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Chapter 9
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Drowned in the Past Chapter 20
The moment she was pushed free, she turned and looked back.The human was sinking.She didn't know him. She didn't know who he was, or why he had untangled the rope, or why he spent time at this particular stretch of rocks.But something strange rose in her chest.Like pain, but not quite. It seemed familiar, but she couldn't place it.She swam to him, lifted him, and drove him upward with her tail. Her strength was considerable; his body was light enough that for a moment she felt something she couldn't name, a weight in her chest she had no words for.She pushed him to the surface and to the edge of the step, let him grab onto the rocky ledge.Then she drew back.She hovered in the water directly below the step, watching the man sprawled against it, catching his breath.His hand was bleeding. The blood ran down with the water and dripped toward her; she was close enough to see it clearly.He turned his head and looked into the water. He saw her.They looked at each other.She couldn'
Drowned in the Past Chapter 19
The caretaker came the day before he was discharged.She told him about the cost of coming ashore. Long periods away from water drain your strength and the scales can surface at any moment. Every so often, she had had to slip away to the tidal flats, put her feet in the water, and replenish her energy."Every time she said she wanted to go to the beach for a walk, she was actually going to recharge. She liked sitting on those steps because the water was right below. Having her feet in it let her hold on a little longer."The caretaker told him about the treatment plan."She stared at it for a long time back then. I think she knew even then. Then she handed it to me and said, let's follow this. I didn't understand what that meant at the time. I just did what she said."She covered her mouth and cried out loud. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I really didn't know—"Ryan raised a hand and gestured for her to stop. His arm hung in the air for a moment, then fell.The hospital
Drowned in the Past Chapter 18
The verdict came down.The assault on Vicky was confirmed. Add in obstruction of the investigation: credentials revoked, mandatory confinement to a designated area, travel restrictions, prohibited from leaving.The confinement location was thirty minutes from the tidal flats. He couldn't get there anymore.Every day he stood at the window. Outside was the sea, but he couldn't see the rocky shore.The caretaker quietly helped send candy to the tidal flats on his behalf, leaving it on the step where he used to sit, holding it down with a stone.One day she came back and said there had been a thin trail of water near the stone, like something had come up from the water, touched it, and gone back.Vicky came to find him once before they took her away.She couldn't see. She couldn't make any sound. The caretaker brought her to him, and she stood there, just stood. The pride and sharpness that used to live on her face were gone. She looked like a crumpled piece of paper.But Ryan felt nothin
Drowned in the Past Chapter 17
It didn't take long for someone to find out what he had done to Vicky.When the people from the Federal Ocean Authority arrived, he was sitting on the rocks, holding a packet of candy, still unopened.They showed him the documents. Criminal charges. Intentional assault. Causing permanent disability.He looked them over, nodded, stood, and walked with them. Before he left, he placed the packet of candy on the step and set a nearby stone over it to hold it down.Before all of this, Vicky had already had her lawyer leak the surveillance footage taken when he had treated her.In the footage, Elena lay there unconscious. The blue scale markings that covered her skin had surfaced fully in her unconscious state, vivid as if someone had drawn them onto her. That color had no business being on human skin. You could see at a glance that something was wrong.It ignited the professional community. The Federal Ocean Authority opened an additional investigation into him. Had he known? Had he been co
Drowned in the Past Chapter 16
Ryan began rewriting the treatment plan.He ran experiments, and in between, he wrote down his memories of his wife. The outside world only knew that his wife had died of illness, that this giant in the field had loved her deeply and mourned her every day after she was gone.His rooms filled up with letters he had written for Elena, along with whatever of hers he could find.The month after Elena died, her body dissolved entirely. No trace of it remained. After that, Ryan began frantically collecting anything that proved she had existed.The dress she wore on their wedding day. The swing she used to sit on. The bowl she ate from. Even the pillow she had slept on in her last days. But he could never find that familiar scent again.He went back through all the data she had left from her three months at the laboratory and analyzed everything from scratch.Her body temperature ran perpetually one degree below normal. Her skin refracted faintly blue under light sources of certain wavelength
Drowned in the Past Chapter 15
Ryan locked himself in the lab for three days and three nights without eating or drinking.The caretaker brought food. She never got through. She could only hear things being smashed inside, loud and irregular.On the third day, the door opened.He came out with deep bruising under his eyes, lips cracked, research coat sleeves rolled to the elbows. There were a few half-healed cuts on the back of his hand, untreated. He was carrying a small vial with a pale blue liquid inside, like diluted seawater.In those three days, he had read through every piece of research Vicky had ever produced, all of it, and he had taken notes. Annotations on every page. Every toxin formula broken down. Every side effect cataloged with dosage responses. On the very last page he had written one line: "This formula can be reversed, but requires deep-sea spirulina extract as a carrier." And the deep-sea spirulina extract, he had left it out.He was coming down the hall with the vial in hand when Vicky appeared.
