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Silence stretches between us. I wish I had known Vialana better before this. She seems a lot sweeter than I thought. Perhaps I could have made more of an effort to get to know the Syrens instead of relying on Sipha.

But I’m tired of having so many regrets.

I’m so tired of everything.

My eyes close, and I drift off to sleep for a few minutes before I hear Vialana say, What do you think they’ll do to us?

I don’t know, I say. I remember what Priest said about exhibitions and museums and being kept in a glass box much like this one, people tapping on it, trying to taunt you, but I don’t want to tell Vialana any of that. If a Syren’s freedom is taken away, she loses all hope. She loses everything.

But you gained everything when you lost your freedom to Priest, I remind myself.

Suddenly, the door bursts open, three men staggering inside. They stink of alcohol, and I know that look in their eyes. Lusty and lawless.

They point at Vialana and shout at each other, their grins sloppy, leering. Disgust rolls through me, mixing with the rage until I feel as if I can’t breathe.

I watch as they take off the glass lid, exposing Vialana beneath. She hisses and lunges for them. Her claws catch one of the men, nearly severing his arm, and blood sprays into the water, mixing with her already-red hair.

The man screams, stumbles back while holding his dangling arm, while the other men grab Vialana, quickly binding her wrists with wire. She thrashes in her box, the bloody water spilling everywhere, splashing over my own glass.

They haul her out, throwing her down on the floor. They yell at the man with the bleeding arm to wrap the rope around her tail, but by now, he’s sitting down in the corner of the room, breathing slow and looking pale.

Another man comes into the room now. He doesn’t even pay attention to the injured man. No, he goes straight to the Syren and takes his penis out from his pants, long and foul-looking. He barks at the other men—one holds down Vialana from behind, holding her hair, and the other sits on her tail. While she’s still screaming, trying desperately to escape, the newcomer straddles her and runs his finger down the front of her tail, trying to find her slit.

He cries out when he does, and Vialana screams again as his fingers penetrate her. When his penis does and he continues to rape her in front of me, her scream turns into her Syren’s song.

It causes cracks to form in my glass box, fissures along the porthole windows. The men cry out from the sound, blood trickling from their ears, and yet they keep pinning her down, keep defiling her. I want to turn away—I can’t bear to see the pain and humiliation on her face as she’s violated so horribly, but I’m afraid to. I have to keep watch, have to stay vigilant, have to figure out how to fight back.

Her screaming continues, louder now, and the cracks in my glass box are spreading, deepening. One of the men punches her in the face to shut her up, which earns a reprimanding tone from the other, as if raping is fine but hitting isn’t, and while they’re distracted, I take in a deep breath of the dirty water. I gather all my strength, and with a scream of my own, I push at the glass until it shatters.

Water spills out in a rush, filling the room, and I flounder on the floor on top of the broken glass.

The men are yelling now as I try to push myself up to sit, the better to defend myself, when suddenly, more people burst into the room.

One man in particular, with a thick blond mustache, starts barking orders. From the way they jump and listen, I assume he’s in charge. He points at me, and men come forward with chains, but I open my mouth and scream again, swiping my tail back and forth along the floor, taking them out. One man falls right beside me, and I act fast. I bite down on his nose, taking it clean off while my claws dig into his chest to find his heart. I manage to swallow down his nose, one of his eyes, and his cheek before shoving the heart into my mouth, trying to gather more strength.

There is chaos all around me, my scream mixed with Vialana’s mixed with the men, but then someone has a chain around my mouth, the same way Priest did, strangling my scream in my throat. I try to bite through it, but the only thing I succeed in doing is chipping a tooth.

Then, someone else grabs my hands and tail, tying both of them together so I’m bent backward in an arc. I’m left there on the ground, watching as they attempt to do the same to Vialana, but she’s not fighting back. In fact, she’s completely still.

For a moment, I think that perhaps the man punched her too hard, but then I see the blood trickle away from her, and when one of the men steps back, I see the awful truth.

There’s a heart in her hand.

Her own.

Vialana just ripped her own chest open and tore out her heart, killing herself instantly.

I freeze. Go numb. I know I said I would do the same thing if any of those men were about to touch me, but it’s still such a shocking, horrible thing to witness. Defiled by these heathens and then destroyed by her own hand.

Even if I could find the courage to tear my own heart out, I’m shackled, unable to move.

The blond man turns red in the face as he yells more things I can’t understand. They push Vialana’s lifeless body into the corner, and then the man in charge turns to me, putting his hand to my face as he says something. He’s not quite leering at me in that sexual way of the others, but his eyes aren’t kind either. They spark with some sort of zealous fascination, and somehow, I think whatever he has planned with me is far worse than what happened to Vialana.

Then, he grins at me, and before I know what’s happening, he hits me over the head.

I wake up underwater.

Moving fast.