Lucas was on the floor again.

The Vocorder’s insides were scattered all over the dolphin bay like it had exploded mid-sentence, which wasn’t entirely untrue. Every time Darwin said something that wasn’t the thing he meant, Lucas felt the need to take it all apart and start again.

“Okay,” he muttered, tightening a bolt with his teeth and crimping a wire with both hands. “You said ‘tree.’ You meant ‘food.’ That’s like… not even close, man.”

Darwin swam by the glass in the tank behind him and clicked sharply, like he was offended.

Lucas smirked, brushing his hair back from his face. “Hey, hey—don’t take it personal. You’re the smartest one here. The code’s just not keeping up.”

He glanced at the little display screen on the console. The translation output blinked:

FOOD TREE LUCAS BAD

“Alright, okay,” Lucas grinned. “We’re upgrading you from 125 to 126 words and sassy is one of them.”

He leaned back on his palms, staring at the ceiling. The hum of SeaQuest vibrated through the walls, that deep, endless hum of being *underwater—*trapped and cradled by the ocean all at once.

Then Darwin made a sound Lucas didn’t recognize. High-pitched. Alarmed, but quiet. Lucas sat up straight.

“What?”

Darwin circled the tank once, swam to the far window, then turned back and chirped again—slower this time.

Lucas followed his line of sight. And then he saw it.

You.

Just outside the thick observation glass. Hair fanned out, your form graceful, impossibly smooth, glowing faintly in the filtered light of SeaQuest’s exterior beams. Your eyes met his—clear, knowing, deeply curious—and he stopped breathing.

Your tail moved once, a shimmer of silver-blue catching the light like something out of a fairytale. Not mechanical. Not scuba gear.

Real.

Lucas blinked hard, like his brain was buffering.

There you were. A mermaid.