Ever After #7: Waves of Scales

Chapter 3.3 The Ripples

ASCEIA OPENED HER eyes and found herself in her sercean form. She was lying on the floor surrounded by seawater. It was dark and she lost her sense of direction. She can't feel the gravity and magnetic field as if she was floating in an infinite void. With her recent memories flooding in, she immediately knew she was taken---she was in the den of her enemy. She swam around, with her hands reaching everywhere to reach for the surface or anything she could hold onto. Until she bumped into a hard surface.

She laid her palm on it and it seemed like she hit a wall. She kept in touch with it and followed where it led. She reached a corner with a perfect ninety-degree angle, and next to it was another wall that stretched for meters. Seconds passed by, and she realized she was inside a box. She tried to contact her kind, especially her mother, but no one responded...no one could hear her. It was very silent and she could only hear her voice and thoughts screaming her terrible scenarios that would likely happen.

A bright light blinded her for a moment. She put her arm above her head and waited until her sight adjusted. When she lowered her arm, she found herself inside an enclosed tank with no passageway or exit. The walls and the ceiling were white, except for the floor which was laid with dark blue tiles. She looked at her stomach and she saw the scar of the arrow that once pierced her. 

She was enraged. Her heart was thumping and her breathing was heavy. Using her tail fin, she propelled and charged herself to one of the walls as fast as she could to gain momentum. She hit the wall with all of her strength, shockingly, she did no damage to it. And instead, she was blown back, feeling so stunned. This time, she screamed so loud and directed her sound waves to a specific part of the wall, but then again...nothing. As if her abilities, which she thought to be destructive, had no effect at all. At that moment, she felt powerless and afraid.

But something happened. The sound of water sucked by the drain in the corner caught her attention. She gazed at it and watched how the water whirled on it. She looked up and saw the water level decrease. A few seconds later, her head was exposed. Engulfed by air, she shrieked in pain for her metamorphosis to set in. Her skin and scales shedding off, retracting spines, and the change of breathing from her gills to nose felt like torture as if she was skinned and burned alive. 

The next thing she knew was her human body lying on the floor, catching her breath, and gaining energy. A few minutes later, she helped herself get up, and looked around, trying to find something that she could take advantage of. But there was none. She was locked inside the inescapable box, inside a facility she had no idea was located.

In the same facility, Rick Corpus, a renowned scientist, was sitting on his chair inside his office and watching the feeds from the surveillance cameras installed in the cell where Asceia was placed. Seeing her up and fine after he ordered them to flush out the water, he reached for his phone and dialed the most recent number he called. It rang for a bit before the person on the other side of the line picked it up.

"Mr. Santos."

"What's the status of the operation?"

"My plan worked. The agent carried out the mission I gave. We have now the mermaid in our facility." He smiled. "I'm watching it right now. It has proven that their regeneration is much faster when they are in their mermaid form."

"That's good to hear. How is this going to advance our research, Rick?"

"She is the key that we've been waiting for. She is the most evolved being of their kind. With her, I believe we can upgrade our forces. We can create soldiers that are strong and can heal quickly. She could give us the cure for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. But what interests me the most is her voice...she has a very powerful voice box. She already killed half of my force in days. Sound is the weapon we need in the coming wars and she just happened to have it, among other things mankind needed."

"Stop with the plans and start working, Rick. The board will be here soon and they expect to see a demonstration of what we did with their money."

"I will be there, sir. I will not fail you. I will show them what we've done with their money."

°°••°°

IN THE HANDS of the scientists and doctors, Asceia was like the most valuable resource on earth. For days, they performed tests on her. They heavily sedated her and took samples of her blood, tissues, scales, and anything they could take. They developed a collar and a gag that they use to suppress her from making any damaging sound every time they need to subject her for observation while awake. The bunker was also designed and proofed to sever her telepathic connection to her kind.

Asceia's body, in her sercean form, only rests for an hour every day to heal from the cuts made by the scientists. With that amount of time, she used it to try to break her cell and improve her telepathy. But each day was the same, her sound waves were absorbed by the container and she was still disconnected from her people. Each day she never failed to think if that was also the fate of her missing people...or much worse. She then lost track of time, she got tired of counting the days she was locked and tortured.

But her rage was like a seed planted and growing inside her, bottled up, and trying to explode. She held her emotions and never showed any signs of weakness. She stopped fighting them and just let the humans do their tests. For her, there was no point in fighting when she had no chance of succeeding, for they made sure she would never stand a chance against them. Instead, she was just waiting...for the right time to strike. After all, this was all her plan.

••°°••

IN DAVAO OCCIDENTAL, specifically in the town of Malita, Troy, and Frejean drowned themselves in finding Asceia. Every day, they spent their time tracking what happened that night, trying to pinpoint the thing they'd been missing for weeks. With the desperation of finding where they took her, Troy followed every thread of events he could pull, even if it led to a dead end and everything turned like a weave of information he couldn't disentangle.

With each day that passed, their chance of finding Asceia decreased. They were also starting to think that she couldn't be traced anymore and she was already dead somewhere with her body lying on a metal table, opened up, and no organs left. But that idea still didn't stop them from trying...because he believed that someday, they would be reunited again.

••°°••

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