Underground_A Merfolk Secret Read online

  Digging into their backgrounds had been painfully easy—even boring for the most part. Dr. Higgs had been part of many UN missions and projects, especially in Africa. He had the full protection of the United Nations, and had been quietly living in New York as a consultant for the UN’s special committee on merfolk relations.

  Which is hilarious, since there are no relations at all.

  Dr. Gaston was a different story. Up until the September morning when a merman had arrived at her ER, her life had been unexceptional from a journalist’s point of view. After that fateful moment, the inconsistencies began. And for those crumbs of maybes and what ifs, Patrick was more than willing to lose sleep.

  She’d declared both publicly and on the record that Ray had died at ORCAS despite their efforts to keep him alive. But all the reports regarding the merman’s death were classified. How he’d died, or why he’d died, or even the exact minute he’d died, were not known. Gaston would only say that it had saddened her deeply, but she wouldn’t give any technical details.

  Up to that moment in time, Patrick was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was just a doctor who’d been swept into a fairy tale with no happy ending. Good doctor all around.

  And better liar, for sure.

  The breaking point of Gwen Gaston’s story happened a few weeks later. She’d suspiciously moved from her home state of Maine to New York City and, with a little bit of digging, Patrick had found that all her legal troubles—with people threatening to sue her, harassers, the hospital administration’s various legal questions—were being handled by a subdivision of Brooks Inc.’s legal firm.

  That meant Gaston was directly involved with Julian Brooks, which made Patrick’s heart sing.

  Getting an interview with Ms. Gaston was high on his priority list, but he knew that if he went to her first, Julian Brooks would be notified instantly. It was one thing to go after Kate, hoping for a slip, but an entirely different story to start climbing the ladder that reached to the top. He had to go to the main source, to Julian Brooks himself, but he had to be smart about it. Really smart.

  Moving the files on his monitor, he opened the one about Christopher Brooks and his three brothers. No follow-ups on Christopher’s recovery had been published, mainly because the man himself hadn’t released any word on it. He’d quietly faded from the public view, and that was it. Getting his medical records would not only be illegal but next to impossible: The guy could build his own hospital and pay the entire staff without breaking a sweat. His records were double sealed and buried.

  Of course, illegal had never been a deterrent when it came to research. Christopher might be off limits, but his little brothers weren’t. School records were easy enough to hack, and he’d soon found that both Alexander and Matthew Brooks had been absent for seven weeks after Ray’s “death.” According to a couple of sources inside Brooks Inc., Julian Brooks had spent two months working from home while his son recovered from his ordeal at sea.

  So Christopher was injured during that encounter. What did you do to Ray?

  After that, things got strange. Scott Brooks, formerly Scott Hunter, had joined the Brooks family. Just like that. At a time most people would be dealing with getting through trauma, Julian had decided to add another boy to his ever-expanding family. But then again, aren’t all of them adopted? Is this how Julian deals with stressful events in his life?

  His phone rang before he could give that thought any serious consideration.

  “O’Connor speaking,” he said formally.

  “Yeah, um…I was told you were the person I should be talking to about this?” a nervous young man said on the other end of the call. Mid-twenties, educated. Definitely knowing what he was about to say could get him into a lot of trouble.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Navy…the—they have this project, sir?”

  Patrick closed all the files and opened a blank document. If this started with “the Navy,” it was likely going to end with “merfolk.” The sir gave it a significant air of authenticity.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m just the guy who typed it up, sir, but it was a list. A list of incidents dating back twenty years.”

  “Incidents?”

  “Accidents. Malfunctions. All types of ships in weird situations.”

  Patrick typed it up. “The Navy has a list of weird ship incidents?” he asked to clarify.

  “Not just weird, sir. They’re trying to pin forty incidents on merfolk hands.”

  Patrick stopped typing, his gaze cast at some point on the wall. “They want to say merfolk are dangerous.”

  “I think so, yes. Sir, I want them to be treated fairly, and I don’t know if the list is right or not. I just couldn’t keep it to myself.”

  The line went dead after that. It wasn’t his first anonymous tip, and the information was vague at best, but nothing was too small or trivial to Patrick—especially when all he had about merfolk was already vague and in small pieces scattered all over the place.

  The more time passed, the murkier everything about merfolk was going to get. He had to consider the fact that merfolk were dangerous, yes, but he knew reducing them to the others and those creatures was a sure way to get them enslaved or killed.

  The sooner he found out what had really happened to Ray, the better for all involved.

  15

  Limitations

  “And this is your diving suit,” Major White said as he handed Drake a sealed plastic box, with J.D. written on it. Drake had finished inspecting the equipment and reviewing the steps for the diving tests in the upcoming days. They would start slow, and reach the maximum depth on the fourth day.

  “It has a few modifications,” White said, as Drake opened the box.

  “How many is a few?” Drake asked, already dreading what human hands had done to a merfolk design.

  “Here,” White said, helping Drake to extend the entire black suit on a table. “On the legs, the seams will tear apart easily if you need to change from legs into a tail.”

  Drake frowned. “The seams might tear off at half the depth on their own if they’re too weak.”

  “We know, but we doubted that it would be a problem for you. If there is an actual problem with the suits, or with the other divers, this might be the only thing that will let you help them.”

  “You have a point. What else is different?”

  “The other main difference is in the back.”

  Drake flipped the suit, and lightly pressed his hand over the material. The soft, smooth surface changed to a rough net at certain parts. “The microfiber here was changed to allow you some breathing room, though we won’t know how effective it is until you try it out.”

  In his merform, Drake would breathe through gill-like openings on his back, four on each side. If he were actually doing this suit for merfolk, he would need to measure exactly where each gill was for each body, and custom make them accordingly. Whoever had come up with this design had probably thought the same thing, and had left wide openings to compensate. And the wider the space, the less resistant the suit.

  “I’ll run a test on the first dive, so we won’t have any surprises the deeper we go. Anything else I should know about?”

  “One more,” White said, and by the formal way he said it, Drake was sure he was not going to like it. “The biometrics system is…extensive.”

  The original design had taken into account a basic internal system to measure certain divers’ biometrics, like heart rate and oxygen levels. Because one of the main objectives of the suit was to dive stealthily, the suit shouldn’t be giving any kind of signals to anyone except the diver itself.

  For these tests, the suits had been upgraded with several more terminals to measure far more key points, so they would know how the pressure was affecting each diver, and how well the suit was working. The extra electrodes needed had been built into the suit, but they had become one of the weakest points of the design. The lab tests had returned
successful testing under a controlled environment, but the ocean was unforgiving to any mistakes.

  “You added more?” Drake asked, dismayed. Each new modification meant a possible new flaw.

  “You’re the first of your kind the Navy and the Pentagon can observe in real time on real conditions—willingly. They were not going to let this opportunity pass. As long as the suit works, they want every biometric they can get.”

  A few silent seconds passed as Drake waited for White to tell him this was a joke.

  It wasn’t, of course.

  “At least you’re honest about it,” Drake said at last, approving White’s sincerity. He slid a hand down the arms of the suit, feeling the tight, sleek material under his fingers. “But if my suit runs into any problems, you won’t be able to evaluate it objectively. You shouldn’t count its performance for the final results, either good or bad.”

  “We’re aware of it. The other three suits are ready to go with no modifications besides the biometrics. We will give you oxygen tanks, of course, but would you prefer them empty?”

  Drake shook his head. “I want the test to be as real as possible. If there’s a problem with the oxygen tanks’ design, I should know it. And there’s nothing like lack of oxygen to snap you into action.”

  “Indeed. The sub will follow you in all the descents,” White went on, this time talking about the unmanned research submarine the Honos had on board. It was designed for reconnaissance and sample-taking in deep locations, and although it was slow, it could easily follow the divers to their maximum depths. After all, the suits were being tried for endurance, not speed. Not yet, at least. “The driver has been instructed to follow your fellow divers, so if you need to retreat off camera to shift, you’ll have to move behind it.”

  “If there’s a reason I need to shift, I won’t really care about being recorded.” They locked eyes for a moment. “I value your men’s lives, Major. If there’s any problem at all, I will help them get out of it alive, and I sincerely hope that your superiors are not endangering them to get something out of me.”

  White smiled—a rare gesture for the serious man—and quietly said, “Right now, you’re the most valuable asset to the entire US military, Mr. Joe. No effort has been spared to ensure this mission runs smoothly and to your every need. Keeping you happy is my number one task. Trust me, no one wants to play any games that would end these exchanges.”

  The door opened unexpectedly, and a short man in a lab coat with a graying beard entered, a cup of coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other, clearly not expecting anyone to be there.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought the lab was empty, and I…” The man trailed off as he stared at Drake, as if they were old acquaintances but he couldn’t remember from where.

  Beside Drake, White regained his stony face. “Dr. Greensburg, this is Mr. Joe Drake.”

  “The—the—the—” Dr. Greensburg stuttered, his eyes going round.

  “The designer,” White said with an inflexion that made Drake cringe, and snapped Greensburg out of his paralysis.

  “The designer, yes!” the man said, leaving the cup and the sandwich on the table, and extending an eager hand to Drake. “I’m Dr. Greensburg, and I’ll be monitoring the biometrics during the testing.” Drake shook hands with him, finding a reassuring strong grip.

  “The doctor and I are the only people on board who know you’re the ‘designer’ of the suit.”

  “We were incredibly surprised that you could design something for a human body so fast,” Dr. Greensburg said, curiosity replacing the starstruck look in his eyes.

  Drake chuckled. “It’s not exactly new. We have friends we like to swim with, and the suit is a great asset for keeping them warm on deeper expeditions, or in arctic conditions. We just made some adjustments for it to be more useful for your stealthy needs.”

  “Well, I have to tell you,” the doctor went on, “we analyzed the design for three days straight, and let me just say this: The simplicity of the suit material itself is staggering. It packs so much in so little. It was like looking at steel after a century of only having concrete.”

  “Well, thank you,” Drake said, “it’s based on how our own bodies store fat. By nature’s design, we should have large pockets of fat under our skin to combat steep drops in temperature in the water. But the way our bodies arrange and store fat molecules in a compressed layer beneath our skin leaves us lean while protected. It’s actually impossible for us to gain too much fat. Our skin wouldn’t be able to stretch enough for us to gain, say, fifty pounds. It would painfully break off.”

  “The trade-off being that you can’t tolerate heat,” Greensburg said, looking intently at Drake’s face, “especially since you can’t sweat.”

  “And that we lack most kinds of body hair,” Drake added. Except for the hair on their heads, which would fall off if they were deep diving often enough that the shift between scales and skin became too much.

  “Fascinating…” Greensburg said, his hand slightly moving beside him, as if he wanted to reach out and start taking Drake’s pulse.

  “Unfortunately,” Drake said, moving back and out of reach, “the suit has its limitations. You shouldn’t exceed its capabilities. Human physiology won’t allow for anything else.”

  “Maybe that’s just a problem for human minds,” the doctor said with a smile. “Since you’re here, maybe you could try on the suit and I can calibrate the system?”

  The request was reasonable enough, even if Drake had a momentary urge to flee. You’re not a lab rat, he reminded himself, and diligently went out to change.

  * * *

  “Theoretically, they would starve faster than a human,” Dr. Greensburg was saying while Drake put on the suit in the room next door. “But we don’t know anything for real. This little exchange has yielded more information in two minutes than months of speculation down at the labs.”

  White looked at the closed door, his mind circling a completely different fact about mer-biology. He said “by nature’s design,” they should be fat as a walrus. Who designed your bodies to be so fantastically lean yet adapted to the depths, then? What games have you been playing with evolution?

  The door opened, and Drake walked out, covered from toe to neck in a skintight diver’s suit. He was working with the gloves, and his dark eyes turned to look at them, almost asking if they had been talking about him.

  “It’s been a while since I went diving in a suit,” he said, finishing with the gloves and adjusting them to his wrists. He stretched his fingers experimentally, and passed a hand over his other arm. “Your men should have tighter suits than this one.”

  “Custom made,” White said with a nod. “We didn’t have your measurements.”

  “But we’re about to remedy that,” Greensburg enthusiastically said, as he started typing on his keyboard, the twin monitors on the desk starting some fancy software White had never seen before. To his credit, Drake didn’t look ready to bolt, just a mix of uncomfortable and resigned. A minute later, the telltale beep of a heart monitor started, smooth and relaxed.

  “Forty-one beats per minute. You have an athlete’s heart, Mr. Drake,” Greensburg said, taking a closer look at the screen. Drake barely smiled; something was on his mind.

  “Is everything okay?” White asked.

  “Just thinking about the upcoming days,” Drake dismissed him. “You should call the other divers once the doctor finishes with my biometrics. The sooner we can start, the sooner we can go back to land.”

  * * *

  In his mind, Drake dubbed the three marines Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It was easy to keep them straight in his head, since each of the suits bore a different color at the collar, but not a name tag. The preliminary checks had been successful, and as the four of them entered the ocean, Drake felt his body itch. The suit felt like a personal cage, and centuries of diving made it difficult to restrain his legs from automatically shifting into a tail.

  The water felt warmer tha
n he’d been expecting, meaning they were closer to the equator than he’d been anticipating. Maybe near Florida. Or maybe I’m just imagining things. Not knowing where he was had been part of the deal, but for a man whose job was to know everything, being geographically blinded was a slow kind of torture.

  The other slow kind of torture was breathing through the regulator. Yes, he’d played human before and worn diving suits with oxygen tanks, but he’d never really played the part to this extent. It was perfectly natural for his body to close his mouth and nose and open his gills to start breathing, so the struggle to convince himself to keep in complete human form was annoying.

  “This is Dr. Greensburg doing one last radio test. Everything looks good on our side, how about yours?”

  All the divers gave the hand sign for okay, and a luminescent light shone from each suit. The deeper they went, the darker it would get, and although the military would most likely use these suits for clandestine operations, the original design included lights that aided in search and rescue missions, so they would test them with the lights on.

  A few feet below them, the small submarine’s bright lights showed the way down. It illuminated a thick, hollow rope, which housed blue white LED lights that disappeared into the depths. The rope marked the exact length they were diving to today, and as the ship crew gave the all clear, Drake started the descent with an eye on his equipment, especially the depth gauge that told him how deep they were going. It was hard for his body to register much discomfort at such shallow depths, but he had humans to mind.

  His three companions followed behind him. Between the three of them, they shared more than thirty-five years of experience, and they certainly looked comfortable as their bodies moved at a leisurely pace. As they all reached the midpoint, Drake let his gills breathe through the suit’s openings at his back.

  He was careful to shift only his gills, though a few renegade scales also went for the ride. Completely covered as he was, this was more an exercise on self-control than hiding his true identity. He took one last breath through his regulator and allowed his gills to expand, all eight of them. The microfiber allowed the bare minimum of water to enter, and Drake felt the lack of oxygen immediately.