The Twice Lost

shrink.

When her screams started, they wouldn’t sound much like a human baby screaming, either.

“Remove the rest of the towels, please, Charles,” the woman said quietly.

He did it, tugging them free of the jerking fins and dropping them in a sodden heap to one side. Then, for the first time, he wondered why he had done it. But wasn’t it better for Snowy to have someone she loved and trusted at her side now rather than to find herself abandoned to uncaring strangers? It was only by doing exactly what they told him that he could have the opportunity to be here for her and the other larvae—just as he had to obey Secretary Moreland if he wanted to spend time with Anais. If he didn’t follow their instructions exactly he would be fired, and then what would become of Anais without him?

“Take the towel off her face, too. We need a complete record of the effects.”

Hackett removed the towel silently. He was doing it for Anais, his darling, golden Anais, so that he could stay here, so that he could continue to serve as her protector and her knight.

Snowy’s blue eyes swung wildly around the room as if she was looking for someone who might save her. Her brilliant silver tail dashed violently against the cold steel table. She screamed again and again, her racked body slamming against the restraints so hard that her stomach began to weep beads of blood around the straps. For two full minutes the humans stared mesmerized at the dying larva, their minds like sails filled by her screams.

Then Charlie Hackett felt himself breaking through entrancement as if it were some slick membrane. He groaned sharply. “It’s not working! It’s not working! Just do something for her!”

The lab-coated man looked up from his notes. “It’s hardly appropriate for you to second-guess our work. It’s a new formula, it should—”

“I’m upping her dosage,” the woman interrupted. Her voice was barely audible over that throbbing scream. Another needle drew a bright clear line across the air, straight into Snowy’s neck. The little larva was in convulsions now, and the luster dimmed on her silver scales. They had turned the color of old tin, as dry as scabs, loose-looking and ashy.

Snowy couldn’t even scream anymore now, only sigh. Charlie Hackett knew from experience what that meant: she was near the end. Her scales were flaking away, winding into a kind of silvery smoke. Her spasms ceased, her blue eyes closed, and she shuddered. She seemed surprisingly quiet all of a sudden, actually, her small body suddenly gone soft and limp. Her hands made tiny fists then opened again. She gave a long exhalation.

And then two babyish legs sagged on the gurney. Snowy lay silent, unmoving. The gray woman moved forward and rested a hand on that small pale chest, feeling for a heartbeat.

He might as well get back to the rest of the larvae, Hackett thought. It would take at least an hour of coaxing and petting before they would be calm enough to eat their dinner. And then there was Anais, who probably hadn’t heard any of the bizarre, incomprehensible news coming out of San Francisco. He wasn’t supposed to tell her anything about the outside world, of course. Talking too much was the kind of small defiance he felt ready to risk. And as his reward she would murmur to him, turn her azure eyes on his face, laugh and play and tell him her secrets.

Snowy’s corpse had a faint blue tinge and a subtle luminous quality that marked her, even in death, as having once been something more than human. Hackett ran a hand over his face and turned to leave.

A whispery moan came from the air behind him. The woman gave a sudden cry.

Charlie Hackett spun around. The moaning stopped for an instant and then came back more loudly.

There was the thump of a small foot kicking steel. Two sapphire eyes opened, and then Snowy let out the full-throated cry of a hurt human toddler. The change in her voice startled Hackett even more than the change in her body, even more than the fact that she was miraculously still alive. She suddenly sounded like any other frightened child.

The gray woman was unbuckling Snowy’s restraints with trembling hands. She scooped the howling little creature up and cradled her close against the coarse white lab coat. “Oh, you poor little thing, you poor little thing. Oh, you’re going to be fine . . .”

The drab man nodded sharply. “Mr. Hackett? Fetch us another one.”

The words jarred through Charlie Hackett; his shoulders heaved up and his voice came out as a yelp. “Excuse me?”

“We have to ascertain that this larva lived through the transition because of the new drugs. Until we can replicate our results with a second larva, there’s nothing to indicate your Snowy’s survival wasn’t just a fluke like that mermaid in San Francisco we’ve been hearing about. It might be rare, but apparently in exceptional cases mermaids do survive the transition without the benefit of medical intervention. There’s no room for doubt here. Another one, please.”

Hackett stared, outraged and breathless. Snowy bawled in the woman’s arms. “I do have other responsibilities,” he managed at last. “It’s after six, and I haven’t had a chance yet to feed the larvae their dinner, and I haven’t seen Anais in hours.”

The lab-coated man’s bland affect was punctured by sincere surprise. “Anais?”

“I’m responsible for making sure her needs are met, not just for being your errand boy! She’s been kept in solitary confinement for months now, and the potential damage to her mental health is—”

“Anais isn’t here anymore, Mr. Hackett. I assumed you’d been informed.”

“Anais isn’t . . . Of course she’s still right where I . . . She couldn’t just get up and walk.” Had his golden beauty escaped through the plumbing somehow or used some unfathomable magic to melt a tunnel to the sea? But then . . . wouldn’t she have asked him to come with her?

“Secretary Moreland ordered her prepared for transport two hours ago. I personally saw her being loaded into the special tank truck that was used to bring her here. She was on a gurney, much like—” here the drab doctor allowed his face to show just a flutter of malice—“much like this one you used to bring us Snowy. Larger, of course.”

“But didn’t she—” He couldn’t ask if she’d cried, if she’d begged to at least be allowed to say goodbye to him. “Didn’t she say anything?”

“She appeared to be heavily sedated. Presumably as a precaution against singing, although the men moving her were also wearing protective helmets.”

Sedated. His Anais drugged, unable to cry out for her one true friend, her champion. If he had only been here, he would have torn her from that gurney with his hands suddenly gleaming like gilt steel and run with her in his arms all the way to the sea. And with her by his side the cold, compounding waves would be no obstacle. But instead he’d been sent out of the way on purpose, to guarantee that no one would defend her. His rare beauty, his strange jewel . . .

“You do realize we’re at war,” the gray man said. His voice came as a terrible violation of Hackett’s thoughts. “I am not a sadist, Mr. Hackett. I don’t enjoy torturing . . . creatures of ambiguous status . . . especially when they happen to resemble human children. But changing mermaids back successfully will mean the end of the war. They’ll abandon the Twice Lost Army in droves once we can offer them a different, better life. You’d agree that that’s a noble objective, wouldn’t you?”

How stupid Moreland had been. So distracted, so unhinged by Anais’s mere presence that he hadn’t even considered what Hackett might do for love of her. But he was Anais’s one true friend, and he’d taken what precautions he could on her behalf. If anyone ever brought any accusations against her—accusations concerning the deaths of Kathleen Lambert or General Prudowski, for example—he could prove that Anais had been cruelly exploited, forced to act against her will.

“Another one, please, Mr. Hackett. Then we can all go home. Believe me, I’m every bit as tired and hungry as you are.”

Anais hadn’t wanted to do those things any more than he wanted to go pluck another sacrificial larva from the tank.

The thought consoled him as he gripped the gurney’s cold metal handle and—obediently, miserably, with all the rebellion sapped from his body—turned and rolled it out the door.

Somehow it was the squeak of the wheels that changed everything for him.

Somehow, in that moment, his own obedience became unendurable.