Wooyoung spent most of the truck ride bent in half over his tail. He hated the restriction placed upon him. It was so cramped and the water was getting stale, to the point where it was starting to make him sick.

And if it wasn't the water, it was the crazy old man that spent more time talking to himself and watching Wooyoung's move than anything else.

He had no idea how long he spent being jostled around, but his anxiety spiked again when the truck finally came to a stop.

The merman sat up and watched as several men came and started rolling the tank back. His stomach dropped a little when he realized it was nighttime. He glanced at the sky, looking for the stars he had taken the time to study. A few managed to poke through, but there were so many lights elsewhere that most were hidden from view.

But to Wooyoung it felt like they were hiding from him.

He didn't get a lot of time to look around before the tank was suddenly turned on his side, forcing him out with the rush of water and sending him rolling across the ground.

A few of the men stopped him with their feet, then bent over to roll him onto another blanket before hoisting him up.

Wooyoung tried to find out where they were taking him, but all he could make out was white walls and bright lights.

"Let's get him in the main tank to give him time to acclimate. That pitiful thing was just a means to keep him alive for the drive. We must keep him in water as much as possible." The old man said. At least he knew what he was talking about...

It was only a couple of minutes before the group stopped and someone reached it to cut the ropes binding Wooyoung's limbs. He had half a mind to try and fight back, but he knew there was no point. So he let them pull the rope away.

Once more, one side of the blanket fell away and Wooyoung found himself suddenly rolling into more water.

This was so much better than the last time though. It was perfectly salty and he could instantly feel and taste how fresh it was.

He immediately flicked his tail to head toward the shadows, only to be met with a dark blue wall. It must have been designed to blend in with the water... Wooyoung let out a small whimper and ran his hands over it to try and find a gap or a hole or... anything.

Then he turned and noticed the schools of fish all around him. He swam forward to try and greet some, but they all flitted away from him, leaving him utterly alone.

Wooyoung clutched his stomach and moved over to a large rock formation to hide behind it. Now that he had been in here for a few minutes, his body was starting to process that this wasn't the water from his home and it made him shake a little in pain. He would be find after a few days, but his tail was noticeably duller at the moment. Although that could also be from the barbed net he had been trapped in.

Wanting to learn a little more about the place he was trapped in, Wooyoung placed a hand on the rocks in front of him to slowly pull himself forward to peer around the rock.

Just by watching the fish he could see that his space was limited. There must be another clear barrier keeping all this water in like what had held him on the way here. He noticed a few zebra sharks and stingrays gliding around, completely unbothered by anything else in the tank.

That is, until the men who had taken him dumped in a bucket of dead fish. It sent most of the bigger fish into a frenzy as they went to feed. Wooyoung's own stomach grumbled with need, but he wasn't going to give the humans the satisfaction of figuring out what he ate.

No matter how good the fish looked...

Even though it was against his better judgement, Wooyoung found his hand reaching out for a piece of fish that had drifted toward him, but a shark came by and snatched it away.

His eyes followed it for a moment, then he noticed something else.

Something that made had him shaking his head and covering his mouth.

San.

The human looked just as shocked at the revelation and they both moved toward each other.

For Wooyoung though... the pain was so much worse.

He had spent weeks telling himself he would never see San again, and for San to see him in this form...

The merman sank down to the sandy floor and doubled over his tail again. It felt like everything inside of him wanted to break free. He clutched his stomach and cried out into his hand.

Vibrations in the water told him that San had touched the barrier between them.

How was this possible? Why was he here?

Wooyoung found himself wishing this was just an awful dream. Any moment now he would wake up laying next to Mingi and Yunho... He had to.

After a few minutes, he slowly lifted his head and saw San staring at him with glistening eyes and the palm of his hand pressed to the barrier. He shook his head a little and started to speak. It was a muffled sound and Wooyoung couldn't understand him, but he knew that San was at least saying his name.

He opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it. There was no way to tell if his captors were seeing what was happening right now... And it was with that thought in his mind that Wooyoung started to look around the tank for signs of anyone else around them. He could feel his panic rising at the thought of someone seeing what was happening right now.

Wooyoung started to back away but San stopped him by tapping on the glass.

The human started to shake his head and then pointed at himself, then at Wooyoung. Then he slowly stuck his hand down his shirt and pulled out the scale Wooyoung had given him.

Wooyoung immediately let out a strangled sob and slapped both hands against his mouth.

He had kept it... San had kept the scale with him this whole time.

Finally closing the distance, Wooyoung swam forward with a flurry of churning sand to press both hands against the barrier.

San dropped the scale so that it hung around his neck and placed his hands in the same exact place.

As strange as it may be, it still felt like there was a little bit of a connection even though they weren't physically touching.

Wooyoung couldn't figure out what was on his mind right now. It was so chaotic and jumbled, but the one thing that kept forcing it's way forward was how good it was to be San again.

All that time mourning, all that time trying to forget... It was as if it didn't exist now because all the bubbly feelings and urges to touch him and kiss him had all slammed into him once more.

San continued to try to speak to him. His perfect lips moving with hurried and urgent words. Wooyoung felt so bad when he had to shake his head and motion to his ears.

He watched the human purse his lips in anger, then pull out his cell phone. His fingers flew furiously over the small device that Wooyoung found so fascinating before he held it up and pressed it to the glass.

Wooyoung's eyes darted over the words, which thankfully he understood because he had studied human language for years.

'Are you ok? What is happening? I don't understand.'

The only problem was that Wooyoung didn't know how to respond. He chewed on his bottom lip and then figured he could attempt to write it out in the sand, but then the muffled sound of something opening above him caught his attention.

Wooyoung gave one last pleading look to San, hoping to convey his fear and worry through just his eyes, before darting off behind a small rock structure covered in colorful coral.

He could still kind of see San swaying back and forth to try and see him, but Wooyoung was more focused on the giant metal device being lowered into the tank. It wiggled around a little, almost like it were some kind of sea snake, but where it's head would be was four long arms that kept opening and closing.

Wooyoung didn't like it. Everything in him told him to find a place to hide.

In his panic, he darted out from behind the rock to seek shelter behind a bigger one.

That was when the thing attacked him.

The arms opened up and grabbed him, wrapping around his entire body and trapping him inside. His tail hung from between two of them, and his head and chest were on the other side, but it hugged his sides so much that no matter how much he squirmed or flipped his tail, he couldn't get free.

Slowly, the merman was pulled up to the surface and out of the water.

He was left hanging and flailing for a moment before something strong and round wrapped around his tail.

Wooyoung cried out and tried to pull away, but there was a long pole attached to the round thing that a human was using to control it.

The man started to pull him closer to the platform and chuckled as Wooyoung continued to struggle. "If ya knew what's good fer ya, ye'd stop strugglin'," He grunted.

Another man approached with a similar ring, only this one was already opened and spread apart. He worked it around Wooyoung's torso and closed it so that Wooyoung's arms were pinned to his side. "There we go. Let's get him to the boss."

The first device that had pulled Wooyoung from the water let go of him, but his full weight was now supported by the two humans. They lowered him to the ground and proceeded to drag him across the hard floor.

They went down two separate hallways before more humans swarmed Wooyoung. They all started attaching things to his body, some on his forehead, several on his chest and stomach, and a few on his tail. Each one had strings attached to them that led to yet another human device that had several lines of flashing lights and moving pictures.

Wooyoung tried to make sense of it for only a moment before he was lifted and deposited into another box of water. This one was a little bigger than the first one he'd been in, he at least had room to swim around a little, but that was it.

"Thank you, boys." The older man from earlier said while approaching Wooyoung. "Sorry we couldn't give you very long, but you've got a very busy day of making us money tomorrow, so I need to run as many tests as possible on you now."

Wooyoung backed as far away from him as he could and looked down and the square things attached to him.

As soon as he lifted a hand up to try and remove one, the man tapped on the glass and shook his head. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." And evil sneer crossed his face. "Not that you'll understand this, but each one is infused with electricity. If it's removed in the wrong way, you're in for quite the nasty shock." He started to laugh, then motioned to one of the other humans in the room.

Wooyoung made sure to keep his movements slow, so that he could act confused, but he knew exactly what the man meant. And he did not want that to happen.

His heart raced as he looked around his new prison. Several men and women dressed in white kept circling him and writing down their observations. They would mutter to each other and nod or shake their heads, all while never taking their eyes off the trapped merman before him.

Thankfully nothing more happened, all Wooyoung had to do was sit there or swim around when one of them stuck a pole in to prod at him, but he knew he was in for some long days and unspeakable things awaited him in the days to come...

It was hopeless.

At this point, Wooyoung saw no way out.

This would be his new home for as long as the humans deemed it necessary to study him...