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I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

Beyond the Depths

Chapter 8: The CEO and His Ploy

It began with a bang.

The sound of a concussive force reverberated through the dark waters. The heads of the resting merfolk raised in interest of the sound, only to witness the sight of a great, orange light surrounding a human ship in the distance.

Various pieces of debris seared through the ocean in a mad collection of bubbles.

In curiosity of the orange light, several merfolk began to swim up from the cliffside. They had seen the sun on occasion, but nothing quite like this. The light was so near. It seemed to flare out on occasion as several softer bangs echoed in the waters, and the bottom of the ship shifted in an odd way. It sank lower at almost imperceptible levels.

Even stranger, the closer they swam to the bottom of the ship, the hotter the waters became.

The noise woke up the merboy named Phantom, who'd hidden himself in the floating reeds. He looked up with bleary, green eyes, which then widened in surprise. He shot up suddenly.

Then he felt the heavy, protective hand of his guardian pull him back.

Clockwork's eyes were narrowed as he stared up at the sight. "Fire," came his awed, suspicious murmur. "The light is not the sun or the moon, but fire."

Phantom struggled to look away from the odd sight. He asked distantly, "Fire?" Even the word sounded strange their language, as if it were a word Clockwork himself had created. "What is it?"

"A destructive force," Clockwork murmured. "That vessel is now sinking. We should hide back in the reeds, in the event there are humans who jumped overboard."

The merboy gently shook away from his guardian's grasp and floated forward. The more he stared at the sight, the more something foreboding came over him. "Wouldn't they have already jumped?" he murmured. If fire was truly so destructive, then it was possible that any humans would have already died.

Then slowly, the foreboding in him swelled into fright. The ship's lines were familiar to him. "It can't be," he said, voice cracking. "No—no—it can't be."

As the stern of the ship began to sink back, it revealed the smooth black text of what was the U.S.S Titan. The same symbols that had been on the ship carrying Sam.

He bolted forward, his heart pounding. "Sam!"

He had believed the ship, with all the other humans, would have simply drifted back to shore. Instead, it had gone against the current, to catch fire far out here? Something was very, very wrong.

Which meant Sam could be in danger, if she weren't already dead from the fire.

"Come back!" pleaded Clockwork, reaching out to the boy as he swam away like a shot. "It is not safe!"

Phantom looked back for only a brief second with a half-apologetic, horror-worn face. Even if other humans saw him, he had to save Sam. She was his friend. He did not understand why her own human technology would betray her with fire.

Before him were several other merfolk, swimming toward the bright light in curiosity, reaching out their webbed hands to marvel in the increasing warmth of the water. Some swam while licking their fangs, in anticipation of more human flesh to feed upon.

And then, the hull of the U.S.S Titan began to crack from the explosions and force of incoming water, and from its crippled metal slipped out a blackness. The surrounding merfolk swept back in surprise, then swept back in to touch what looked like fingers of the night sky. They had seen such phenomena before. Clockwork had once explained that oil was the life blood of human technology.

The waters began to darken slightly around them as the leak spread, the tendrils dropping down in swirls.

Phantom gave a whine as he neared closer, struggling to see the ship.

But a cough from one of the mermen caught his attention. The being, swimming right next to the black, looked suddenly surprised. His dark gills flared out in a panic, like a rapid heartbeat, as he coughed more. This time, green blood began to seep from his lips and his gills, and he began to wheeze, his gills fluttering as they bled shut.

The others panicked.

Phantom halted in his pursuit, staring on as he watched in growing horror. The coughing fits began to spread as the black waters engulfed them all. He saw the body of the first merman disappear into the black, the ship now just as lost from sight.

"Trap!" cried one of the merwomen. Her sleek voice was rasp, as if it had been shredded by the black. She began to cough too. "Poison!"

The boy felt frozen where he floated, watching the wave of black stretch higher and lower, its fingers reaching out to him. His green eyes were wide in confusion and fear. The ships had never poisoned them before.

A tendril of the black diffused near him, and he immediately tightened up in pain and scurried back, diving low as he instinctively reached to his throat. His gills flared. It felt like Sam were pulling on them again in an attempt to hurt him. Like he could not breathe.

He coughed, desperately swimming back to the cliffs where the intelligent ones had remained. As he did so, the U.S.S. Titan gave an odd groan through the waters. There was a rumbling effect from inside its cracked hull.

A bright light suddenly exploded from within it, and the ship opened wide with a mouth of hot fire tumbling into the waters. The fire caught several of the merfolk, who screeched in pain before their cries cut off into death.

The black poison was everywhere—an impending cloud surging in. Phantom realized, as more and more cries quickly fell to silence, that nails and coils and large pieces of shrapnel were also surging through the water.

In that second, a nail drove into his outstretched hand, and he cried out.

His vision tunneled in pain as he fought to keep swimming, the webbing in his hand tearing open with a swirl of green. He began to struggle more as the currents slipped through his ruined hand.

In the mass panic, he saw his tribe drop lower, swimming deeper into the cracks between oceanic plates. He followed the crowd. But in doing so, he began to worry.

The merfolk knew the deepest parts of the ocean were beyond their reach. At a certain depth, their bodies would hurt from the pressure of the water—the most daring of their explorers had coughed up blood and nearly died—and so they lived in only a certain stratum of the ocean. Now, they were racing farther and farther down, willing to risk the internal damage in the name of survival.

Only the glow of their own bodies lit the way, with the heavy, black poison continuing to inch down. The youngest of the merfolk began to struggle, grabbing onto their stomachs, their gills flaring out in desperation for more air. Some of the older ones began to slow as well. Phantom continued onward, feeling the weight of the ocean press in on all sides. It became harder to move his gills, to keep swimming.

His sight began to blur as strange, glowing fish passed him by. A whine worked its way up to his throat as he grew fearful. He did not know this part of the ocean—it was too dark, too deep, too—

A familiar, webbed hand grabbed at his shoulder and pulled him back. The boy came face-to-face with his guardian. The waters flickered around him with a pool of green blood. Clockwork's timeless face was haggard with pain. A large, metal rod had torn through his shoulder.

"Up," Clockwork begged, voice a rasp of its usual calm. One of his gills did not function, his body starving for air.

Phantom panicked further at the sight. "Your shoulder—!"

"Swim up," he demanded. "Sky." He closed his red eyes for a moment as pain shook through him. "Go."

"Wha—?" The merboy reached out to his guardian, who was the only one of his tribe whom he loved as family. A cry of confusion and horror slipped from his lips. "No, the poison is—"

"—Not in air," Clockwork rasped. With his good arm, he raised his long fingers to the boy's cheek in a small stroke of affection. "Breathe out hard…on way up."

The tribe was scattering in a multitude of directions, some digging into the cracks of the cliffs to hide themselves. Others were actively swimming back up, unable to handle the water pressure any longer.

It hit Phantom that Clockwork was actively begging him to go above water.

"What about you?" he cried.

The older merman knew he could not make the swim up. He weakly pushed his charge away. "I will find you," he promised. "Go."

Although merfolk could not cry tears, the boy wanted nothing more than to do so. He feared his guardian was dying. "No—I'm not leaving you—!" By this point, the poison was beginning to surround them again, appearing like dark glitter against the backdrop of the black ocean.

Clockwork's face was pained. "I can…make the fall," he rasped. "Now go!" This time, he strongly pushed Phantom away. In doing so, the veins on his arm began to glow. The water around Phantom wavered, as if in the midst of an opening portal.

The next thing the merboy knew, he was higher up than where he'd been, now caught in the current of the poison. He panicked, clawing up with every fin and finger, eyes widening. He barely recalled his guardian's advice to breathe out as he surged up in the blackness. All around him, he saw flashes of limp fins, unblinking eyes.

The water was silent by now, the cries of the tribe far below him, along with the now-sunken U.S.S. Titan.

His eyes began to blur as the ocean swelled with a hint of light from the surface world. He was suffocating, running out of air. The poison had thinned in its mass diffusion, but he did not dare attempt to breathe yet, the last bubbles of his breath still streaming from him.

The instant he broke the water, his gills and human mouth flared open. He felt dizzy as his human lungs kicked in. He flailed out with his ruined hand in search of something to stabilize him.

It was then he realized various pieces of the U.S.S Titan still floated atop the water. He coughed as he reached for a floating box, pulling the upper half of his body onto it. He held on tightly as he shook like a leaf and coughed, terrified and confused.

As the adrenaline wore away, it left him with the pain of his injuries. A sound came from him, like a mournful whine. His scarred lungs squeezed as he drifted helplessly, holding onto the floating debris in the midst of poisoned waters. Sam had not made it back to shore, where humans were meant to live. Clockwork was still at the bottom of the ocean, dying if not already so. His tribe was mostly dead—some of their bodies had already floated up, and it was likely that predators or bad humans would come to the site of such death. That meant he had to move now.

His latent human lungs began to squeeze hard. He half-heartedly began to push himself away from the sight, in fear of the predators who would come to feast. But he still could not cry in his form.

And there he floated in the vast stretch of the ocean, a lone figure in the early dawn.

Sam sat in a daze in the infirmary of G.O.D's mainland headquarters on the coast of Amity Park. She had her own private room now. She was staring out the window, out at the dark ocean where the bodies of her mother and father lay—and where the U.S.S Titan now rested.

Then, she heard a knock on her door.

"Samantha Manson?" called a smooth, velvet deep voice. It was soft with concern. "My name is Vlad—I oversee this organization and wanted to speak with you. May I come in?"

She gripped a fist tighter into her borrowed blanket, not bothering to wipe away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. "No," she said. Her voice was hoarse. "No, you poisoned them. You blew up the boat. I don't want to talk to you."

There was a pause, and then a sigh. "I wish I could make this all go away for you," the man named Vlad said. His voice was still sorrowful, patient. "It's such a terrible thing, what's happened. I can't even imagine your pain."

Something about his words inspired her eyes to burn more with tears. Her hands shook. "I don't want to talk."

"I'm sure you don't. But you've ended up in quite a bit of a war zone, you see. And your parents would never forgive me if I left you alone in this painful time."

Sam blinked, her vision blurry with tears. Her breath hitched. "What do you know of my parents," she said bitterly. "They're dead."

The doorknob began to turn. Slowly, the door opened to reveal her mysterious visitor.

The girl's eyes widened with recognition. It was Vladimir Masters, an enigma with whom her parents had invested but had rarely spoken about. Vladimir was handsome up close, and his business suit suggested a lithe, powerful form beneath.

His gaze was highly intelligent as he looked her over with a bit of surprise, having expected the infamous Manson daughter to look like her parents. Instead, she had pure black hair, among other peculiar traits. He cleared his throat to hide his surprise. "Pamela," he said softly, "was a dear friend of mine. Very intuitive with stocks. And your father and I, we attended conferences back in the day. We…lost contact a while ago, but I have always thought of them fondly."

Even talk of her parents made Sam's face twist in a barely hidden sob. There was a lulling rhythm to Vlad's voice. Smooth and deep, like a powerful wave. She clung to the calm in an attempt to crush her tears. "You didn't know them," she said shakily. "Don't act like an old f-family friend."

"Oh, but I was," Vlad nodded. "It's a pity we didn't keep up. I feel a terrible sense of responsibility in all this, even if I didn't know them." He sat down in a chair on the other side of the room—far away enough to not be intrusive, but now closer to her eye-level. "The fact is, it was entirely my fault that your ship was attacked."

Her gaze tightened as she stared at him. "…What?"

The man clasped his hands together. "In my arrogance, I'd assumed Amity Park had been permanently purged of the beasts and that our technology would keep everyone safe. I should have ordered an escort for your ship, and I did not. I am truly sorry for it."

In that moment, the girl blinked away tears in confusion. "B-but they're not just beasts—you poisoned them, and now—" Her voice caught at the memory of the boy with blue eyes. Maddie and Jack's son.

For whom Maddie herself had signed the death warrant.

Vladimir tilted his head, his eyes staring knowingly into hers. "Maddie and Agent O told me you were…attached to a boy who transformed back into a human? Maddie herself was quite distraught herself over the decision to release that poison. Not that I blame her. It appears the boy may have once been her son, based off your description."

Sam wiped her nose in an unladylike fashion and looked away from Vlad, her red-rimmed eyes welling with more tears. An incredulity overcame her—which was that every single adult seemed perfectly willing to kill a boy who cried over crab cakes. "And you still wanted to kill him?" she whispered.

His eyebrows furrowed. "Not at all, Miss Manson." He leaned forward in his chair. "No—you see, we wanted to save him."

"Save him?" she repeated dumbly.

The man nodded. "Her true son died thirteen years ago in the bay. All that is left is his face."

Her voice shook. "You don't know what he acted like—how innocent he—"

"—I've spent years of my life studying them, Miss Manson," Vlad interrupted, voice still soft, like a wind against the sea. "If there were even an ounce of humanity left in that boy, then we did him a favor."

A great silence overcame the room at that, and tears slipped down her face. It began to hit her that, once again, no one understood her—and even worse, no one cared to try. "How do you know he's dead?" she whispered. "Could he survive that poison?"

The CEO pressed his lips together, then said, "You're not asking the right questions, my dear. You're obviously a bleeding heart for these merfolk, despite everything." He leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at her in contemplation. "This boy made a deep impression on you, I can see that. In your desperation to save something after losing your parents, you're clinging to his memory. That's an honorable thing. An honorable thing."

"He was still human," she whispered shakily. "I promise—he was human."

Vlad gave her a patient look. "I know you think we're terribly cruel for what we've done, and I am certain that, if I'd had your experience, I would feel a similar sense of—"

Sam interrupted. "—I should tell everyone, the whole city, what really happened. I bet they'd think you're evil too."

"Miss Manson," Vlad said gently, "if you walk out of these headquarters and spill the truth of what happened, we will have mass hysteria on our hands. There will be runs on the supermarkets, on the banks. We will fall into martial law in less than 48 hours, I guarantee it. The world is not ready for the return of these creatures. So allow me to make a deal with you."

The seventeen-year-old gave him a suspicious look as she wiped her nose. "What kind of deal?"

"A deal where we both benefit. Your entire world has changed in less than 24 hours. You're the heiress to a significant fortune with high-risk stocks. In memory of your mother and father, I could help you navigate this world of business until you turn of age." He waved his hand. "In return, all I ask is that you maintain secrecy regarding tonight's events, and that you work as an ethical control intern for G.O.D."

"Ethical…control?" she repeated hesitantly.

"Why, yes." There was something devious about him in that moment. "You say these creatures can be saved. I'll let you work with our research and development department to see if there is some kind of…cure for the beasts to control their bloodlust." The reality, of course, was that Sam would not find such a cure and would slowly come to accept the merfolk for what they truly were. "Our policy will otherwise remain to eradicate them, to avoid an infestation and more war."

Sam paused. "And if we do…find a cure?" She had not forgotten about Agent O's description of natural selection and resource competition. "Would you just let them go?"

"All things need a role," Vlad said, waving a hand. "But that is a conversation for another day, once we understand if they can be in control of themselves."

"And the boy?" she dared to ask. "Say he—or, or anyone from his tribe—survived that poison."

"He did not survive," Vlad said.

"How would you know that?"

Vlad tilted his head. "The research of Dr. Madeline Fenton and her husband. But I suppose you'll learn more about that from them. Now my dear, do we have a deal?"

"…My silence and an opportunity to work for a cure, in exchange for your help with the family business?"

"That's the one," he said pleasantly.

Sam knew that Vlad's offer to help was mostly out of self-interest for his own business, but she also knew she'd spent her whole life trying to ignore her family's business. Which meant she knew nothing about one of the final remnants of her own parents. And even if Vlad didn't believe she could find a cure, she'd give it everything she had—including even the money she might make off of Vlad's stock intelligence.

Sam hesitated for a moment, then began to nod her head. "Ok. It's a deal."

Maddie kicked off her shoes in a tired, dazed fashion. It was nearly five in the morning now, with the world still dark. Jack shut the door behind him, sighing in exhaustion as well.

"Talk about a run," he said, dropping the heavy back of experimental technology to the floor. It clattered with several metallic bangs that made Maddie turn around in fright.

"Don't do that!" she hissed. "Jazz could still be sleeping."

The man gave her a sheepish look. "Oh, I forgot."

Suddenly, a female voice echoed from the kitchen. "I'm right here! Don't worry guys, I've been up for a while." There was a strange jitter in her voice, as if to suggest she'd stayed up the whole night. "What was the emergency call for?"

The mother and father looked at each other, searching each other's eyes. Then Maddie called out distantly, "There was a ship explosion. They wanted to us to confirm it was human error and not merfolk."

"And was it? Human error, I mean?"

She looked at the worn look up on Jack's face and decided it was best to withhold the truth. "Yes."

"Oh," Jazz called out with sadness. "Well, I hope no one was hurt."

Neither Maddie nor Jack said anything after that, not necessarily wanting to explain to their sensitive, bright daughter that several people had died agonizing deaths—or that they had likely killed off a cannibalistic remnant of their own son.

The parents tiredly trudged forward out of the foyer, Jack patting her back in a silent message as he turned to go up the stairs and wash up. Maddie forced a smile on her face as she entered the kitchen, where Jazz sat at the table.

The college student had her computer, several books, and various crumpled papers in a mess around her. Three pens stuck out of her frazzled ponytail as she typed away on her laptop in a frazzled rhythm, her eyes narrowed at the screen. She was still wearing her clothes from last night.

"What's kept you up, dear?" Maddie dared to ask. "Have you eaten yet?"

Jazz looked up at her mother. "I am onto the greatest discovery ever," she said seriously. "And don't worry—I got myself some toast earlier." She lifted a half-finished plate from the other side of her computer.

The mother decided toast was not such a bad idea to distract herself. She began to move toward the bread box, trying to keep her voice merry as she pulled out the loaf of bread. "And what is this great discovery of yours?"

Jazz took a distracted bite from her now-cold toast, and then said, voice a bit muffled, "Do you think it's possible for merfolk to walk?"

Maddie nearly dropped the bread in her hands. "Excuse me?"

Jazz did not catch her mother's surprise. "Could they walk?" she asked. "Say they had some kind of underlying leg structure that was human, and their tails…shifted somehow to let them transform. With all of your autopsies, did you ever see anything like that?"

The mother remained silent for a bit, keeping her face turned away as she continued to place bread in the toaster, suddenly feeling no desire to eat. "What brought this on, dear?"

"I was curious." The daughter's tone turned with a hesitation. "In my World Literature class, we've been learning about mythological and regional legends. I started putting origin dates on a timeline, and mom—it's the weirdest thing. Every time a new merfolk myth pops up, so does a vampire one. And the original vampire stories were pretty…violent. Not just drinking blood."

"What's your point, sweetie?" Maddie began to put away the bread back into its box, a little nervous. Did Jazz already know something about what had happened on the U.S.S Titan?

Jazz set down her toast and eyed her mom. "I think vampire stories were inspired by interactions with merfolk. The dates are too close. But to result in those vampire stories, that would mean merfolk would have to walk."

Maddie leaned against the counter, mind racing. "That is…a very interesting theory," she said. "But I've never seen a merperson walk on land."

"And their bone structures?"

The mother bit her lip. There was a gnawing deep within her stomach—an ache for her baby son. "We don't understand, from an anatomical perspective, how exactly the ocean triggers the transformation of a dead human body. But we do know they have a skeletal structure infused with a type of substance, which we call ectoplasm. On an atomic level, it has different chemical properties than any other element we know of."

"So you're saying the ectoplasm is responsible for the change? Could it change them back?"

Maddie shrugged, feeling a bit cornered. "In a contained environment, a chemical change can revert back to an original state at the same time that it's still carrying through a reaction. We call this equilibrium. Theoretically, this could be the reason why merfolk exhibit human and fish structures at the same time. But…it would be a stretch to assume they had a full human form to walk in."

Jazz quieted a bit. Then she began to think harder, her eyes lifting up to her mother. "But what if they could? What if we've been wrong about everything?" Her breath hitched suddenly in awe. "Mom, what if they're walking among us right now, and we don't even know it?"

Vlad Masters shut the door to his Cadillac, then readjusted the button on his business suit. There was a shake in his right hand—barely imperceptible. The sun was beginning to rise behind him, the dark of the night bleeding into a bluish gray.

His handsome face carried a tight agony as he walked to the all-night bar before him. He scanned the area, looking for other signs of life. The site was mostly abandoned but for a singular man stumbling into a dark alley. There were no cameras.

Samantha Manson's voice echoed in his mind. "He was still human. I promise—he was still human."

Vlad began to walk toward the man, his face now in a dark twitch. "What a silly girl," he murmured. "So hopeful. So ignorant of reality."

All the talk of blood had tripped a switch in him. He was eyeing the sluggish movements of the drunk man stumbling in the alley presumably back to a slum apartment nearby. A great pull overcame his senses as he inhaled.

Suddenly, Vlad blurred into invisibility.

In less than a second, he slammed the drunkard's body against a wall, appearing as little more than a manic, dark shadow. His blue eyes bled red.

The drunk man began to cry out in bewilderment and fear, only for Vlad to smack a cold, webbed hand over his nose and mouth. His hand trembled at the feeling of the man's pumping blood, and a smile too wide for a human face split his lips.

His teeth were fangs.

"Sorry," he rasped, as if his body were no longer suited for a human voice. "It's been a long day."

And then he gave into his insatiable hunger, his fingernails breaking open into claws.

A/N: I really fell behind on this story, yikes. I'm sorry for that. I am currently back in school to pursue a master's degree, so that's why I've been terrible at updating.

I went back through this story to make sure I knew where I was at, and I realized I had an inconsistency with the name of Sam's dad, which apparently tends to waffle between Thurston and Jeremy depending on the source? So for the purpose of this story, I'm standardizing to the name Thurston, haha.

Also, nice job to everyone who had previously guessed that Vlad was one of the merfolk! And thank you again to everyone who had previously read and reviewed.

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