Aquata Cove Ch. 39

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Adam sobbed as Merrick tightened his arms.

Keith rolled his eyes as he heard the noise and drama from inside the cell, while the other guard kept himself stoic, feeling a little overwhelmed himself from the powerful hurt those two men probably feel.

"I'm sorry, Merrick!" Adam said, "I'm so sorry!"

"Hahhh... Ihhh" Merrick wept, "I almost killed you..." He cringed as he clutched onto Adam's uniform, "I was going to KILL you!" Merrick whispered harshly.

"I know, baby, I know, I'm sorry," Tears ran down his face as he squeezed his lover tightly, "Oh baby, wha..." Adam put his hands on Merrick's face, and held it up, "Oh Merrick," His eyes are bloodshot, darkened from lack of sleep, his skin is pale, and those cuts around and near his ears look deep, "What have they done??" Merrick pulled his face away and sobbed into Adam's chest. Adam looked at the door, and roared, "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!?!" Merrick cringed and cried more. Keith hit the door twice.

~~~

"If you have a shred, any kind of trace, of human decency." Erin said behind Nigel as they watched the heart-breaking scene, "You stop this insanity right now." Her voice thickened as she struggled to contain her emotion.

"Miss Conally..." Nigel said, his hand turning to a fist, "For the last time..." He turned, and gave her a very deadly glare, "Know your place, and keep silent, or I will rip you apart..."

Erin glared at him as she shook her head.

~~~

"Adam..." Merrick sobbed, "My Adam..." His hands tightened around the stiff fabric, "You can't..." He shook his head against Adam's chest, "You can't see me like this..."

"Merrick..."

"Not now... Not when I almost ended you..."

"I don't care, baby..." Adam moved Merrick closer to him, "I love you, I'm so sorry... I couldn't protect you."

"No..." Merrick shook his head again, his voice a little muffled, "You didn't do this... You didn't do this to me... Please don't... You found me... You always find me..."

"No, Merrick," Adam said, "They've kept me here too, and I'm just now finding out why."

"Adam..." Merrick sniffled as they huddled closer, "They want to know everything about merfolk."

"Yeah... I figured..." Adam mumbled as he stroked Merrick's back.

"I won't let them know anything, but they won't stop torturing me... They won't stop asking, testing, lying, ripping, hurting me..." Merrick's grip tightened on Adam's uniform, "They won't stop, they won't stop, they won't stop, they won't stop, theywon'tstop, theywon'tstop, theywon'tstoptheywon'tstoptheywon'tstop -"

"M-Merrick!"

Merrick stopped himself, gasping and whimpering as if he almost choked himself. He shook his head as he pushed against his love's chest.

"Merrick, what if you just tell them a few things?" Adam inquired.

~~~

"Theeerre we go..." Nigel said, nodding.

~~~

"Just tell them a few facts, and maybe they'll let us go-"

"NO!" Merrick sobbed, "They won't!" He cried as he pushed closer, "Adam... They've tricked me!" He held up his bandaged hand, "They took me apart... That should be enough for them..." Merrick whimpered as he put down his arm, "And then they feigned kindness... They reached out, and I gave them answers they didn't even ask for... And it all went straight to HIM!!" He whimpered as he curled up, "Adam..."

Merrick sobbed in fear "They will never... Let us go..."

"Merrick... They will, they have to..." Adam shook his head as he caressed the merman, "Please... They have to let us go..." Merrick whimpered as he clutched onto Adam, "... If you won't tell them then..." Adam said, "I will-"

"NO!!" Merrick demanded, "No, Adam, PLEASE!!" He shook his head harshly. "Think about it!!" He begged, "Humans society connecting with merfolk! You told me all about what happens when humans make those sorts of connections!"

"Merrick, look at you!" Adam cried, "They've butchered you up, and they've kept me in the dark all month! Is it really worth all of this pain?!"

"I don't care!" Merrick said, "Adam, please don't tell them anything, please!!"

~~~

"I think we finally got ourselves a Trump Card..." Nigel said.

"Nig- Mr Quinlan," Erin said, "Please, just put a stop to this-"

Nigel ignored her, and brought a walkie to his mouth, "Alright, separate them. Take Mr Bryant to the interrogation room, and I want him securely bound."

~~~

"Merrick..." Adam croaked as he held tight onto Merrick, "Please... They've done enough to-"

The door unlocked, and opened up. Keith and the other guard stepped in, inspiring a surge of fear into Merrick.

"Time's up."

"No!" Merrick said.

"Visiting hours are over, Faggots."

"NOO!" Merrick clung to Adam tightly, and Adam held onto Merrick as best as he could too.

"Don't make this harder than it has to be."

"I'm so sorry for this." The guard said as he pushed his baton between the two males.

"NOOO!! STOP IT!!" Merrick demanded.

"LEAVE US ALONE!!" Adam shouted as Keith wrapped his arms around his torso, and his shoulders, and pried his arms off.

"ADAM!!" Merrick exclaimed as his human was dragged away from him, holding onto his hand as long as he could, "DON'T go, pleeeaaassee!!"

"Merrick!" Adam winced as his hand was slipping, "GGhhhhh!" The other guard yanked Merrick back, and their hands disconnected.

"NOOOO!!"

"Let get go of me!!" Adam struggled and writhed in pain as he knee seared with agony, "Let me go, you bastards!!"

"Calm down, Drama Queen," Keith said as he pulled Adam away towards the door.

"I almost killed him!!" Merrick yelled in tears as his mate was taken away, "I don't want to kill him! I DON'T WANT TO KILL HIM!!" He yelled as he kicked and writhed the best he could.

Adam cried and struggled more as this homophobic guard locked his hands in handcuffs, still hearing Merrick's cries and shrieks from outside the cell. "Merrick..." He whimpered, "I'm sorry..."

"Egh, don't get all-"

"EEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYEEEEEEEHHHHHHHH!!" Came the sound of a ravenous war cry. Adam jumped as he heard a man scream in pain, before the other guard was thrown out the cell, and crashed on the wall. Merrick appeared soon after, snarling as he sank his fist into the guard, breaking several ribs.

"Humans are monsters! ALL OF YOU!!" He proclaimed.

"Merrick, stop it!!" Adam called. The injured merman turned his attention to Adam and Keith.

"Monsters..." He let go of the guards, and sprinted right at Adam, "DESERVE TO DIE!!"

Adam stood, terrified as his one and only love charged at him, his eyes blaring in the low light like illuminated cat eyes, his jaws opening up as he zero'd in on them.

"MERRICK, NOOO!"

EEEPEEPEEPEEEPEEPEEEPEEPEEEPEEPEEEPEEPEEEPEEP

A loud, strange, chirping noise rang out in the hall. The guard Merrick has just pulverized is holding his gadget out and emitting the harsh noise.

"AHHHHH!!" Merrick clutched his ears, screaming in pain as the fell to his knees, subdued by the new sound.

"S-Stop!" Adam wept as he watched his Merrick writhe and cover his ears, "STOP IT!! You're hurting him!!"

"You WANT him to eat you alive?!" Keith said as he yanked Adam back.

More guards sprinted in as Merrick groaned in agony of the continuous noise. They yanked him up to his feet, and dragged him back, with him barely moving at all.

"YOU'RE GOING TO FUCKING KILL HIM!!"

Once Merrick was locked back in his cell, the noise stopped. Adam cried as he was carried away, forced to limp as Keith lead him to the interrogation room.

~~~

"JUST LET US GO ALREADY!!" Adam roared, standing up, his fists clenched as he seethed at Nigel, "What are you trying to prove?!" Try as he must, his wrists are no match for the titanium cuffs that bind him to the table.

"A lot." He simply replied.

"What, how much of a great tormentor you are?! Congratulations, YOU MADE YOUR POINT!!"

"No I haven't, and I will tell you if you will just calm down." Nigel said sternly. Adam breathed deeply, glaring at total hatred at this man. Eventually, Adam forced himself to sit down.

"Fine. Tell me why you're doing this... Why are you torturing him?"

"I have a dream, Mr Bryant. And I'm very, very short on time..." Nigel said as he turned around, and looked out the window of the interrogation room - this one has a view of the sea.

"When I was about 6 years old, I saw a mermaid. She looked real enough to me, but who can recall from so long ago?" Adam said nothing, but listened, "Of course, I can't wait to tell any and everyone who would listen." Nigel shook his head, "As you can guess, on how cruel kids can be..." He sighed, "Of course, I made myself a laughing stock of the whole school, from the 2nd grade, to the 6th grade, when I finally stopped hearing about."

"So lemme guess," Adam said aggressively, "You swore revenge on everyone who laughed at you, and devoted your life to revealing the existence of merfolk."

"Hmph." Nigel huffed, "That WOULD be the end result, wouldn't it." He said. The old man shook his head, and turned back to Adam, "No, eventually it got out of my head, but I did take up Cryptozoology - my own little way of searching without anyone really knowing what I was looking for - I did not want anyone getting in my way, or mocking me for my passion.

"As you can imagine, Cryptozoology doesn't provide much of a living, and I couldn't let anyone know what I was after, so I focused my time and energy to Marine Biology. Half-way through my education, my parents enlisted me in the Navy. And thus began the decline of my heath..."

"What?"

Nigel walked back to the window, and gazed longingly into the ocean, "Through all of my dedication and hard work, I was given the Honorary Privilege to run the Agency of Oceanic Research. A government funded facility where we research and study new, exotic creatures of the deep. Yet sadly..." He took a deep, ragid breath, "A few years ago, I was diagnosed with an old, severe case of Mesothelioma. I'll spare you all the technical mumbo jumbo, and call it Lung Cancer. I can thank the Navy ships for that." He coughed a little, "Even with treatment and kemo... I have 5 to 10 years left to live."

"Well you're not exactly a Spring Chicken." Adam retorted coldly.

"Hmph," Nigel turned back around, and approached the table. He put his hands on the table, and looked down at the young man, "Tell me something, Adam. Have you ever gone to the doctor, and discover that your life has an expiration date? Have you ever looked in the mirror, and think to yourself that that can be very well the last time you ever see yourself? Everything you are, everything you were, everything you were going to be, every goal and aspiration snatched up away from you in just a blink of black." He glared at Adam bitterly, "Regardless of age, would you ever want to know how much precious time you have on God's green earth."

"And how does that excuse the way you've been abusing my boyfriend?!"

"The ends justify the means, Adam." Nigel said, getting up, "I have a real live merman, here, in my facility. Tell me though, what do you think will happen if I made this discovery public?" Adam shook his head and shrugged, "An uproar, that's what. If I were to reveal to the world that I have contained a real merman, everything would be seized, the papers would overload with news, skeptics will take every once of the day blabbing about how much of a hoax it is, debunking every once of evidence that is shoved right in their faces." Nigel shook his head, "No... I simply don't have that kind of time. And besides, with doing something like that, the news would be old in a year, and what would I have to show for it?"

"So you're mocking and maiming the love of my life because you're short on time," Adam said, "But WHY?? What are you trying to achieve???"

"I want to make my mark on history." Nigel said, "I want to be the man who not only discovered the existence of merfolk. Oh no, I want to be so much, much more."

"What, you want to be a merman yourself?"

"If you would let me finish." Nigel retorted, "I'm taking whatever steps necessary to get every ounce of information I can get, from any source. The guards have spoke with him in turn, my assistant has accumulated very fine details, and my scientists are in the process of analyzing Merrick's genetic code.

"But it's not enough, you see. I must learn any and everything about the culture, their religion, their different body types, I must find MORE merfolk to question, and break down THEIR DNA, but I must know where they are, where they go, how to speak with them, everything there is to know about merfolk!"

"Why??" Adam said with disgust, "What do you hope to accomplish??"

Nigel gave a smile "With what little time I have left, I will do everything in my power to become the Ambassador of the 7 Seas." He stated, "I will go down in history as the man who created bonds and ties between humans and merfolk. I will establish society into the deep blue see. I will pave roads into the trenches, where we could never wander into before!"

"So that's your plan?!" Adam snapped, "You're torturing my Merrick for an impossible dream?!"

"Nothing. Is impossible, Adam. You have your proof sitting in a cell. You and your boyfriend is living proof that humans and merfolk CAN work and live together."

"Not in YOUR lifetime!" Adam said, "And not in MINE either! I told you, contact with humans is strictly forbidden, Nigel!"

"Perhaps. But I know they worship and obey the will of their goddess. I believe they refer to Her as the Sea Mother?"

"They'll NEVER believe you!" Adam snarled as he rose up, his bindings snapping straight, "Even if you convince them to even LOOK at you, there are mermaids out there that can always tell when you're lying!"

"Oh I'm sure there are, but I'm sure they'd never cross the word of their goddess."

"Did you even hear me?! Besides, they won't even talk, or look at you!!"

"That is why as soon as I find them, I will set the better example. I will establish myself as a man of peace, who can and will provide with anything they want to know about us."

"You're delusional!" Adam shouted, "In all my years I've known Merrick, I've learned that merfolk believe in completely ridiculous atrocities about humans! They think we can make weapons out of hot lava! They think we're masters of the skies! They believe that a single human can destroy and reshape mountains at any given time!"

"Even so, Adam," Nigel said, "I have come too far to give up now."

"Even if your dream was possible, what YOU want to do would take more than 10 years!"

"So you understand why I've done what I have to." Nigel said bitterly.

"No, I don't!" Adam said.

"Really." Nigel leaned down, "Tell me. When all of your dreams and aspirations have completely vanished, wouldn't YOU do whatever it takes to make them come true?"

"Not if it meant mercilessly torturing an innocent person!" Adam spat out.

"Well, that's one opinion. But at least now that you're here, I can get things back on track."

"You..." He hesitated, "I won't let you use me!"

"Of course you will." Nigel said, "I'm sure you don't want anything else to happen to your Merrick?"

"You bastard!" Adam growled as fresh tears formed in his eyes, "I love him with all my heart, but he doesn't care happens to him! He'll die if it meant protecting his kind! He'll sacrifice himself 100 times over if it meant keeping all that holds dear from falling apart! And if I have to lose him because of that," His chains snapped straight again, "I'll kill you first before he has a chance to die!"

"Such drama." Nigel said, shaking his head. "I think I need to show you a little something..."

~~~

Adam is escorted down a flight of stairs, with one guard keeping behind him, and two medics following closely. Nigel has the only key to the door they are about to enter, "I like to call this my..." Nigel said, "Mausoleum Museum." He chuckled at that, before unlocking the door.

They entered, and Adam shuddered as he looked around, half in awe, and half in fear as he looked at the many glass cases, domes, and coffins, all of which contain one or few extremely strange sea creatures.

"Are these your previous... 'Guests'?" Adam asked. This place is like a freezer, it's so cold.

"You COULD say that. Another way I'd put it are discoveries this Agency has found over the years. We learn all we can about them, and bring them to this secret garden right here."

Adam turned his head, spotting an octopus with spiky skin, about 6 feet in circumference, pinned up in a glass case on the wall. He saw a dome with a spiral-formation of dead fish that are almost completely transparent. Another model he spotted was the strange Ruffle Shark. He gasped as he spotted a familiar creature in a large glass case - a bunyip. Almost like the one that belongs to Atarah, only this one is larger.

"Ah, here's one you might be familiar with," Nigel said as he came to one of the glass coffins. Adam gasped as he looked upon a dead mermaid - one of the Primate mermaids from the documentary, The Body Found. It lay there, freshly preserved inside the coffin. "Sometimes, when I'm not coughing up a bucket of blood, I like to come down here, and look at all these treasures." Adam irked as he closed his eyes. This icy room just makes him feel like he's in Death's lounge room.

"But that's not the one I like most." Nigel said. "My favorite... Is over here." They walked to another glass coffin, but this time, he opened it. Adam quaked as he gazed upon the creature - a reptilian being with dark green scales, pale yellow underbelly down its front, and along its long, coiled, snake-like tail. Its hands are long and sharp, and the face looks near-human, with a head full of smaller, clearly dead snakes.

"Ain't she a beauty?" Nigel said as he gently caressed the corpse's head, "A living myth, just like your boyfriend."

"I-Is that... Is that Medusa?" Adam asked. Nigel chuckled at that.

"Oh, I doubt that. Might be a descendant though - I discovered this one myself 5 years ago off in a rocky area near Athens, Greece."

'Merrick did mention that merfolk mutate when there's a Solar Eclipse,' Adam thought to himself, 'Maybe this thing - if there's more of them - came from ancient Greek times from mutant Holsiens...'

"Did you interrogate uh... Her too?" Adam asked. Nigel smirked and shook his head.

"It's a little difficult to question a dead girl, wouldn't you agree?"

"You killed her?"

"No, actually, I founder her recently deceased on that trip." He tilted her head to the side a little, "Interestingly enough, some of the snakes on her head were still alive when I found her. It took a few hours before they died too, one by one. Sad, really." Adam breathed deeply as he fought the urge to shed tears. This sick monster is just pawing around this poor dead creature like she was a puppet.

"You want to know what I love most about her?" Nigel asked. He tilted the gorgon's head up, and put two fingertips to its eyes, and moved them up.

"Hhhh!!" Adam gasped as he looked into those silver, reflective orbs.

"Her eyes are most enchanting." He said.

Adam immediately felt a cold wave hit his body. His breathing suddenly became extremely difficult - he's unable to take a breath! His hands started to lose feeling, along with his feet. His legs turned to jelly as he fell back, and collapsed right on the floor! He gagged and gasped raspy huffs as his torso quickly lost all feeling, up to his chest, until his very face felt like cold clay.

As the young man rasped and huffed, Nigel closed the gorgon's eyes, and closed the glass coffin. He walked around the coffin, and squat himself down to Adam/

"Mythology states that the gaze of a Gorgon would turn its victims into stone. Well, maybe in ancient times, maybe they did, and maybe they didn't." Adam can still hear and see him, but his body is completely numb. He lay there, unable to breathe at all! "But the science of it is just fascinating. See, instead of turning to stone, the victim's brain actually shuts itself down after seeing a refraction of light from the Gorgon's eyes. The victim would become entirely paralyzed. So, either they died from suffocation, or they were eaten alive, completely painless."