I awoke with an ache where my crotch would be if I still had legs. I was groggy and woozy from whatever they had knocked me out with so, for the moment, I just remained as I was with my eyes closed. Not that I could have moved anyway. I seemed to be strapped down and since whatever I was lying on was more comfortable than the cold hard floor, I assumed that I was on the stretcher that Dr. Harris and the goon squad had brought in.

I could hear voices. “This is stupid; we should be taking it back to the pool now that we’re done with it, before it can wake up and try to kill us. That tranq is going to wear off soon,” one voice pointed out nervously.

“We won’t have to wait long,” another said. “Harris said that that hot piece of ass that the boss is fucking wanted to see this one when he was done with them. Do you want to tell Pierce’s trophy girlfriend that she can’t look at the freaky fish girl if she wants?”

“Fuck no,” the other replied bitterly. “That bitch would have me fired for sure and I like this job. Well, I don’t like it, but it pays a hell of a lot better than being some mall cop and has health and dental coverage. I’m willing to keep a few secrets and take orders from assholes for that.”

They were quiet for the next few minutes until I heard faint footsteps, followed by a door being opened to my left. There was the distinct smell of cigarette smoke in the air as Dr. Harris’s voice then said, “You two can wait outside, we won’t be long.” Footsteps retreated and then the door opened and closed once again. “Only two of the specimens that you recruited survived the process, Miss Hart. One was killed by subject alpha but this one seems to be healthy.”

“Yes, this is the one. I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the video of that little shit slowly changing in his little fish tank,” the woman replied gleefully, and I could practically hear her sneering. I also realized that I recognized the voice from somewhere. “I’m so glad this one survived. I’ll teach this thing to respect its betters.”

A long and frustrated sigh sounded from Dr. Harris. “I keep telling you, Miss Hart. It probably won’t remember you, or anything. Its brain was completely restructured just as its body was, it’s doubtful that any of its memories or personality survived the process intact. From the MRI scans that we ran on subject alpha, their brains are radically different than those of humans. Given its curiosity and the instinctual social behavior observed by Dr. Emerson, it is likely that the ones we created artificially are blank slates mentally.”

“Well, I’ll just have to make it remember me then,” the woman replied testily. The sharp sting of a slap hit my right cheek and I barely managed to keep from yelping and school my expression into one of curiosity with a slight bit of fear as I allowed my eyes to flutter open. The fear wasn’t all that hard since I was strapped down with a mad scientist and some psycho bitch as my only company. A psycho bitch that I unfortunately recognized.

Bleach blonde hair, fake tan, and designer clothes, though she didn’t look near as sickeningly perky as when I saw her last. It was that Emily Shaw woman from the Pierce Foundation who had been pushing to recruit me as a lab rat. If she was here, then she probably knew damn well what that fake Cancer cure would entail for me, and others like me, all along. This was twice as likely, given that my sister said that Emily Shaw didn’t exist and her real last name was apparently Hart. Ironic since I doubted that she had one.

I had to carefully control my thoughts and expressions so that I didn’t give anything away. As pissed as I was with her, getting angry would only give me away, and probably the others as well. I couldn’t let that happen. I tilted my head as much as I was able and gave her my best ‘curious and a little afraid’ look before doing the same for Harris and then looking around the room itself. I was definitely in some sort of lab, though I couldn’t recognize any of the equipment.

You know, a great actor can always tell when someone else is acting. Fortunately for me, Miss Hart was not a great actor. She had almost lost her composure with me in the hospital room and I had been pretty sure that something was fishy with her and her deal from the start. I just didn’t care back then because I was hoping that the ‘treatment’ would kill me. Funny how things turn out sometimes, huh?

“Hello, Jonny, are you enjoying your new life? Do you… Fucking pay attention to me when I’m talking to you, you little freak!” A burning sensation caused me to scream as the bitch put her cigarette out on my left breast.

The name had hurt even more than the burn. I let my nature take over, hissing and baring my fangs at her as I strained against the leather straps holding me down. “Yeah, you’re so fucking brave while I’m strapped down and can’t fight back,” I thought angrily. I could feel the tingle of my magic but I quickly stifled it. Now was not the time, I couldn’t afford to give away our potential ace in the hole. It was better to just endure whatever torture that the bitch had planned, for now. If the opportunity came up when we escaped though, I was going to kill her myself.

“There you are, Jonny! There’s that hostility that I remember,” she said with a smug grin as I snarled and hissed at her. “Come on, where’s the sarcasm now? Where are your witty little insults?”

“It doesn’t remember you,” Dr. Harris said with a sigh. “You hurt it and that’s how their kind responds to threats or danger.”

“It’ll remember me after this,” she snapped, looking me over as if trying to think of a good way to fuck with me. Her eyes settled on my tail and she smiled evilly. “You have such a pretty tail, Jonny. The scales are so shiny and such a pretty color. What can you tell me about them, Doctor?”

Dr. Harris groaned as if he didn’t really like where this was going, especially with me hissing and snarling at them, but he knew that it was probably better just to give in. “They’re thick and as hard as steel, and the exposed edges are very sharp, Ms. Hart. We had to use a power bone saw with a special diamond-tipped blade just to cut through them to do the exploratory surgeries on subject alpha. Though these creatures seem to have qualities resembling both fish and snakes, their scales are similar to those of fish, not growing from the epidermis, but from deeper in the dermis.”

“I think that I’d like to take some home with me, so we can both remember my little visit,” Miss Hart said with a smile that I didn’t like at all. I was struggling against my restraints and my magic once again trying to rise to the surface and make itself known when that bitch called one of the goons in and had him yank out a scale with a pair of pliers from where my outer right thigh would be if I were human. It was the most intense pain that I had ever felt in my life and I screamed in agony.

The bitch took my scale from the goon and examined it before practically shoving it in my face to make sure that I saw it as well. It was half an inch wide and close to twice that in length, and it would have been oval-shaped if not for prongs that had held it within my body like some sort of pulled tooth. It was dripping blood and I winced as I saw it while trying to catch my breath from my screaming. She wanted to make me afraid whether I remembered her or not, this was some sort of petty vengeance for me talking back to her at first instead of graciously taking her offered ‘help’ like a good little peon back in the hospital. To my shame, I was afraid as she smiled savagely again and said, “I’m going to need more than this.”

Not long after I had hit puberty, Uncle Max and Aunt Clara had insisted on teaching Maddie and me the basics of how to hold up under torture. Even if we weren’t going to be part of the family business, and even if we might not know anything useful, they made enemies in their line of work, enemies who might someday come after one of us. It was for the same reason that we were taught to use guns and various other skills that we had learned growing up, to keep us safe or, barring that, give us a way to fight back.

There are several ways to hold up under torture and most of them require a good deal of mental fortitude and techniques to distract the mind from what the body is going through. One is to resist, and refuse to give an inch while waiting for rescue, death, or the enemy to give up. Another is to annoy the fuck out of them, which is probably where my use of snark as a defense mechanism came from. The easiest way though is to make the enemy think that they’ve gotten what they want.

That was especially the case in this situation. This torture wasn’t to get information out of me, it was because she was a sadist and wanted me to hurt for no other reason than to see the pain and fear on my face and make herself think that she had power over me. She wanted me to fear her. I wasn’t going to do anything to make her think that we were smarter than we’d been letting on or that I actually did remember her but fear I could give her. Once she got what she wanted, hopefully, it would be out of her system and she would lose interest.

What followed was me using every single mental technique that I had been taught to valiantly hold back from either screaming anything that might be construed as human speech or using my magic as the goon yanked out scales one by one with the pliers. I did scream because the pain was excruciating, I just kept it to general screams of pain rather than cursing her name. It was not easy.

Hart watched the entire time and sometimes contributed with a cigarette burn to change things up, seeming to take great satisfaction in my agony and in calling me ‘Jonny’. I refused to give that bitch the satisfaction of making her believe that I might actually remember her on some level but that was why she wanted me to remember this, it was a catch-22. I was hoarse from screaming and had counted over a dozen scales in my mind before losing count. By the time I felt like I was going to lose my voice completely from screaming I thankfully passed out from the pain.

The sting of saltwater on my wounds as I was tossed in the pool woke me up. I became aware of sudden movement in the water, arms being wrapped gently around me, hurried footsteps and the sound of wheels rapidly retreating, and then the doors to the pool room closing before I had the energy to open my eyes. Kara was holding me in her arms with a look of concern on her face.

Concern turned to fury as she saw the state that I was in. ~ What the hell?! Are these cigarette burns?! ~ She held me closer and I winced as the right side of my tail brushed against her, causing her expression to become worried again. As she looked down to see the cause. ~Shit! A bunch of scales are missing on her right side too. Jenny, Naiya is hurt. Can you heal her, please? ~ I could already feel the burns healing and the scales starting to grow back but I didn’t argue. It hurt too damn much to refuse the near-instant relief that Jenny could provide.

~ On it, Sis, ~ the younger sister confirmed as she dove into the pool with us, a look of concentration scrunching up her young face as she swam toward us. As soon as her hands touched my marred tail, a golden glow enveloped us both and I could feel the warmth of her magic flowing through me and healing my injuries. By the time that she pulled her hands away and the glow faded I felt much better, physically anyway. The burns were gone and my scales had fully regrown from that bare bloody patch on the side of my tail.

“What happened, Naiya?” Natalie asked in a hushed tone once we had joined her and Kieshala back on the surfaces at the side of the pool. “You were in there a lot longer than the others.” She looked confused, but I was pretty sure that Kieshala had been following what Kara had said when she came to check on me because the other Naethari looked pissed.

“They fucking tortured her, that’s what fucking happened,” Kara snapped. “She had healing burn marks all over her and a big patch of scales were missing.”

“Jon’s past sarcasm came back to bite me in the tail,” I admitted self-consciously. “It turns out that the bitch who was pretending to work for the Pierce Foundation and offered me my cure is Pierce’s trophy girlfriend and they’re a match made in hell. I guess that I made an impression on her and she wanted to make sure that I remembered this meeting. I managed not to shift or give anything away, I think.”

A horrified expression settled on Nat’s face. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I lied, looking down at my tail before abruptly changing the subject. “Any idea what tests they wanted us for?”

“Tests, my ass,” our human caretaker spat. “When Kieshala and Kara were brought back the scales covering their vulvas had been pried open. Judging by that and the fluid I found, I’m pretty sure that you were all turkey-bastered. They’re probably hoping that it takes with one of you and you’ll have a boy they can use for proper breeding later.” Just great, I’d been violated and tortured on the same day.

~ A useless endeavor, ~ Kieshala said with a sniff of disdain once we had translated for her.

“Kieshala says that isn’t going to happen, not that that makes me feel any less dirty,” Kara told Nat, looking and sounding as sickened by the thought as I was. “From what she told us before none of us are even fertile, and even when we do become fertile we’ll only be genetically compatible with our chosen mate.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’m sorry, I tried to at least make them bring me along for any tests as your primary caregiver but they refused,” Natalie said with a frown.

“Yeah, but they said that they would handle it and she was supposed to ‘stay here and keep the guppy out of trouble’,” Jenny added with a similar expression.

“You’re just our caretaker, Nat,” Kara said with a shrug. “Even if they trust you to do that, as far as they know you’re not in the know about the mad science portion of this operation, and they’d probably like it to stay that way.”

None of us were too happy as the conversation broke up and Nat left to grab our lunch. The meal was a quiet affair and then we were back to training to improve our swimming with Nat and Kieshala’s assistance and the coaching of the latter in both Naethari and Porpoise. The games were a nice distraction that I sorely needed at the moment as I tried to focus on anything but the memories of my morning introduction to Miss Hart.

After a couple of hours, we were starting to physically tire so while Kieshala set us to work on practicing how to summon and control our magic, Nat went out. Her job didn’t really have any set hours so long as she fed us three times a day, encouraged us to socialize with her, and saw to any other needs that we might have. So, she was free to go talk with my sister and have dinner while they talked strategy and other things.

I was more focused than usual when we worked on our magic stuff. Since I was still starting, calling on my magic and trying to make it do what I wanted still required enough focus and concentration on the task that I was able to filter out less desirable thoughts. I was putting everything I had into it and doing my fin and tail exercises as well to focus my every thought on my body, getting to know every inch of it and then trying to change parts without actually looking at them. I didn’t manage anything as big as my first shift but I did manage to temporarily change the color of my hair. At least it was a start.

I was both mentally and physically exhausted by the time Nat returned with our usual dinner. She had kept her promise to Kara too, producing a box with a large meat supreme pizza inside that only had two slices taken from it. It was good but I couldn’t really show as much enthusiasm for it as the others. I only ate one piece and quietly hurried through the rest of my meal, not even able to enjoy the shrimp or the fruit salad in my current mood.

My silence and withdrawal did not go unnoticed but, in retrospect, I guess it was pretty obvious. They just weren’t really sure what to say or do as I took the phone that Maddie had sent and threw my focus into finding possible locations for Kieshala to either draw on or produce some mana after we made our escape. Finally, Kieshala came over to join me, placing a hand gently on my shoulder. ~Naiya, I think that we need to talk. ~

It was she who did most of the talking. She told me about everything that Pierce and his morally bankrupt employees had done to her. The sedatives that they used on her at first didn’t work very well, it took them a long time to find something that would knock a Naethari out for more than an hour at most. She had been awake through most of the exploratory surgeries, and the first time that they had ‘harvested’ her with nothing to dull the pain.

It made me feel sick, but it also made me realize that what I had gone through could have been a hell of a lot worse. It didn’t make me feel any better about it or any less traumatized about the whole affair but it did put it in perspective. ~ That… must have been awful for you. ~ I finally said in the long silence that followed.

~ It was, Naiya, but it is also in the past and there is nothing that I can do to change it. The physical wounds have long since healed. All that I, or you, can do is not let it rule our minds in the present. You have been wise to distract yourself but that is only a temporary solution, ~ the sunset-hued Naethari advised gently.

~ What do I do then? ~ I asked hesitantly. ~ I… every time I close my eyes I have to push those memories away. What if she tries to do something like that again? ~

~ Do what I do. Face this, face your fear of it, and tell yourself every time that fear rises that you will not let something so small break you. If you keep doing so then it will become the truth in time, ~ she told me candidly. ~ Allow it to make you stronger, not weaker. You are Naethari. You are Naiya Soulsinger of Clan Moonreef, and you will not be diminished by such suffering. You are destined for great things; I could tell the moment that I heard your voice for the first time. This is merely a break in the current. We will escape, and we will get our vengeance for the way that we have been treated. I have faith in the Natrir, in myself, and in you and the others. You should as well. ~