be so quick to scorn those who live on land."

Phantom felt quite as if Clockwork were testing him. His eyebrows furrowed in hesitant curiosity. "But...we come from the sea," he said. "The ocean is our mother; we're different."

"Are we?" Clockwork challenged, raising an eyebrow.

"Everyone knows the ocean is our mother," Phantom argued. Something in his face grew desperate. "But I want to understand, if that is true, how I became human when my scales dried out. What are you hiding? What do you know that you've never told me or…or anyone else?"

The old merman gave him a grave look. "I withheld the truth to protect us from another Massacre. I had to keep us separated from the human race. But we are not so different from humans—rather, we descend from them."

Phantom began to feel his systems race his heart. A wholeness that Clockwork spoke real truth—carrying a ring that settled just right—overcame him. "Descended?" he breathed, tilting his head.

"Yes," Clockwork explained. "Merfolk come from drowned humans. It is deep magic from the waters." His face grew troubled. "I have seen fragments of the process with my own eyes. If the ocean is our mother, then it is a surrogate only."

The ocean began to feel cold, as if it were offended. Or perhaps Phantom simply felt chills up his spine. He scratched at his stomach, feeling distant in an odd way. In some way, he was human—Clockwork was human—everyone was human—

"That is why," his guardian said softly, "when your scales dried out, your human legs returned. Because they were your first form."

Phantom said nothing. He spun around to hide his face from his guardian, his green eyes still wide with the undying spark of truth. He began to breathe uncertainly, his gills flaring. "So…I'm not the only one who can change?"

Clockwork shook his head. "No. Even I can shed my tail if I so wish. But I have not since the Massacres."

His charge looked wildly confused and afraid and brilliantly anxious. "So this is normal?" his voice broke. "Why do you let everyone think lies—why would you hide this? What are we gaining?" And then his eyes widened more. "And the hunger—you mean we could be eating our mothers?! Why would you—?!"

The guardian quickly placed his large hands on his charge's shoulders, as if to calm him. "—I know this is shocking to you," he said, setting his voice to be an even tone. "I will explain, if you would allow me the chance."

Phantom broke away, staring at his guardian in wide-eyed amazement. "The chance?" he breathed, gills flaring more unevenly. The chasm between himself and Clockwork began to widen. "You raised me. How long have you had to tell me—any of us—the truth?"

Clockwork gave him a dark look. "You seem to think I have orchestrated our reality to your detriment. But this was the only way I could ensure that our people would continue to live. Things are not simple."

"Then make it simple," Phantom demanded, feeling suddenly disgusted and confused about everything. He gave his guardian a broken look. "I've tasted human blood in my hunger. But now you tell me they are our people too." He pointed his clawed finger back in the direction of the canyons. "We have dozens of humans tied by seaweed for our Tribe to gnaw on. Why are we doing this? Why not just…walk on land and take back the food they took from us?"

"In the old days, we did." Clockwork raised his hand and traced his black scar with his finger, his face pained. "There were times millennia ago when our kind rose above waters. None of us looked entirely human, even on legs, and the human villages—they saw us as gods and water spirits. They offered us many fine things, and in return we helped them navigate the waters. But then times changed."

Phantom knew that Clockwork had lived for unfathomable amounts of time, but he had never imagined such a life in the past. "What changed?"

Clockwork waved out at the vast darkness of the ocean. "We and the humans fished our home out, and the humans did not have the technology they do now. We all began to starve while we looked for a new home. And then one of us felt hunger, and he attacked a human." He sighed. "Others followed and found they could not resist the taste of human flesh. It destroyed our alliance with the humans."

"Did they fight you?" Phantom asked curiously.

Clockwork nodded. "It drove most of us who had not eaten human flesh to the ocean permanently. By the time it was over, the human eaters were slain, our tribes were scattered…the humans despised us. We attempted several times over the centuries to make repairs, but it seemed one of our kind would always fall to the whispers about the taste of a human being. We eventually decided it was better to separate our kind until the humans forgot about us."

Phantom's eyebrows furrowed. He ran an impatient hand through his hair. "But I don't understand," he said. "If we are human too, why would humans taste good to us?" His sharp teeth set uncomfortably in his mouth, now that he knew the smooth lines that were human ones.

The older merman admitted, "In these forms, we are capable of eating raw meat, whereas a human cannot. But we were never meant to eat them. The human body contains particular…organs that we cannot digest well. It is said human flesh provides an unexplainable rush, but it eventually drives the eater insane. Once an eater has had too much human flesh, they become addicted and cannot stop. The Elders who perished in the Massacre thirteen years ago called this sickness the Kuru. It was the cause of that massacre as well."

At that, Phantom felt cold again. He argued against his guardian, "And you just let the whole tribe—me—go and attack a ship, knowing that we could go insane and die?"

Clockwork grimaced. "The warrior class and the other Elders have never respected my commands. They have begun a cycle I cannot stop. And without food, I cannot provide a better alternative. I can only hope that this one instance will not affect the majority while we search for other options."

Phantom began to feel afraid—he could remember Undergrowth's madness, his wild eyes as he bit down on his arm. "But the ones who are affected. What about them? What will happen to all of us?"

The guardian turned away. "I fear that another Massacre will be on the horizon." He looked old and tired. "I do not know if I can survive another one."

Sam hid her face in her hands, struggling to pull herself together as tears slipped between her fingers. Jack Fenton had lowered the image of his long-lost son, but the image of the happy black-haired boy was permanently burned into her mind.

The merboy—it was him. It had to be him.

Her breakdown confirmed their fears. Maddie's eyes began to water, and a spark of fear came over her. "It's okay," the mother said, voice faltering. She moved a bit closer to pat the girl's shoulder. "It's okay, take your time. You've had a very difficult night."

The mother's actions only drove the stake of pain in deeper. Sam barely managed a shuddering inhale. It all seemed too much, to know that the merboy was the remnant of this woman's dead child.

Sam said in a choked whisper, "I saw him."

Maddie blinked, and suddenly the tears in her eyes became too much. They slipped down her sharp cheeks, and her lips tightened back in a barely hidden cry.

The photo in Jack's hand nearly crumpled under the man's sudden strength—of fear and excitement and worry and horror.

"B-but he looked different too," Sam said, trying to wipe the tears away in her eyes. She felt raw and vulnerable. "He's older. White hair. Green eyes."

The mother pressed, voice breaking in desperation. "How else did he look? Did he have reflective scaling? Claws? Any protruding fangs or extra fins?"

Sam looked at her in bewilderment. "He looked like one of them," she said slowly. "Claws. A black-ish tail. I…guess it was reflective?"

The mother gently grabbed onto her wrist and turned her arm in the light. Something in her touch seemed shaky. "And did he do this to you? What did he do? How did he act?" Her lips quivered. "Did you see him kill anyone?"

The questions began to make Sam uncomfortable. She pulled her arm away, and she swallowed hard. It was difficult to stare at Maddie's broken face. "I mean, he attacked me at first. But then he stopped. He got scared too." She shakily exhaled. "I don't know if he ate anyone before I met him, but he definitely didn't after."

"Those scratches, and the bite on your ankle," the mother pressed in fear. "Did he do that?"

Sam said nothing because her eyes said it all.

Maddie looked up at her husband. "Oh, Jack. Our baby boy." Her face twisted into quivering lips, a shaky inhale. "Our baby."

The man's jolly face had grown worn and tired. The expression did not suit him. He reached out to his wife, his large hand reaching for her slim one. He squeezed hard. "We…we knew this was a possibility."

"It took him," Maddie whispered. "Like all the others, it took him too."

Sam cut in, her bloodshot eyes hardened a bit. "Look, he wasn't a mindless monster. Whatever he is, he saved me from a pretty painful death." She looked a bit vulnerable as she stared down at her arms. "That poison was killing me."

The mother's teary eyes snapped back to her. "You mean, that creature with my son's face—he negated merfolk poison? You didn't get the antidote from G.O.D.?"

Sam bit her lip and shook her head. An odd tinge of a blush began to work its way on her face, but her cheeks were already a bit red from crying. She hoped the mother couldn't tell. "No, but I found out that another way to stop the poison is through—"

"—Merfolk saliva," Maddie cut in, voice breaking. "But that's impossible. You're saying he saved you? On purpose?"

The girl nodded.

For a second, a spark of hope seemed to glimmer from the mother's eyes, but then she squeezed her eyes shut and re-centered. Then she breathed in shakily. "That creature must have had a reason. Maybe they've gotten smarter since the Massacres. Maybe they let you live so they could track human patterns…"

Sam's face twitched. "Look, I saw what they can do. They killed my parents. But trust me when I say I saw your son's human side. It's still there."

"That creature," Maddie said, "is not my son. Just his face—a ghost." She wiped her tears away, only for more to fall. "But now Jack and I can do what we wanted to do years ago. We can help put him to rest."

The younger woman blinked. "To rest? Wait, you mean like kill him?"

Maddie did not answer, but she instead stood up. The tear tracks on her face suddenly looked sinister. "My baby died thirteen years ago. Whatever's left isn't him."

Sam's eyes widened. An odd panic weaved through her. "No! No, there is something left! He actually has a human side! I saw it. He saved me. Why would you go to kill him? Are you seriously going to hunt your own son?"

"My son," Maddie's voice hardened, "is a victim of forces we don't understand. The sea turned him into something, and for the sake of his soul, I have to give him rest."

Sam stood up, bewildered. "You can't be serious," she breathed. "He saved my life. And when his scales dried out, something happened—he transformed! He looked human. He sounded human. And he was scared. Your son is still alive. Somehow."

The air in the room turned heavy with silence. Maddie swallowed hard. "What do you mean, transformed?"

The girl felt a bit woozy standing up, but she steeled herself. "There were these rings of light—his tail disappeared, and he had black hair and blue eyes, just like that picture." Her voice broke. "He hid with me because another merman attacked him like he was human. You've got to believe me."

The hardness in the mother's eyes began to falter. "That's impossible," she whispered. "During the Massacres, there was no recording of merfolk transforming into humans."

"That doesn't mean it can't happen," Sam argued. "Maybe conditions weren't right or something."

Tears welled in Maddie's eyes again, and she looked to her husband, who was tense. They seemed to communicate silently, and then she turned back to Sam. "You have no idea how much I want to believe that my son is still here. But Jack and I…we can't take false hopes."

"This isn't a false hope," the girl pressed.

Maddie stepped forward, tentatively. "Did he speak to you? Did he act…human?"

Sam's face twitched. The boy had only managed a slew of vocal noises and had absolutely no concept of nakedness. "He cried," she said finally. "He was confused. I don't think he'd ever transformed before. But he was able to walk on two legs, and I got him to eat shrimp and crab cakes instead of me."

Jack grabbed onto Maddie's hand and squeezed. It was a silent comfort, with a rising hope in the man's eyes. "Crab cakes, huh? Those are an old weak link for the Fenton line."

"I noticed," Sam said flatly. "He ate, like, twenty."

"Sam, I can't get my hopes up," Maddie repeated again, her strength visibly breaking. She wanted Sam's words to be true with every fiber of her being. "All the research—the autopsies Jack and I did on remains from the Massacres—it suggests these beings aren't human anymore, and that they're very dangerous."

"Then maybe you need to do more research before you shoot your son," the girl snapped. "He saved my life. You should at least give him a chance."

Before Maddie could reply, a heavily-armored, male agent tapped on the glass window. The sound made them all flinch and wheel around.

The agent seemed unapologetic, his visor shielding his eyes. "The Commander has requested an immediate debriefing with the primary survivor." His voice was smooth, nondescript. "This is non-negotiable."

Sam eyed the agent, feeling her hackles rise at the demand. "Do I look like I can handle an interrogation right now?" she snapped, feeling as frazzled as she looked.

The agent pulled from behind his pack a pressed, folded pair of cameo pants and a matching, dark green shirt. "We grabbed these from storage," he said. "Please open the door so I can give them to you. Your debriefing begins in ten minutes."

Maddie put a hand on her hip, her bloodshot eyes narrowing. "Now, look here. We're doing a debrief of our own that is vital to the continuing innovations of Research and Development—"

"—The Commander's request overrides yours," the agent said with a shrug. "Apologies. I imagine you will be able to return to your conversation after the Commander's debrief with the girl."

Sam's jaw set. She didn't know the Commander. Maybe he was even more militant than Maddie and Jack. Maybe they'd strap her to a chair and hold a light to her face and torture her for everything she didn't want to tell them.

"I don't want to talk to the Commander," she called.

The agent tilted his head, as if unused to noncompliance. Then he said, "I am sorry. The Commander will not accept no for an answer. Your information is vital to national security." He raised the clothes up higher, as if in an offering. "It is a routine debrief, nothing to fear. Maybe a half an hour of your time."

Sam looked over at Maddie, and the older woman sighed in defeat, "Well, if it's absolutely necessary."

"It is," the agent affirmed.

Sam grimaced.

"Don't worry," the agent said. "The Commander of G.O.D. is interested only in your well-being, and in the well-being of others. That's all. We promise."

A/N: Okay, so this chapter tried to address some more of the background information regarding the Massacre thirteen years ago and previously in history. There's still a lot of information I want to give, but I didn't want to bore too much here. Thanks all again for your support and your questions as I work to build this crazy plot, haha. I think I still owe several people further answers to their questions. Sorry if this chapter feels rushed.

For the record, Kuru is a legitimate neurological disease that a human can obtain from cannibalism/from eating the brains of other humans (somewhat like mad cow disease). It typically results in coordination issues as well as headaches, emotional instability, and uncontrollable laughter. Here, I've appropriated Kuru out of its scientific context and added an addiction-like component to it to explain a little more about the merfolk's own problems.

Please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or critiques! Thanks!