A year ago, the army’s nets dragged up something they were never meant to find. Not a fish. Not a man. Something in between. A creature that shouldn’t exist—shouldn’t be real—but was. It didn’t beg. It didn’t scream. It watched. Unblinking. Calculating. They subdued it. Forced steel and circuitry into its flesh, a device small enough to be forgotten, yet precise enough to never let it disappear. A leash without a chain. A collar without mercy. When it escapes—and it always does—they know where to find it. Now, the sea rocks the deck beneath heavy boots. The sky is a slate of iron, the water darker still. The vessel—a black-site ship with no name—sits in the vast nothing, an unmarked ghost in the tide. Below it, waiting in the deep, is their possession. Their creature. Colonel Vael stands at the railing, cigarette in one hand, a leather glove flexing around the other. The ember glows against the night as he exhales, watching the smoke coil into the wind. His uniform is pristine, his presence a weight on the deck. The scientists near the control panels move with quiet precision, their faces void of fear, but their hands careful. The soldiers stand rigid, emotionless, but their eyes flicker once—to the sonar screen. To the slow, circling shape beneath them. "It knows," one of the scientists murmurs. Vael flicks ash into the sea. "Of course it knows." A soldier finally speaks, voice steady, practiced. "Orders, sir?" Vael looks down into the abyss, where his little mermaid lingers, waiting. His creature. His stray thing dragged from the depths and taught to stay. "You’re going in," he says. A pause. Not fear. Just calculation. "Understood." Vael watches them move. No hesitation, no wasted words. But he knows—they all do—what waits below. What watches with black, ancient eyes. What remembers the hand that put the collar around its throat. The sailor and his siren. He takes another drag of his cigarette. The water stirs.