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Emil awakens in a different world made up of four glass walls and a roof. His eyes flutter open, only to see dozens of faces — human faces — gawking at him. When his vision returns, Emil lets out a silent scream.
Where am I?!
Memories begin to resurface as Emil swims over to the glass barrier, placing his hand against the wall. The glass is frigid under his touch, and he retracts his hand. “Get me out!” Emil tries to cry, to scream, to make any sound, but nobody bats an eye. Nobody flinches when Emil tries to slam the glass with his fist. A small human laughs, a group of middle-sized ones hold up strange rectangular tools, flooding Emil’s vision with bright white flashes. “Stop! I don’t belong here!”
The surface dwellers fail to understand him. Of course they don’t understand — Emil’s voice is muffled behind the glass, there’s no way they can hear him over the artificial sounds and the chattering of voices talking among each other. The sounds leaving his throat are nothing more than strange, warbling notes to them. Musical. Alien.
Emil presses his back against the far corner of the tank, as far from the glass as he can manage. His chest heaves, gills fluttering uselessly against his neck, struggling to filter the wrong kind of water — too clean, too still, stripped of everything that makes the ocean alive. A home. But this? It tastes like nothing. Like death.
Think, Emil. Think.
He recalls the net, the horrible, rough scraping of rope against his scales as it tightened around his tail, his arms, throat. He remembers the way the light had changed — shifting from the familiar deep blue home to something blinding and horrifying. Then the hands. So many hands, grabbing at him, lifting him, shouting in human tongue.
And then… nothing. Darkness.
A tiny surface dweller slaps the glass with both palms, a sound that vibrates the tank. Emil flinches so violently he crashes into the fake coral behind him. Pain blooms across his shoulder blade, the coral a plastic and painted mockery, yet its edges are sharp enough to cut. A thin ribbon of blood curls into the water.
The crowd gasps. More flashing lights, more pointing fingers.
Emil curls into himself, tail wrapping around his body like a shield. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to remember the sound of the deep currents, the way they used to sing him to sleep in his homely cave in the mermaid kingdom. But the memory slips like sand through his fingers, replaced by the dull hum of filtration pumps and the muffled cacophony of peoples’ voices.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be here for. Maybe they’ll all grow bored and release him into the sea. Or maybe they’ll move him to some other tank, transporting him like a pirate’s treasure. Gods. Is that all Emil is? A sight for sore eyes, a creature? He may be half-man, but that doesn’t make him a whole animal.
Emil isn’t sure if he’s crying or if it’s the artificial water, but all he knows is his face flushes as he sobs, hugging his tail close, watching as the humans gawk and stare at him. He doesn’t look at them, just tries to make himself smaller than he really is. The other mermaids had warned Emil so many times about surface dwellers, about their magic and curiosity that borderlines torture. He’s heard stories from the fish and whales about the surface walkers and their monstrous intentions.
He doesn’t want to think about those stories. He doesn’t want to bear witness to land machinery. But here he is, put on display for the whole world. He lets out another sob, wiping away what could be a teardrop on his cheek, as he slowly looks up. People — so many people — with their rectangles and flashing lights, their laughter, the smaller ones banging on the glass that sends vibrations throughout his entire body.
Hours pass. But it feels like days.
Soon the artificial lights start to dim, and the humans file out of the room. Emil’s eyes flutter open, sore from crying, his tail flicking in irritation. Even with the gawking crowd gone, he can’t stand this noise. The humming of the tank, the restlessness in his body. The tank is too small, too cruel for a mermaid to swim around. The ocean was an infinite swimming pool, a place of sanctuary and peace.
He looks around, spotting a few other animals swimming in their tanks. A beautiful orca swims slowly around her tank, and a handful of fish scatter around theirs. Back home in the ocean, Emil always loved talking to the orcas. He could understand their whistles, their low murmurs always speaking of wisdom. But here? The whale across from him slowly turns away, as if she has nothing to offer.
Emil’s heart sinks.
Even the creatures here have lost all hope.
How long has the orca been trapped here? Months? Years? A lifetime? Her movements are slow, mechanical, like she’s forgotten what it means to breach the surface and taste the open air. There’s no song in her anymore, just the hollow echo of a soul worn down by walls.
Is that what I’ll become?
The thought coils around Emil’s chest like a sea serpent, squeezing tight. He shakes his head, his dark hair drifting around his face into a grey halo. No. No, he can’t think like that. He’s only been here for… how long? A day? Two? He can’t give up yet.
But as the hours stretch on and the artificial night presses down on him, Emil finds it harder to hold onto hope.
The feeding comes at dawn.
Emil doesn’t even know what time it is — there are no sun rays filtering through the water here, no shifting colors to mark the passage of hours — but the lights above flicker to life with a harsh buzzing sound. It’s the signal. The humans will return soon.
First, though, comes the food.
A hatch opens somewhere above him, and something splashes into the water. Emil’s stomach lurches — not with hunger, but with revulsion. Dead fish slowly sink toward the tnk floor, their eyes glassy and unseeing, scales dull and lifeless. They smell wrong. Chemicals.
Back home, Emil would hunt. He’d chase silvery schools through kelp forests, feeling the rush of the current against his scales, the thrill of pursuit singing through his veins. And even when he didn’t hunt, he’d forage — plucking sea grapes from rocky outcrops, cracking open urchins to taste the briny sweetness inside. Food was an experience, a ritual.
This? This is an insult.
Emil turns away, his stomach cramping painfully, twisting in on itself. But he refuses to eat. He won’t give them the satisfaction, snatching dead things from the water like some performing seal. He refuses to let these creatures reduce him to base instinct for their entertainment. I am not an animal.
He repeats it like a prayer, a ward against the creeping despair that threatens to swallow him whole.
No matter what these surface walkers may think, no matter how often their boxes of artificial light blind him, Emil will not give in. He swims away from the crowd, tucking himself underneath the fake coral as a makeshift hiding spot. He sighs, sitting on the fake sandy floor, tail wrapping around his body like a hug. Except, it’s anything but a comforting gesture. These people, they see Emil as an object of awe. A creature.
They pay in human currency to witness the unimaginable.
The hours stretch, and as the last of the crowd leave, Emil tries to entertain himself. He draws in the sand, depicting himself swimming in a cave freely, hunting for food and playing with the whales, competing to see just how high they can jump up to the surface. But here, there is no surface. No contest. Just the lull of the humming lights and the sight of other sea creatures longing for the deep again.
He stops drawing, instead blowing bubbles, watching them pop immediately. Then, he swims over to the glass, fogging it with his breath, trying to draw something else. The water washes it away faster than the hopes and dreams of escape. Emil frowns, returning to his makeshift hideaway, trying to ignore the dead carcasses surrounding him.
The days soon bleed into one another.
Emil stops counting after what he thinks might be the fifth sunrise. There’s no point — each cycle is identical to the last, an endless loop of buzzing lights, gawking faces, and dead fish sinking to the floor ike offerings for a god who wants nothing to do with them. The wound on his shoulder has long since healed, mermaid flesh knitting itself back together with practiced efficiency, but it leaves a faint, silver scar. It’s a reminder of Emil’s place.
You’re trapped. Hurt. All alone.
His body begins to betray him.
The hunger is a living thing now, his stomach aching, longing for the taste of sea-grapes and kelp. Emil’s hands shake when he holds them in front of his face, his vision blurring at the edges, darkness creeping in whenever he moves too quickly. He knows he should eat — knows that his stubbornness is killing him slowly — but every time he looks at his ‘offering’, something in him recoils.
I am not an animal…
The mantra grows weaker with each passing day.
Emil spends most of his time in his hiding spot beneath the fake coral, tail curled around himself, watching the world through half-lidded eyes. He’s stopped drawing in the sand, stopped blowing bubbles. Stopped doing anything except existing, if this hollow drifting can even be called that.
The orca still swims in her endless circles, the fish still scatter aimlessly in their tanks. None of them look at each other, like prisoners across the hall from each other. But none of them speak.
This is what giving up looks like.
Emil closes his eyes, trying to remember the color of real sunlight, the real taste of proper food.
He can’t.
He stops caring.
The afternoon crowd is thinner than usual — something about the weather outside, maybe, some land dwelling concern that Emil can’t begin to fathom. He stays right where he is near the bottom of the tank, one hand trailing absently through the faux sand, leaving behind patterns that the gentle current erases almost immediately. His hair floats around his face in a dark, tangled cloud. He hasn’t had the energy to push it aside.
But then, he feels it.
A gaze. Far different from the others.
Emil has grown far too familiar with the weight of staring eyes, a constant pressure inescapable just like the hum of the filtration system — curious stares, excited gasps, sometimes the flash of disgust. He’s learned to tune it out, let it wash over him like the artificial current, meaningless and impersonal.
But this gaze, it burns.
It presses against his awareness like a physical touch, insistent and heavy with something Emil can’t name. It’s not curiosity like the tiny surface walkers banging their fists against the glass; it’s not the excitement of the middle-sized ones with their flashing rectangles. It’s… something deeper. Something that makes the scales along his spine prickle with an unfamiliar sensation.
Slowly, almost against his on will, Emil lifts his head.
A human stands at the front of the glass, close enough that his breath fogs the surface in small, rhythmic clouds. He’s young — around Emil’s age, if he had to guess — with a mess of unkempt brown hair and dark circles carved deep beneath tired eyes. His clothes are rumpled and worn, posture hunched with exhaustion.
But none of that is what makes Emil’s breath catch in his chest.
It’s the arm.
One of the person’s arms is made of metal. Gleaming plates interlock like the scales of some mechanical fish, articulating smoothly as his fingers twitch against the glass. It’s not magic — Emil knows magic, knows its fluid warmth and organic pulse — but something else entirely. Something built. Constructed with intention and precision.
Emil finds himself drifting closer before he realizes he’s moving.
The human’s eyes track his approach. They’re brown, Emil notices — warm, earthy shade that reminds him of the wooden hulls of sunken ships, the ones he used to explore in the deeper waters near his cave. But there’s nothing warm about the expression in them right now. His face cycles through emotions too quickly to catalogue: confusion, disbelief, dawning horror.
And then — strangest of all — recognition.
Not recognition of Emil specifically, but what Emil is. What he represents. The human’s lips part, brows furrowing, and Emil can practically see the thought crystallizing behind those exhausted eyes:
This is a person.
Emil’s heart stutters.
He swims over slowly, cautious, pressing his palm against the glass. The cold bites into his skin, familiar and unwelcome, but he doesn’t pull away. He can’t. Something is happening here, something important, and if he moves too quickly it might shatter like sea foam in the sun.
The person mirrors the gesture.
His flesh hand — the left one, the one that isn’t metal and gleaming — rises to rest against the glass, fingers splayed directly opposite of Emil’s own. The barrier between them is only inches thick, but it might as well be the entire ocean.
For a long, breathless moment, they stare at each other.
The human’s mouth moves. He’s speaking, Emil realizes, but the words are lost to glass and water and the loud humming of machinery. Emil watches the shape of his lips, desperate to parse meaning from movement, but the land language remains as foreign to him as the surface world itself.
Frustration flickers around the land dweller’s face. He glances around — at the crowd, at the tank, at the garish signs plastered on the walls — and something in his expression sharpens. Hardens. He looks back at Emil with a renewed intensity, and then he does something unexpected.
He points to himself. The gesture is slow, deliberate, his metal fingers catching the artificial light. Then his mouth forms a single word, exaggerated and careful:
Luca.
Emil's fins flutter.
A name. The human is telling Emil his name.
It shouldn't matter. It's just a collection of sounds, arbitrary syllables strung together by human convention. But names are not given to animals. Names are not shared with exhibits or curiosities or things behind glass. Names are exchanged between people.
And this creature — Luca — sees Emil as a person. A fellow man.
Something cracks open in Emil’s chest, something he thought had fossilized days ago beneath layers of despair and resignation. It hurts. It hurts like blood returning to a numb limb, prickling and sharp and achingly alive.
Emil points to himself with a trembling finger, mouthing his own name, shaping the syllables with care, hoping — praying — that Luca can understand:
Emil.
Luca’s eyes widen, nodding almost frantically. He mouths the name back: Emil. Emil. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips, small and sad and impossibly kind.
Then his expression shifts, the softness hardening into something more fierce, akin to a look of near determination. He holds up one finger — wait — and then he’s turning, pushing his way back through the crowd, disappearing into the sea of bodies.
Emil stays pressed against the glass, his hand still splayed on the cool surface.
His heart pounds against his ribcage, loud enough to drown out the filteration system. He dosn’t dare move. Doesn’t dare breathe. What if he imagined it? What if this is just some cruel trick of his exhausted mind, conjuring where none exists?
But the fog from Luca’s breath still lingers on the glass, fading slowly.
Real. It was real. He was right here, in front of me.
Emil waits.
But the minutes stretch into an eternity.
Emil watches the people filter past — a blur of faces and flashing rectangles and muffled voices — but none of them matter. None of them are him. His palm grows cold against the glass, fingers aching from how hard he’s pressing, but he refuses to pull away. If he moves, he breaks contact with the spot Luca’s hand had been, maybe the spell will shtter. Maybe he’ll wake up curled beneath his fake coral, and this will all have been a fever dream conjured by his starving mind.
Please come back. Please.
A tiny human child waddles up to the glass, pressing his face against it, tongue lolling out in a grotesque way. His mother doesn’t laugh, instead brings her rectangle out, a flash going off. But Emil doesn’t flinch this time. Usually he gives the humans what they want — a reaction. Instead, his eyes stay fixed on the spot where Luca disappeared, scanning the crowd with growing desperation.
What if he doesn’t return?
The thought slips in, cold and unwelcome. What if Luca’s just like the others after all? What if that moment of recognition was nothing more than surprise — the shock of seeing something impossible made flesh? Humans are fickle, the elder whales always said. They marvel at wonders than then forget them by the next tide.
Emil’s chest tightens, his hand sliding down the glass.
And then—
Movement. At the edge of the crowd.
Brown hair, disheveled. Dark circles. The glint of metal catching artificial light.
Luca!
Emil’s heart lurches so violently he can feel it in his throat. He presses himself back against the glass, both palms flat now, watching as Luca shoulders his way through the thinning crowd. There’s a bag slung over his shoulder — cloth, bulging with mysterious shapes — and his expression is set with that same fierce determination from before.
Their eyes meet.
Luca nods, just once, but the gesture carries the weight of a promise sealed in the slight downturn of his brow: I told you I’d come back.
Emil’s vision blurs, blinking rapidly. He refuses to let any tears fall — not now, not when something is finally happening — and watches Luca approach the tank. The human crouches down, bringing himself to emil’s eye level, and unzips his bag with practiced efficiency.
From inside, he produces a thick pad of paper. The sheets are large and white, bound together at the top. Then comes a writing tool — a thick black instrument that Luca uncaps with his teeth, a gesture so casually human that it makes something flutter in Emil’s chest.
Luca begins to draw.
His strokes are bold and hasty, the lines uneven, clearly the work of someone more comfortable with precision than artistry. Yet, Emil watches with rapt attention, trying to parse the meaning from the shapes taking form on the page.
When Luca finishes, he holds the paper up to the glass. It’s a picture — simple, rough, but unmistakable. It’s a drawing of a figure with a tail, trapped in a rectangle. Next to it is an arrow pointing outward, away from the box. The same figure swims freely among the wavy lines that can only represent the ocean. Home.
Do you want to go home?
A sound escapes Emil’s throat — half-laugh, half-sob, emerging as a stream of bubbles that spiral toward the surface. His entire body trembles. Does he want to escape? Does he want to taste real water again, feel the pull of real currents, return to his cave and his paints and his life?
He nods so hard his hair swirls around his face in a dark cloud, until his neck aches. There’s no mistake in his answer, no hesitation.
Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!
Luca’s expression softens, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders. He flips to a fresh page and draws again. This time, it’s a crude sun and moon, cycling in a small spiral. Numbers beside them — human numerals Emil can’t read, but the meaning is clear enough. Time. Then, an arrow points back to the first drawing, the one with the freed figure swimming in open water.
It will take time, but I will help you.
Emil presses both palms harder against the glass. A fresh wave of tears spills down his cheeks—real tears this time, warm and salt-tinged, mixing with the artificial water. He wants to speak, to scream, to pour out every ounce of gratitude and desperation and fragile, trembling hope. But his voice won't carry, and his language isn't Luca's, and the glass between them might as well be a wall of stone.
So he does the only thing he can.
He trusts.
Recklessly. Completely. With every fiber of his exhausted, starving, desperate being.
Luca seems to understand. His smile widens slightly, though sadness still lurks at its edges. He holds up one finger again — wait — and then flips to a new page.
This drawing is different. More complex.
First, Luca sketches a figure that is clearly meant to be himself — messy hair, one arm shaded darker than the other. He points to the figure, then to himself. Me. Then he draws the figure returning to the rectangle-with-tail again and again, a series of small suns and moons between each visit.
I will come back. Every day.
Emil's throat constricts.
Luca continues drawing. The next image shows two figures — one human, one tailed — with objects between them. Rectangles covered in marks. Lines and squiggles that might be writing.
We need to communicate.
Emil understands. They can't plan an escape if they can't talk to each other. Pictures will only take them so far. He pulls from the glass, glancing around his tank. There’s nothing here — just fake coral and fake sand and dead fish drifting along the bottom. Nothing to write with, nothing to—
Wait.
The sand.
Emil darts to the bottom of the tank and sweeps his hand through the faux substrate. It's too fine, too light—the current from the filtration system erases his marks almost as quickly as he makes them. But if he packs it down, presses harder...
He tries again. Concentrates. Drags his finger through the sand with deliberate pressure, fighting against the current.
A shape emerges. Wobbly. Imperfect. But recognizable. First, a tail. A figure with a tail. And next to it, wavy lines — the ocean.
Home.
Emil looks back at the glass. Luca is watching, his eyes wide, his lips parted. He understands.
Luca grins—a real grin this time, bright and brilliant despite his exhaustion—and scribbles something on his pad. When he holds it up, Emil sees a drawing of the human giving a thumbs up. Beneath it, in the same bold strokes, Luca has written something. Letters. Words.
Emil can't read them, but he can guess the meaning.
Good. That's good.
Something warm blooms in Emil's chest. It's fragile and unfamiliar, bruised from days of despair, but it's there. Alive. Growing.
For the first time since the net closed around him, Emil doesn't feel alone.
The days that follow are different.
Not easier — Emil’s body still aches with hunger, his vision still blurs at the edges, and the artificial water still tastes like nothing — but different. Because now, every time the lights buzz to life and the crowd filters in, Emil finds himself watching. Waiting. Searching for a familiar face among the sea of strangers.
Luca comes back the next day, just like he promised.
He arrives in the afternoon, where the crowd is at its largest. Emil spots him almost instantly — the messy brown hair, the mechanical arm. Luca pushes his way to the front of the glass, bag slung over his shoulder, and when their eyes meet, he smiles.
A small one. Tired. But it’s real.
Emil swims over to the glass, pressing his palm against it. Luca mirrors the gesture, just like before. Then, he pulls out his pad of paper and gets to work. Today’s drawings are more complex than yesterday’s, and Luca has clearly ben thinking, planning. He shows Emil pictures of the sun and moon, then points to himself and the tank, over and over.
A schedule. He’s establishing a schedule.
Then Luca flips to a new page, which is already full of drawings. It shows two figures — the human and the figure with a tail — sitting on opposite sides of a rectangle. Between them are small recangle covered in marks. Luca points to himself, then to the marks, then Emil. He’s trying to teach Emil something.
Letters!
Emil’s heart beats faster as he gathers his thoughts. Communication, Luca had implied the other day. If he can learn to read the human language, they can plan properly. They can actually talk.
Emil nods again, more fervently this time.
Luca grins and flips to another page. On this one, he’s drawn a single symbol: A. Next to it is a picture of a round object with a stem. Emil stares at it, tilting his head to the side, but he begins to memorize the shapes of the next letters and their drawings associated with each letter.
They spend the next hour like this, Luca holding up one symbol after another, pairing each one with a drawing, stringing the letters together to form words. A for apple, B for ball. Soon, the lessons become their lifeline, their form of speaking.
Each day Luca returns, sometimes in the morning where the crowd is sparse, and sometimes in the afternoon where bodies press thick against the glass. He always finds his way to the same spot, always pressing his palm against the barrier in greeting before pulling out his paper and markers.
Emil learns quickly — faster than either of them expected.
And by the third day, Emil can recognize the entire human alphabet — at least, Luca’s alphabet. By the fifth day, he’s stringing letters together to form simple words, tracing them in the sand with trembling fingers: FISH. HOME. WATER. The current still fights him, erasing his messages as quickly as he writes them, but Luca watches with analytical eyes, nodding along intently. There’s something in his smile that swims of pride.
Then, on the sixth day, Emil writes his first sentence.
I AM SCARED.
Luca’s expression crumples, pressing his metal hand flat against the glass — not the flesh one, Emil notices, but the mechanical fingers that catch the artificial light like fish scales. There’s something deiberate about the choice, something almost vulnerable.
Luca writes on his pad, the letters large and clear:
ME TOO. BUT WE WILL DO THIS.
Emil’s throat tightens, tracing his response slowly, each letter a small victory: I TRUST YOU.
Luca stares at the words for a long moment. When he looks up, his eyes are glassy. He doesn't write anything back — just nods, once, fierce and final.
That night, after the lights dim and the crowds disappear, Emil does something he hasn't done since arriving.
He eats.
The fish still taste wrong — chemical and lifeless, nothing like the silver-bright prey he used to chase through kelp forests. But Emil forces himself to swallow, bite after agonizing bite, because he understands now. He can't escape if he's too weak to swim. He can't go home if his body gives out before Luca finishes his plan.
I am not eating for them, Emil tells himself as he chokes down another mouthful. I am eating for me. For him. For us.
The distinction matters.
Finally, Luca arrives with something new.
His bag is heavier than usual, bulging with strange shapes that clink together softly when he walks. Emil spots him the moment he enters — has been watching the entrance for hours, truth be told, pressed against the glass like a child waiting for a storm to pass. The crowd is thin today, just a scattered handful of humans drifting between exhibits, their attention elsewhere. Good. Emil has come to prefer these quieter moments, when Luca doesn't have to fight for space at the glass.
But something is different today.
The dark circles under Luca's eyes have deepened into bruises, purple-black crescents that make him look almost haunted. His hair is even more disheveled than usual, sticking up at odd angles as though he's been running his hands through it obsessively. His clothes are rumpled — the same ones from yesterday, Emil realizes, recognizing the oil stain on the collar. Has Luca slept at all?
Yet despite the exhaustion carved into every line of his face, there's an energy thrumming through him. Electric. Barely contained. It's in the way he walks — quick, purposeful strides that eat up the distance between the entrance and Emil's tank. It's in the set of his shoulders, the determined jut of his jaw, the way his mechanical fingers flex and unflex at his side like he's fighting the urge to run.
Emil's heart begins to pound before Luca even reaches the glass.
Something has changed.
Luca crouches down, bringing himself to eye level. Their palms meet on opposite sides of the barrier — the greeting that has become ritual between them, sacred in its simplicity. But Luca doesn't linger on the gesture today. His eyes are bright, almost feverish, and he's already reaching for his bag with his flesh hand.
What is it? Emil wants to ask. What happened? What did you find?
Instead, he watches. Waits. Presses his palm harder against the cold glass as if he could somehow push through it, close the impossible distance between them.
Luca pulls out a rolled sheet of paper — larger than his usual pad, bound with a rubber band that he snaps off with practiced efficiency. When he unfurls it against the glass, Emil sees something that makes his breath catch.
A map.
But not like any map Emil has seen before. The merfolk have maps, of course — carved into stone tablets, painted onto stretched kelp, sung in the old songs that chart the currents and the deep places. Those maps are organic things, alive with the pulse of the ocean, rich with warnings about shark territories and the cold trenches where light never reaches.
This map is different. Angular. Precise. Covered in Luca's hasty strokes and cramped notations that crowd every available space. Lines intersect at sharp angles, forming corridors and chambers and passages that branch outward like the veins of some great mechanical beast. Numbers are scattered throughout — measurements, maybe, or distances. Emil can't read most of the words yet, the letters still unfamiliar in certain combinations, but he doesn't need to.
He recognizes shapes.
There — in the upper left corner — a rectangle. Small compared to the others, with wavy lines drawn inside it. Luca has added a tiny figure with a tail, curled at the bottom. His tank. Emil's prison, rendered in simple strokes on a piece of paper. Somehow, seeing it like this — seeing how small it is compared to the sprawling complex around it — makes something twist painfully in his chest.
From the rectangle, arrows lead outward. They twist through corridors, bypass larger chambers marked with X's (danger? guards?), and navigate a maze of turns that makes Emil's head spin just trying to follow. The path doubles back on itself in places, avoiding certain areas entirely, threading through what must be the least-traveled routes.
And at the end of the arrows, at the very edge of the page where the paper is slightly crumpled from being rolled...
A larger rectangle. Shaded with wavy blue lines, darker than the ones in Emil's tank. Deeper. Realer. And beyond it, the edge of the page dissolves into nothing — into possibility.
The ocean.
Emil's fins flutter involuntarily, sending small currents rippling around his body. His hand trembles against the glass. The ocean. It's right there, rendered in simple strokes, and suddenly it feels more real than it has in weeks. More possible. He can almost taste it — the salt, the depth, the infinite expanse of home waiting just beyond these walls.
Luca taps the map, watching Emil's reaction carefully. Then his metal finger begins to trace the route, moving slowly so Emil can follow. Here, the gesture says, tapping the small rectangle. This is where you are. The finger moves along the first arrow, pausing at each turn. This is how we get out.
It's so far.
Emil counts the turns as Luca traces them — one, two, three, seven, twelve. The corridors twist and branch and double back, and even with the map right in front of him, Emil isn't sure he could memorize it all. And the X marks — there are so many of them, clustered around certain junctions like warnings.
Luca seems to notice Emil's growing apprehension. He reaches into his bag and produces another page, this one covered in his bold handwriting:
THERE IS A LOADING DOCK.
He lets Emil read the words, sounding them out slowly in his mind. There. Is. A. Loading. Dock. The letters are starting to make sense now, the combinations becoming familiar. Luca waits until he sees recognition in Emil's eyes, then flips to reveal more text beneath:
TRUCKS BRING SUPPLIES.
DOORS OPEN AT NIGHT.
Below the words, Luca has drawn a picture. A large rectangle — much bigger than the tanks — sitting on four circles. Wheels, Emil realizes. Like the ones on the carts the workers push around sometimes. But this is massive in comparison, tall enough that the tiny human figures Luca has sketched beside it barely reach the bottom of the rectangle.
A truck. Emil has never seen one up close, but he's heard stories. The elder merfolk spoke of the great metal beasts that roared along the coastal roads, spewing smoke and thunder. Dangerous things. Unpredictable.
But also, apparently, useful.
Emil presses closer to the glass, his nose nearly touching the surface. He studies the route again, trying to commit every turn to memory despite his mounting anxiety. The path leads from his tank through what seems like an endless maze of corridors, past the X-marked danger zones, and finally to the loading dock where the trucks come and go.
It looks so far.
So many corridors. So many turns. And he has no legs — his tail, beautiful and powerful in open water, would be worse than useless on dry land. He'd be dragging himself across cold floors, gasping for air, completely helpless. A fish out of water in the most literal sense.
How? Emil wants to scream. How am I supposed to do this?
As if reading his thoughts — as if Luca has somehow learned to parse meaning from the desperate furrow of Emil's brow and the anxious flick of his fins — Luca sets down the map and reaches into his bag again.
This time, he pulls out a thick stack of papers, held together with a metal clip. The top page is covered in drawings even more detailed than the map, and when Luca holds it up to the glass, Emil's eyes go wide.
It's a schematic. Technical. Precise. Nothing like Luca's usual hasty sketches — this has been labored over, every line deliberate, every measurement marked. It shows a wheeled platform from multiple angles: top view, side view, something that might be a cross-section. Like a cart, but larger and sturdier, with a shallow basin built into the top.
And inside the basin...
Water. Luca has drawn small ripples across the surface, careful and detailed. And nestled within that water, curled into a protective ball, is a figure with a tail.
A TRANSPORT TANK, Luca has written beneath the drawing. The letters are neater than usual, like he wanted to make absolutely sure Emil could read them. I CAN BUILD ONE.
Emil stares at the drawing.
His chest aches with something vast and complicated — hope and terror braided together so tightly he can't tell where one ends and the other begins. He traces the lines of the schematic with his eyes, taking in every detail. The wheels are large, sturdy-looking, designed to handle weight. The basin is shallow but long, curved at the edges to keep water from sloshing out during movement. There are handles at the back, positioned for pushing.
Luca has thought of everything.
When did he draw this? Emil wonders, staring at the careful measurements in the margins. How many hours did he spend hunched over this paper, planning, calculating, figuring out exactly how much water my body would need?
The thought makes something warm and painful bloom behind Emil's ribs.
Luca flips to the next page. More schematics — the internal structure, the materials needed, the way the wheels attach to the base. He's annotated everything, small notes cramped into every available space. Emil can't read most of them, the technical language still far beyond his vocabulary, but he understands enough.
This isn't a fantasy. This isn't a dream.
Luca is going to build this. For him.
Emil's hands are shaking when he drops to the sandy bottom of his tank. The current fights him as always, trying to erase his marks before he can finish making them, but he presses harder. Fights back. Traces the letters one by one with trembling fingers:
YOU WOULD DO THIS?
He looks up, watching Luca read the words. The human's expression shifts — something soft and fierce flickering behind his exhausted eyes. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't pause to consider. He simply flips to a blank page, uncaps his marker with his teeth, and writes in strokes so bold they nearly tear through the paper:
I WOULD DO ANYTHING.
The words hang there, stark black against white, and Emil feels something crack open in his chest. His vision blurs. He blinks rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall — not now, not when Luca is watching — but his throat is so tight it aches.
Why?
The question surfaces unbidden, bringing with it a tide of doubt that Emil thought he'd drowned days ago. Why would a stranger do this? Why would a human — a land dweller, one of the creatures Emil was taught to fear — risk everything for a mermaid in a tank? They've known each other for barely two weeks. Communicated through drawings and sand-scratched letters. They don't even speak the same language.
And yet.
I would do anything.
Emil traces another message, the letters wobbly:
IT IS DANGEROUS. FOR YOU.
Luca reads the words. A shadow passes over his face — acknowledgment, maybe. He knows the risks. He must know. If he's caught helping Emil escape, the consequences would be severe. Emil doesn't fully understand human laws and punishments, but he's seen the guards that patrol the aquarium at night. He's seen the locks on the doors, the cameras watching from every angle.
But Luca just shrugs — a small, tired gesture — and writes:
I KNOW.
Then, beneath it:
I DO NOT CARE.
Emil's breath hitches.
BUT WHY? he traces, desperate now. He needs to understand. Needs to know why this human, out of all the hundreds who have passed by his tank, saw something worth saving. Worth risking everything for.
Luca stares at the question for a long moment. His metal fingers tap against the glass — a rhythmic, unconscious gesture, like he's working through something in his head. Then he presses his flesh palm flat against the barrier, right over the spot where Emil's hand rests.
Slowly, carefully, he begins to write:
BECAUSE YOU ARE A PERSON.
The words are simple. Obvious, even. But somehow, they strike Emil like a physical blow.
BECAUSE THIS IS WRONG.
Luca pauses, his pen hovering. When he continues, his strokes are slower, heavier with emotion:
BECAUSE I SAW YOUR EYES AND I KNEW.
He holds up the paper, making sure Emil reads every word.
YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE — NONE OF YOU.
Emil's gaze darts involuntarily to the orca, still swimming her endless, mechanical circles in the tank across the room. The whale hasn't looked at him in days. Hasn't looked at anything. Just swims, and swims, and swims, trapped in a loop that has worn grooves into her very soul.
I CANNOT SAVE THEM ALL, Luca writes, his expression crumpling with something that looks like grief. BUT I CAN SAVE YOU.
The words blur as tears finally spill down Emil's cheeks.
He doesn't try to stop them this time. Just lets them fall, warm salt mixing with the artificial water, as he presses both palms against the glass. His whole body trembles — with fear, with hope, with a gratitude so vast it threatens to swallow him whole.
THANK YOU, he traces. The letters are barely legible, his hands shaking too badly for precision. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
Luca watches him scribble into the sand, his own eyes are bright, shimmering in the artificial light, but he blinks the moisture away before it can fall. When Emil looks up, Luca is smiling — small and sad and impossibly tender.
He presses his mechanical hand against the glass, right next to his flesh one. Both hands now, splayed against the barrier. A mirror of Emil's own desperate grip.
WE WILL DO THIS, Luca writes with one hand, the letters awkward and slanted. TOGETHER.
Emil nods so hard his vision swims.
Together.
They spend the next hour pouring over details.
Luca shows Emil age after page of his plans — the materials he'll need for the transport tank, the tools he's already acquired, the schedule he's been mapping out through careful observation. Guard rotations. Camera blind spots. The twenty-three-minute window between the night security check and the loading dock's automated lock cycle.
Twenty-three minutes. That's all they'll have.
Emil's heart pounds as he absorbs the information, trying to commit every detail to memory. The path through the corridors. The turns. The X marks that represent danger zones — storage rooms where guards sometimes linger, corners with security cameras, doors that require key cards to open.
HOW WILL YOU OPEN THE DOORS? Emil asks, tracing the question in the sand.
Luca’s expression shifts into something that might be a smirk under different circumstances as he reaches into his bag, pulling out a small rectangle. He displays it in front of the glass. A key card. It has a photo on it — Luca's face, younger and less haunted — and text Emil can't fully read.
THIS, Luca writes, gesturing to the card.
Emil stares at the card. Such a small thing. Such a flimsy piece of plastic. And yet it might be the key — literally — to his freedom.
HOW LONG? he traces. TO BUILD THE TANK?
Luca considers the question, his brow furrowing as he calculates. Then he scribbles down on his pad:
ONE WEEK. MAYBE LESS.
A week. Seven days. Seven more cycles of artificial light and dead fish and the endless humming of filtration systems. It feels like an eternity. It feels like nothing at all.
I CAN WAIT, Emil writes, and he means it with every fiber of his being. I WILL WAIT.
Luca smiles again, softer this time.
SOON, he writes. I PROMISE, YOU WILL SEE THE OCEAN AGAIN.
On the night of the escape, Emil doesn’t sleep.
Not that sleep has come easily since his capture. This place has never aligned with his body’s natural tides, leaving him drifting in a perpetual state of exhausted wakefulness. Tonight, though, every nerve ending feels electrified, every sound amplified to deafening proportions. The hum of the filtration system. The distant clunk of pipes settling. The soft splash of the orca's endless, circular swimming.
Emil hovers near the bottom of his tank, tucked beneath the fake coral that has become his refuge. His tail curls around his body — not for comfort this time, but to stop himself from swimming frantic laps around his prison. Energy crackles through his veins, restless and urgent, screaming at him to move, move, move.
But he can't. Not yet.
Wait, Luca had written yesterday, his letters emphatic. I will come when the third guard passes. Watch for me.
So Emil watches.
Through the glass, the aquarium stretches out in artificial twilight. The main lights shut off hours ago, replaced by dim emergency strips that cast everything in shades of blue and shadow. It reminds Emil, painfully, of the deep waters near his home — the twilight zone where sunlight fades and bioluminescence begins. Except there's no life in this light. No warmth. Just the cold glow of human machinery.
The orca is still swimming.
Emil watches her for a long moment, his chest tight with guilt. She moves like a ghost, her massive body cutting through the water with mechanical precision. Around and around and around. No song. No soul. Just motion for the sake of motion, a body that has forgotten how to stop.
I'm sorry, Emil thinks, pressing his palm against the glass that separates their tanks. I'm so sorry I can't take you with me.
The orca doesn't respond. Doesn't even look at him. Just keeps swimming, trapped in her endless loop.
Emil squeezes his eyes shut.
I'll come back, he promises silently, even though he doesn't know if it's true. Somehow. I'll find a way to free you. All of you.
It's a lie, probably. A comforting fantasy. But it's the only thing that keeps the guilt from crushing him completely.
A sound echoes through the building — distant footsteps, heavy and rhythmic. Emil's eyes snap open. He presses closer to the glass, peering into the shadows beyond his tank, his heart pounding against his ribs.
A figure emerges from the darkness. Uniformed. Human. A guard, flashlight in hand, sweeping the beam across the exhibits in lazy arcs. Emil shrinks back instinctively, tucking himself deeper beneath the coral. The light passes over his tank, illuminating the water in a brief, blinding flash, and then moves on.
The guard doesn't even glance at him. Just another exhibit. Just another animal in a cage.
One, Emil counts silently as the footsteps fade. That's one.
Time stretches. Minutes feel like hours, each second dripping past with agonizing slowness. Emil tries to calm his breathing, tries to slow the frantic flutter of his gills, but his body refuses to cooperate. His hands shake. His fins twitch. Every instinct screams at him that something is about to happen — something momentous and terrifying and wonderful.
Please, he thinks. Please let this work.
The second guard passes. Different footsteps this time — lighter, quicker. A different flashlight beam, more thorough in its sweep. Emil holds perfectly still, not even daring to breathe, as the light lingers on his tank for one heartbeat, two, three—
And then it's gone.
Two.
More waiting. More silence. The orca swims. The fish scatter in their smaller tanks. Somewhere in the building, a pipe groans, and Emil nearly jumps out of his scales.
Calm down, he tells himself. You have to stay calm. Luca is coming. He promised.
But what if he doesn't? What if something went wrong? What if he was caught, or hurt, or—
Footsteps.
Different from the guards. Softer. More deliberate. And beneath them, a sound that makes Emil's heart soar:
The squeak of wheels.
Emil surges toward the glass, pressing both palms against the barrier. His eyes strain against the darkness, searching, desperate—
And there he is.
Luca emerges from the shadows like a dream made flesh. He's dressed in dark clothes, a hood pulled up over his messy hair, his mechanical arm gleaming faintly in the emergency lighting. He's pushing something in front of him — a wheeled platform, larger than Emil expected, with a shallow basin built into the top.
The transport tank. He actually built it!
Their eyes meet through the glass.
Even in the darkness, Emil can see Luca's expression — tight with tension, but fierce with determination. He doesn't smile. This isn't a moment for smiles. But he nods, once, sharp and certain.
I'm here. Just like I promised.
Emil nods back, his throat too tight for even the bubbles that usually escape when he tries to speak.
Luca doesn't waste time with greetings. He positions the transport tank beside Emil's prison, then pulls something from his pocket — the key card, Emil realizes, the one with Luca's old photo. Luca jogs to a panel on the wall that Emil never paid much attention to before. The card slides through a reader. A soft beep. A mechanical click.
And then Luca is climbing — scaling a maintenance ladder built into the wall, ascending toward the top of Emil's tank with quick, practiced movements. His mechanical arm grips each rung with precision, never faltering, never slipping.
He's done this before, Emil realizes. Back when he worked here. He knows this place inside and out.
The hatch at the top of the tank creaks open.
Emil looks up, watching as Luca's face appears in the opening — pale, sweating, illuminated from below by the tank's faint internal lights. He's breathing hard from the climb, but his eyes are steady. Focused.
A rope ladder tumbles down, splashing into the water.
Emil stares at it.
This is it. This is actually happening.
"Emil." Luca's voice is hushed, barely more than a whisper, but it's the first time Emil has heard him speak aloud. The word echoes strangely through the water, distorted and muffled, but Emil understands it perfectly.
His name. Luca is calling his name.
Emil grabs the rope ladder.
The material is rough against his palms — coarse fiber that scrapes against his skin as he pulls himself upward. His tail is useless here, unable to provide the thrust he'd have in open water, so he relies entirely on his arms. The muscles burn. His shoulders ache from weeks of disuse and inadequate nutrition. But he doesn't stop. Can't stop. Not now.
Rung by rung, he climbs.
The water level drops. First to his chest, then his waist. The air hits his skin like a slap — cold, sharp, painfully dry. Emil gasps, his gills fluttering uselessly against his neck. They're designed for water, not this thin, empty atmosphere. He can breathe air, technically — all merfolk can, in short bursts — but it's uncomfortable. Wrong. Like trying to drink sand.
"Easy," Luca whispers, reaching down. "Easy, I've got you."
Strong hands grip Emil's arms — one warm flesh, one cool metal. Luca hauls him upward with surprising strength, dragging him over the edge of the tank and onto the narrow maintenance platform that circles the top.
For a moment, Emil just lies there, gasping.
The world is too bright. Too loud. Too dry. His scales itch where the air touches them. His tail flops against the metal grating, heavy and awkward without water to support it. He feels exposed. Vulnerable. Like a snail ripped from its shell.
"Hey." Luca's face appears above him, brow furrowed with concern. "Hey, look at me. You're okay. You're okay, Emil."
Emil forces himself to focus. Luca's eyes. Brown, warm, exhausted. Real. He's real, and he's here, and this is actually happening.
Emil nods weakly.
"The tank," Luca says, gesturing to the transport cart waiting below. "We need to get you in the water. Can you climb down?"
Emil looks over the edge. The maintenance platform is high — at least twelve feet above the floor. The rope ladder dangles uselessly into his now-empty prison. There's another ladder, a metal one, leading down to ground level, but—
His tail. He can't climb down a ladder with a tail.
Luca seems to realize the problem at the same moment. His jaw tightens. "Okay. Okay, new plan."
Before Emil can react, Luca is stripping off his jacket, balling it up, and pressing it against Emil's chest. "Hold this. Keep your gills covered — it'll help with the dryness."
Emil clutches the fabric against his neck, confused but trusting. It smells strange, like chemicals and an aroma of coffee, a beverage he’d seen a few humans drink from plastic cups — the same cups he’d find in drifting down ocean floors.
Then Luca crouches down, turns his back to Emil, and says: "Get on."
Emil stares at him, head tilted to the side curiously.
"On my back," Luca clarifies, glancing over his shoulder. "I'll carry you down. It's faster."
Carry him. Luca is going to carry him down a ladder.
Emil wants to protest — wants to say that he's too clumsy, that this is insane, that Luca will fall and hurt himself — but there's no time. Already, seconds are slipping away. The twenty-three-minute window is shrinking.
So Emil wraps his arms around Luca's shoulders.
Luca hooks his hands under Emil's tail, grunting slightly at the weight. The mechanical arm whirs, joints adjusting to compensate for the added burden. Then, slowly, carefully, Luca begins to descend.
The ladder rungs groan beneath their combined weight. Emil clings tighter, pressing his face against Luca's back to block out the dizzying sight of the ground approaching below. He can feel Luca's heartbeat, rapid but steady. Can feel the bunch and flex of muscles as Luca moves, one rung at a time.
He's actually doing this. He's actually carrying me.
"Almost there," Luca breathes. "Just a little more."
The final rung. Luca steps off, and suddenly they're on solid ground. He carries Emil the last few feet to the transport tank, and then Emil is being lowered into water — blessed, beautiful, wet water — and he nearly sobs with relief.
The basin is shallow. His tail curls awkwardly, fins pressed against the sides. The water is different from the tank — fresher, somehow. Did Luca fill it himself? Did he research what kind of water merfolk need?
"Okay?" Luca asks, hovering over him.
Emil nods, still clutching Luca's jacket against his chest. He's shaking — from cold, from fear, from adrenaline — but he's okay. He's okay.
"Good." Luca's expression hardens into determination. "Now comes the hard part."
He pushes the transport tank with steady, measured strides, the wheels squeaking softly against the polished floor. Emil lies as still as possible, curled in the shallow water, watching the ceiling pass overhead. Pipes. Vents. Flickering emergency lights that cast everything in shades of sickly blue.
Every sound makes him flinch. The distant hum of machinery. The click of their wheels against tile seams. His own ragged breathing, too loud in the silence.
"First turn coming up," Luca murmurs, more to himself than to Emil. "Then a long stretch. Camera blind spot in thirty feet."
Emil doesn't respond. Can't respond. His voice won't carry in the air the way it does in water, and even if it could, he doesn't know enough human words to be useful. All he can do is trust. Watch. And pray to whatever gods might be listening.
They round the first corner. Then the second. The map from Luca's planning sessions flashes through Emil's mind, overlaid with the reality of these cold, sterile halls. The tank where he was prisoner is already far behind — just another rectangle in a maze of rectangles, growing smaller with every step.
I'm leaving, Emil thinks, and the realization hits him like a wave. I'm actually leaving.
"Stop."
Luca freezes.
Emil's heart seizes. He lies perfectly still in the basin, water sloshing gently against the sides, and strains his ears. Footsteps. Faint, but growing louder. Coming from somewhere ahead.
"Guard," Luca breathes. "Early patrol. Shit."
He yanks the transport tank sideways, ducking into a recessed doorway that provides just enough shadow to hide them. The motion sends water splashing over the basin's edge, soaking Luca's shoes, but he doesn't seem to notice. His entire body is tense, pressed flat against the wall, one hand clamped over the handle of the cart to keep it still.
Emil stops breathing.
The footsteps grow louder. Closer. A beam of light sweeps across the corridor, passing just inches from their hiding spot. Emil can see the guard now — a silhouette at the edge of his vision, heavy boots and a crackling radio and a flashlight that seems far too bright in the darkness.
Don't see us. Please don't see us.
The guard pauses.
Emil's heart stops.
For one terrible, endless moment, the guard just stands there. The flashlight beam hovers at the edge of the doorway, so close that Emil can see dust motes dancing in its glow. If the guard takes one step closer, looks one degree to the left—
The radio crackles. A voice, tinny and distorted, says something Emil can't understand.
The guard huffs, turns, and walks away.
Emil doesn't dare move until the footsteps fade completely. Even then, he lies frozen, his chest heaving, his hands trembling beneath the water's surface.
"Okay," Luca whispers. His voice is shaking too. "Okay. We're okay. Keep moving."
They keep moving, but the next obstacle comes sooner than expected.
They're halfway through the fourth corridor — Emil has been counting, trying to track their progress against the map in his memory — when Luca suddenly stops again. This time, there's no hiding spot nearby. No convenient doorway or shadowed alcove.
"Keycard door," Luca mutters. "I forgot — they added this after I left."
Emil cranes his neck, trying to see past the edge of the basin. Ahead, a heavy security door blocks the corridor, a blinking red light indicating its locked status. Beside it, a card reader identical to the one Luca used earlier.
Luca swipes his card.
The light stays red.
"Damn it!" Luca swipes again. Red. Again. Red. "They must have finally deactivated it. Took them long enough."
Panic claws at Emil's throat. No. No, we were so close—
But Luca is already moving, kneeling beside the door, examining the reader with narrowed eyes. His mechanical fingers flex, joints whirring softly. Then, with careful precision, he pries off the reader's front panel.
"What are you—" Emil starts to ask, forgetting that his voice is useless in the air. The words emerge as a warbling croak, meaningless and strange.
Luca glances back at him, and despite the tension, the corner of his mouth quirks upward. "I told you. I built the filtration system here." He turns back to the exposed wiring. "Security systems aren't that different."
His mechanical fingers dive into the tangle of wires, moving with a speed and precision that human fingers could never match. Emil watches, transfixed, as Luca strips a wire with his teeth, crosses two others, and—
The light turns green.
The door clicks open.
Luca grins — a real grin, bright and brilliant despite his exhaustion — and pushes the transport tank through.
They pass more corridors. More turns. Emil loses count somewhere around the seventh junction, his mental map dissolving into a blur of identical hallways and flickering lights.
But Luca knows the way. His steps never falter, never hesitate. Even when they have to pause for another patrol, even when a camera swivels in their direction and they're forced to backtrack through an alternate route, Luca keeps moving forward. Always forward.
How much time do we have left? Emil wonders. The twenty-three-minute window felt infinite when Luca first explained it, and now it feels impossibly small. Every second that passes is a second closer to discovery. A second closer to failure.
"Loading dock," Luca breathes suddenly. "There. We made it."
Emil's heart leaps.
Ahead, the corridor opens into a vast space — a cavernous room filled with crates and pallets and the hulking shadows of dormant machinery. And there, on the far wall, the most beautiful thing Emil has ever seen:
A massive roll-up door. Industrial. Metal. And beyond it, visible through the small windows set into the frame—
Stars.
Real stars. Not the artificial lights of the aquarium, but actual points of light scattered across an actual sky. Emil's chest constricts with longing. The sky. The outside world. After weeks of glass and concrete, it's almost too much to bear.
"Come on," Luca says, pushing the cart faster now. "Almost there. Almost—"
The lights slam on.
Blinding. Harsh. Emil cries out, throwing his arm over his eyes as pain lances through his skull. After so long in darkness, the sudden brightness is physical agony.
"Hey! Stop right there!"
A voice. Loud. Authoritative. Accompanied by the heavy thud of running boots.
Guards.
Emil's blood turns to ice.
Through his fingers, he sees them — two figures converging from different corners of the loading dock, flashlights and radios in hand. They're shouting, barking orders into their communicators, and Emil doesn't need to understand the words to know what they're saying.
Intruder. Alert. Stop them.
"Luca—" Emil croaks, the sound barely audible.
But Luca is already moving.
He grabs the transport tank's handles and runs — really runs, abandoning all pretense of stealth. The wheels screech against the concrete floor, water sloshing wildly, splashing over Emil's face, into his gills. The world becomes a blur of motion and sound and terror.
"Stop! Stop or we'll—"
The loading dock door. Luca skids to a halt in front of the control panel, his mechanical hand slamming against buttons seemingly at random. Nothing happens. The door stays closed.
"Come on come on come on—"
The guards are getting closer. Emil can hear their boots, their shouts, their radios crackling with backup calls. In minutes, this place will be swarming with security. They'll be caught. Luca will be takne away, Emil will be dragged back to his tank, and this time they'll never let him out, never let anyone close enough to help—
A mechanical groan.
The door shudders. Rattles. And then, slowly, begins to rise.
"Yes!" Luca grabs the transport tank and shoves it toward the widening gap. "Go go go—"
The door is only halfway up when Luca pushes Emil through.
The outside air hits him like a wall — cold, sharp, alive with salt and wind and the distant roar of waves. Emil gasps, his gills fluttering wildly as they try to parse this new atmosphere. It's not water, but it's better than the sterile staleness of the aquarium. It smells like home.
They're on a dock. A real dock, jutting out over dark water that shimmers with reflected starlight. The ocean spreads before them, vast and black and infinite, and Emil's heart swells so violently he thinks it might burst.
The sea. The actual sea.
But there's no time to appreciate it. The guards are squeezing through behind them, shouting into radios, one of them fumbling for something at his belt—
"Hold on!" Luca yells.
He grabs Emil — actually grabs him, arms wrapping around his torso, hauling him bodily out of the transport tank. Emil yelps, fins flailing, tail thrashing against empty air. For one terrifying moment, he's suspended in nothingness, caught between worlds.
Then Luca jumps.
They plunge into the ocean together.
The cold hits Emil first — shocking, electric, glorious. Salt water floods over his gills, and for the first time in weeks, he can breathe. Really breathe, deep and full, his body drinking in the oxygen like a man dying of thirst. The water embraces him, welcomes him, fills every pore with the taste of home.
Beside him, Luca thrashes.
Luca can't breathe underwater.
The realization cuts through Emil's euphoria like a knife. He grabs Luca's arm — the flesh one, warm even in the cold sea — and swims. His tail pumps powerfully, propelling them both upward, breaking the surface in an explosion of spray.
Luca gasps, coughing, clinging to Emil with desperate strength.
"Go," he chokes out, treading water awkwardly. "Get out of here! Swim."
"No." The word tears from Emil's throat, rough and raw but unmistakable. He won't leave Luca. Not after everything.
Shouts from the dock. Flashlight beams sweeping across the water.
"Emil, go—"
Emil wraps his arms around Luca's chest and dives.
Not deep — just below the surface, just enough to escape the searching lights. He swims with everything he has, tail pumping, dragging Luca through the water at speeds no human could match. The sounds of pursuit fade. The lights grow distant. The dock shrinks behind them until it's nothing but a smudge of artificial brightness against the vast darkness of the sea.
Only when Emil is certain they're beyond reach does he surface again.
They break through into open air, both gasping. The stars wheel overhead, impossibly bright after weeks of artificial lighting. The moon hangs low on the horizon, painting a silver path across the waves.
And all around them, stretching in every direction, endless and eternal and free—
The ocean.
Emil floats there for a long moment, just breathing. Just existing. The water holds him like a mother's embrace, gentle and warm despite the temperature. He can feel the currents tugging at his fins, whispering of distant places. Deep places. Home.
Beside him, Luca treads water, shivering with cold but grinning like a madman. "We did it," he breathes, half-laughing, half-sobbing. "We actually did it."
Emil looks at him — this strange, impossible human who crossed worlds to set him free. The moonlight catches the metal of Luca's arm, making it gleam like fish scales, his hair plastered to his forehead, clothes waterlogged and heavy. He looks half-drowned and wholly exhausted.
He's the most beautiful thing Emil has ever seen.
"Thank you," Emil wants to say, but his voice is rough, unpracticed in the air.
Luca's grin softens into something gentler, as if understanding what Emil wanted to say for so long. Since they first met. He reaches out with his flesh hand, cupping Emil's cheek, and Emil leans into the touch without thinking.
"You're welcome," Luca whispers. "Now go. Go home."
But Emil doesn’t leave.
Not immediately. He guides Luca to a rocky outcrop nearby, helps him climmb to safety above the waterline. The human collapses against the stone, shivering violently, but he’s still smiling. Still laughing, soft and disbelieving. Emil hovers in the shallows, reluctant to leave.
“You need to go,” Luca says gently. “Before they send boats, before—”
Emil shakes his head, his throat tightening. He reaches for Luca’s hands — both flesh and metal — and gazes into those tired brown eyes. How can he say it? How can he express everything he’s feeling — the gratitude, the fear, the strange ache that opens in his chest at the thought of never seeing Luca again?
As if reading his mind, Luca gently pulls Emil closer. “I will come back,” he says, the words inadequate, but they’re all he has. “I will find you, I promise.”
Emil's vision blurs. The salt of tears mingles with the salt of the sea, indistinguishable now, and he doesn't try to stop them. His fingers tighten around Luca's — flesh warm against his left palm, metal cool against his right. Two hands. Two worlds. One person who somehow bridged the impossible gap between them.
He wants to speak. The words are there, crowding his throat, pressing against his tongue like waves against a shore. But they won't come. After weeks of silence, after communicating only through sand-scratched letters and desperate gestures, his voice feels like a rusty thing — unused, uncertain, afraid.
So instead, Emil does what he's learned to do.
He shows.
He lifts Luca's flesh hand and presses it against his own chest, right over his heart. The beat is rapid, fluttering, alive with everything he cannot say. Feel this, the gesture begs. Feel what you've done. Feel what you mean to me.
Luca's breath catches.
Then Emil takes Luca's metal hand — those gleaming fingers that drew maps and built transport tanks and bypassed security systems — and presses it to his cheek. The metal is cold from the ocean water, but Emil doesn't flinch. He leans into the touch, eyes fluttering closed, letting himself memorize the sensation.
This, he thinks. I want to remember this. The weight of your hand. The kindness in your eyes. Everything.
When he opens his eyes again, Luca is crying.
Not sobbing — just silent tears tracking down his cheeks, glinting in the moonlight like scattered stars. His expression is raw, open, every wall crumbled away. He looks at Emil like he's something precious. Something worth saving. Something more than a creature in a tank.
"Emil," Luca whispers, and his voice cracks on the name.
The ocean tugs at Emil's tail, impatient and insistent. The currents whisper of distant places — kelp forests and coral caves and the deep, singing darkness where his people dwell. Home is calling. He can feel it in his bones, in his blood, in every scale that shimmers beneath the waves.
But leaving feels impossible. He knows he should go, swim far away from this place, go back to sea grapes and schools of fish and playing with the whales. He should go home. But will Emil’s home ever be the same without Luca?
How do you leave someone who saw you when no one else would look? Who heard you when no one else would listen? Who risked everything — everything — for a stranger behind glass?
Luca seems to understand, his sad smile returning, though it wavers at the edges. "Go," he says softly, squeezing Emil's hands one last time. "Live. Be free. That's all I wanted for you."
All he wanted.
Not fame. Not recognition. Not even gratitude. Just Emil's freedom. His happiness. His life.
Something cracks open in Emil's chest — not painfully this time, but like a shell finally breaking to reveal the pearl inside. All the words he's been holding back, all the sounds he's swallowed for weeks, they rise now like bubbles seeking the surface.
And for the first time since the net closed around him, Emil speaks.
"Luca."
The name emerges rough, halting, his voice cracking from disuse. It sounds strange in his own ears — too loud, too real, too human. But Luca's eyes widen, his lips parting in shock, and Emil knows he heard.
He heard.
Emil swallows hard, forces his unused voice to cooperate, and pushes out the words he's been carrying since the moment their palms first met through the glass:
"Thank you."
Two words. Simple. Inadequate. But they carry the weight of everything — every lesson, every drawing, every promise scratched in sand. Every moment of hope in a place designed to crush it. Every breath Emil will take from this moment forward, free and alive and home.
Luca's face crumples. A sob escapes him — raw, broken, beautiful — and he pulls Emil into an embrace.
The position is awkward. Luca is perched on wet rocks, shivering and half-drowned. Emil is suspended in the shallows, his tail still submerged, his arms wrapping around a human body for the first time in his life. They don't fit together — land and sea, legs and tail, two creatures who should never have met.
But somehow, impossibly, they hold each other anyway.
"You're welcome," Luca whispers against Emil's hair. "You're welcome, you're welcome, you're welcome—"
The words dissolve into tears.
Emil clings tighter. He breathes in the scent of Luca — salt and sweat and something mechanical, oil and metal and human. He memorizes the feeling of arms around him, of a heartbeat against his chest, of warmth in the cold night air.
I will remember, he vows silently. I will remember you forever.
Finally, reluctantly, they pull apart.
Luca's hands linger on Emil's shoulders. Emil's hands linger on Luca's arms. Neither wants to be the first to let go.
But the ocean calls. Distant shouts echo from the direction of the aquarium. Flashlight beams sweep across the water, searching, hunting.
"Go," Luca breathes, and this time it's not a suggestion. It's a plea. "Please. Before they find you."
Emil nods, his throat too tight for more words.
He releases Luca's arms. Drifts back into the deeper water. His tail flicks beneath the surface, ready to carry him home.
But at the last moment, he pauses.
Their eyes meet one final time across the moonlit waves — brown and gold, land and sea, human and merfolk. So different. So impossibly, beautifully different.
And yet, Emil raises his hand and presses it to his heart.
I will carry you here, the gesture says. Always.
Luca mirrors the motion, palm flat against his own chest. His smile is watery, trembling, but real. And I will carry you.
Emil holds the image in his mind — Luca on the rocks, soaked and shivering, hand over his heart, tears on his cheeks and starlight in his eyes.
Then he turns. Dives.
The ocean swallows him whole, dark and cold and endlessly, gloriously free. The currents catch his tail and pull him forward, deeper, farther, away from the prison of glass and artificial lights. Away from the crowds and the cameras and the tank that was never meant to hold him.
Away from Luca.
But not forever.
As Emil swims toward the distant glow of his homeland, he makes a promise — silent, fierce, unbreakable.
I will find you again. I don't know how. I don't know when. But I will.
Wait for me.
And somewhere far behind him, on a rocky outcrop beneath the hovering stars, a human with a mechanical arm watches the last ripples of Emil's dive fade into the dark.
And waits.