The mermaid cut through the pitch-dark water, senses sharper than they had ever been. Every pulse of echolocation painted the seafloor and walls in shimmering reverberations—clearer than sight itself.

  What she ‘saw’ was like a mangrove forest—it wasn't just plain ocean, but water and vegetation mixed, with sea life of all kinds moving through it. Some muddy, some rocky, some clear as air, where an liquid flowed.

  It felt right. Natural. Like home.

  She took in oxygen through water effortlessly now, only on the exhale did she bubble it out through her mouth in a way still reminiscent of human. It made her smile. She was unique.

  I'm so different now. But how? Why?

  Though it had been less than an hour, the memory wavered—like a vision from another life. She strained to recall it, but it seemed like from a different time and place—with a different version of Calistya who’d experienced it.

  * * *

  Calistya's scream was cut short by a rush of water flooding into her ears, nose, and threatening to go down her throat. Desperately clawing to get back into the room, the last sight she saw was the widening eyes of her best friend. Crystal looked terrified, and Calistya knew why.

  As the room faded from sight and she plunged into the channel system, she realized that she was about to die. Without time to take in a breath, she was already halfway to asphyxiation, her limbs and head banging against the channel as she careened through the system. Somehow, though, it didn't seem aimless. It was almost as though she was going straight down, reminiscent of her plunges into the deep—though that was safe and controlled with breathing apparatus.

  The thought of it reminded her of her desperate situation, and her lungs began to scream for air. She tried stopping herself, tried resisting the flow, but it was irresistible, and so she let go and relaxed.

  Further and further, but she knew she couldn't get out. There was no exit, none that she could see, and it was growing dark.

  Her mind swimming, her head began to pound, her body ached for release, which she knew it couldn't find.

  I'm going to die, she thought.

  * * *

  The mermaid tried to shake off the terrifying recollections, gone from almost nothing to terrifyingly real in moments. She plied the currents with strong strokes, reminding herself of her aliveness. More than alive. Stronger than she’d ever been, and better. More real, somehow. More the creature she’d been born to be.

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  Another, more distant memory surfaced then. The recollection of a girl’s desire to become an artificial mermaid. ‘Full-gill’, the term flashed into her mind, causing bubbles to burst forth as she laughed at the audacity. These were gills, she knew, feeling them slice elegantly inward, drawing in water and filtering the air in the most natural way possible. The notion of any other way was simply absurd. As if now, desiring to walk the airy places, she would have herself encased in an iron lung. Why on earth would she?

  But then, the more recent, traumatic memory re-asserted itself. The way things had been just, what? Hours ago? Less than that, even? When she had been gasping for air. When she would have gratefully accepted an iron lung, or artificial gills. When life or death was so real.

  In truth, she had perished then. The girl, the human she was, died the moment she drew water. Her heart began to pound as those recollections of death, no, re-birth, came back full-force.

  * * *

  Panic. No way out.

  Calistya strained for the sides of the waterways, pounding on the glass, searching for any weakness. But it was as impenetrable as the floodwaters pressing into her, crushing her now, helpless against the pressure with nothing but her clothing. No protection at all.

  Her jaw strained to remain closed, she thrashed against the irresistible urge to gasp, ocean salt pressing at her pursed, determined lips.

  Limbs convulsing, throat spasming—every instinct screamed for her to hold, hold, HOLD!

  But she couldn’t fight forever. Her mouth forced open by force of nature, the irresistible urge to attempt a breath, whether it killed her or not, was seconds away. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold out.

  Then, an impossibly natural, new urge suddenly overrode the other. She felt a pulling, drawing sensation coming from the sides of her neck. A brand new instinct took hold, like that of a newborn realizing how to survive. Instead of taking the breath from the front, she sucked in from the sides and felt the water rush in.

  And yet, it was infused with the sweetest kind of liquidy, delicious air. She blew out the bubbles through her mouth as if that, too, were the natural way.

  Confused and still rushing through the channel, going darker all the time, she continued holding her breath. Panic and instinct and fear gripping her as she felt the water pushing down on her all around, growing heavier, growing denser.

  She was diving now.

  How could she be?

  It was almost as if she was beneath the city.

  She'd been going down for so long.

  She must be beneath the city. She can't be under the seabed here. It doesn't make sense.

  Her mind continued to swim as the irresistible urge to pull in another breath caused her to open her mouth. Her eyes widened.

  That first breath—

  A dream?

  It seemed like it. Or a hallucination. Was she dead already?

  The panic began to set in again. She almost did it the first time. To draw water in through her mouth. But again, instinct took hold. She relaxed. Trusting. Leaning into the flow.

  And again, her gills drew in a flood of water infused with sweet air.

  She flipped, aimed towards the channel flow, and began to swim with it.

  As the sides grew darker, the tunnel seemed to recede and open up until she found herself in the open sea.

  No.

  Looking up.

  Not the open sea.

  Below it. Another part of the deep. Lying dormant under the shallows all this time.

  She drew in another water breath and swam for home.

  Her real home.