The storm had passed three hours ago. The cargo ship Meridian sat dead in the water, engines failed, crew of eleven waiting for rescue. Captain Marcus stood at the stern watching the dark water. Something felt wrong.
Then he saw the fin.
Marcus: All hands. Now.
It rose from the water like a blade. Gray, ancient, enormous. At least six feet tall. The shark beneath it had to be forty feet—prehistoric, scarred, circling the ship with slow deliberate patience. Not a great white. Something older.
Marcus: Get the flares. Get anything.
The crew scrambled. But the shark didn’t rush. It was in no hurry. It knew they weren’t going anywhere.
Then the water began to glow.
Green light rising from the deep. Fast and purposeful.
She broke the surface thirty feet from the ship. From the waist up she looked almost human—pale skin, dark hair trailing behind her, bare shoulders catching the moonlight. But her eyes. Her eyes were wrong. They burned green, luminous, like two fires underwater. Below her waist, a tail. Dark scaled, powerful, twice the length of her upper body.
The crew went silent.
The shark turned toward her.
What followed lasted four minutes. The crew watched every second.
She moved through the water faster than anything had a right to move. When the shark charged she dove under it, tearing at its underbelly with both hands. The water turned red. The shark thrashed, spinning, trying to find her. She was already behind it.
Sailor Tom: She’s fighting it. She’s actually fighting it.
She was. And she was winning. Every time the shark struck she redirected its momentum, used its own size against it. Three times it nearly caught her. Three times she slipped free by inches that made the crew gasp.
It ended with her driving the shark down, deep, both of them disappearing beneath the surface for thirty terrible seconds. Then she rose alone. The water around her dark with blood that wasn’t hers.
The crew erupted. Cheering, crying, arms raised.
Tom: She saved us! She actually saved us!
Marcus watched her float there in the moonlight. Something was wrong. She had fought savagely, efficiently, like something that had killed a thousand times. But she wasn’t looking at the water where the shark had gone. She was looking at the ship.
She was looking at them.
Then she began to sing.
It wasn’t like any sound Marcus had heard. It came from beneath language, beneath music, beneath everything human. It was beautiful the way deep water is beautiful—pull-you-under beautiful. Promise-you-everything beautiful.
He felt it immediately. A warmth spreading from his ears through his chest. The water below suddenly looked gentle. Welcoming. Like something he’d been missing for years.
No.
Marcus gripped the rail hard. Hard enough to hurt. The pain helped. He held onto the pain.
Around him, the crew was moving. Tom was at the rail, one leg already over. First Mate Sarah walking toward the side, arms slightly raised, face peaceful. Four more men following. Then five. Then eight.
Marcus: TOM! STOP!
Tom didn’t hear him. Nobody heard him. They were somewhere else.
Marcus looked at her. In the moonlight, floating, singing. Her green eyes were fixed on the deck, bright and patient. She had fought the shark to clear the water. To make it safe for them to enter.
Not to save them.
To hunt them.
Marcus ran for the ship’s horn. His legs felt heavy, like moving through water already. The song pressed on him from every direction. He almost stopped twice. Both times he found the pain in his hands from the rail and used it, focused on it.
He reached the horn and held it down.
The sound was enormous. Deafening. Physical.
The song shattered.
The crew stumbled, confused, eight men catching themselves at the rails. Tom was halfway over—Sarah grabbed him, pulled him back. Both fell to the deck, disoriented, gasping.
The siren stopped singing.
She looked at Marcus directly. For the first time. Her green eyes fixed on him with something he couldn’t read. Not anger. Not respect. Just recognition. He had seen through it. That had not happened before.
She was still for a long moment.
Then she dove.
Green light fading into black water. Gone.
Two men had gone over before Marcus reached the horn. In the chaos and the singing and the ship sitting dead in the water in the dark, two men were lost.
The crew stood on deck in silence. Tom was shaking. Sarah was holding onto a cable with both hands. Marcus stood at the horn, hands still pressing it even though it had gone quiet.
They sat in silence until rescue came six hours later.
Nobody told the coast guard everything. Some things don’t have official reports.
At the inquiry, Marcus said they lost two men to the storm surge. It wasn’t the right explanation. But it was the only one anyone would believe.
He thought about her eyes often after. The way they had fixed on him. The recognition in them.
She had fought a monster to earn their trust. She had done it perfectly. She had almost gotten all eleven.
She’d gotten two.
And somewhere in deep water, Marcus knew she understood that the one who had resisted was the reason she’d lost nine.
She would remember him.
He would always wonder if she’d try again.
He never sailed again.
