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“And then we’re going to flood the bedroom so you can swim with your sharks.”
“Okay, sounds good.” I close the door, and rest my hand on the bookcase that hides it. “Wait, what?” Her muffled voice comes from the other side. “You’re joking, right?”
I open it again. “Yes.”
Her face lights up with a smile. “I’ll eat something.” She takes a large bite of the stew and swallows it down with a big gulp of water. “Well, hopefully the curfew is lifted soon.”
“Yes.” I close the door again.
Castor is picking up the pieces of a broken lamp. We’ve got the sofa and the bed both back together. “The guys who tossed this place were some angry blubber fish.”
“Indeed.” I pick up a painting and hang it back on the wall.
“What do you think they were looking for? Annabelle? Or something related to what Eros used to do?” Castor throws a glass into the dustbin.
“I don’t know, but I’d like to tear them apart.”
Castor straightens. “Is she doing okay in there?”
“She’s already finished Bellucci’s notebook. He was paying the Kraken king. It’s a ledger and testimony against the Vitrom governor. Belle’s working on Richeal’s translations now.”
“Whoa.”
“She’s working really hard at it. She hardly touched her stew.”
“I’m just doing housekeeping, and I hardly touched that slop, so I don’t blame her.”
We keep at it, and two hours later, the apartment is as good as it’s going to get.
“Eureka,” Belle yells from the library.
“What?” Castor tilts his head.
The door opens, and Belle is beaming. “Eureka. Or what is it you would say when you’ve had a big breakthrough?”
“‘I’ve made a big breakthrough,’” Castor replies.
She throws her hands up in the air and laughs.
Castor claps, so I do too before taking her hand that she still has thrust into the air.
“I’m doing my ta-da hands. Never mind.”
Ta-da, eureka—I still have a lot to learn about humans. “What is it? What did you figure out?”
“It’s not what I figured out but what your mom figured out. The Mermaid Viability Project wasn’t only about making more female mermaids and getting them to survive but about making geminae mermaids. That way, they could grow the Braesen population faster than any other dome.”
“Shoot, that’s big, Annabelle.” Castor sits back on the sofa.
“Yes, and they were close to doing it too. They had several successful theories. Well, semi-successful. From what she could tell, they were models, but Richeal was close to figuring it out. Somehow, she was getting access to Braesen’s data. The mermaids in the models weren’t full mermaids. They wouldn’t have the ability to shift all the way.”
“Did they make podlets?” I cross my arms over the front of my chest. I know what it sounds like she’s saying. If they did, what has happened to them?
“I don’t think so. But these notes are from a long time ago. There’s a lot more I need to go through. One name keeps popping up over and over again, though. At first, I didn’t realize it was a name. I thought it was a scientific term. But then I kept seeing it over and over and I thought it might be translating it wrong. Calvin Degree. I thought maybe it was talking about the temperature. But then later on, in the smallest note on the side of the notebook, she mentions Calvin is threatening her. That if she tells anyone, he would hurt her podlets. She was blackmailed into not letting the news out. It’s horrible.”
“Podlets?” Surely it says “podlet.” She was worried about someone hurting Nico. I nod at her. I know I’m right. Belle is a clever girl, but she’s made a mistake interpreting the data from the notebooks. It must say podlet.
“I knew you were going to catch that. Yes, Holter, it says podlets. I had the translator check it three times. I can even show you the symbol she uses to make it a plural. It’s ingenious. I’m starting to catch on to the basis of the whole thing. I’m hoping I’ll be able to read it without the machine soon because the volume of material is so extensive. It would be a heck of a lot faster if I could just read it without having to use the translator for the easy stuff.”
