Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

“Aren’t there stairs?” I ask.

Amy shakes her head. “The elevators are the only way into the tank.”

I’m dreading this, but I have no choice but to use it. I swipe the card on the sensor plate and wait until the elevator opens on our floor. I shove Amy in front of the elevator door in case a soldier with a happy trigger finger decides to shoot before looking. When it opens wide, Amy blubbers. We push her inside and step in ourselves. I search the buttons and find a P for penthouse. The doors close, and we slowly rise while a Muzak version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” plays. Yes, this place is truly that evil.

“The Alphas are in there,” Amy cries when the doors swing open. “Just let me go. You don’t need me.”

I can’t think of a reason to keep her, so I let her go, giving her a shove so that she falls to the floor of the elevator.

“You suck,” I say, because I’m all out of quips, then watch her disappear when the doors close.

When we turn, I find out why this place is called the tank. There are rows and rows of big water-filled tubes. Some are large enough to house many people. Inside them are Alpha, all in their undersea forms: gills and fins and tails and odd appendages. Scientists scurry about, taking readings and recording data. They don’t even realize we are here.

I clear my throat.

Suddenly, all the buzzing and work comes to a stop. The scientists see my gun and cry out in fear, alerting the whole room.

“Get out. Every one of you,” I threaten. They scurry like rats fleeing the exposing light.

“What is this place?” Bex asks.

“This is the torture chamber,” I explain. I peer into each tank. There are Rusalka and Sirena and Nix. I see a Selkie and Tritons and Feige and even some creatures I’ve never seen before.

“We need to find your mother,” my father says. “If she’s not hurt, she can help get us out of here. She’s a lot stronger than a normal person.”

“Find Arcade, too,” Bex says.

I leave her with my dad. Racing down the aisles, I realize the whole place is like a zoo. There are fourteen Ceto in a single tank, ranging from elderly to small children, bobbing up and down like transparent blobs. They’re very close to jellyfish, except for the pinkish heart that beats steadily and pumps black blood through millions of veins. One tank has three Sirena, two females and a male, covered in gorgeous scales that range from blue-green to red-pink. Their legs are gone and their long, muscular tails swing back and forth, but my mother isn’t among them.

There are seven Nix crammed in one filthy tank. Their spindly arms and legs have transformed into gray fins lined with terrible spikes. I realize they look a bit like eels, with their yellow eyes. There are more Selkies, bloated and brown, with whisker-covered snouts. Their back legs are gone, replaced with tails, but their arms are still huge with rocky muscles.

In one tank at the back of the room are five small creatures that at first appear to be octopuses, but on closer look, they have dozens and dozens of tentacles, and that’s pretty much it—no head, no eyes, no body—just tendrils lined with suckers, all whipping around in a frenzy and smacking against the glass. It’s the creepiest, most unnatural thing I have ever seen. They’re what nightmares are made of.

I shake off the chill they’ve given me and turn down another aisle, searching tank after tank. I stop before a huge creature with charcoal-colored skin and a round, puffy body. It has quills sticking out of it and a foul expression on its big face.

“Nathan.” I met him in the Alpha camp back home.

The tank next to him contains three Feige with murky green skin. The one after that hosts something that looks an awful lot like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There are others, some with skinny legs, others with claws like lobsters, and some that have huge shells on their backs. There are so many different kinds, it’s hard to process them all. Arcade told me there were other people in the ocean. Now I believe her.

“My God.” I gasp when I come across the next tank. It’s filled with body parts: limbs, heads, hands, like some kind of nightmarish junk drawer where these bastards keep the stuff for which they don’t have a place.

Some tanks have Alpha who look like they have been experimented on. They’re missing limbs, and their chests are split open from neck to naval, so their internal organs are exposed. There are some so wounded that it seems a miracle they are still alive. This is the horror show Terrance Lir warned me about, the one he swore he would die before going back to, but Tempest has Rochelle. I’m sure he’s here somewhere.

“Lyric, you have to hurry!” Bex shouts to me.

I turn a corner and finally find my mother. She looks intact, healthy and serene, like she’s taking a long bubble bath. Her mermaid tail swishes back and forth in the water. She’s more beautiful than I have ever seen her.

“If they’ve hurt you—”