Chapter 32

Chapter

Thirty-Two

Hand over hand, Nireed scaled the side of The Seriphus , its engines roaring in her ears. Deepest, murkiest depths, it was so loud. The moment she got onboard she'd stuff her ears. With what, she didn't know, but something. Anything.

Just several more feet and you're over the side.

Claws dug in the hull, gouging hand holds out of slick, barnacle encrusted metal. Up, up, and up she climbed, fueled by rage, spite, and the desperate need for this all to finally be over. She was so sick of these Surface Dwellers and their nets taking whatever they wanted—her podmates, her friends, the sanctity of her own home.

Slowly, she rose to the gunwale, peering over the edge. Much of the crew appeared to be working out on deck, ten or so men with their backs turned to her, guns holstered at their hips.

She'd have to be careful.

Slinking over the side, Nireed found her footing, each movement quietly taken. The last time she'd been on a Nautic-owned fishing vessel her people had been fighting for their lives. Her side twinged at the memory; the pain of a phantom gunshot wound only just recently healed. She quickly ducked behind a deck box, seeking shelter.

It was a long shot, but she tested her siren song, a low crooning hum.

Shut off the engines. Quiet the ship.

That was the intention, but it wasn't answered.

Another glance over the deck box confirmed what she'd feared—the crew wore protective ear coverings, the noise canceling kind that silenced siren song. And, begrudgingly, the kind she needed to block out this awful engine.

Hands clasped firmly over her ears, she sank back down, giving herself a moment to breathe, to think. All this racket made it hard to do either.

She scanned her surroundings for something she could plug her ears with and spotted a light gray hoodie abandoned on top a pile of line. Snatching it, she was just about to carve it up when she thought to check the pockets. Sometimes Killian's crew carried around little orange sponges that they stuck in their ears.

To her delight, there were a couple pairs shoved inside this garment. Tearing into the plastic, she rolled the orange bits with the pads of her fingers and stuffed them inside her ears like she'd seen the crew do.

She sighed quietly to herself. Instant relief.

While the engine was still loud, and she could hear everything going on around her, it took the edge off and didn't make her feel like her ears might bleed. She could think now.

Where would they hold Lorelei and Lila?

Below deck. Yes, that seemed right.

Making sure The Seriphus crew's backs were still turned, Nireed darted across deck and down the hatch.

The first room she snuck into appeared to be the crew's sleeping quarters. It was mostly empty. There was one man snoring obnoxiously in one of the bunks, a dreadful, sawing sound that could easily rival the ship's engines.

Quietly closing the door, she moved on to check other rooms.

Supplies. Eating area. But no Lorelei or Lila.

They were on this boat somewhere. Beneath the reek of burning diesel, she was picking up faint traces of their scents. Wringing her claws, she peeked around a corner to make sure the way was clear. Two men were coming up the stairs, so she scurried back, dipping inside the room that held all the supplies.

Their voices grew louder as they entered the narrow mid-deck hallway, their thick-soled boots plodding along. She shrunk back as tight as she could, begging the Twenty-Armed Goddess that they didn't open this door. She could easily take them, that wasn't the problem.

If they found her, sounded the alarm, well, this rescue would be a whole lot easier if she didn't have thirty-odd armed men breathing down her neck. Despite their crimes against her and her people, she was trying not to hurt any of them. For the sake of peace, and not feeding assumptions about her kind, she was going to let Surface Dweller leadership handle doling out their punishment.

They passed her door, opening the one next to it, and a horrid, garbled snoring sound peeled out into the hallway. The two men laughed, then the door clicked shut. Quiet followed.

Carefully and slowly, Nireed cracked open her door, peeking out. Empty.

She hurried down the hall and to the metal-grated steps.

Fear, then nausea, clenched her belly as she descended to the bottom-most deck. A noxious fog hung in the corridor, fouling the air with the stink of fish and slow decay. Holding her breath, only to later suck in greater gulps of air, made it worse. Death thrived here. There was nothing to do but power forward.

This level was where the engine room and fish hold would be. Nireed didn't want to think about why the crew might be holding Lorelei and Lila down here.

A large metal door loomed ahead.

Inside was where they allegedly processed and packaged fish, and made some egregious, breaded atrocity called "fish sticks," getting their catch shelf-ready for Surface Dweller markets.

Nireed's hand trembled as it closed over the door handle, icy cold to the touch.

Twenty-Armed Goddess, give me strength. Whatever lay beyond, she had to keep going. For Lorelei and Lila. For the pod.

Taking a deep, punishing breath, she opened the door.

At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at.

Rows of people holding knives hovered over moving…shelves? Long, narrow tables? She wasn't sure what they were. Loud, whirring machinery that was for sure, and she was once again grateful for finding orange sponges for her ears.

The too bright florescent lights overhead and the room's oddly clean, rigid order resembled the mermaid lab, in a way. But where the lab had been designed for cold, calculated observation, its scientists dissecting her with their eyes, this place held people just as mechanical as the machines they worked alongside, taking apart creatures with their hands.

The workers wore thick rubber gloves, aprons, and some weird head covering that sort of looked like a net as they repeated the same tasks with rote efficiency. Slicing, chopping, discarding unwanted bits into troughs. She peeked into one of them—offal, body fluids, and shorn, colorful scales mixing to make a gruesome sludge.

So focused on their work, none of them noticed her as she crept over to a table filled with packaged fish. She rifled through a few of them. Diced. Chopped. Filleted cuts. Another table held canned goods, and something called "Paté."

One of the workers looked up, starting.

Pressing a clawed finger to her lips, Nireed flashed her amber eyes, a low hum forming at the back of her throat, and the individual froze, lacing the air with their fear.

These Surface Dwellers weren't wearing noise cancellation headsets.

With all the noise this machinery was making, they probably couldn't hear anything beyond this room, siren song included.

Others began to look up, too, sharing equally frightened looks.

Don't move. Don't make a sound.

No one said anything, or so much as twitched a muscle, as she sniffed the air and checked the contents of a third table. Something was off. The reek of this room was overpowering, making it hard to pick out individual scents, but there was something else here, and it wasn't a normal fish smell.

She picked up one of the finished packages, nose wrinkling at the distinctive round shape. It looked like a…

Heart.

She dropped the package, looking around the table wildly.

Heart. Liver. Brain. Tongue. Eyes.

Twenty-Armed Goddess, the eyes.

Gold. Green. Blue. Topaz.

There was a section of the room cordoned off by a large, semi-opaque sheet of plastic. She whisked it aside with a rough yank.

Rows of mermaid tails, severed at the waist, hung from meat hooks, their tailfins dragging across the floor, and scales dim and dull, washed out of their usual vibrant color. On a table off to the side was the upper half of one of her podmates, tail cleaved and gone.

Two empty sockets where her eyes had been stared back at Nireed, her hand hanging limply off the table, claws and webbing sliced away. Her flesh was being cut into and divvied up; her organs harvested.

Packaged. Labeled.

It came from low in her belly. A piercing, shattering scream.

Every worker in the room dropped to their knees, covering their ears.

Nireed upended table after table, rage and anguish her only allies as she set upon destroying this evil. An avenging maelstrom. The ocean had been pillaged, her people slain and dismembered like animals, and there would be a reckoning.

Metal screeched as she ripped the processing hold's door off its hinges and hurled it at a wall, crumpling in on itself.

Shouting above. Running footsteps. Down the stairs, then in the hall outside.

Picking up a four pound can labeled Sea Maiden Paté, Nireed threw it at the first crew member to darken the threshold, gun drawn. The can hit his head with a wet, meaty crack, and his hand jerked up, setting the gun off.