STEPPING OUTSIDE THE room where they were held captive, Troy sighed in relief when there were no patrolling guards in the hallway. Led by the woman he barely knew, they walked the hallway silently. He was anxious, his heart was beating so loud that it was the only thing he was hearing, he also felt that something was clogging his throat that gave him a hard time breathing. He doesn’t know how long they were sneaking and trying to get out, the bunker was like a maze. Good thing they were still not caught by any of the guards.

“There are CCTV cameras everywhere.”

“Don’t worry. Michael put the feed on a loop. We’ll be safe as long as no one notices it.”

“Wait,” he said in a whisper and stopped in front of the room with a big rectangular glass window. What was inside that room caught his attention.

“Are those?” Frejean moved closer to the glass.

“Mermaids, yes. They were just transferred here from the laboratory.”

“We need to help them,” he suggested. “One of them could be Asceia. They all can help us.”

“No, we can’t. I don’t have access to this room and we can’t waste any more time.”

“Is Asceia in here?”

“Who?”

“Asceia, the mermaid who doesn’t talk. She has a destructive voice. I’m sure she is very popular here.”

“I think I know her. She came here fifteen minutes ago. She’s been prepped for another phase of testing. Apparently, she survived the testing earlier before the earthquake.”

“We need to get her.”

“She’s the most important here, Troy. She’s for sure heavily guarded.”

“She’s important to me too. I won’t leave without her.”

“Excuse me,” Frejean interrupted. “Can we please leave and discuss this somewhere hidden? We’re basically in the open and anytime, the guards could walk in.”

“The storage room,” the woman said and they rushed to the end of the hallway and went inside the small room full of cleaning tools and supplies. “We need a plan.”

“Tell us your name first and why are you doing this.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t plan for this. I’m so fucking scared right now.” She shook her trembling hands to ease her nerves.

“Tell us now.”

“I’m Cynthia Avila. Your mother and father are my colleagues. We started this Foundation that aims to protect mermaids and interact with them. We dreamed of creating a mutual relationship with them to save this planet from dying. Then Rick Corpus came into the picture. He destroyed the Foundation before we could even start it. He sees the mermaids as objects, he wanted to extract marine natural products out of them. They are apex predators that need a careful approach, but he blew that up. He...He also killed your parents. I’m sorry.”

“I know...” He knew it all along but hearing it again broke his heart. “I know they were killed by someone. I just don’t know who and why.” He sighed. “Thank you for telling me. But why? Why did you work for them, Cynthia?”

“I need to. I don’t want to die and I have a family to feed. But when I heard about you, I knew right away need to save you. I owe that to your parents.”

“That means Leyrosa was supposed to be part of the Foundation. She was close to you and you’re family,” Frejean said.

“Yes, I heard your parents talked about her as the first contact.”

“And now he took her, Asceia, and the others.” Troy massaged his forehead. “We need to free her. She’s the only one capable of stopping this.”

“I agree.” Frejean nodded..

“What are we going to do?” Cynthia asked.

“I need to see where and what room Asceia was held.”

“The Control Room is also heavily guarded and it’s too far. We won’t get there unnoticed.”

“Can you get me a computer? Maybe I can hack my way into your system and tap into the feeds.”

She stopped for a second, thinking for an answer. “I can get you to our office. But first, we need to take out the guard stationed outside and whoever’s inside the room.”

“Let’s go.”

••°°••

“YES, MR. PRESIDENT. I’m watching the news right now,” Mr. Santos answered while holding his phone to his left ear. He was in the Control Room and his eyes were fixed to the monitors filled with news from different channels.

“Tell me this is not them.”

“I’m afraid this is their attack after the tests we ran, Mr. President.”

“What tests?”

“The results were promising. We found a way to connect to all other mermaids using only five species. We can kill or control them all at once in a snap.”

“You’re too late! They already killed hundreds of Filipinos with the earthquake and tsunami! It’s a fucking chaos out there. I want this operation to focus on making these beasts dead, right now!”

“Yes, Mr. President.” He ended the call and stormed out of the Control Room. Outside, he walked the hallway with his mind occupied by his plans. He didn’t bother answering the greetings of his workers and just made his pace a lot faster.

He then reached the end of the hallway with four guards stationed near the door. One of them opened it and he went in, welcomed by several doctors and scientists working over their test subject.

“Mr. Santos,” Rick approached him, he was holding a tablet containing brain scans and the activity of the test subject.

“Where are we?”

“We’re still identifying the reason why she’s the only one who survived the test.”

“The President just called me and he’s very pissed off by their recent attack. He wants them all dead, right now. We need to use this test subject again before any other attacks could happen.”

“Are we really going to kill them, sir?”

“No, not yet. For now, you only need to control the others in the ocean, bring them all to our island where our guards can pick them up. We need more mermaids for our soldiers. The rest, we can butcher them there---”

They all stopped and silence filled the room when the lights suddenly went out.

••°°••

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