When Doctor Armando raised the padding and Cassie saw her momma's sightless eyes and mutilated body, she died inside. She had remembered her momma as a beautiful woman who had loved her so much, she was willing to die for her daughter. For the rest of her life, however short it may now be, her treasured memory would be forever blighted by the sight of the ugly shell of what remained, hideously preserved in some toxic fluid, imprisoned in a clear cylindrical casket like some circus sideshow freak.

Cassie's awareness of what went on around her retreated to a place of darkness deep within herself. Her heart still beat, she still breathed, her body continued to function, but her thoughts ceased to exist.

She floated in nothingness.

"Sirena."

Cassie didn't know how long she remained in oblivion. It could've been minutes. It could've been centuries. The call from the sea sparked a lone electrical impulse to fire between two of her dormant brain synapses.

She ignored it and tried slipping back into torpor.

"Sirena."

Perhaps she had been gone so long the world had ended and this was her call to judgment. Maybe she wasn't human, but Cassie never doubted she had a soul. She was a child of God, no better or worse than her human counterparts. Her kind had been placed on Earth to save lives, to live among humans and to love them. To be denied a chance at salvation just because of what she was would be the cruelest of jokes.

"Sirena."

She could no longer fight the call. Her mind began to return. Then she heard a familiar voice.

"Hurt her and I'll kill you. I'll torture you first and you'll wish you were never born."

Rafe? Her heart leapt, his voice like an oasis in the desert.

Someone held her upright. Something sharp pricked at her throat. A laugh. "But that can only happen after this thing is also dead."

Armando, the embodiment of everything evil in humans. A monster who wouldn't even acknowledge her identity by saying her name. Her voice had gone hoarse. "I'm not a thing. My name is Cassie."

Her sight returned and she recognized her custodian standing with Rafe, trying to reason with the doctor while he made her walk toward a door.

Soon they were outside, the cool rain a welcome relief to her skin, a healing balsam. Her consciousness completely returned, and she felt strong.

While on the drug they had administered to her, Cassie had been unable to sing. She hadn't been able to remember how. She could sing to the doctor now and enthrall him, make him let her go.

"Sirena."

The call warned her not to do so. Whatever existed deep in the sea, the angel directing her had other plans.

Armando stumbled while dragging her aboard a boat. She recognized it. Ofelia's boat. Her boat. What was it doing here?

The doctor shoved her. She fell hard against the deck. He was driving the boat away at full throttle.

Shots zipped over her head. She heard the snap and felt the vibration of bullets slamming through the hull.

Her eyes expanded. The dim lights shining from the instrument display provided enough illumination for Cassie to see Doctor Armando's face twisted with rage. Neither of them had been hit by the gunfire, but from where she lay, she was getting wet from seawater leaking through the breached hull.

Cassie stood and held on to the gunwale. She shouted above the noise of the motor and pounding rain. "Turn back. We're taking on water."

He ignored her and kept the boat pointed toward the middle of the Gulf, each minute taking them farther from shore.

Looking behind, she saw a light piercing the darkness. It hurt her large orbs and she averted her gaze. A boat was pursuing but headed in a slightly different direction. She realized the doctor hadn't activated the running lights.

"You can't get away," she shouted. "Another couple minutes and we'll be swamped."

The man was unhearing, staring at some point far in the distance.

As they sank deeper toward the water line, the motor began to lug as its air intake sucked in sea spray. It finally got Doctor Armando's attention. Cassie saw recognition in his eyes as he realized their plight. Instead of surrendering, in his desperation, he resumed his suicidal course.

The motor eventually coughed and choked out.

"Why?" Armando shouted. He sounded like a petulant child. "I was only trying to save human lives. Your blood and your organs hold the key to miracle cures."

In a normal tone of voice, she said, "Maybe you should've approached me like a decent human being and asked for my cooperation instead of forcing me. Maybe my momma would still be alive if you would have asked her to help you."

"How dare you speak to me of human decency, you miserable inhuman creature," he snarled.

The boat pitched onto its side and Cassie leapt into the sea. She experienced the now familiar pain of her body transforming, fins growing from her backbone and scalp, tail extending from the base of her spine, and webbing forming between her fingers and toes.

The transformation lasted for only a minute. She swam effortlessly around the sinking vessel. Guided by dim bioluminescence of sea creatures not visible to human eyes, she found Armando holding onto the bow, the only part of the watercraft not yet submerged. She dove under and swam to what once was the deck, opened a compartment and pulled free a lifejacket. She went to the compartment where her things were stored and retrieved the machairi knife her uncle had given her.

She tried strapping the knife onto her lower leg as usual, but the task proved difficult. The webbing of her fingers decreased her dexterity. She couldn't dawdle. Armando wouldn't survive without the lifejacket. Feeling profound loss over the generational gift that had been entrusted to her, she let go of the knife. It sank into the deep.

She breached the surface and found the doctor coughing, sputtering, desperately treading water. Waves washed over him in between his breaths. Shoving the lifejacket at him, she said, "Here. This is how decent human beings help each other."

Weakened by his struggle, the doctor couldn't slip into the buoyant device. She tried helping, but again her loss of dexterity prevented it.

Cassie knew the next wave washing over the doctor would finish him. She grabbed him in a lifeguard's cross-chest carry and began to swim, whipping her tail to gain speed.

How many miles from shore were they? She couldn't quite make out. Maybe one or two. The drag resulting from the extra body reduced her normally sleek, streamlined form. She couldn't go as fast as she wanted. Another factor slowing her was the wake she caused. It flowed around the doctor's face and into his nose and mouth.

She tried to encourage him. "Keep breathing."

He didn't speak.

Cassie wondered what he thought of her now, a sub-human struggling to save his wretched existence.

She fought to stay above the waves, understanding she was in no danger herself, but instinctively struggling to save a man, because saving men was what she was put on Earth to do. Not just good men, but all men.

Cassie soon began to tire. Every time she rolled on her back to float and rest, the waves washed over Doctor Armando choking him.

Cassie continued to struggle, bearing the man's body that on land weighed nearly twice hers. He had stopped coughing and his breathing turned shallow.

"Sirena."

"No," she shouted to the sea. "I won't let him go."

"Sirena."

She started to cry. "He's probably never had anyone to show him mercy."

When her calling suddenly ended, Cassie no longer sensed the doctor's life force. He was gone.

"I'm sorry I failed you," she said between sobs. "I tried. I really tried."

She let him go. He sank down and away.

Question - Would you have been as compassionate toward Doctor Armando?