Chapter Text
Yaz would never understand her assignments. It was mostly guard stuff, stand there and look intimidating. Dissuade civilians from entering government areas. Basic things she barely had the patience for. And yet, her newest job seemed different. A non-government experimental company that needed a new guard after they had to let their latest one go.
She sighed, looking up at the building. This was definitely it. Although it looked a bit shoddy, and the parking lot was suspiciously empty. But there was a man in a white coat waiting for her, so she wasted no time walking up to him.
“Miss. Khan?” The man said. “I’m Dr. Donahue. I’ll be leading you around and giving you your assignments while you work here.”
“Please,” Yaz said, shaking his hand. “Call me Yasmin.”
Dr. Donahue nodded. He looked pretty plain. Greying brown hair, wire framed glasses surrounding dark eyes, not particularly tall or heavy. Just a doctor. “Of course Yasmin. Mind if we go in? We try to run a tight ship here.”
Yaz followed him down rather hospital-like halls, the white lights bouncing off the linoleum floors.
The first leg of their tour was short, during which Dr. Donahue explained her duties and showed her where she’d be clocking in.
“Basically, we do experiments on living creatures to see if we can extend the human life or improve it in any way,” he said as they walked. “We just need someone to guard our specimen. They’re not prone to escape or escape attempts, but they do fight occasionally, and we just need a bit of a peacekeeper.”
He gestured to a door, opening it with a flash of a card. “You’ll get an ID badge today too,” he added. “That’ll all be done before you leave. Anyway, this is your break room. You have a locker there, and a place to relax and eat during your break just ‘round that corner. That there is the timetable, and that next to it is where you’ll receive any mail from us.”
Yaz nodded throughout all of this, staying silent as possible to avoid missing any information. Dr. Donahue poked his head around the corner and smiled. “Ah! Mr. and Mrs. Williams! Come meet the newest recruit.”
A tall ginger woman and a blonde man stepped into view, both dressed in similar uniforms. They introduced themselves as Amy and Rory Williams, two of the senior guards.
“And if you need anything, any help at all,” Rory said. “You come get us. Working here is a bit of a shock for the first month, but it evens out.”
Yaz waved as they left the Williams’s to their work, Dr. Donahue telling her about the other guards she’d likely encounter.
“There’s Miss. Potts, she’s in her third week here, and then Miss. Noble has been here almost a year now. Mrs. Jones was just moved to another part of the building, so you’ll likely not see her often. Oh! This is us,” he pointed to a door labeled ‘Aquarium and Aviary. Keep out unless authorized.’
Dr. Donahue pressed his ID against a panel, and the door popped open. Immediately, a small girl in red rainboots, who’d been about to open the door from the other side, yelped in surprise.
“Oh!” She took a few steps back, smiling as she regained herself. “Dr. Donahue! I was just coming to find you! We had an incident in the tank. Thirteen grew hostile and picked a fight with Twelve. She’s been moved to isolation to await punishment and he’s currently in A&E getting his tail patched up. She didn’t do much damage, just a few bruises and a scratch or two. He’ll need medicated water though, so I began prepping his isolation tank as well, oh, who’s this?” She stopped her rambling to peer at Yaz. “Is she the new one?”
“Indeed she is,” Dr. Donahue said. “Yasmin, this is Miss. Oswald.”
“Please, just Clara,” Clara insisted, shaking Yaz’s hand. “Anyway, should I report the incident to management?”
Dr. Donahue shook his head. “No I don’t think that’ll be necessary. If Twelve wasn’t hurt that badly, we shouldn’t have to report it. Don’t want to flood management with minor inconveniences.”
“Okay!” Clara said, beginning to walk off. “Oh! Jack took a bit of a spill earlier and knocked his head pretty badly. Poor thing went home early to rest, so it’s just me and Rosie down in the labs. Well, and Nine, but he’s there for recovery.”
She waved and rounded a corner, disappearing from their sight.
“So,” Yaz said finally. “Am I ever going to meet these mysterious experiments of yours?”
“Ah,” Dr. Donahue nodded. “Yes. This way. I suppose the isolation tanks are first.”
As they walked, he began explaining the exact nature of their experiments.
“It’s a bit odd, what we’ve been told to do,” he said. “But it’s what was ordered. Back in the day, about twenty years ago, we had a batch of experiments that went into our aviary. There are eight of them, and you seem like a smart lady, you know what goes in an aviary, yes?”
Yaz hummed a confirmation, looking around into an empty tank.
“Well, we received different orders with our next batch. They live here, in our aquarium. Honestly, I think this work is a bit barbaric and dangerous to our specimen, but we can’t exactly ignore the bosses. They could have our jobs, or worse,” he turned to Yaz with a somber face. “Our heads.”
Yaz’s face must’ve shifted, because Dr. Donahue smiled. “I’m kidding Yasmin! No one here is going to kill you.”
They rounded a corner, and Yaz could see a few smaller cylindrical tanks, about fifteen feet in height and ten feet wide. There were five on each side of the hallway, and Yaz could see movement in one of the far ones on the right.
“Ah yes, Thirteen,” Dr. Donahue sighed. “She’s a troublemaker, that one. Our only female in this wing. We have another, but she’s on the other side of the building, and honestly,” he lowered his voice a bit. “They don’t really get along terribly well anyway.”
Yaz walked over to the tank, steps slowing as she took in the image before her. Making tiny laps in the tank, clearly cramped and unhappy, was a full blown mermaid.
Immediately, the mermaid hissed and made a face at Yaz. She was trying to be intimidating. But Yaz, as surprised as she was, didn’t even flinch.
“Hey!” Dr. Donahue rapped on the glass. “Be nice!”
Thirteen hissed again and went back to her swimming, the lazy circles suddenly making sense. She was sulking.
“Apologies you had to meet her like this,” Dr. Donahue sighed. “She may be a bit of a handful, but she’s usually quite personable. I guess she’s still upset she lost her favorite guard.”
“Oh yeah,” Yaz said. “What did happen to the last person?”
“Mrs. Sinclair?” As he said the name, Thirteen stopped and cocked her head, hope filling her features. “Oh, poor thing died. Had an unexpected heart attack. Her husband, Mr. O’Brian, still visits Thirteen when he can. He works down in maintenance along with his grandson.”
“Oh,” Yaz watched Thirteen’s face fall as she realized what they were saying. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Dr. Donahue smiled softly. “She was the kind of person who wouldn’t have wanted us to be sad she was gone.”
Thirteen gave the glass a slap with her biggest fin, and Yaz jumped in shock. Thirteen, apparently getting the reaction she wanted, laughed behind the glass. With a racing heart, Yaz finally took in the beauty that was Thirteen.
From the waist up, she was mostly human sized and looking. A bit of a tan, decent muscles, a few freckles dotted here and there. She had three gill slits on each side of her neck, and her fingers had a silvery blue webbing between them. Her face was delicate, and yet surprisingly strong. Like bulletproof glass. Her eyes were a dark hazel, and she had a cloud of blonde hair all around her. Yaz could barely even begin to guess at a length for her hair. Maybe chin or shoulders? It was so flowy that it almost looked messy.
Of course, her tail was what Yaz was most enthralled by. It was a dark blue, almost navy at her waist, and faded into a more teal blue around where her knees would’ve been. She had colorful stripes on the navy part, and two prominent yellow stripes down her sides. Yaz counted five distinct colors in her stripes. Yellow, orange, navy, teal, and green. At her hips were fins, about the size of her head. Underneath her hip fins, right were her thighs would be, were smaller versions of her hip fins. But her defining fin was her fluke. Big and powerful, it wasn’t shaped in any delicate way. This was clearly function over fashion, although it was incredibly pretty. A shimmering silver-blue, the fluke was bordered by deep navy, and then a smaller, flat rainbow stripe. She had fins right near the base of her fluke, about the same size and shape of her lower hip fins. They mimicked the soft grey and blue bordered look of her fluke, and Yaz had to estimate that from head to tail, Thirteen was at least nine or ten feet long.
“She’s beautiful,” she breathed. Dr. Donahue smiled, gesturing down the hall.
“If you think that’s impressive, you should see the rest of our collection.”