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Three weeks after Evan's arrival

Darkness. Screaming. Blood.

Giorgio woke with a sharp gasp dying on his lips, nightmarish images still filling his vision even as he registered that he was safe in his bed.

As his panicked breathing slowly returned to normal, a now–familiar wave of self–loathing crashed over him, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

He wasn't a child anymore, crying in the darkness with the spectres of his dead family hanging over him. But while his nightmares of that terrible day had faded somewhat over the years, they had never truly gone away.

Trying to calm his racing heart, Giorgio stumbled out of bed and headed to the bathroom. He leaned heavily against the sink, splashing a handful of water on his face in an attempt to calm himself down.

The cold water woke him up a bit, but not enough. Alone in his empty apartment, it was all too easy for his memories to overwhelm him and send him spiralling deeper into the darkness of his mind.

As though on autopilot, he found himself leaving his bathroom, and then his apartment, barely remembering to lock the door on his way out.

It wasn't until he descended the final set of stairs to the basement that he realised where his legs had been taking him.

Immediately, he shrank back, mentally kicking himself. Evan was surely asleep at this hour, and the last thing he needed was Giorgio scaring him half to death by making a surprise visit to his room in the middle of the night.

Rationally, Giorgio knew it would be in his and Evan's best interests for him to go back upstairs to his own room and try to get back to sleep. But somehow, he couldn't seem to convince his body to turn around and leave.

Quit being stupid. What are you so afraid of? Just turn and walk away.

Deep down, in that dark place Giorgio didn't like to look too closely into, he knew what was stopping him. Try as he might, he just couldn't bear the thought of being alone right now.

Maybe I'll just peek in on him for a few minutes and then leave.

Decision made, he placed his hand on the basement's doorknob, turning it as quietly as he could and pushing the door open.

Dim moonlight was shining in through the small basement window above Evan's tank. From the doorway of the room, Giorgio could see the mermaid curled up underwater with his eyes closed, tail slowly swishing back and forth.

Quietly entering the room, Giorgio carefully eased the door shut with a soft click.

As though alerted by the almost imperceptible sound, Evan's eyes flew open, and he swam into an upright position.

"Who's there?!"

Whoops.

"It's just me, Evan," he quickly said, not wanting to spook the mermaid further.

"Giorgio? What are you doing here at night?" Evan asked, rubbing his eyes as he turned to look at Giorgio.

"I'm sorry, I was just…" Giorgio hesitated, unsure of what to say.

Just what? Just barging in on him sleeping because you couldn't sleep?

"Hey… What's wrong?" Evan seemed to realise that Giorgio wasn't just here for a casual visit, surfacing from the water to look at the agent properly.

"It's nothing, I… I was having trouble sleeping," Giorgio said evasively. "I decided to go for a walk and ended up here without thinking. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"Bad dream?" Evan asked.

Giorgio froze. "How did you…"

"I know because you look like how I feel when I have nightmares," Evan explained. "You're trying to hide it, but I can see the haunted look in your eyes."

Letting out a weary breath, Giorgio climbed the steps of the viewing platform beside Evan's tank and took a seat, leaving himself looking slightly up at Evan's face.

"…You're right," he admitted. "I was having the same nightmare I've had for years. But… it's nothing new. Just the same old stupid dream. I should be over it by now, after all these years."

"Want to talk about it?" Evan asked. "I'm a good listener, aren't I?"

Giorgio shook his head quickly. "No, it's alright. What's the use anyway? It's just dumb. Besides, I'm supposed to be watching out for you, not the other way around."

"If it's keeping you up, then it's not dumb," Evan insisted. "Besides, you already came all the way down here to visit me. If something's troubling you, I want to hear about it. You're my friend, after all."

At this, Giorgio let out an amused laugh.

"Only three weeks and you already consider me a friend?"

Evan looked a bit hurt. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, nothing at all," Giorgio quickly assured him. "Actually, I'm touched that you feel that way. I don't exactly make friends very easily."

Evan was silent for a moment.

"…I used to be good at making friends, I think," he said softly. "Sometimes, it's hard to remember whether I'm imagining things or if they really happened, but I think there was a time before all of this that I used to like being surrounded by people."

"I can't remember their names or faces now, but I feel like I used to have a group of friends I always played with back when I was human."

"I'm sorry you lost them," Giorgio said awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.

"In a way, it's not so bad because I can't remember them properly," Evan explained. "But on the other hand, it's an ache of losing something and not being able to remember what I lost, which hurts in a different way."

"But it's not so bad now. At least I have you, right?"

"You do," Giorgio agreed. "What about the other agents who've been visiting? What do you think of them?"

"Well…" Evan thought for a bit. "Alan and Wesley seem nice enough, I think. Keith is a bit too loud for me. Robert is kinda scary, honestly. Richard seems pretty cool, but also really mysterious."

This time, Giorgio couldn't help laughing out loud.

"That sounds about right," he commented.

"Anyway, you're changing the subject again," Evan complained. "Come on, tell me what happened? I'll tell you about my nightmares if you tell me about yours."

That's right, Evan said he recognised how I looked because he feels the same way when he has nightmares.

"…Alright." Giorgio gave in. "There's not really much to tell though."

"My entire family was killed when I was a kid. It wasn't until after they died that I learned they were involved in criminal activity, and they'd been killed by rival criminals. I've had nightmares about their deaths for years; the dreams are still a frequent occurrence for me even now."

Evan looked shocked.

"I'm so sorry to hear that Giorgio," he said. "Is that what you were dreaming about tonight?"

Giorgio nodded.

"The dream changes sometimes, but it's usually variants of the same dream. I'm sleeping at night, and then the sound of screaming and gunshots wakes me. My mother runs into my room and tells me to hide in my cupboard, ordering me not to come out until she tells me to do so."

"After that, it's just more screaming and more gunshots. And then… The sickening smell of blood fills the air. It's all around me, and I can barely breathe. Then, slowly, the cupboard door opens…"

"That's when I usually wake up," he concluded. "More often than not, I wake up screaming and tangled up in my sheets."

"I usually have trouble getting back to sleep after that. Tonight, I… I just really didn't want to be alone."

"So you came here to see me," Evan said. "I'm touched, truly. We haven't known each other for that long yet, but you came down here looking for comfort anyway."

Giorgio flushed. "I mean… It's not… I didn't exactly plan on coming down here. I just wasn't thinking."

"All the same, I'm glad you trust me," Evan told him, giving him that small smile he so rarely wore.

Before Giorgio could reply, there was a loud crackling sound from outside, followed by the booming rumble of thunder.

In an instant, Evan's relaxed demeanour vanished and he flinched hard, clapping his hands over his ears and curling up into a ball as his tail swished agitatedly and wrapped itself around him.

"Hey, it's okay. It's just a thunderstorm," Giorgio quickly said. Getting to his feet, he slowly reached out and placed a hand against Evan's back.

Evan flinched reflexively at the touch, relaxing slightly as he realised Giorgio wasn't trying to hurt him.

"Come on Evan, look at me," Giorgio coaxed. He slowly moved his hand to Evan's hair, running his hand through the long blonde locks in a gentle, soothing motion.

As Giorgio gently stroked Evan's hair, the mermaid's trembling subsided somewhat and he lowered his hands. He still looked spooked and on edge, but he was at least calmer than he'd been at first.

"Sorry, I…"

"No need to apologise," Giorgio assured him. "Not a fan of storms? I guess this is the first one we've had since you moved here."

"A storm…" Evan's pale blue eyes were unfocused, as though he was gazing into the distant past. "So that's what that is. We never got to see the outside down in that lab, and the last time I experienced a storm before that…"

He trailed off, scrubbing a shaking hand across his face.

"What happened?" Giorgio asked gently. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"…I haven't thought about this in a long time," Evan admitted. "The last storm I experienced was the day I was taken."

Giorgio looked at him curiously. "Taken? You mean…"

"The day Dr Anderson abducted me, yes," Evan said. He took a deep breath, as though steeling himself for something.

"Do you… Want to hear about it?"

"Only if you want to tell me," Giorgio replied firmly. "If you're not ready to talk, I won't push you."

"No… I want to tell you. Right now, with this storm… Those memories are too loud for my mind right now."

"Alright then," Giorgio agreed. He drew his hand back, patting Evan on the shoulder for a moment before resuming his seat on the platform. "Talk to me."

"It started years and years ago, when I was still a kid…"

If I'm not wrong, I was from France. I know that I knew how to speak French very well once upon a time, but not anymore; I haven't used it in years. I knew a bit of English back then, but most of it was learned later, from the scientists in the lab after my abduction.

I can't remember my family's faces, but I know that I had a father and a mother, and that I came from a family of fishermen. No siblings, at least not that I remember.

From a young age, I used to occasionally accompany my father on his fishing trips. Unlike fishing as a hobby, being a fisherman isn't a relaxing job. You have to be out in all sorts of weather, even storms, and you have to catch tons and tons of fish, otherwise you won't make money that week.

It happened during one such trip. A fierce storm picked up, and our boat was being tossed back and forth amidst the waves, as though it was in danger of capsizing any moment.

A huge wave struck our boat, and I ended up getting swept overboard. I was a good swimmer even at that age, but under those conditions? It was all I could do to keep afloat, let alone attempt to swim back towards my father's boat.

It was then that I was scooped up by a passing boat. But, as it turned out, they hadn't picked me up to rescue me. The person who pulled me out of the water was one of Dr Anderson's assistants; perhaps Dr Anderson herself was on the boat too, though I don't remember seeing her. Instead of returning me to my father, they kidnapped me and took me back to their lab as a test subject.

For a while, it wasn't so bad. I was kept locked up in a cell, but they left me alone at first. I was fed some sort of watery gruel and stale bread through a flap in the door. There was no mattress or even blanket, so I slept curled up on the floor, shivering in the cold. Don't ask about how I used the washroom. All I'm saying is it involved a bucket.

Occasionally, I'd be dragged into a sterile–looking lab to have my blood drawn, or be poked at and examined by scientists wielding all sorts of sharp, painful–looking things. Once they were done, they shoved me back in.

I have no idea how long I spent in that cell; that period could have lasted for weeks, or maybe months, or even years.

I cried a lot in the beginning, of course. I was scared, and I wanted to go home. I quickly learned not to cry, or at least to be quiet about it if I did. The scientists didn't like it, you see. If they saw me crying, they'd zap me with a cattle prod and shock me until I screamed and passed out.

After a while, the misery just… became a part of me. My tears dried up, and I couldn't cry anymore. Mostly, I was just bored, miserable and lonely. I spent all my time waiting. Waiting to be dragged to the lab, waiting to be brought back to my cell. That was all there was to my world.

And then, one night, I heard something coming from the cell next door. It had been empty since I arrived, up until then. I heard someone crying, much like I'd used to when I was first captured.

There was a small vent that connected our cells. I got up, overturned my (thankfully empty) wastebucket, and stood on it to reach the vent and look through the vent cover.

Thinking back, it must have been at least several months since my capture at that point, because I'd been too short to reach the vent even standing on the bucket when I first arrived. I know because I'd tried, hoping I could escape through the vents just like in the movies.

There was a girl in the cell beside me with long, red hair. She looked to be about my age and was crying her eyes out, looking frightened and alone.

"Be quiet," I hissed in English. "If they hear you crying, they'll come in here and punish you."

The girl looked up with a start.

"Who's there?" She whispered.

"Over here, at the vent." I waved to her from my vantage point.

There was a scraping sound, and then the girl's face was on the other side of the vent, looking at me with bright green eyes.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"My name is… Evan," I introduced myself. It took me a few moments to remember my name; nobody had called me that in a while at this point.

"I'm Casey," she replied quietly. "Do you know what they're doing to us here?"

"I have no idea," I admitted. "They've mostly been leaving us here to rot. Occasionally, they'll drag you to the lab to run tests before throwing you back in your cell."

"I want to go home… I want my Mum and Dad." Casey hiccupped wetly, scrubbing at her tear–stained face.

"I miss my home too… But you can't let the scientists see you crying. If they catch you, they have these huge cattle prods they like to shock you with."

"That's horrible!" She clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked. "Has that happened to you?"

"How do you think I know about it?" I retorted. "I've been alone in this cell for ages. In the beginning, they kept zapping me when I cried, until eventually I stopped crying entirely."

"I see. Thank you for warning me," Casey said shyly. "Want to be friends?"

I thought for a moment. The part of me that had begun to break under the scientists' torture wanted to refuse, convinced that there was no point having friends as a prisoner.

But the other part of me, the part that still hoped I would someday be able to go home to my parents, was crying out with loneliness from my solitary confinement.

"Alright, let's be friends," I agreed.

Casey beamed at me.

"Let's make a promise, Evan," she suddenly said. "Someday, we're going to get out of here together and find our families."

Somehow, when she said that, it didn't seem like such an impossible fantasy after all.

The next period of my captivity was a bright spot in my time there. Casey and I became close friends during that period, and every night, we would talk through the vents and keep each other company. I said earlier that I learned most of my English from the scientists barking orders at me. Well, the rest was learned through my conversations with Casey.

We often fantasised about finding a way to escape and going home to our families. Both of us knew how unlikely it was, but it was those fantasies that kept our hope alive and kept us going.

I still don't know how we got away with it for all that time. Perhaps the scientists didn't notice, or maybe they just didn't care. What could two kids stuck in adjacent cells do, after all? They were busy with whatever horrific experiments they were conducting; as long as we weren't actually escaping, they probably didn't care enough to pay attention to us.

Time continued to drag on. My short hair grew long, and Casey's already long hair grew even longer. We weren't kids anymore either, having begun growing into teenagers.

And then one day, I woke up and greeted Casey through the vent to find that she was gone.

At first, I wasn't that worried. I thought that perhaps she had been taken to the labs and would be back later.

But then, after night fell, she still wasn't back. Nor did she return the next morning, or the morning after that.

I was alone again, but not for long.

After a few weeks of fretting and worrying about Casey, I was awakened early in the morning by my cell door being thrown open.

The scientists had never come to fetch me this early, and I was suddenly nervous. They marched me out of the cell block without a word; by now, I knew better than to try and fight back, unless I wanted bruises all over.

This time, instead of taking me to the lab where they usually ran their tests on me, they dragged me down another flight of stairs, deeper into the building.

When I got there, I was met by a woman I'd never seen before, but who I was instantly unsettled by. She introduced herself as Dr Sophie Anderson and told me that I'd been blessed with the chance to receive a great gift, and to become far better than a mere human.

I opened my mouth to shout, to scream, something, but the scientists were quicker. As Dr Anderson gave them orders, they gagged me and strapped me to an operating table before I could even attempt to struggle.

After that, one of them stuck a needle into me.

I can't even begin to tell you how it felt to be injected with whatever they gave me. My whole world was nothing but an all–consuming, burning pain that seemed to rip my body apart from within. I screamed my throat raw from behind the gag until my voice gave out, and yet the pain still wouldn't stop. Finally, mercifully, I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was underwater.

Naturally, I freaked out. I instinctively tried to draw a breath and would have swallowed a lungful of water, only to find that I couldn't breathe in at all. Panicking, I tried to thrash my way to the surface, but my legs didn't seem to be working properly.

It took me a few moments to realise I wasn't suffocating at all. There was a peculiar sensation on both sides of my neck. They felt like cuts of some sort, except that they didn't hurt, and water was going in and out of them. I didn't realise it at the time, but these were the gill slits I had developed through my transformation, keeping me breathing underwater.

I finally had the sense to look down and found that my legs were gone, replaced with what you would call a mermaid's tail.

Naturally, I was even more freaked out by that. I tried to convince myself I had to be dreaming, but to no avail.

Then, a familiar and unwelcome voice spoke from somewhere near me.

"Well, my little sea angel," said Dr Anderson. "How do you like your new form? I'm expecting great things from you."

She smirked wickedly at me, then walked away.

In that moment, I was too frightened to do much more than float and breathe. I don't know how long I was in there just panicking.

When I finally managed to calm down enough to look at my surroundings, I found I was in a small, grimy tank of water. The room my tank was in housed countless other tanks, each with beings that looked like me. Most of them were unconscious, at least to my eyes.

The tank right next to me housed a mermaid with a familiar mane of long, red hair.

"Casey!" I called out to her in alarm, trying to get her attention.

That was my mistake.

She turned to look at me, and I shrank back in terror. There was nothing human left in her eyes, only madness.

She lunged halfway out of her tank, screeching and slashing at me as she bared her teeth savagely, full of primal fury. I screamed in terror, dodging as far back into my own tank as I could.

Alerted by the screeching and screaming, Dr Anderson and a few of her lab assistants re–entered the room. Standing some distance from the tanks, they reached out with that wicked cattle prod and shocked Casey until she shrieked and went limp, the fight taken out of her.

As they turned their attention to me, I threw my hands up over my face in a desperate attempt to protect myself.

"Please, don't!" I cried.

To my astonishment, they stopped.

"This one can still speak," Dr Anderson said, examining me with a hungry look of wonder in her eyes. "My clever, precious sea angel. You truly are a unique specimen, aren't you?"

The scientists began to leave, but not before Dr Anderson looked back at me one last time. "I'll be seeing you soon, my darling. We're going to change the world together."

They left the room, and I was alone.

I turned to look at Casey's tank, at the animal she had become, and I realised my friend was gone.

I truly was alone.

I would soon learn that speaking in the presence of the scientists had been a massive mistake.

Dr Anderson took a particular interest in me, frequently taking me back to the labs to experiment further on me. They always brought the cattle prod with them when they came to fetch me, and I went quietly without fighting back, knowing that they wouldn't hesitate to shock me if I tried to attack them.

They also had some sort of paralytic that prevented my upper half from moving while allowing my tail to keep moving, keeping me upright in the water and preventing me from attacking them while they ran tests on me.

The scientists didn't use that initial painful injection on me again, but I was injected with other substances countless times, had blood drawn from me on a regular basis, and was frequently sliced into with scalpels and other wicked tools.

For quite a while, I wasn't fed anymore. I wasn't hungry either though; something about the transformation seemed to have changed the way my appetite worked.

The first time they fed me, it was a shock.

Dr Anderson came to see me personally while I was in my tank. She was carrying a small lunchbox with her and smiling, which was never a good sign.

"My little sea angel," she said. I have no idea why she kept calling me that, but it seemed to be some sick term of endearment on her part. "Are you hungry? I've brought you some food."

I had, in fact, been starting to get hungry over the past few days. But I wasn't going to tell her that. Or anything else, for that matter. I hadn't spoken a word since the day I'd been transformed into a monster.

Humming merrily, Dr Anderson opened the lunchbox and retrieved what appeared to be an odd–looking piece of meat. It didn't look like any meat I'd ever seen before, and it certainly didn't look appetising at all. But I knew that refusing to eat wouldn't help. Who knew when they would next feed me, if at all, if I decided to try ignoring the food?

At this point, Dr Anderson picked up an object I'd assumed to be some sort of a long stick from somewhere nearby. Looking closer, I realised it was a fishing rod. She stuck the piece of meat onto the hook and cast the line into my tank.

I have to admit, that was rather clever of her. If she'd tried to get close to the tank to feed me, I'd probably have attacked her immediately.

"Eat up, my darling. Eat up and grow strong!"

I wasn't quite stupid enough to bite into a fishing hook, so I carefully pried the meat off it with my hands. Seeing this, Dr Anderson laughed.

"Clever boy. You're a smart one, aren't you?"

Forcing myself to ignore her, I looked at the meat again. Something about it made me both hungry and squeamish at the same time. Closing my eyes, I gathered up my courage and took a bite.

The part of me that was still human was repulsed by the taste… but in an instant, that part was overridden by the rest of my senses. It was the sweetest, most delicious thing I'd ever tasted in my life. In that brief moment, I felt as though I'd do anything to get another taste of that meat again.

Laughing with delight, Dr Anderson reeled the rod back in. "Good boy. You're going to be absolutely perfect."

As she left, I felt as though I'd just done something very wrong. Why else would she have been so pleased?

My life soon settled into a new routine of sorts. Spend time at the lab, get hungry eventually after several months, get fed via a fishing pole. Lather, rinse, repeat.

They always seemed to know exactly when I was getting hungry and fed me shortly afterwards. Always the same strange, perfect, delicious meat. After that, I was full for months.

The scientists had moved Casey's tank elsewhere after our altercation, and I hadn't seen her once since then. I had more sense than to try to make contact with any of my fellow mermaid captives after the incident with Casey, and so I simply kept quiet and kept to myself, getting used to my body and learning to swim with it.

Then one day, everything changed again.

I was pulled out of my tank by a group of scientists as usual. But this time, instead of taking me to the lab, they took me down to a larger room with a massive tank in it.

The last time I'd experienced a radical change in environment, I was turned into this monster. I was terrified of what would come next, and yet I had no way out. I was also hungry; I had been hungry for a few days, but no food had come yet.

They put me into the huge tank. From somewhere else in the room, I could hear the crackling of a cattle prod and shrieking. Then, another group of scientists came into view, depositing a very familiar mermaid into the tank I was in, separated only by a sheet of plexiglass down the centre of the tank.

I nearly called out Casey's name, but remembering how she'd reacted last time and not wanting to break the vow of silence I'd imposed on myself, I stopped myself at the last moment.

"Well now, my darlings." Dr Anderson had entered the room at this point. "A bit of incentive for you first before we start."

She tossed two pieces of meat into the tank, one into each side. Casey lunged out of the water and snapped it up with her teeth before it could hit the water. I barely restrained myself from doing the same; instead, I caught it with my hands and bit into it, finishing it within seconds.

"Now, for something more exciting." She held up another piece of meat. "I have a special second helping here for whoever performs better in this bout. Do your best, my darlings."

For a moment, I didn't understand. What was she planning?

Then, a mechanism in the ceiling pulled the plexiglass divider up from its place in the tank, removing it entirely.

I had a split second to realise what was coming before it happened.

Casey lunged, shrieking and snarling.

"Casey, stop! It's me! Don't do this!" I shouted at her. In my heart, I knew that the mermaid in front of me wasn't my friend anymore, but all the same, I didn't want to fight back and hurt her.

"What are you waiting for, boy?" Dr Anderson shouted at me. "Let her have it!"

I had a moment to make my decision. Fight back and injure Casey? Or try to defend myself until it was over?

You might notice my nails don't look like the other mermaids' nails. A quirk of my transformation, perhaps. My nails certainly weren't sharp enough to be used as weapons. All I had was my shark–like teeth… if I could bear to attack my former friend as though I was a savage animal, biting at her and tearing her flesh.

In that moment of hesitation, Casey scored a deep slash across my face with her razor–sharp nails, tearing a deep gouge into my left cheek.

I howled, throwing my hands up over my face to protect myself and trying to swim backwards as far as I could. But this time, nobody was stepping in to save me, and there was nowhere left to run.

I backed into the corner of the tank as Casey slashed at me, ripping my hands and my left arm to shreds. I was screaming, or trying to at least; apparently, I couldn't talk underwater, for the same reason that I couldn't breathe through my nose — so I wouldn't drown myself trying.

The agony continued for what felt like forever, my silent screams rumbling through my throat all the while, until finally I heard the familiar crackling of a cattle prod and a shriek. My body arced in agony as the electric charge jolted through the water into me as well, and then there was a weight being pulled off me and someone shouting angrily.

"Pathetic! You fool! After all the time and effort I invested into you, and this is what I get?" Dr Anderson gestured angrily at me. "Take him back to his tank. From now on, he gets his food from Lot B until I figure out what to do with him."

As the scientists dragged my battered and bruised body out of the room, I glanced back to see Casey snapping up Dr Anderson's spare meat with her teeth again.

After that, there's not much more to tell. I have no idea how long ago that was. All I can tell you is that I was still dragged to the lab for testing several times, but Dr Anderson never came to visit me again, for which I'm very glad.

Whatever the "Lot B" she mentioned was, the food from there tasted far less palatable to me. There was a grimy, stale quality to it, and while I wasn't exactly left hungry after being fed, I never quite felt full either.

And then, you arrived at the facility. And the rest is history.

As Evan finished his story, Giorgio was silent.

"…So that's how you got your scars," he finally said.

"Yes. And I'm proud of them," Evan said fiercely. "They wanted me to be an animal. I chose not to lower myself to that level, even if it ended up getting me maimed as a result."

"It's also why I was afraid to speak when you first found me. The scientists took an interest in me after they discovered I could still speak and think. At that point, the only humans I'd seen for years were the ones who kept hurting me. I was afraid that if you knew I could speak, you'd want to do bad things to me too."

"You know now that I wouldn't let anyone do that to you, right?" Giorgio asked.

"I trust you," Evan agreed. "I didn't know you then, but now that I do, I trust you to keep me safe."

"Thank you." Giorgio gave him a small smile. "I'm sorry about your friend."

In his mind, he was trying to remember if any of the mermaids he'd euthanised in the lab had long red hair.

"At least she's at peace now," Evan said quietly. "I know Casey would never have wanted to be that sort of monster. Thank you for putting her out of her misery."

I guess she was one of them then. Sorry Evan.

"Evan, would you be alright if I told our scientists some of the stuff you told me?" Giorgio asked. "I'll keep the personal stuff out of it, but some of the stuff you mentioned might help us to make things easier for you."

"Well…" Evan hesitated, looking uncomfortable.

"I know you don't like scientists, but I can vouch for our scientists that they're not like Dr Anderson and her cronies," Giorgio promised. "I'll stay in the room with you when they're with you, if that makes you feel better."

"But… Don't you have your own work to do? You can't always be here with me, right?" Evan asked worriedly.

"That's true," Giorgio admitted. "But at least at first, I'll stay with you during check–ups until you feel more comfortable around the scientists and doctors. Would that help?"

Evan took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and nodded. "Alright. I trust you, Giorgio."

"Thank you, Evan." Giorgio let out a relieved sigh. "I promise, we just want to do what we can to help you."

Outside, the storm raged on. Evan shivered a bit.

"Could you… Stay here for a bit longer? Just until the storm is over."

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise," Giorgio replied. Settling into his seat on the viewing platform, he pressed one hand against the glass of Evan's tank, smiling a bit as Evan placed his own palm against the same spot from the other side of the glass.

Burnt fragment of Dr Sophie Anderson's private research notes

Test Subject No. 125

…found a drowning boy… (text illegible)

…son of a local fisherman… (text illegible)

…gift from the ocean… (text illegible)

… a special sea angel, to lead me to success.

(Remainder of page missing)