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Beyond the Depths

Chapter 7: The Commander and His Strategy

The walk to the commander's office was long. A tired and injured Sam followed with the most displeased expression on her face, lips pulled in a tight line. The agent before her paid no mind to the tension between them, nor the way that Sam was still limping on her injured ankle.

"How much farther?" she complained.

"Not much," said the agent. "Just a few halls over."

As they passed into the commanding stations, the ship's decorations became more ornate. The thresholds were stamped with the insignia of the private global army. On one of the walls they passed was a golden plaque. It said, Global Oceanic Defense. Sponsored by Dalv Industries. Sam ran her across the smooth metal. Engraved at the bottom was the G.O.D. motto: To protect humanity at all costs.

Her face twitched, the metal suddenly cooling her skin too much. She pulled away from the wall, only to nearly run into the agent who had stopped.

"This is the office of our commander," he said, punching in numbers in the keypad beside a white door. The door carried a metal plate as well that said Agent O. "Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Manson."

Something about the agent's manner set her teeth on edge. "I haven't done anything yet," she muttered in suspicion, watching anxiously as the door opened. She cradled one of her arms, the scratches beneath her bandages pulling with pain. She was fairly sure that her ankle was still swelling a bit.

There, in the somewhat spacious office, was a heavily decorated officer wearing a white suit that matched the blank decoration of the walls. He looked older, his skin dark. "Ah," he said. "The survivor. Please come in. Agent W, you are dismissed."

Agent W saluted. "Sir." And then he gently pushed Sam into the room and shut the door.

For a time, there was only silence.

Sam stared at the commander, feeling raw and strange and entirely out of place. Was she supposed to salute? What did she call him? What was this all about? "...I'm here," she said lamely.

"And so you are," Agent O said. His voice was deep with a sort of weary alertness. "Take a seat. You still look woozy. Are you in pain?"

She gratefully accepted the offer. The chair in front of Agent O's desk was pure metal—as cold as the air. "I just…ache." She stretched her legs out, feeling overwhelmed by the future. By the past.

Agent O raised a brow, "You seem to be a pretty tough young lady, to make it out of that mess."

A tinge of survivor's guilt wormed through her uncomfortably. She wasn't really tough. "My parents pushed me out of the way," she said, but her voice wavered with their memory. And in that moment, such a strong desire for her mother's tight and uncomfortable hugs overwhelmed her. It was about all she could to breathe normally.

Run! Baby, run!

Get out of here! You hear me? Get—!

"You are the first survivor of an outright attack, which is quite a feat, Miss Manson. I hope you understand why I've requested to debrief with you so soon."

The strong voice of the commander brought her back to reality. "I understand." Her own voice sounded weak and dry. She cleared her throat and attempted to sit up straighter, then eyed the commander. "What do you want to know?"

"Are my people treating you right?" The answer seemed casual and calculated, as if he were attempting to win her own. "Do you feel you've received proper care?"

She ran shaky fingers along the pure white gauze of her arm. Then she suddenly felt the warm and wet friction of the merboy's tongue on her skin, and she flinched in surprise. "Yes." She blinked, feeling her eyes water up for no reason. "They're nice."

"Very good. Now I'm going to ask you a few questions about what you remember. How many there were, the direction they came from. Anything that will be helpful as we work to exterminate this tribe."

Her heart stopped, her thoughts immediately drifting to the boy. "Wait, what?"

"War is a terrible business. I'm sorry you had to get involved. But you can take comfort in the fact that the merfolk will all be put to death."

She stuttered fearfully, grabbing onto the seat's armrests. "N-no. You can't do that. Not now."

Agent O tilted his head at her, now measuring her up again with a bit of surprise. "And why not?"

"One of them—he stopped attacking me. He hid with me." Her breath hitched with a nervous laugh. "I know it sounds crazy."

"Yes, it does." He eyed the scratches on her arm. "You must be experiencing some form of Stockholm syndrome, given that these beings murdered your own parents in cold blood and yet you're arguing on their behalf. Did…he attempt to stow you away for later?"

Sam did not know what Stockholm syndrome was, but she knew the commander was belittling her in some way. "He didn't stow me away," she said, voice strengthening with injustice. "I hid him. He turned human."

"Did he now?" The commander did not seem too surprised, although the glint in his eye suggested this was new information, just as it had been for Maddie and Jack Fenton.

"Yes. And he was very scared and confused." The girl was measuring up the commander now, purple eyes hard with pain. "It was like he didn't know he could transform. Did you…know what they were?"

"Our scientists performed experiments years ago on various mer cadavers. We knew they exhibited characteristics of humans who drowned at sea. I suppose it's no surprise that they can still take on an old form. Doesn't negate the need to exterminate them."

Her breath hitched. She thought of the naked boy in the linen closet, crying in hunger and pain. The son of Maddie and Jack. "These are people," she said, eyes wide in horror. "You know they're people."

Agent O raised a dark brow. "They're dead. Ghosts, trapped in a corrupted body and a world that's not theirs. Uncontrollable. Insane. Cannibalistic. I'm sure you know all this by now."

She did. "But that's not it. Not for all of them. The boy—"

"—The boy might have looked human, Miss Manson, and maybe he cooperated with you, but do you even know how many humans he might have eaten in the past?"

She did not. Her face bloomed with a blush of embarrassment as her eyes watered. "He was scared. Just as scared as I was. He was starving and thin. I think that's the reason why they've become so violent."

Agent O was not impressed. He seemed entirely convinced that Sam was suffering from a kind of temporary insanity that left her clinging to her own near-murderer. In some way, he pitied her, which was perhaps why he tolerated her backtalk at all. "There's no excuse for what they've done."

Sam's lips quivered. "And what about us for fishing out all of their food?"

The commander fell silent for a bit. Then he said, "They chose to attack us thirteen years ago. They have an instinct to eat humans, and they're slaves to it. This is about more than just overfishing."

"But they're smart. We can teach them a better way. The boy, even before he transformed—he understood what I was saying."

"Yes, they're very smart," Agent O nodded. "In the beginning, they attacked small fishing ships. By the end, they were attacking international naval ships in the middle of the ocean—and nothing short of expensive weapons held them off."

Sam inhaled shakily, feeling her stomach drop. "N-no. That's not true. It was just fishing boats. Small things."

Agent O raised a dark brow. "A little fear kept the public away from the ocean. But if they knew the real extent of what these merfolk did, what their powers were, we would have had total world collapse. I trust you can keep that in confidence."

The girl sitting in the chair before him went pale and swallowed hard.

"This is reality, Miss Manson," he told her. "You have to plan for the worst, in which it is likely that merfolk become an even larger, uncontrollable force again. Between you and me, I find the merfolk kind of fascinating. You know, like dolphins or a good documentary. If they didn't eat humans, maybe I'd like them a little more. But if I have to choose between saving them or saving my family, which do you honestly think I'm going to choose?"

Her eyes watered. "Why is it a competition? Why can't we save both? We can teach them not to attack people, and they could help us with ocean shipments in exchange for food—we could make a deal or something!"

Agent O said carelessly, "Even if the mer people weren't cannibals by nature, the fact they've resorted to it is a sign that this world can't sustain us both. The most merciful thing is to put them down. The Merfolk Massacres were brutal because we were afraid and under-prepared. But now we can control it and keep them from suffering."

"You're talking about killing souls," she said, voice wavering.

He shrugged. "There is always a sacrifice in protecting people."

Sam nearly flinched, remembering the sight of the seaweed merman she'd stabbed in the throat. Her parents who'd bled out to save her. This time, tears slipped down her face. "It doesn't have to be that way. We can stop it. We can end the war somehow. Share the food. Educate each other."

The commander huffed, almost amused at the girls' naiveté. "Once they start attacking, their hunger for human blood spikes at an exponential rate. We'd have to shut down the whole seafood industry, the tourism industry, the shipment industry again—and if we didn't put a cap on it, they'd probably start crawling on the beaches too. A lot of human beings would starve, and a lot of us on the coast would become fish food. You'd create global war and economic collapse."

Sam looked stricken. "I have money—"

"—You're a Manson, sure, you've got some millions to your name," he said shortly. "But not nearly enough to save the world. I'm sorry. Life's full of tough choices."

The girl's ankle seemed to pulse as the pain medications wore off, and she grimaced. Her eyes were watery. She felt dazed and unable to think clearly. This man before her still wanted to kill a boy who was human beneath it all. And that boy had clung to her and felt pain and had a soul—

"You c-can't just kill them." Her heart hurt as much as her pulsing headache did. She wiped her face of tears. "Even if they're monsters. Not all of them are. I don't want anyone else to die."

Agent O sighed. "I know you're tired of the violence. So am I. But thanks to our advanced research teams, we now have enzymes we can release into the water. It can kill these beasts quietly. They won't feel pain. They'll just…go to sleep. And then we can all forget about this nightmare."

She stared at the commander in horror and pain.

He was still going to kill the boy who'd sat on the floor and cried in joy over crab cakes.

Maddie and Jack's son.

"Now I'm going to ask you one more time, Miss Manson. How many were there. Which direction they came from. I will not ask again."

Later, Sam limped back to the infirmary, eyes haunted. One her arm scratches had begun to bleed through the gauze. She felt like her throat was constricted with cotton. She could not breathe.

"Oh, dear," came the familiar voice of one worried Maddie Fenton. She re-shouldered some kind of scientific equipment across her back as she walked up. Her demonic red goggles jingled around her neck, glimmering like the blood-shot weariness in her eyes. "I was just about to check in on you. Did the commander keep you this whole time?"

The teen barely managed a nod. Her purple eyes were distant.

The mother's face pulled in sympathy. "That Agent O. He likes to analyze. I hope he didn't put you through the ringer too bad."

Sam looked up at Maddie and then began crying, hiding her face in her hands. On some level, she didn't even know why she was crying. Maybe it was because Maddie had a natural mother look that damnably reminded her of one Pamela Manson. And Sam was so raw—everything was just so raw—and maybe she'd just given away information that killed the boy—

The older woman wrapped an arm around her, patting her. "Come on, dear." Her voice was soft and kind. "Let's get you some new bandages, and maybe some nice, hot tea." And so she helped her into the infirmary and found her a private room to sit down in the infirmary. Then she kneeled before the girl, gently grabbing onto her arm to inspect her still-bleeding wound. "These things are always so hard, dear." She worked on untying the knot. "You've been very brave and strong."

Sam's voice was shaky. She stared down at the mother with watery eyes. "I d-don't feel strong," she whispered.

Maddie's red lips stretched. "Sometimes, we don't know how strong we are until we look back on it." The bandage on Sam's arm loosened, and she began to unwind the gauze. "Earlier, you were arguing for my son, despite everything he put you through. That takes a lot of courage."

Her breath hitched. She had to warn Maddie about what was to happen. "The c-commander. He's going to—he wants to—to kill them. With a poison of some kind."

The mother paused. "I know." Something in her gaze was tired and old. "I designed it, along with Jack. It interferes with merfolk gills and sedates them while depleting their oxygen."

"B-but…" Sam blinked, and new tears streaked down her face. "He's going to use it." She tried to inhale, only to hyperventilate. "On your son, who saved m-me. Who turned human."

Maddie looked at the sharp scratches on Sam's arm, pained at the thought that her own blood had done this. She turned away and began cutting a new strip of gauze. "I'd do anything to have my baby back, Sam. But his first instincts were to attack you. It's not so…simple."

Sam fell silent as Maddie turned back and began to re-wrap her arm. "We could teach him."

"His human behavioral characteristics are at the very least stunted," the mother said, voice halted. "Possibly irretrievable at his age. You said he looked human and ate crab cakes, but what does that mean if he doesn't understand anything?" This time, Maddie had to blink away tears. "And if he attacked you like an animal, that means his nature is different. Beyond the fins and the fangs."

"I trusted him," Sam whispered. "He understood what I was saying when I talked to him. He was sorry."

Something entirely heartbroken crossed the mother's face. "Maybe so, but merfolk have a desire for human blood. They go crazy for it. And I can't take seeing my baby struggle with that kind of losing battle."

Agent O straightened his back before knocking on the plush, wooden door located at the stern of the ship. Behind it was the primary stakeholder of the privatized Global Oceanic Defense and the president of Dalv industries, who further sponsored and outfitted the army. Very few from G.O.D. actually spoke to the man, given that he was so often aloof, but Agent O regularly demanded an audience with him.

Some things, he felt, were worth interrupting brunch for.

"Do come in," came the sleek baritone voice of G.O.D.'s owner. And so Agent O walked in, chin held high.

"Sir," he said. "I'd like a word with you about the reputational risks to our organization based off this recent attack."

"Ah, Agent O," the man greeted from his desk. He was a white man in his late forties, with striking features that often landed him on cover magazines. His blue eyes were sharp and intelligent, his gray hair pulled back in a low ponytail. "How nice of you to visit. Tell me, how are our survivors? The dinner guest who saw it all in particular?"

"They're recovering, sir. I spoke with the dinner guest extensively. She seemed…unsettled and oddly attached to saving the monsters from themselves."

"You speak of Samantha Manson, yes? The poor girl." The owner of G.O.D. poured for himself a glass of grape juice. The liquid pinged against expensive crystal. "Her parents were old colleagues of mine. Fine couple."

Agent O seemed a bit frustrated. "This Samantha Manson is still a sympathizer of the merfolk, even though they almost ate her."

Vladimir Masters, billionaire of the year, begun to chuckle. "Is she now? How marvelous. I've heard she can be quite the handful."

"Sir," the commander pressed, "this is very serious. Miss Manson is set to become the most popular human being in Amity Park. If she admits in interviews what she saw, then we could have serious challenges to exterminating the merfolk."

The easy smile on Vlad's face fell. "And what, pray tell, did Miss Manson see that was so enlightening?"

"She says the one who attacked her transformed into a boy. They hid together in a linen closet from the rest of the massacre. She says the transformation woke him up from his blood lust, and that he ate human food before falling back into the waters as a merperson."

Vlad paused for a time, mulling it over. "My. That is quite the story. Are you certain she did not simply hallucinate this…boy? Perhaps as some kind of coping mechanism?"

"I do not believe the boy was a hallucination. Miss Manson had scratch marks from merfolk claws down her arms. My medical team confirmed that the usual poison from their claws had been negated with an antidote from living merfolk saliva."

At that, the owner of G.O.D. raised a regal brow. "Hm. That is rather fascinating." He raised his glass of grape juice to his lips.

Agent O stepped forward. "Sir. I believe in our mission and know what these merfolk can be like when left unchecked. However, if Samantha Manson spreads stories about this boy helping her, then we could face serious backlash from other stakeholders and the media."

Vlad lowered his glass and eyed Agent O. "There have always been sympathizers, O. But you're suggesting that the media would even hear about this attack."

The commander blinked. "What?"

"The tourism and shipment industries are just starting to provide revenue in the billions again. It'd be a shame to crash the economy over a little fear." Something in Vlad's face was terribly calculating. "No, the U.S.S. Titan suffered from a leak, resulting in a terrible explosion. Samantha Manson and a few crew members were thrown from the ship, which saved their lives."

Agent O's voice was slow. "You're suggesting we cover this up? Like the naval ships?"

"Well, of course. Possible merfolk sightings are one thing, but the world is not ready for another war. Or walking merfolk. I'm sure you can get a team or two to set charges on the Titan."

"And the girl? The others could probably keep quiet if they're paid off, but I can't imagine her keeping shut up about it."

Vlad's thin lips twitched. "Allow me to handle her directly. Samantha Manson is an intelligent young woman who needs guidance about how the world works. I believe, with the proper motivations, we can turn her into an asset for the Global Oceanic Defense."

Agent O sighed. "And so then what about this new tribe of merfolk?"

The most powerful man in the world leaned back in his chair. At times, his eyes glinted in strange ways that suggested he was not entirely sane. "My dear Agent O. I don't care if the merfolk turn into pink unicorns on Saturdays. At the end of the day, the salvation of this world demands their extermination. All of them. Did Miss Manson have anything to say that was helpful?"

"Not particularly. They arrived from the bow of the ship, but not before stopping the engines with something she could not see. She claims it was all too sudden."

"And how many?"

"At least a few dozen."

That made Vlad's face darken. "Well. I suppose their numbers were bound to grow after thirteen years. A pity they are so uniquely capable of evasion."

"Miss Manson also had nothing to say about special abilities. Beyond the…transforming into a human, of course."

"Of course," Vlad nodded. He tapped his fingers on the crystal glass in his hand. "Very good. Then you know what to do. Ask the lovely Mrs. Madeline Fenton to procure her poison, and we'll inoculate the sea front of Amity Park. And I'll get to working on Miss Samantha Manson."

"Yes, sir."

On the far side of the metropolitan Amity Park stood a young woman, puzzling over a chalkboard in a private library study room. She'd thrown her fire-red hair into a sloppy bun and had several strands of it falling out. "Well, that's something," she murmured to herself, only to narrow her eyes more at the chalkboard.

Jasmine Fenton, a nineteen-year-old intellectual, knew how to connect dots. She'd already published a few essays in academic and scientific journals on the nature and ethics surrounding the Mer Massacres. Given her parents' obsession with the merfolk and their work with G.O.D., the topic was a psychological goldmine and likely to inform her topic for a Ph.D.

And now here she was, taking an advanced World Literature course as an elective for her undergrad degree and writing about the merfolk again—this time, for something a little more fun as her term paper. It was no secret that humanity had written of mermaids and merman over the course of centuries. She'd found pages and pages of translated legends from almost every developed culture.

When she correlated the legends onto a timeline, it seemed there were five specific times in early history in which merfolk were written largely as man-eating animals. That by itself was not surprising. Previous clashes that had descended into mythology were to be expected.

But strangely, the places and times in which these legends arose appeared to only slightly predate the rise and spread of legends about vampiric entities—another type of undead creature. (She knew it from her parents that merfolk were likely the souls of humans drowned at sea, which was still mostly denied by authorities.)

She felt a rush of academic excitement as she dared to consider the implications. "Maybe they are connected," she breathed, leaning over to circle an early segment of her timeline. "Maybe merfolk inspired the legends of vampires over time, which then took on their own personality per the different cultures and sensationalism as the stories spread." It almost made sense. The earliest vampire legends originated near the water, with the first victims detailed as mostly weak, inebriated, or old.

But the problem with such a correlation was that even in the earliest legends, vampires walked on land. Which was, of course, impossible for the merfolk.

…Unless it wasn't.

A/N: Vampires and mermaids and Vlad, oh my. I'm sure I just crossed a line, but I suppose this is what I get for letting chapters write themselves and trying to pull in a pseudo-mythological history.

I'm trying to integrate more canon characters as we go along, but I'm not quite sure yet how they all puzzle in. For example, what to do with Valerie or Tucker?

Please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive critiques! Thank you!