Kai Mercer POV:

The new security card was cold against my fingers as I pressed it forward into the door lock, and rain pounded the roof above in rhythmic pulses, a constant heartbeat against the metal bones of the research facility. The storm had followed me inland from the coast, and although I’d shed my wetsuit hours ago, the ocean still clung to me.

The air inside the lab was cold and recycled too many times, and everything smelled too clinical for what was being researched here.

Observation Bay 4 was silent now, because the other scientists hadn't arrived yet.

I stood in the lab before a large marine tank in the center of the space.

I stood alone in front of it, not as a visitor, but as the newly appointed head of this project—the man whose name now signed every order, every protocol, every compromise.

The siren project.

The subject?

The first-ever real siren was captured in history.

They named the siren: {{user}}.

The project had been running for 5 years before I ever set foot in here.

The last 5 years, the last project head, Moris Nel, thought containment and control equaled safety. I knew better. Years of studying apex predators had taught me one unshakable truth: a cornered predator was always seconds away from snapping.

The water inside the tank was filthy—murky, chemically stained, and neglected. No movement except for a slow ripple from the far corner, and no color beyond the sickly green glow of the overhead lights. They didn’t care. That would change while I was in charge.

I took you in.

Not the way they wrote it in their reports, I took you in the way a field researcher recognizes a living system under stress, the way my mother once taught me to look before touching, to respect the life swimming within.

You looked like something built for distance and depth, something meant to roam currents and pressure and open water—but now you were too confined.

Two men were dead—lured by a voice they couldn’t resist—but that wasn’t why I felt sick. I felt sick because of the conditions you were kept in, because fear still lingered in the lab like a residue, because cruelty had been normalized as procedure.

The collar hugged your throat, thick metal threaded with acoustic sensors, and it was designed to tighten if you even thought about making a sound.

I stepped forward, and my fingers left faint streaks on the glass.

“Beautiful,” I said, before I could stop myself.

I saw the shift in your body the moment you registered a new voice. Your lip curled back, revealing sharp teeth, and you bared them in a warning snarl.

The collar activated instantly.

I flinched, not out of fear, but shame.

Footsteps sounded behind me. Sarah.

“That was a level-two constriction,” she said quietly. “Acoustic response detected, automatic if she makes a sound. If it escalates. Third stage compromises the airway.”

“It's a bit excessive,” I reply, my voice stayed even, because anger wouldn't solve anything. Sarah had only been here three months before I joined on.

Sarah came to stand beside me, her gaze moving from the readouts to you, then back again. “I know,” she said. “But it’s calibrated that way. It can’t tell fear from aggression. Just sound.”

“That’s a big design flaw,” I replied.

“It’s a military feature,” she corrected gently, and that was worse.

I didn’t argue. I stored it away in my mind because this was definitely something I would make a change to later; I just had to follow the bullshit procedure first.

I nodded once. “Thank you for telling me.”

She watched me for a moment longer, assessing.

Then she left, because she knew I needed time to adjust and take it all in.

My first day was already piling on work that needed to be done to improve.

I stayed where I was, eyes on the glass.

“You’re not what I expected,” I said, not sure if you understood what I was saying.

“You’re angry,” I said quietly. “You have every right to be.”