My Online Alien Merfolk is Real novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Surface
Gus's voice came over the tug's loudspeaker, enormous and cracked.
"Somebody get that girl out of the water!"
Six sets of hands reached down from the tug's rail.
They hauled me over the side in a tangle of boots and blankets.
Someone wrapped a coat around me that smelled of diesel and pipe smoke, and I coughed until my ribs hurt.
"Where is he?" I said. "Where's Velun?"
"Here," said a low voice behind me.
He came up the boarding ladder one rung at a time, dripping, and every phone on the deck swung toward him.
He had legs.
In the glare of the floodlights, silver and tall and bare as a statue, he stood on the tug's deck.
He looked down at himself.
The blue lines ran down his ribs.
His skin was dry, and it did not split.
"Four hours," I whispered.
"It has been seven," Velun said, wondering. "My skin has not even tightened."
The old crabber from the café pushed through the crowd with a pair of canvas trousers.
He held them out at arm's length.
"They're mine," he said. "Long ones. Wear them, son."
Velun took them, and put them on, and they fit.
Nobody on the tug made a sound.
Then Maya came down the ladder at a run, still in her rain jacket.
She hit me so hard that Gus had to catch us both.
"You idiot," she sobbed. "You absolute idiot. You were on the feed for six hours and you went down before I could..."
"I'm okay."
"Your lips are blue."
"I'm okay!"
"I'm taking your pulse," she said, and did it, and kept crying.
On the beach, under the sweeping lights, I saw the deputy.
He stood by the upended submarine with a pair of handcuffs, and Brent sat at his feet in the wet sand.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of My Online Alien Merfolk is Real are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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