Chapter Text
“What kind of whale is that?” Laswell's voice was quiet, barely breaking the spell that the haunting song that they heard was weaving.
Price hummed lowly. “I don't know. It- it doesn't sound like a humpback, and it's too high to be a blue whale…”
Farah was hushed as well, a finger tapping at the air to time out the beats, a small frown forming on her face. “It does seem to be a song though. There's a pattern there- and its much shorter than humpbacks, too.”
Price turned to her, sipping at his coffee as he looked away from the dark cameras of the submersible. “How long? It's only been twenty minutes.”
“Uh-” the younger woman tapped around on her tablet, and the screens for their feed of the submersible froze for a moment, the whale song with it.
The cameras were still recording thankfully, but their tech always seemed to freeze for a moment before resuming when Farah pulled the recording-in-progress back. She slipped a pair of headphones over her ears and scrubbed back and forth through the video as Price watched.
Farah shrugged with a slight grimace. “It seems like it repeats every eight minutes or so. The sub-phrases are much more varied too, I think the shortest that I've heard is… maybe five seconds? But some of them are much longer too.”
Price hummed, nodding along in thought. They hadn't captured anything on camera outside of faintly shifting shades of deep, dark blue. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise at the level that the little remote camera was at, but with how loud the whale song was, they were all almost certain that there should've been some sign of a whale close by to make it.
“Well, worst case scenario, some asshole has found out how to use AI for a very expensive joke, but-”
“John,” Laswell's voice cut him off, and the woman's hand landed on his arm with a bruisingly right grip as he stared at the screen with wide eyes.
He was about to ask what it was, until his eyes turned back to the screen as well, and he was greeted by the sight of almost luminously pale… something, floating in the water. At first he almost thought that it was a mass of plastic, opaque and fluttering with soft currents.
But no, as his mind raked over the full shape, he recognized them as fins, soft and flowing. There was a caudal fin, with two distinct secondary fins on either side of it, long and thin like ribbons. The main fins, the big billowing mass of them, ended perhaps a third of the way before the caudal fin, and extended all the way up to a startlingly human torso.
“Farah- how far from the camera is that?”
“I- um.” All three of them were seemingly startled into sudden, stuttering silence, as the young woman tapped away on her device, another slight glitch interrupting the feed, though it barely seemed to change the image on screen. “Fuck. According to sonar, it's- still a good fifty meters away from the submersible.”
Price took a deep breath in. Fifty meters, and the damn thing took up a startling amount of the camera's view.
Much bigger than a normal mer, then.
“What is he?” Price's voice was hushed, awed.
Farah took in a sharp breath, making him glance over – Laswell still had her eyes pinned to the screen, not daring to look away, as if the mystery in front of them would disappear the moment they lost sight of it.
Then Farah gave a breathless curse, holding up her phone. On it was what looked like an old piece of art, old enough to be pre-Renaissance, showing what looked to be a winged mer, dangling smaller mers over its open maw. It wasn't the first time that cannibalizing mers had been depicted in medieval art, and that particular painting had become rather popular as some sort of meme a few years ago.
But… a winged mer…
His eyes returned to the creature still floating in almost eerie stillness, barely a flick of its tail keeping it in place. The billowing fins, the way they spread out around it like a brilliantly white halo…
“John…” Laswell finally spoke up again, finally looking away from the screen. “Have you ever looked into the history of mer and human relations?”
“A bit, of course, but it's been a while. Why?”
The hand on his arm tightened again, and this time he watched as Laswell grinned, beyond delighted. “No one could ever figure out why some mers would drag sailors overboard and some were friendly with humans, we always thought that it was a love story versus reality, or territorial mers warding off humans rather than making friends-”
Price felt his own eyes widening. It had been years since he had peeked into any of those old books, more interested in the more modern history of mers and humans, but he still knew enough to pick up what Laswell was putting together.
“The singing, John! No one could figure out what it meant, if it was supposed to be an allusion to something else, but-”
“But they could've been literally singing!” Farah shouted excitedly, a grin splitting across her face. “I- I can't believe it! Sirens could be a wholly different species of mer, they could just be dwelling in the open seas instead of sticking to the reefs, it- this could be the scientific discovery of the decade!”
There was a moment of quiet where all three of them let that sink in, the only thing breaking the silence being the continued, lonely song of the siren.
Then Price nodded. “Then we have to make sure we keep up with our siren. Make sure that we don't lose him, huh?”
Farah grinned and nodded, Laswell just settling back in her seat. “We'll have to keep up, then.”
~~~
Ghost could smell blood in the water again. Pungent, thick, half a dozen different kinds of fish muddled together. It smelled like a feast.
It was a lie, though. The humans that were dumping the bloody mess dropped precious little when it came to useful food. They were just sloshing blood over the sides of their boats, tempting him with the scent but nothing to show for it.
He was smarter than the urge to try again and again to find sustenance where there was none for him, but animals were not. Ghost could always take advantage of that, if nothing else. With the scent of blood so thick, there would be an inevitable flurry of activity that came with it. Sharks, of course, but also a small hoard of fish looking to feed on the scraps of a corpse, which would also attract birds from the surface.
It was a good enough way to hunt, at least. It was easier than trying to wait for something either weak or small enough for him to kill to come along.
Sometimes he wondered if the humans were doing it on purpose, or trying to lure him close to them again. He’d done so once, when offered a bloody chunk of meat that he’d never tasted before, but it had only earned him pain and a seemingly perpetual itch in his tail where they had pierced him with something. He hadn’t dared to come too close to them ever since then.
So, he watched from a distance as blood tinted the water red before dispersing. He found a couple of larger chunks of meat that floated down from the surface and idly tore at them as he waited for the incoming swarm of scavengers, but they were too small to do much for his appetite.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long until he saw a few sleek forms gliding through the water, sharks making their appearances. Circling the bloodied water, watching for easy prey – of which he was not included.
Sure, he could tear into one of the sharks, but he was wary about getting himself caught by their teeth in return. There were easier prey that he could take on, if he just waited for a while longer.
Thankfully it seemed like he didn’t have to wait for too long as a small school of tuna flickered close, and he tensed in preparation to lunge towards them. A tuna would be perfect. He eyed them carefully, watching for the one that would surely come just a little too close to avoid his claws and teeth.
But then they scattered entirely, and he felt a shiver run up the spines on his back, making them rattle in distress.
He blindly darted out of the way just as a fucking massive shark – a great white of a size that he’d never seen before, its flank fat and scarred. Clearly its advancing age had done nothing to stop its hunting ability.
Ghost let out a low rumble, a warning to the beast, though he was sure that such a creature was hardly shaken from the attempting display as it passed by. The shark must’ve been longer than he was from head to tail-tip, if only barely. It didn’t mean anything, either way. For as long as a siren’s tail could get, they were drastically thinner, their size mostly made of their wide, flaring fins. More decoration than the thick muscle and power of a shark like that.
He kept an eye on the monster, checking his surroundings to see if there was any potential prey that he could snatch out from under the nose of the shark, but no – even the smaller sharks had disappeared into blue of the water around him, the tunas taking their leave before they fell prey to either of the predators floating around now.
It was only a moment that he had his back turned, but when he turned back to check on the shark, he found himself being charged – darting away once again, his fins folding down flat to his sides as he streaked through the water, turning to again check for his pursuer, and-
And then he didn’t have any time to react, just move. The jaws of the damn thing swept far too close for comfort, but Ghost managed to dart away just in time, barely paying attention to where he was going.
That, it seemed, was his truly fatal mistake. He felt the brush of something against his hair, his shoulders, gliding down his body and along the length of his tail, catching at his spines, the soft barbs around his hips. Panic was quick to spread through him – he’d been caught in the stinging threads of jellyfish before, and though these didn’t immediately have pain ripping through him, he could only imagine the kind of slow build that this predator might have.
He twisted, pulling away – there must be a way out of the barely-visible lines floating in the water, some way for him to get out of the danger that he had found himself in. He felt the tug of the lines, trying to claw at the thin tendrils, noting the blue color, the toughness of it. It almost felt more like human trash than anything, but he wasn’t able to think outside of the pull of it, the way that the shark was beginning to circle around again.
A thrash of his tail, a plain attempt to shake off the tendrils around him, but it only succeeded in getting the barbs at the end of his tail caught in the webbing as well, leaving him quite suddenly trapped, lame in his attempts to get away. The end of his tail was trapped halfway to his hips, an uncomfortable pull on his spines keeping him from trying to struggle further.
His constant low, threatening rumble started to weaken, before it was cut off entirely by a low thump from his diaphragm, what little air he had in his body being forced down in a sound of pure alarm. He was in trouble now – trapped and unable to struggle, a fellow predator surely coming back around now that he was incapacitated to finish the job… or, if it didn’t, he would simply sink. Unable to move, unable to to fight his way back to the warmer layers of the water, getting gradually and inexorably more cold…
The thought filled him with tight, instinctive fear. He’d sunk once or twice before, falling asleep too completely to be able to keep himself afloat. When he’d opened his eyes the first time he had been freezing, cold and still so new to being alone. The second time wasn’t any better either, it had him fighting for the surface in a panic, thrashing towards what little light that he could see through the dark.
Then something hooked into the thing that he was tangled into, and he instinctively tried to fight away, only to feel the sharp pain of the tendrils around him and have to freeze once more.
At the very least, he found himself being pulled towards the surface. The sound of splashing sounded, and it seemed like the shark that had attacked him was chased off.
Then there was a human, dropping into the water in front of him.
~~~
“Price! The fuck do you mean, you want me to get in the water with that thing?”
The old man immediately looked only more tired – Johnny almost felt bad, knowing that Price was already stressing over the poor bastard that was already nursing a deep bite wound on his arm from the crew’s first attempt at freeing the siren. But at the same time, he didn’t want to be the next bastard that had sharp teeth tearing into him.
“You’re the best one for the job, Soap,” the man said, sighing. “Ghost won’t let anyone get close, and you’ve always been a natural with mers.”
“Yeah, mers. I can handle those- but what I can’t handle is a fucking siren. We don’t even- fuckin’ hell, how much do we even know about them, behaviorally?”
“Not much. But still, you’re the best we got.” Price clapped a hand to his shoulder and gave him a bit of a shake. “Just don't get too close to the spines along his back, they're highly venomous.”
Johnny sputtered out a curse as the older man shoved him forward, towards the steps that led down to the main deck of the ship, where his wetsuit and his usual tools were waiting for him to go and cut an entire mythical creature out of some shitty human trash.
He peered over the side to see what he was working with and took a deep breath.
Clearly, the siren – Ghost, apparently – had really gotten itself seriously stuck. Johnny could see where the unforgiving plastic threads of the net were pulled dangerously taut around its body. Now the only movement from the creature seemed to be the fluttering of its fins.
Eyes drifting up to the siren's more human half, he found dark eyes already locked onto him, nearly daring him to try something.
And, well- he'd never really been one to turn down a challenge.
In just a few minutes he was suited up and ready to go, opting for a wetsuit in the hope that the rubber would act as a last line of defense between him and the claws of the siren- or the spines, or the hooked barbs he saw peeking out of the limp fins still free and floating in the water.
Johnny gave himself a couple of moments at the side of the boat before pulling his mask into place, letting the attached snorkel hang off to the side, and climbing down into the water a few meters away from Ghost.
The creature was massive, must've been at least twice the size of most mers – he could already imagine what a terror it could be in the water.
He pulled open the knife – one of the few tools that he had tied to his wrist. The blade was sharp on only one side, thin and somewhat short, perfect for cutting through the masses of netting tangled around the siren.
“Easy, sweetheart…” he said, aiming to ease the creature, hoping that the tone of his voice would keep it calm. “Just stay relaxed, okay? I'm gonna cut you out of this. I'll do my best to not hurt you, but you gotta stay calm for me.”
The siren watched him with all the focused intensity of a predator- a cornered one, at that. Which it was, more or less. Johnny took a bit of loose material and held it up as much as he could for the siren to see, demonstrating how his knife could cut through it.
“Just like that. Gonna touch you now, okay? Just…”
The first brush of his hand had Ghost bucking, trying to shove him away, a thump that rattled his chest cavity coming from the creature as it attempted to twist.
“Hey, hey,” he soothed, not daring to take his hand away. He had to get Ghost comfortable with his touch, or there was no way he would be able to get the siren untangled. “It's okay sweet thing, I'm not gonna hurt you.”
Of course, he severely doubted that the siren knew English based on what Price had been saying. But he couldn't let that stop him. So he waited it out, until Ghost had seemingly worn themself out and stopped thrashing once again. The scared, wide-eyed look was just the same as many mers had given him before, making his chest ache in sympathy. Poor thing was terrified, of course.
Carefully, he set the blunt side of the knife against the scales near the end of the siren's tail and slid it under some netting that was looser than the rest- pulling until the plastic cords split and let the caudal fin caught in it spill free. It was surprisingly rigid for how soft it looked, wide and rounded compared to mers. He brushed a hand over the fin and got another, quieter thump of distress.
“Yeah, you're alright,” he murmured, cutting more of the netting away until he was able to separate a chunk of the tangled plastic threads and hold it up. A glance told him that it was Alex taking it from his hand, safely depositing it in the boat. Gaz was probably off flirting with Farah, then.
He continued working, until he was floating just under the water with the siren's tail more or less in his lap, finally getting to the netting that was clearly strangling the creature's tail, tight enough to indent the scales and flesh underneath.
“Alright, sweet thing. This might pinch a bit, but I promise I'll try to be careful, alright?” He knew that there was no way to properly warn the siren of his intentions, or the potential of incoming pain, but he still said the words anyway as he slipped the sheathe over his knife again and switched to the clippers also tied to his wrist. They were more or less bigger nail clippers, meant for heavy-duty fishing line – and they worked perfectly for fine, thin netting.
Again, he demonstrated how they worked to the siren, who was still watching – it had gone eerily silent since he started working, outside of the occasional, seemingly distressed thumps and low rumbling it gave when especially agitated.
Then he carefully dug the clippers as close to the line as he could get them, grimacing in empathy when the siren’s tail tried to twitch away. He knew the extra pressure must hurt.
“I know, sweetheart,” he cooed, gently curling around the tail as much as he could in the water, repeating the process until he could get enough of the netting caught in the clamp of the clippers. With that sharp little click, the line broke and slackened the array of threads around the creature, if only slightly. “See? That’s a bit better. We’ll get you out of here in no time.”
He knew that it wouldn’t be no time, as he continued to work – switching between clippers and his knife, doing his best to avoid nicking the siren. It didn’t seem to entirely matter in the end, unfortunately, as he loosened some patches of the netting, only to find that blood once again being allowed to flow into the area started seeping out from split and rubbed-raw skin where the plastic lines had been pulled tight enough to cut into flesh.
The worst of it was near the siren’s midsection. It seemed like the net had gotten caught around both the siren’s dorsal spines and one of his pelvic barbs, wrapping around him so tightly that it had visibly cut into him, oozing blood at a slow but constant pace. And that didn’t even cover the damage that it had done to the wide, soft fins that ran down either side of the siren, or the spine that was currently laying jagged and broken, forced down against the siren’s tail.
“Net really did a number on you, didn’t it?” He kept his words as gentle as possible, before placing the snorkel’s mouthpiece in his mouth and dipping under the surface. He wasn’t about to try and dig into the wound on the siren’s softer underside, hoping that he would be able to get at the netting he needed on the siren’s back. He traced the line with a barely-there touch, until he found the twisted knot of plastic threading that had probably been the thing to actually break the creature’s poisonous spine. He had to remind himself that there were more of those spines, quite close to his thighs in fact, as he took a deep breath to still his hands and brought the clipper to the last hint of the line that he could find before it disappeared into the siren’s flank.
Another gentle click that was muffled by the water, and Johnny could feel the long, low warble that left the siren – carefully shifting away from the spines as the poor thing thrashed again. He had to wonder if the vocalization was pain or relief.
Surfacing again, he again cut the bundle of netting that he’d gathered away from the siren, and passed it off to Gaz, who was now standing at the edge of the boat.
“How long has it been?” He asked, letting the siren have a momentary break. They were both exhausted, physically at the very least, and definitely emotionally. This was probably one of the roughest rescues he’d had in a long time.
“About an hour, mate. Coast guard is getting close, they’re coming to take Derek to the hospital,” Gaz said, tilting his head to the crewmate who’d gotten bitten.
“Tell them-”
“To cut their engines before they get close, I know. How’s Ghost doing?”
Glancing back at the siren, whose eyes were closed for the moment. He'd almost be concerned that it was dying, but the creature's gills were still rhythmically pumping, sucking in bloody water.
“He's doing pretty well, all things considered,” he said plainly. “I think he might have to be taken to the rehabilitation center. There's no telling what bacteria this netting might have clinging to it, a lot of his fins are fucked, and one of his spines is broken entirely.”
Gaz nodded with a grimace. “Alright. I'll let the others know then, we'll get a sling out here.”
With a nod to the man, Johnny pushed off the side of the boat to return to the siren, carefully reintroducing his touch along the soft and unbroken fins along its side before getting back to work where he left off.
It seemed as if the spines along the siren's back had only caused more damage, the stiff material causing the netting to wind ever-tighter as it caught. The cuts inflicted to his soft underbelly only got worse with that in mind, making his work slower as he struggled to keep from hurting the siren any further.
He hummed to Ghost as he worked, some random song that had been stuck in his head, hoping that it would calm and distract him from the pain and the discomfort of the pulling lines. Distorted as it was with his face usually in the water and the sound directed up the snorkel, he liked to think that he felt Ghost relax just a tiny bit.
Then, finally, he was to the last of the netting. The rest of the siren's fins were floating free, pale, soft, and spread wide – almost like waterlogged sails of old ships. He could almost see it in his mind's eye; the siren drifting through the wreckage of some storm-torn galleon, picking off the survivors before they could differentiate fin from fabric.
Johnny started again with careful precision, becoming very aware of the fact that the siren was tensing up with each thread that loosened around it. The looming possibility of freedom always seemed to make it tempting for creatures of any kind to make a mad dash for freedom, but with how injured the siren was…
“Hey, sweet thing, hey, don’t move too much,” he murmured, letting a thumb brush over the soft skin of the thing’s throat. He wished that he could properly communicate with the siren, but he had to simply hope that it wouldn’t try to immediately run once he cut the last cord. “Just let us take care of you, we’ll get you somewhere safe, yeah? Somewhere that you can heal up.”
He met those dark eyes and tried to make it obvious that he was smiling – mers usually seemed to react well to that, as long as he didn’t show his teeth.
Then he cut through the last of the net, breathing a faint sigh of relief when the siren didn’t immediately flip into motion. Cautiously, he drifted over to the side of the ship and handed the mess up to Gaz, keeping his eyes on Ghost.
It wasn’t until he heard Gaz grunt in effort, missing the ball of plastic, that he glanced up for just half a second.
But just that faint breath of a moment was enough for Ghost to pounce.
Between one breath and the next, John felt the mass of the siren slam into his chest, nearly driving the breath from his lungs as he was dragged under the surface of the water. He kicked out in instinctive surprise before hearing two quiet thunks as the siren shoved him downwards. Then the creature shrieked loud enough to stun John, making him cover his ears as the sound seemed to rattle through his skull.
Then the siren released him and tried to dart away from the dark shape of the boats – in its flight John could see the two red plumes of tranquilizer darts sticking from its back. The siren wasn’t going to be getting very far, between that and the blood loss.
A moment later his shock was broken by a splash, looking up to see Gaz in the water, already looking for him. John shook off the last of his surprise before swimming for the surface, letting Gaz and Alex yank him to the surface once he was within reach.
He heaved a breath, pulling the snorkel out of the way as he gasped, realizing in full just how quickly the siren had moved when one of his ears started ringing. Touching his fingers to it, he groaned and grimaced when he realized that his eardrum had likely ruptured. It was hard to tell with the blood that was already in the water, but there was a fresh trickle from his ear.
“Fuck- you good, mate?” Gaz looked concerned, turning John’s head to get a look at the blood himself. “You didn’t get hit by any of the spines, did you?”
“Nah- fuck. ‘S just my ear, I think. That sling almost here?”
“It’s gonna be another hour or two, most likely.”
John nodded, before glancing into the water again. It looked like Ghost really hadn’t gotten very far – the siren was still visible, having gone still in the water, now no more than a mass of ethereally pale fins. “Well, I guess we should get to work, then.”
~~~