THE SUCCESS OF the operation put a smile on Troy’s face. He finally felt relief seeing Asceia heal herself, to be embraced by the water she always love. She was so beautiful floating in the middle of the tank. It was fascinating to watch how her hair sways, her fins move, her gills open and close, her sharp claws, shiny gray scales, and her mystical black eyes. She was like a goddess.

“Thank you for bringing me here and saving me,” Asceia telepathically said to him. Her voice was clearer and stronger than the way she talked yesterday and on the other days. Right there, he believed she was finally alright.

He genuinely smiled and mouthed, “you’re welcome.”

The group just let her stay in the water for the meantime, to ensure that she will regenerate all of her damaged tissues and organs. Knowing Asceia was going well, Troy spent all of his spare time gathering data on Herozoan Genetics. For him who once entered their system, he thought it will be very easy, but now, something was different, it seemed wrong. He made his way in but there was nothing for him. A complete scrub. No traces left. He was like looking for a non-existent place.

Two hours later, Asceia announced her full recovery. Fatima, through the use of her tablet, restored the sides of the glass tank down to the floor and drained the water out at the same time. After the stinging transformation of losing the scales and having a new and replenished human skin and form, Fatima gave her new clothes and a clean towel.

“How do you feel, Asceia?”

“I feel so better now. Thank you, Fatima,” she telepathically answered. “Now...how can I help?” she asked while drying her hair with a towel.

Fatima led her to the wall full of monitors where Troy stood beside her. Through the use of a tablet, Fatima projected the map of the Philippines on the collective screens. The map was covered in red and yellow dots. “The red dots scattered in the Philippine seas are the serceans. On the land, yellow are the humans and the bright red are the serceans. Part of the Wave Foundation’s job is to monitor sercean movement and observe them. Because of their body heat, it is not hard for us to track their movements. For years, we observed patterns in your movement. But now, the Herozoan’s attacks made drastic changes in the pattern, we also noticed more and more unpredictable irregularities in the movement. Every day, the number of serceans blending with the humans is increasing.”

Asceia took a deep breath and telepathically said to all minds around her, “it’s Yrevia, she’s the new Crown of the Order and she controls all of the serceans. As far as I can remember, she is not up for a war. Goddess Aesercean also said that Yrevia’s planning something for herself, no matter what the costs.”

“How did she become the Crown of the Order?”

“By attacking the elders while they were occupied and vulnerable. Her Order imprisoned the minds of the elders and used their bodies to gain control of the sea.”

“This is more complicated than I expected.” Fatima shook her head in disbelief. “We monitored their movements for days and traced all of the humans they encountered.” She swiped and clicked something on the tablet, displaying a group of photographs of people.

“Fuck. These are powerful and known persons. If I’m not mistaken, these are senators, business owners, and our President. These are rich and influential people to be exact.”

“You’re right.”

“Asceia, do you have any idea why would they reach out to these people?”

“I have something in my mind,  but just make sure of what the New Order is planning, I need to see these people myself.”

“What?” Troy turned around and looked at her. “These are heavily guarded people, we can’t just walk into their front door.”

“We won’t. I just need to get closer to one of them, just close enough to know.”

“Can we do that?” Troy asked Fatima.

“Among these people, only Mr. Epifanio Dela Cruz is the most accessible,” she said and tapped the image of a man with a beard that occupied the whole screen.

“That will do.”

“So we’re doing this right now?”

“Not now...later. I need time to prepare.” Fatima was about to walk out when her tablet suddenly pinged.

Asceia’s attention shifted to the banner that just popped out of the notification panel of Fatima’s tablet mirrored on the monitors.

“President Relativo called for the media. He about to announce something,” Troy uttered after reading it.

Fatima quickly opened the notification and they were directly brought to a news webpage. There, they witnessed the President sitting in front of the camera, arms laid on the table full of microphones from different news outlets. Asceia noticed something different just by looking at his eyes and facial movements. She sensed something bad and she was worried to confirm if it is true.

“I think I know what’s going on,” Asceia said.

“What?”

“People of the Philippines...” All of their attention was focused on the President. “This is not your President speaking. You humans call us mermaids, yes, we are real and we only exist in the Philippine seas. I called for this to tell you to leave the sea alone. For the past centuries, our kind felt how you poison our world. We swim with your waste and that risked the marine life. You all have been drilling into our seafloor, extracting oils that add to air pollution, which then makes our water more and more acidic. An imbalance like that affects us in the most worse way. You’ve been destroying habitats that we need to survive; spilling chemicals to poison us, and dumping soil to expand your land. You all have been killing us slowly. Since the day you all started to grasp technology, you’ve been waging war on us and we’ve been so patient and considerate of your meaningless lives. Remember, most of the oxygen you breathe came from the ocean. Destroy our world and you’re only killing yourselves. We tried to do the safest way to save both of our kinds, but it didn’t work. Now is the time to do what’s right. I’ll give you all the chance to take everything you put into our world. Take your boat and ships away. Remove your drilling platforms. Stop taking our natural resources as soon as possible. This not only goes to the Philippines but the whole world. Failure to do so, you will all feel our wrath. Every day, I will send a warning.”