The Afterlife (Siren Suicides, Book 3)

Chapter 1. Dry Lab

This room, no, this cell, is soundproof, perhaps specifically designed for locking up sirens. Yell all you want, nobody will hear. Not like I can test this theory, thanks to the gag.

I wheeze.

The floor shifts and I sway, noticing that it was gently moving all the time to a tender rocking motion, but I was too focused on the walls and the lighting to notice, mistaking it for my own dizziness. Does this mean I'm still on the boat? The word vaguely makes sense, pulled from the farthest banks of my memory and presenting me with an image of a trawler, a gigantic overturned insect gliding across the ocean's waves. Whose trawler is this and how did I get here? I can't remember.

I suck in air through my nose and cringe at the stench of fake leather. Enough diddle-daddle, let's see what's happening with my body. Breathing rapidly, I turn my attention to my fingers. They're stuck tight against my elbows in a cup hold, yet I don't feel like I'm holding them. I try to move one, then another, and can't; they all feel numb. My whole body is numb, as if it's not there. I try to lift my head and look. Tough luck, my neck muscles don't cooperate. Shifting my gaze down doesn't help either, my eyeballs burn like they're about to turn to lava and I can't see anything beyond the faint outline of my nose and jaw.

Finally, I decide to try something else. I tighten my abdomen—those muscles seem to be working better—and, with an audible grunt, I tense into a string of will and tilt my head to the left, scraping the floor with the back of it until it's as far as it will go. There, in the distance, blurry, are my feet that I can't feel. The length of my body is shrouded in the semblance of a cotton sheet, several cotton sheets, layer upon layer. It takes me another minute to tilt my head back and to the right. Same thing.

Great, Ailen Bright, you're the first siren pupa.

Off-white cotton, perhaps the same material that fills my mouth, holds me in a cocoon. Imagining who did it, how long it took them to wrap me up like this, and whether or not I'm naked underneath, makes me want to puke. Forget about the trawler, I'm an insect here, an ugly larva cleaned with ocean water, washed with shame, and rinsed and dressed in layers of gauze. I flex my hands again, finger by finger, like I'm playing a piano. Though in real life, I never got a chance to try; my father forbade me because of his hate of noise and all things musical. I could only tap on the bathroom floor while locked up, pretending I'm a teenage virtuoso, one of those prodigies you see on TV. I would tap Siren Suicides songs and sing to them quietly, afraid that he'd hear.

My father. That's it! His face was the last I saw...where? Did he put me into some kind of floating asylum?

"Let's see here," I mumble into cloth, but it comes out more like, "Uhuhuheee." I don't mind it and keep talking, to feel sane.

"My name is Ailen Bright, and I'm a sixteen year old siren." That much I remember and, in my heart, I know I'm right. "I'm a siren and that's all that matters. I have awesome—as Hunter would say—powers, and I can get myself out of this mess." Pause. "My father is a siren hunter and he wants to kill me. We were on a rowboat wh—" Hunter? What happened to him? Later. I'll think about this later.

I try to bend my right forefinger first. It won't move. Pathetic. How about middle finger? No luck. All right, if I can't move my fingers, arms, or legs, maybe I can bend using my stomach muscles? They worked well about a minute ago. I patiently wait for the boat to lurch, to coincide with my inertia, so that I can roll over.

Here it comes. The floor tilts lightly and I arch and contract like a leech pinned under a stick, gaining momentum, turning, turning, hanging on my left side in that moment of not knowing whether I will make it or not. The boat bumps on the wave and I flop face down.