Chapter 4
Nerida
The white shell is a coffin.
I lie curled in the porcelain hollow, the water turning lukewarm and stagnant around me.
My tail is cramped, the powerful muscles twitching with the need to stretch, thrash, and propel me through the crushing dark of the deep.
But here, there is no depth. There is only the hard, unyielding ceramic pressing against my spine and the metal spout digging into my shoulder.
I cannot heal like this.
The wound in my side, the hole where the wood pierced me, throbs with a dull, rhythmic ache.
It is a hungry pain. It demands energy, flow, and space to knit the flesh back together.
But I am folded up like a dead thing in a preservative jar.
The circulation to my fluke is cut off, and my fins are pinned.
The stagnation is a poison, seeping into my mind, making the edges of my vision blur with gray static.
I shift, and the water sloshes loudly, a turbulent sound in the quiet room. My tail strikes the side of the tub with a heavy, wet thud.
I hiss. The sound is sharp, bouncing off the tiled walls.
I need to change.
The realization is not a thought but a biological imperative.
In the trench, we are fluid. We are the pressure and the dark.
We adapt. When the currents shift, we shift.
When the prey moves to the shallows, we follow.
But to follow here, into this dry, gravity-heavy world of the land walker, I cannot remain as I am.
This form is built for hydrodynamics, for speed in a medium that supports me. Here, I am just heavy meat.
I look at the door. It is closed. I can smell him on the other side, the salt and iron of his blood, the musk of his fear. He is pacing. His vibration travels through the floorboards and into the water, tapping against my sensitive lateral line.
I close my eyes and reach inward, past the pain in my side, past the hunger, down to the genetic slurry that sits dormant in the marrow of my bones. It is an ancient mechanism, a survival trigger pulled only in the direst of straits. It is the Shift.
It begins with an itch.
Not on the skin, but under it. It’s a maddening, crawling sensation that starts at the base of my skull and ripples down the length of my spine. It feels as though a thousand tiny parasites are burrowing through my meat, severing the connections that hold my shape together.
I gasp, arching my back, water cascading off my chest.
The heat comes next. It is a fever that spikes in seconds, boiling the water around me. My blood, usually cool and slow, turns to liquid fire. It races through my veins, hammering against the walls of my heart until I think the organ will burst.
Then, the breaking.
A sound tears through the room, a wet, sickening crack like a branch being snapped in half.
It is my hip.
I throw my head back, my mouth opening in a silent scream.
To vocalize is to invite death. Even in agony, the instinct to remain silent holds, but the pain is a white-hot lance driving through my pelvis.
My tail’s fused bone structure and the solid, powerful rod that drives me through the ocean is shattering.
Snap. Crunch.
The sound is deafening in the tiled acoustic chamber. My tail thrashes uncontrollably, splashing water onto the floor, soaking the bathmat. The beautiful, iridescent scales that armor my lower half begin to feel tight, like a skin that has shrunk in the sun. They pull. They tear.
The door flies open.
Jack stands there.
The light from the hallway spills in, silhouetting him. He holds a weapon, a heavy, metal object, raised and ready.
He heard the thrashing.
He thinks I am attacking.
He freezes.
I cannot look at him. The restructuring of my architecture consumes me.
My tail is splitting.
It starts at the fluke, the wide, translucent fan tearing down the center seam.
The membrane dissolves, retracting into the flesh, leaving behind two distinct, raw limbs.
The split races upward, unzipping the muscle, cleaving the meat of my tail in two..
It is the sensation of being torn apart by a shark, but from the inside out.
I grunt, a guttural, wet sound that bubbles up from my chest. My hands grip the edges of the tub, my claws gouging deep scratches into the porcelain, so much so that my knuckles turn white.
Jack lowers the weapon. His face is drained of blood, pale as the belly of a dead fish.
His eyes are wide, locked on the violence of my transformation.
He looks horrified, almost repulsed, but he does not look away.
He is caught in the spectacle, witnessing biology that should not exist in his world.
“God…” he whispers. The word is a breath, a prayer to a deity that has no power here.
Another crack, louder this time. My knees. The joints are forming, popping into existence where there was once only smooth, flexible cartilage. The sensation of bones grinding together, reshaping, and locking into new sockets makes my vision swim with black spots.
The scales are receding. They do not fall off but dissolve.
They sink back into my skin like a tide going out, absorbed by the hungry cells beneath.
The hard, armored exterior softens, turning pliable and smooth.
The dark teal and midnight blue of my hunter’s hide fade, bleaching out into a pale, opalescent gray-pink that mimics the soft flesh of the land walkers.
I convulse, my body arching violently in the water. The tub is too small for this, and I am thrashing against the sides, bruising my new, tender skin.
The gills.
The slits on my neck flutter wildly, desperate for oxygen that is no longer sufficient.
They begin to seal. The delicate filaments dry out, fuse together, and the skin grows over them in seconds.
I start to suffocate. My lungs, dormant and compressed, suddenly expand, forcing my ribcage outward with a terrifying pop.
I heave in a breath of air. It burns. It tastes of dust and chemicals, but it rushes into my new chest, filling the expanded cavity. I cough, expelling the last of the water from my bronchial tubes.
The violence subsides as quickly as it began. The fever breaks, leaving me shivering and cold.
The water in the tub has drained away, displaced by my thrashing or perhaps leaked out through a cracked seal. I am lying in the empty porcelain basin, curled in a fetal ball, where I look down at myself.
The tail is gone. In its place are two long, pale limbs. Legs. They are strange, alien things, ending in feet that look too small to support my weight. My toes are long, the webbing between them translucent and thin, barely there.
My skin is no longer armored. It is soft and vulnerable, but it retains a memory of what it was. A shimmer coats me, an oily, iridescent sheen that catches the hallway light. When I move, rainbows of oil-slick color dance across my thighs and stomach.
I am completely exposed. I have no shell. No scales. No slime coat. I am naked in the truest sense of the word, stripped of every defense mechanism I possess.
Jack takes a step into the room. He is breathing hard, as if he were the one who just rearranged his skeleton. The man stares at me, his gaze traveling from my face down to the new legs, then back up. He looks terrified.
“You…” he starts, but his voice fails him.
The first attempt to rise ends in a hard scrape against the floor. The body is completely wrong. My center of gravity has shifted entirely. I am now top-heavy and unmoored, and my new joints pop.
As my heart rate spikes with the exertion, the light comes.
The sudden exertion forces a rush of blood through the veins, and the skin reacts.
Pinpricks of sharp blue light ignite at the wrists. The color travels fast, mapping the blood vessels up the forearms and across the ribs. It washes down the length of the strange, pale legs sprawled on the tiles, pulsing in time with my erratic heartbeat.
Jack freezes. The rigid tension in his jaw dissolves. He studies the glowing patterns for a long moment before he registers the light is tracing completely bare skin.
“Here,” he mutters, his voice tight. He reaches for a towel hanging on a rack. It is a fluffy, dry thing, the color of sand. He throws it at me.
The fabric lands on my head, blinding me.
I freeze. Is this a net? Is this an attack?
I claw at the fabric, ripping it away from my face. It is dry. Horribly, aggressively dry. The texture is rough against my sensitive new skin, like rubbing against a coral reef. I look at the towel in my hands, confused.
Why did he throw this?
Does he want me to dry out faster?
Does he want me to die?
I let it drop to the wet floor.
I look at him, not understanding his ritual. In the ocean, there is no modesty. There is only survival. We do not hide our bodies—our bodies are our weapons, our tools, our reality. To hide is to admit weakness. I will not hide.
Jack makes a strangled noise in his throat when the towel falls. He keeps his eyes strictly on my face, refusing to look lower. It is a strange behavior. He is a predator who refuses to look his prey in the eye.
“You need to… you can’t just…” He trails off, running a hand through his hair, looking overwhelmed.
I ignore his confusion, needing to test these new limbs. I have to know if I can move, fight, or flee.
I place my hands on the rim of the tub. The porcelain is slippery, but my grip is strong, and then I push. My arms tremble. The muscles are adjusting to the new leverage. I haul myself up, my new knees knocking together. They feel loose, unstable, like jelly.
“Wait,” Jack says, stepping forward. “Don’t try to…”
One pale leg clears the porcelain edge. Bare toes press into the woven bathmat. The rough, dry fibers scrape against uncalloused skin, sending a sharp, unfamiliar texture up the calf.
The second foot follows. Weight shifts onto the new joints. The room tilts. The sudden vertical height feels entirely wrong, leaving the floor a vast, unstable distance away.
The muscles refuse to hold. Both knees fold like broken hinges. The heavy torso drags the rest of the body down, plunging straight toward the tiles.
Hands flinch upward to block the ceramic floor, but the crash never hits. Warm, tight grips clamp around the ribs, halting the fall mere inches from the ground.
Jack.
The sudden drop ends in a violent halt. Thick arms cage the ribs, crushing the breath out.
The heat radiating off his body is overwhelming.
Bare, freezing skin presses hard against the heavy weave of his flannel.
The contrast is agonizingly sharp. A deep, involuntary shiver tears through the spine.
The new flesh is entirely frictionless, sliding slick and damp against the rough fabric of his shirt.
A ragged breath tears out of his throat.
His chest rises and falls in frantic, heavy heaves against the cold collarbones.
The grip at the waist tightens until it bruises.
He freezes, muscles rigid beneath the shirt, completely overwhelmed by the aquatic texture pressed against him. Yet, the hands refuse to let go.
The new height forces a steep upward tilt of the chin. His jawline hovers just inches above.
His gaze drops. The dark centers of his eyes are blown wide, eclipsing the color entirely. The primal terror from the water is gone. He stares down at the pale throat, the curve of the waist, the human face. The monster is dead. A woman breathes against his chest.
The close proximity to his feverish warmth draws an involuntary reaction. The cold, damp body craves the heat radiating from his skin. Blue illumination surges across the pale limbs. The glowing dots throb in a frantic rhythm, casting a deep azure reflection across his stunned face.
The scent of him fills the narrow space. The bitter tang of fear lingers, but a heavier, richer musk bleeds through it. It is the smell of rain, copper blood, and a desperate, confused fascination.
The cold torso presses deliberately deeper into the rough flannel. The movement demands more of his heat, soaking it up from his chest, waiting to see if he pulls away.
“Warm,” I whisper.
My voice is different now. The dual-tone harmonic of the deep is gone, stripped away with my scales. My voice is higher, clearer, and sounds more human, but it still carries a strange, liquid cadence.
Jack shudders. His hands tighten on my waist, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. He looks like he wants to push me away, to run from the alien thing in his arms, but he doesn’t. He holds me tighter.
“You’re freezing,” he says, his voice rough.
“You are burning,” I reply.
I look at his throat and see the pulse hammering there, right beneath the skin. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It is a frantic, terrified rhythm.
I could bite him. It would be so easy. My teeth are still sharp, though smaller now. I could tear out that throat and drink the heat directly from the source.
But I don’t.
I rest my forehead against his chest. I listen to his heart, let his heat seep into my cold, new bones. The Shift has taken everything from me. It has left me weak, trembling, and flightless.
But I am not alone.
I have a source of heat.
I have a guardian.
I have a mark.
And right now, standing in the wreckage of his bathroom, shivering in the circle of his arms, that is enough.