Kara’s eyes widened in surprise and it was a moment before she managed to say, “Umm… no offense, but you don’t exactly look like a ‘Jon’ at the moment. Unless that’s some sort of Asian girl’s name?”

“None taken, and no, it’s not. I’m only half Chinese and I didn’t exactly look like this before the treatment, or at least I don’t think so. I was a lot paler for one thing, and one hundred percent less… female. I don’t still have a guy face on this body, do I? Because I think I’ve about maxed out my allotted level of weird shit for the day,” I countered while trying to ignore my mixed feelings on my current situation.

On one hand, I felt healthier than ever but on the other hand, it seemed that I was a girl and a mythical creature now. What was really throwing me for a loop though was that the girl part of that equation didn’t bother me near as much as I felt that it should have. My crack about having my old face on this body was more upsetting for some reason. It was actually causing my old friend, Anxiety, to make its presence known again as a whirlwind built up in my chest. Why did that random thought upset me so much?

Okay sure, I was no Mr. Universe before and I wasn’t near as interested in guns and explosions as Maddie was but I was born a guy so I thought that this whole situation should be upsetting to me, not just bits and pieces. The tail and gills and stuff were freaking me out so why wasn’t the rest of it? Instead, there was that little simmering feeling of happiness inside me and my heart fluttered whenever I looked down at myself or my long hair and ignored the fishy parts. It wasn’t bad or nervous heart flutters either, I’ve had those before, these felt…good? At least it had been good until I freaked myself out with my random sarcastic comment.

I was drawn out of my near existential crisis as Kara said, “No, you’re like, really pretty. Gorgeous, in fact. And your voice… wow. I’m not sure if any of that will make you feel better or worse though. If it’s any consolation, I think that Jenny is the only one who looks anything like her old self, though she looks a little more androgynous. I almost didn’t recognize her with the green hair and eyes though, and she didn’t believe that I was her sister until I convinced her. What treatment?”

I shrugged my shoulders and tried not to let the odd shifting of my chest, or the strange bubbling happiness that her confirmation that I was pretty caused, distract me from answering her. “Uh… thanks? I was dying from Leukemia and some lady from the ‘Pierce Foundation’ offered me a chance at an experimental Cancer treatment. If the way I’m feeling is any indication it looks like I’m cured, now I just need a cure for ‘Mermaid’ and I’ll be set.”

“Pierce Foundation? As in Edward Pierce?” she asked with a scowl.

“I think so,” I replied with another shrug. “They weren’t exactly forthcoming with the details, and they seemed awfully concerned about whether I had any next of kin. Call me suspicious but I’m starting to think that there might be something fishy about the whole deal, like maybe it was a red herring and they were working on something else entirely. And I was desperate enough to take the bait hook, line, and sinker. On the upside, I never knew anything about my bio-dad before, he was just some white dude my mom dated. Now I’m pretty sure that I’m half Chinese and half Finnish.”

Kara grimaced, though her pretty face made it seem more like an adorable pout. “Are you kidding me? Fish puns at a time like this?” I could see Jenny nearly cracking a smile from where she sat watching us though.

“This is the perfect time for fish puns! Can’t you sea that?!” I countered indignantly. “If I tried to pony up the seahorse puns, I’d just make an ass of myself. If you really want me to stop though, I’ll clam up. I’m beginning to flounder anyway, and the sole porpoise was to lighten this depressing atmosphere.”

“Fuck, you’re weird,” Kara muttered and nearly smiled, damn did I want to see her smile. Jenny chortled though, causing a stream of bubbles to emerge from her mouth. The younger sister seemed to figure that I was safe and awkwardly pulled herself toward us along the floor of the pool. I guess that I wasn’t the only one having trouble controlling my new appendage.

“Jenny laughed! I’m off the hook!” I exclaimed triumphantly. As a result, I finally got the ghost of a smile from Kara. Even that small smile lit up her face enough to make my heart flutter. It was too bad that she probably wouldn’t be interested in me like this.

“How can you be so annoyingly upbeat at a time like this?” Kara asked with a sigh as her smile faded.

“I have a big sister, I’m used to suffering,” I deadpanned before grinning as I offered Jenny a high five. Jenny seemed shy but she was a good kid, she didn’t leave me hanging and even returned my grin with a hesitant one of her own. She was understandably scared but we all needed to get past that so we could get through this, thus why I was trying to lighten the mood.

“We’ve been experimented on, we aren’t even human anymore, we’re in a pool god-knows-where, and you’re a girl, Jon!” Kara snapped in frustration. “Who knows what that asshole Pierce has in store for us next!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” I said wryly as I looked down at myself again. Once again I felt that strange contented euphoria as I looked at my human parts, even her calling me a girl didn’t bother me for some reason, it almost felt right. It actually hurt though when she stressed my name afterward. I felt like I was on the cusp of having an answer to what felt wrong about me my whole life, but I didn’t have time to think about that too deeply at the moment, especially since the tail and fins felt weird. Not necessarily wrong, just really weird and disconcerting after having legs my whole life. They were also a blatant reminder that I was no longer human.

I sighed and gave the elder sister a serious look. “Kara, I do realize the gravity of the situation, and I am appropriately freaking out about it, on the inside.”

“Maybe there can only be girl mermaids,” Jenny suggested in a quiet voice.

“No, Jenny, I kinda overheard some stuff while I was supposed to be unconscious still. They’re as stumped about why I’m a girl as I am, I just didn’t know that it was me they were referring to at the time. There was another dude who lived in my group and he stayed male, Pierce is apparently planning a breeding program and put him with ‘subject alpha’ to start,” I told the pair, shuddering as I imparted that last part.

Kara mirrored my shudder with one of her own. “I just don’t know how you can be so calm about this, you just said that they’re planning on breeding us like animals. You are aware of what that would mean for you as the female of the species, right?”

“I was dying before and that kinda gives a person a new perspective, I think,” I informed her gently. “And no, I don’t know what that means. We know jack shit about Mermaid biology, we could lay eggs for all I know. If we’re going to get out of this situation though we need to keep level heads, we can’t help ourselves or each other if we panic. We need a plan. The way that Pierce was talking to his minion, he thinks that we are dumb animals. Hell, he’s planning a marine park in Orlando where we’ll likely be center stage. He’s bringing in people to ‘train’ us. He doesn’t seem to think that we’ll retain our intelligence and that gives us an advantage.”

Both sisters’ eyes widened at my revelation. “So, what?” Kara asked. “Do we just try to talk to whoever he sends in here to train us?”

I considered that for a moment and shook my head. “I’m not so sure that I want to rely on the moral compass of anyone that Pierce hires. Even if they were somewhat decent people, do you think that they would want to cross him to help us?”

A horrified expression briefly passed over the faces of the sisters and Kara shook her head. “No, we know all too well what he does to his enemies. He wanted to buy out Dad’s company, but Dad refused. Pierce doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in the business world. We were out celebrating my eighteenth birthday as a family and he had some goons snatch us on the way home. We woke up in a cell and Pierce went all Bond-villain, monologuing and shit.”

Kara went on to explain how Pierce bragged about faking their deaths and that nobody was going to come looking for them. With none of the kids to inherit, the business would go to their uncle Lucas. Apparently, he had a gambling problem and Pierce was sure that he could convince him to sell. He even bragged about how he was going to use them in genetic experiments that would likely either kill them or leave them horribly disfigured.

Kara and Jenny both said that the next couple of days were a bit hazy as they came down with the flu that their brother had just gotten over, and that on top of being locked in a cramped cell only made things more miserable. They weren’t certain, but they were pretty sure that their brother and parents had been killed by whatever process turned them into what we were now. They had nobody else on the outside except school friends who probably wouldn’t recognize them, grandparents in a seniors’ home, and their uncle, who they didn’t think that they could trust.

We talked over our plans then. None of us would speak in the presence of humans to let them think that we were the ‘stupid beasts’ that Pierce seemed to consider us. It would give us opportunities that we wouldn’t have if they realized just how smart we were. That, and if he did find out that we could talk, none of us would put it past Pierce to drug us and have our vocal cords removed. We would play along for now and look for opportunities to contact someone that we could trust to help us.

Things weren’t looking good though. They had nobody that they could trust on the outside and we didn’t think that we could trust anyone on the inside either. I told them that I had technically lied through my teeth when I talked to the Pierce Foundation lady though. I might not have any official family on paper but Maddie was like a sister, we grew up together. Aunt Clara and Uncle Max had never treated my mom like a servant either and had been like extra parents to me when they were at home with us.

I sighed as I thought about them. “They were family to Jon though, not whatever I am now. There’s no way that they would recognize me like this, even if I could manage to get a message to the outside, unless… Kara, can you look at the back of my neck?”

The aquamarine-hued mermaid looked confused for a moment before nodding and moving behind me. I tried my best to gather all of my long hair up and away from the area so she could get a good look. The fact that my hair was so long and my favorite color brought a smile to my lips. I guess that this situation did have some good points and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t dying anymore, so that was another check in the plus column.

I felt fingers tentatively touch my neck behind the slits of my gills, moving any stray strands of hair that I hadn’t gathered. “Whoa, you have a tat?! I guess you’re cooler than I thought,” Kara’s voice teased.

“Yeah, what does it look like?” I asked, hoping that it hadn’t been deformed by my transformation.

“It’s like a cartoon cat-girl? Her fur is almost the same color as your fins, I think, and her hair matches yours. She’s wearing some kind of bikini and it’s a bit small to tell but she’s got a big gun and maybe a bandolier with little balls on it?” she said hesitantly.

I could feel myself smiling again. “They’re grenades, not easy to draw at that size you know. Maddie and I were really close and I designed this tattoo for Maddie myself, so she would have something from me with her when she wasn’t at home. She kinda insisted that we both get it, and in the same place, as a promise that we would always be there for one another when I decided to go to school to study art rather than join the family business with her and her parents. She suggested the back of the neck since I kept my hair shoulder-length, so I wouldn’t have to worry about guys razzing me for having a girly tattoo.”

“Okay, so if she sees this then she would at least talk to you to find out why you have it?” Kara asked. When I nodded, she added, “Do you have a way to contact her? Would she be willing to help us?”

“Not in this pool, I don’t. And we can’t exactly walk out of here to go to the local electronics store,” I said with a sad shake of my head. “If they’re not in the country, they could be in communications blackout mode, but if that’s the case I know some backchannels that I can use that they check regularly. I’d need a computer, or at least a phone, and a way to make sure that nobody knows I’ve used it afterward. And I can hardly do that in here or without arousing suspicion. If I can contact them though, I’m pretty damn sure that they’d help us.”

“Communications blackout? Backchannels? What kind of family business do they run?” Kara asked as she clumsily swam back to join her sister and they both turned to stare at me. I really needed to get her to tell us how she was swimming, sure she wasn’t great at it yet, but Jenny and I were both getting frustrated by our inability.

I found myself looking down at my tail as I answered her awkwardly. “They’re… umm… private contractors. They do private security, bodyguarding, espionage, hostage rescues, and… uhh… the occasional wetwork. They’re not bad people! They’re very particular about both their clients and their targets. If they found out what Pierce was up to, they’d probably kill him for free.”

“If they can kill the bastard that did this to us and killed our family, then I’m on board. We need to find a way to get you a phone or something,” Kara grumbled darkly. “What’s our first step?”

“Ha! Leg humor! And you thought that the fish puns were inappropriate,” I teased. She blushed as she realized what she had just said, she was adorable when she blushed. “Ironically, our first ‘step’ is that you tell me and Jenny how you’re able to move your damn tail so we can do the same.”

“You’re weird, it’s a good thing that you’re so pretty,” she stated, though she was cracking that ghost of a smile again. Until she seemed to realize what she had just said and quickly looked away with her face bright red. “I… uhh… had some time to practice before Jenny woke up. I didn’t think about kicking my legs I just sort of closed my eyes and tried not to consciously think about my tail, just moving. I guess my instincts took over and it gave me a feel for how the tail and fins are supposed to work. It’s actually easier if you don’t overthink it.”

With that, we began to practice swimming, but tails and fins come with a steep learning curve when you’re trying to use them consciously. Instinct was great and helped us to get a feel for them, but we were going to need a lot of practice if we wanted to have any real control over our movements. I’m not sure how long we practiced, alternating between instinctual movement and conscious control, but I was starting to get tired and hungry when we heard the scream.