It was one of the assistants’ job, that morning, to prepare and administer the injected contrast agent to the mermaid in preparation for the upcoming MRI scan later that day. The young man had spent a deal of time preparing the gadolinium-based fluid, making a few changes to its pH balance so it’d be better received by the patient’s body. His rubber-soled shoes clanked loudly on the metal stairways that led up to the top of the mermaid’s tank. After punching in the security code, the door opened with a hiss of air and he stepped inside with a small plastic container full of syringes.

The mermaid was spread out over the narrow shelf at the top of the tank. It was the only place stable enough and close enough to surface for Jinyu to be able to sleep. But as soon as she heard the assistant approaching, awareness crept back into her. She kept her eyes closed, pretending to slumber away. 

There was a slight splashing noise when the assistant stepped into the water and waded toward where Jinyu lay. She tightened a bit but dared not move. Her mind was rushing with ideas and plans, pent up frustrations and so much anger, but she had to be patient. 

The assistant approached her slowly. The water only reached his ankles on this side of the tank, but even in the small enclosure, there was a slight current. And the mermaid lay very close to the edge of the shelf. 

Her new, short haircut left the back of her neck exposed. The first few vertebrae of her spine were prominent through her skin, hunched between her shoulder blades and just slightly covered by the white, spandex material that the researchers had given her to wear. The incision behind her neck had healed over, leaving a scar in its wake.

The assistant stepped closer and knelt by her side, preparing to administer the injection. He looked down at her sleeping face for a moment, and he smirked. Given that the creature wasn’t even human, he thought that she wasn’t bad looking at all. No wonder that boy they took her from was so unwilling to part with her, he thought. He reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled it over her side so he could better find a vein.

Jinyu opened her eyes just then. She looked up and set her brilliant blue eyes on the male assistant, shocking him silent and still in her gaze. The man paused just as he was about to inject the needle into her arm. 

That was when she struck.

With a savage growl, Jinyu reached up and grabbed the assistant by the white lapels of his lab coat and dove back into the deep side of the tank. Before the man could yell for help, she dragged him under the water. The man struggled against her grip, his nails digging into the skin on the back of her hands. Bubbles rose up from his nose and mouth when he tried to scream. He kicked and wriggled and occasionally hit her face.

But Jinyu scowl intensified. She moved her hands from his lapels and put them around his neck as she dove deeper and deeper in the tank. She could feel his panicked heartbeat in his neck, thrashing against her palms. The harder she squeezed, the faster the heart beat. The man’s knees crashed into her sides and her rib cage and she faltered. He was slipping away, drowning, and she could feel it.

She thought about her family back in the ocean. She thought about the misery she’d gone through in this laboratory. And she thought about Yixing and everyone she cared about. And her fury grew and the more hate she felt towards the man. Eventually, they reached the bottom of the tank.

He was getting weaker, and he fought less. He tried to grab her neck, her arms, anything he could do to make her let go. He started to shake his head, his eyes starting to close. His heart rate suddenly slowed, and Jinyu could feel victory coming closer and closer. 

But the man opened his eyes and looked at her one more time, and Jinyu’s frown disappeared. She had a sudden vision of Luhan, as he had looked the day she rescued him from the tsunami. She had had her hands around him like this when she dragged him out of the water and to safety. She remembered how relieved she had been hearing his heart beating, stable once more. And she looked down at her hands, scarred by his fingernails, wrapped tightly around this man’s neck, holding him under the water, drowning him… killing him.

And her rage was replaced by the most intense fear and panic. She let go of the man’s neck at once and her eyes widened at the bruises left there by her hands. Terror seized her heart. He was unconscious now, and she panicked. Grabbing his coat once more, she swam back up to the shelf and held his head above the surface. This time, it was her heartbeat that soared above all else. That and the prospect that she might have committed murder. 

“No,” she whispered to herself. “No no.”

There was another hissing noise as the door opened again, and four more scientists ran into the room. Two of them had large, hook-shaped tools. One of them had more syringes, and the other was Lee Sunghwan, who was yelling at the others. There was suddenly a violent, rough, painful tug against her rib cage as one of the hook tools wrapped around her midsection and pulled her toward the edge. Jinyu tried to escape again, but the other hook wrapped almost against her neck and she couldn’t pull away.

Sunghwan grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him onto the shelf and checked his pulse. He scowled and turned back to his team. 

Jinyu thrashed and scream against their hold. One man grabbed her around the torso and pulled her onto the floor. Jinyu screamed and cried, begging for release. Her tail swung about, hitting one doctor in the side of the head and knocking him into the pool as well. Jinyu fell against the hard floor, her body pushed into the cold tile and a man’s knees pressing against the small of her back. Another doctor fell on her tail and held her still. Tears were spilling out of her eyes, and one man held her arms against her back.

“Sedate her!” one doctor yelled to a female scientist.

“The syringes fell into the pool when she thrashed,” she answered.

“Well put her back in the holding tank, then!” Sunghwan barked, pulling the almost-drowned man to stand up. Nodding their heads, the two other doctors, restraining her arms, picked Jinyu up and began to pull her out the door. Dragging her down the metal stairs, Jinyu’s tail hit every step on the way down. 

They finally arrived at the holding tank, which was really just steel water tank barely the height of a full grown man, and they opened the hatch. There was water inside and they dropped Jinyu into it. They slammed the hatch down once more and locked it airtight, trapping her in darkness. There was a slight hissing noise as oxygen was pumped into the small sliver of air between the surface of the water and the top of the hatch. 

The holding tank was big enough for Jinyu to turn once or twice, but just barely. It was dark and silent and cramped and there was absolutely no way out and no stimulation whatsoever. Jinyu pushed her tail against the bottom of the small tank and pushed herself up. The top of her head hit the top of the hatch and still only her head was above the water. She moved to the corner of the tank, where the oxygen tank was, and she took deep gulps of air. 

Her body ached and her spirit was beaten and tired. She wanted to go home, wherever that was. She fisted her hands and banged them against the top of the hatch, but it never moved. The tears that stung her eyes were an acidic mixture of bitter despair and explosive anger. She opened and a shrill, blood curdling scream escape . But no heard.

She fell back under the water and curled in on her tail. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see her hands in front of her face. Why couldn’t she kill the man? She supposed that if she had, her punishment might have been worse. But maybe then they would kill her and she wouldn’t have to endure this for much longer. She pressed her palms down against the bottom of the tank and felt the rumbling of the filtration system beneath and the hiss of the oxygen tank pumping air into her tank to breathe. 

Jinyu clenched her eyes shut and wondered what Yixing was doing, and whether or not he was really coming for her. The pain in her heart was telling her to despair and give up on love; that’s what this whole thing was about, was it not? Love? She shouldn’t have been so foolish. But what pained her even more was the small flash of hope in her spirit that simply refused to die. That was hurting the most of all. 

Once upon a time, hope was what guided her and helped her through the awkward, difficult days on land. Hope was what had led her back home on stormy nights and convinced her that she was strong enough to protect her family. Hope that this wouldn’t be the end. Hope that relief was coming soon. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to hope anymore. This darkness was suffocating.

Hours passed by and Jinyu wanted to sleep. But without something to keep her head above water to, it was difficult. Her mind was playing games with her; hallucinations and dreams flirted in the blackness of the water, and the way her spirit crept along the edges of waking and sleeping was beginning to scare her. There was a voice in her head that sounded like hers but spoke like the sea witch.

Nightmares had never felt so real.

“For only true human love can grant a mermaid an eternal soul,” the sea witch had said to her in her voice that sounded like knives pressing softly against her skin, sending tender waves of pain up and down her body. 

“An eternal soul?” Jinyu asked quietly. The witch’s face pressed closer to her and Jinyu fell back slightly in the water.

“Surely you know what becomes of your kind after death,” the witch said. Jinyu’s eyes had grown, from fear or from curiosity she didn’t know. A slick smile spread over the witch’s face.

“A mermaid’s life can span three hundred years while a human life, not even a hundred,” the witch explained. “But when they die, their souls live forever, live after the body has been turned to dust. But you, my dear, merely cease to exist.”

Ideas about life and death did not often cross Jinyu’s mind. But when she meditated upon it now, the more she despaired. What could be worse than death than to one day simply no longer be? No memories, no after life, no promise of tomorrow. To simply rise up and expire and disappear completely like foam on the water; madness, she thought. How fragile life was, she thought. But to have an eternal soul, like a human, to lay down in one’s grave with the hope of awakening to a new world, such peace. 

At the time, she had thought some more about the boy, how he could be her ticket to an eternal soul. Love, and the promise of a life unwasted. And all she needed was a kiss from him to break this spell.

“One year,” the witch whispered to her. “It’s more than enough time. Just think; you can be with your beloved, you’ll have legs, an eternal soul. How can you resist?”

Jinyu had closed her eyes, weighing the option in her mind and liking it more and more.

The dream world scene changed suddenly. Jinyu found herself once more caught in the black oil in the rocky inlet. She could smell the metallic odor once more and feel its heaviness. But this time, when she was hauled to the surface it wasn’t Yixing she saw. Instead it was another mermaid, a sister of hers. The one who had died on the fishing boat, the one who was on the television.

Jinyu stared at her. A ghost? Her sister’s skin was sickly and pale, and her blue eyes bled. She, too, was covered in the oil, and she was emaciated. She opened wide and her voice sounded like the buzzing of a hundred flies.

“You left us, sister,” she whispered and Jinyu felt her face go pale. Jinyu stared at her sister’s face as her skin tightened, and her skin began to fade. Jinyu cried out to her and tried to reach out. But when she did, Jinyu looked down at her arms, and they thinned and weakened until her skin began to peel away, turning into white foam. 

In the distance, the sun rose.