The next morning Webb met up with his crew at Verdanx Pharma on Live Oak Key for a debriefing by Doctor Armando. The trail leading to Cassandra Drakos had gone cold, at least for the time being, and Webb had wanted his crew to take the day off. The past day and a half they had all been operating non-stop. They needed time to rest and to decompress over the loss of their mate, Leo Grant.

Webb needed to get away from the situation too. He missed his wife and little boy.

The team sat around a conference table drinking coffee. As usual, Doctor Armando was late to his own meeting. Webb resented the man and the way he lorded over them like a tyrant. But he was the one paying the bills.

Just as he was about to lose patience, the doctor burst into the room, disheveled, the tails of his open lab coat flapping behind him.

"Bruce Webb," he said while standing at the end of the conference table. He didn't take a seat and instead leaned forward his palms against the tabletop.

The doctor was small in stature. Webb figured he remained standing to compensate, thinking it would somehow give him a psychological advantage over the Tipstaff crew. His stature also explained the man's Napoleon complex.

Webb acknowledged the doctor with a curt nod, but he said nothing.

"I'm in the process of dissecting the corpse you brought in." He sounded delighted at his ghoulish task. "I doubt it will be of much use to me as nearly all the specimen's organs were perforated as a result of your overzealous use of force. I specifically told you I wanted it alive. Why did you shoot it so many times?"

Webb's temper crept into his face. He was quick to answer. "First off, the specimen as you call it had a name. She's Mya Drakos. We were forced to put her down after she killed a team member."

"Don't presume to humanize the creature," Doctor Armando snapped. "Genetically, it's a separate, distinct species, Homo sirenas." In the same breath, he asked, "Where's the adolescent girl creature?"

The man truly was an asshole. Webb counted to ten before answering. "Did you not hear me say we lost a team member?"

"What do you expect me to do about it? You're the ones who screwed up. Where's the girl?"

Webb came up out of his seat ready to deck the bastard.

Claudia Mayhew who had been sitting beside him grabbed his wrist. "You best sit down, boss."

Webb glared at the man wanting to pummel him.

Doctor Armando wore a bemused smile. He reached into the top pocket of his lab coat and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He lit up and took a long drag. He kept his focus on Webb. "I'll ask one more time. Where is the girl?"

"She got away." It gave Webb perverse pleasure to tell him that, even though it meant his crew had failed on their mission.

"She got away," Doctor Armando parroted. He stubbed out his cigarette. "I believe all of you need a refresher in exactly what it is we're dealing with. Follow me." He abruptly left the conference room expecting them to trail along like ducklings behind a mother duck.

The doctor led them into an antechamber fronting the autopsy suite. After they all entered and the vacuum sealed door behind them was secured, he opened the door to the lab.

An odor reminding Webb of formaldehyde overwhelmed him. It affected his entire crew as they breathed through their shirt sleeves until able to tolerate the stench. Mya Drakos lay splayed out on a stainless-steel dissection table, her chest cavity split open.

Doctor Armando stood on the other side of the table. "Do any of you really want to argue with me that this thing is human? It had fully transformed at the time you killed her and remained that way postmortem."

Unfortunate, Webb thought. The change had come over her as a result of their attack. Otherwise, she had been a pretty lady.

"Look at her eyes," Armando commanded. "Completely dilated, no whites showing. Adapted for sight in deep water where sunlight is filtered out." He removed a piece of her skull running from jawline to temple.

Webb started to feel queasy.

The doctor tilted Mya's head in such a way they could get a closer look. "Notice the expanded ear canal and oversized ear drum for enhanced hearing, also an underwater adaptation." He pointed to her salamander-like tail trailing from the base of her back, over the table and onto the floor. "It can whip its tail through the water to propel itself at great speeds. The row of fins aligned with the creature's scalp and spine act as very effective rudders allowing it to turn on a dime. In the water, it's highly mobile and agile."

They had seen it all before when Doctor Armando had given them the same lecture while cutting up his first so-called specimen. The doctor's performance now was gratuitous and self-aggrandizing.

He used a chest clamp to crank open her ribcage. "Check out its liver. See how it's half again as large as a human liver? In a human, blood is manufactured in bone marrow. We suspect the hemoglobin-rich blood allowing these creatures to hold their breath underwater up to ten minutes has something to do with the extra liver lobe."

He added, "But we don't know. We need to find out. Think of the repercussions to human medicine if we unlock just that one secret, how to replicate the creature's blood."

The doctor lit up with excitement. "Lookie here." He reached into Mya's throat, removed her thyroid gland, and held it under the lamp. "This extra lobe is how the magic happens. It secretes a hormone that causes the transformation."

Webb still had nightmares over what he had seen previously. Doctor Armando had strapped his live specimen—Webb was ashamed he had never taken the opportunity to learn her name—to the table and stuck electrodes through her neck into her thyroid. He had passed electrical current through the electrodes forcing the transformation.

Using a hypodermic needle, he had pulled fluid from her thyroid during the process.

The poor woman had suffered excruciating pain. At the time, Webb had taken no pleasure in her suffering but thought it necessary to understand her species.

The only reason he hadn't resigned from Tipstaff Security afterwards was to make sure nothing like it ever happened again. He had no problem with studying these special ladies, but never again would he stand idly by while they were tortured. Mya Drakos lying on the table like a slab of meat proved he had failed in that regard. Their approach to her should have been completely different. If they had simply knocked on her door and asked if she would be a willing participant with a promise to treat her humanely, she and Leo Grant might still be alive.

He was kidding himself. Nobody would willingly agree to be violated in such a way. He certainly wouldn't. His mind reeled over the contradictions.

"There is so much we still don't understand," Doctor Armando droned on. "For instance, why do these creatures only bear female offspring? We know they require human males to procreate. I suspect it has to do with their XXX chromosome instead of a human woman's XX configuration, but again, we don't know for sure. Also, what about metamorphosis? What triggers a teen-female into a fully actualized, adult Homo sirenas? What's that process like? What can we learn from it and how can we exploit it?"

The doctor tapped a scalpel against the steel table which grated on Webb's nerves. "That's why it's so vital to capture the girl-thing. We need to control her growth, study the changes to her body fluids, keep her in an MRI machine as she undergoes metamorphosis. Maybe then, we'll finally be able to understand these monsters."

Webb glared at the man. "Armando, the monster isn't these creatures. It's you."

Things will not go well for Cassie if Doctor Armando ever gets his hands on her. If you are enjoying the story, please consider voting. 

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