Page 94 of Ensnaring the Siren

Their voices grew louder as they entered the narrow mid-deck hallway, their thick-soled boots plodding along. She shrunk back as tight as she could, begging the Twenty-Armed Goddess that they didn’t open this door. She could easily take them, that wasn’t the problem.

If they found her, sounded the alarm, well, this rescue would be a whole lot easier if she didn’t have thirty-odd armed men breathing down her neck. Despite their crimes against her and her people, she was trying not to hurt any of them. For the sake of peace, and not feeding assumptions about her kind, she was going to let Surface Dweller leadership handle doling out their punishment.

They passed her door, opening the one next to it, and a horrid, garbled snoring sound peeled out into the hallway. The two men laughed, then the door clicked shut. Quiet followed.

Carefully and slowly, Nireed cracked open her door, peeking out. Empty.

She hurried down the hall and to the metal-grated steps.

Fear, then nausea, clenched her belly as she descended to the bottom-most deck. A noxious fog hung in the corridor, fouling the air with the stink of fish and slow decay. Holding her breath, only to later suck in greater gulps of air, made it worse. Death thrived here. There was nothing to do but power forward.

This level was where the engine room and fish hold would be. Nireed didn’t want to think about why the crew might be holding Lorelei and Lila down here.

A large metal door loomed ahead.

Inside was where they allegedly processed and packaged fish, and made some egregious, breaded atrocity called “fish sticks,” getting their catch shelf-ready for Surface Dweller markets.

Nireed’s hand trembled as it closed over the door handle, icy cold to the touch.

Twenty-Armed Goddess, give me strength. Whatever lay beyond, she had to keep going. For Lorelei and Lila. For the pod.

Taking a deep, punishing breath, she opened the door.

At first, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at.

Rows of people holding knives hovered over moving…shelves? Long, narrow tables? She wasn’t sure what they were. Loud, whirring machinery that was for sure, and she was once again grateful for finding orange sponges for her ears.

The too bright florescent lights overhead and the room’s oddly clean, rigid order resembled the mermaid lab, in a way. But where the lab had been designed for cold, calculated observation, its scientists dissecting her with their eyes, this place held people just as mechanical as the machines they worked alongside, taking apart creatures with their hands.

The workers wore thick rubber gloves, aprons, and some weird head covering that sort of looked like a net as they repeated the same tasks with rote efficiency. Slicing, chopping, discarding unwanted bits into troughs. She peeked into one of them—offal, body fluids, and shorn, colorful scales mixing to make a gruesome sludge.

So focused on their work, none of them noticed her as she crept over to a table filled with packaged fish. She rifled through a few of them. Diced. Chopped. Filleted cuts. Another table held canned goods, and something called “Pâté.”

One of the workers looked up, starting.

Pressing a clawed finger to her lips, Nireed flashed her amber eyes, a low hum forming at the back of her throat, and the individual froze, lacing the air with their fear.

These Surface Dwellers weren’t wearing noise cancellation headsets.

With all the noise this machinery was making, they probably couldn’t hear anything beyond this room, siren song included.

Others began to look up, too, sharing equally frightened looks.

Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.

No one said anything, or so much as twitched a muscle, as she sniffed the air and checked the contents of a third table. Something was off. The reek of this room was overpowering, making it hard to pick out individual scents, but there was something else here, and it wasn’t a normal fish smell.

She picked up one of the finished packages, nose wrinkling at the distinctive round shape. It looked like a…

Heart.

She dropped the package, looking around the table wildly.

Heart. Liver. Brain. Tongue. Eyes.

Twenty-Armed Goddess, the eyes.

Gold. Green. Blue. Topaz.

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