Desharow Mermaid - Chap 55

“Desarro, get up.”

Amidst the whirring sound of the propeller, a voice called out, and I felt the knees that were pressing down on me move away as a hand dragged me up from the ground.

Without even needing to think about it, I knew that the one who had just been suppressing me was Lein, that Nazi lackey! In an instant, I exploded with tremendous force and leapt up, slamming into him from behind with all my might. My fist was aimed straight at his face, but he dodged it with agility as if he had already anticipated my move. My punch ended up grazing his nose, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward, causing me to tilt forward. Lein then used a standard hold to subdue me, and at the same time, I felt a dull pain in the back of my neck. Before I could react, I fell to the ground, seeing stars.

I shook my head and tried to get up, but my head was spinning, and I felt dizzy. In the blink of an eye, I heard a few swishing sounds, and then sturdy tape was wrapped around my hands and feet, and a large coat was thrown over me, covering my eyes in darkness. To prevent myself from being at the mercy of my captors, I bit my tongue hard, causing unexpected and intense pain that jolted me awake.

Thankfully, I didn’t bite my tongue off, but I noticed that my canine teeth had become very sharp! I could feel blood dripping from my lips, and my tongue was numb.

Thank goodness, thanks to Ares, I might become a mute from now on!

Damn, this is just too unlucky…

I struggled between dizziness and pain, fighting against nausea. Then my body suddenly felt light, and I was lifted by strong arms and carried quickly, soon placed on a stretcher, tightly bound with straps, rising upward with the swirling wind.

My heart throbbed fiercely, as if suspended in midair. My limbs were covered in cold sweat, like a person with acrophobia experiencing a helicopter ride for the first time. Although I could hardly consider this a ride, I was being transported like livestock or cargo. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like being trapped in a cave filled with unknown darkness. I couldn’t control my fate or whereabouts, and I couldn’t find out the fate of my friends and Agerres, or even confirm whether I still had any value to these Nazis. And if I did, would I have a chance to turn things around under their control?

May God bless me. I wanted to pray to God, but I didn’t believe in Christianity and knew well that He would not take care of an atheist like me. I had to face reality – I was in a real, completely isolated, and helpless situation, becoming a hostage to a group of Nazi remnants who were attempting to occupy this ancient island thousands of miles away from Russia.

A wave of despair surged in an instant, but I immediately suppressed those depressing thoughts. I took a few deep breaths, closed my eyes, and forced myself to maintain a little bit of the “De Sarro” optimism, spitting out the blood in my mouth.

Hey, hey, De Sarro, don’t beat yourself up first, you’re still alive, right? These mermaids are such powerful creatures, maybe they can give these scheming bastards a brutal counterattack with the laws of nature!

Encouraging myself like this, I felt a glimmer of hope rise in my mind. Also, my body underwent some changes, making me stronger (although it might bring unforeseeable dangers), but it has now become my most advantageous condition. Oh, damn it.

When I was lost in thought, the helicopter slowly descended and quickly made a landing sound on a metal surface.

The clothes covering my head were roughly pulled off, allowing me to see where I was.

I had arrived at the Nazi fleet anchored on the coast. After being taken by several armed personnel, I saw that their ships numbered four and were linked together by metal plates, resembling a small hydroelectric power station. But I couldn’t be clearer that this was the “experimental base” mentioned in the conversation between Rhein and Shakaral.

They would use this as their core, log the islands, and then expand their invasion range, just like the “Z” plan of the German Navy during World War II, although that plan failed. I hope they will be defeated here just like during World War II, but it’s ridiculous that there were powerful Allied forces during the Normandy landings, but now there’s only me, a Russian kid, a biology student who only talks about theories on paper.

“Hey, where are you taking me? What about the mermaid you captured?”

I rinsed the residual blood in my mouth and asked fiercely the person on my right who was responsible for escorting me. He gave me a cold glance and ignored me. Realizing that they might not understand Russian, I repeated it in English, but now with a slightly unclear pronunciation and a strong Moscow accent, the response I got was almost the same as before.

I sighed in frustration and looked away, but suddenly my eyes lit up when I saw the wire mesh trapping Ageres, hanging empty on a hook on the ship’s side, swaying back and forth. He must be on this ship too.

But as I searched around, a hand suddenly pressed down hard on the back of my head, shoving me violently towards the cabin door with an angry voice behind me saying, “Idiot, gehen!” (Idiot, go in!)

I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I was sure it was an insult. In fact, everything in German sounded like an insult to me. I was shoved into a windowless cabin, where there were many iron cables and handcuffs hanging, and there was also a closed door. I guessed that this was the place where they were going to imprison me as a captive.

The hand behind me pushed me to face the wall. Before I could react, a powerful jet of water suddenly hit me from behind, making me spring forward like a spring, but my head was pressed hard against the wall and my body was held down by several hands. The high-pressure water, full of the salty taste of the sea, attacked every corner of my body without mercy. I couldn’t even open my eyes and could only struggle to breathe. This was like the experience of every prisoner before they entered jail!

This was a way to break the pride of the criminals, making them realize that they had no dignity or resistance left. They were no longer treated as a “person” but as an animal. These guys were treating me like a prisoner, perhaps wanting to torture me first before interrogating me with torture.

I started to feel scared, but I gritted my teeth and didn’t react. I remained motionless like a statue. Being sprayed with a high-pressure water gun all over my body was extremely unpleasant. They didn’t even spare my buttocks and genitals, which made me feel extremely humiliated. It was so humiliating that it even reminded me of the worst memory of my life – the cruel punishment inflicted on me by my strict father when I was a child. But the scary thing was that these people wouldn’t care about my life as much as my father did.

The water gun swept over me for who knows how long. When the water in my ears was about to flood into my brain, everything finally stopped. My eardrums were ringing, and my thoughts felt numb. Mechanically, I wiped the water off my face, patted my heavy head, which felt like it was taking on water, and before I could recover, I suddenly felt a rough hand on my butt.

This instantly stunned me, and I heard several people behind me burst into laughter. One of them sarcastically taunted me in broken English, ‘Hey, Russian kid, I heard the mermaid you caught was your lover?’

My brain exploded, and I viciously swatted the wandering hand on my butt, turned around, and stared at the tall speaker with a dark face. I slowly said word by word, ‘What did you say? I don’t understand your lousy language.’

The room fell silent, and then there was another burst of laughter. The guy in front of me looked me up and down with ill intentions, scratched his chin, sneered and said, ‘I heard that before we arrived, you and that fierce beast in the cave below had…some kind of intense fight?’

My ears suddenly became hot, and an overwhelming sense of shame rushed into my brain with anger, causing my nerves to smoke like a burnt-out spring. My fists involuntarily tightened at my side, and my nails sank into my flesh. But the pain-induced rationality told me that I had to endure because I had no capital to resist at the moment.

So I stared at the guy in front of me, my gaze turning into a knife-like glare at his disgusting face. ‘I used to be his keeper, trying to tame him, but the process wasn’t that smooth,’ I said firmly.”

The response to my words was a burst of even more audacious laughter, as if they had heard the funniest joke ever. One of them reached out and grabbed my chin, then pushed me against the wall with his chest, breathing heavily and sneering at me, “Oh really? What did you use to tame him? Your perky little butt or your soft tongue? Let’s see, this pretty Russian boy has a body full of tender flesh…”

I couldn’t hear or see anything clearly, but the boiling rage inside me had already burned through my skull. My body reacted even faster than my brain, and I landed a punch on his nose in the blink of an eye. He cried out in pain, and I followed up with another punch, then another, knocking him backwards. Without hesitation, I pounced on him and pinned him to the ground, unleashing a flurry of blows on him. People around us raised their guns and aimed at me, shouting, but I didn’t care. I just kept pummeling the man beneath me, who was much stronger than I was. Even when they hit me with the butt of their guns, it didn’t do much to stop me. I felt like they were hitting me with a sponge pillow.

These people clearly hadn’t expected that the seemingly docile lamb in front of them could suddenly turn into a lion. And I myself had no idea what kind of strength I could unleash in this state of anger. I just let the ferocity in my blood explode like a firework. I fought back against the people who kept coming at me, and soon the ground was covered in blood. After knocking down several more people, the others backed away and aimed their guns at me.

I gasped for breath on the ground, wiping the blood from my forehead and nose. I prowled around the others like a real beast, and they looked at me in surprise rather than contempt, which made me feel a little better. But it was still bad news, because I knew they were planning to shoot me dead.

If I could go back ten minutes, I’d do the same damn thing–I couldn’t bear that damn humiliation. If I were going to kill someone, it would be in this kind of mood. I wished I had a machine gun to mow them all down.

“Click.”

I heard the sound of a safety being disengaged. A voice in my head desperately reminded me to say something to save my life, but my mouth…

Damn it, Desaro, you’re so stubborn like a bull. You’ve suffered so much since childhood, and now you’re finally going to pay for it with your life.

“Wait! Don’t shoot, Colonel Shakalal! He still has use!”

Just as the situation was about to take a turn for the worse, I suddenly heard Lain’s voice at the door.

I opened my eyes and saw him walking in, looking at the bloody mess beneath my feet, and paused at the sight of the poor creature lying on the ground with a broken nose and teeth scattered about. He looked up at me in disbelief, as if asking if I was the one who did it.

I stood up, shrugged my shoulders, squinted my eyes, and stared provocatively at him. I rubbed the blood dripping down my chin with the back of my hand, but then suddenly noticed that something was wrong with my hand. The transparent membrane between my index and middle fingers had grown back, and the veins on the back of my hand were bulging. This caused me to shudder all over, and I quickly lowered my hand and pretended nothing had happened.

“Well, do I still have any use to you, Lain, my dear mentor?” I snorted, trying to conceal the panic rising inside me. I didn’t know if this mutation would intensify immediately, and I couldn’t be sure if my legs would suddenly turn into fish tails or if that damn embarrassing estrus would happen again.

“Bring him here, quickly.”

Suddenly, a sharp female voice broke the dead silence in the room, which came from the pager on Lain’s body. This successfully shifted the complex and ambiguous gaze that Lain had been casting on me. He waved his hand, signaling the others to lower their guns, and gave me a covering garment so that I could finally cover my body without shame. He then escorted me towards the other end of the ship.

Descending the stairs leading to the lower deck, I immediately felt like I was in a heavily guarded underground cage. Oh my god! What did I see? The glass water tanks on both sides were covered with a layer of metal mesh. Through those small and dense gaps, I found that they were all individualized mermaids! Among them were females and males, all with their heads against the glass inside, looking out at the outside world with despair and fear. Those eyes suffocated me like a stranglehold.

But I found that there was no sign of Ageres among them.

Where is he?

Just as I was full of doubts, Rhine led me all the way to the end of the lower deck, and Shakalal was standing in front of me. Behind her was a closed cabin door, and there were several indentations on the door panel, even with blue blood stains on her hands.

My heart suddenly tightened.

“You’re lucky, Desarro,” Shakalal bent her crimson lips slightly, showing her iconic and nauseating cunning smile, “you will have a chance to survive, but not because of Rhine’s plea, but because of this mermaid in the cabin behind me. I just found out that she is the leader of the mermaids on this island. Look at these pitiful little things around you, they all came to save him.”

She paused and stared at me with a falsely gentle look in her eyes, “Little genius, now we need his genes, but unfortunately, no one can get close to him and pierce his skin with a syringe. Only you–”

“Colonel!” Rhine interrupted her.

“Shut up!” Shakalal’s face suddenly turned from sunny to gloomy: “Otherwise, do you have a better way? Or do you not want your little baby to live?”

“But…”

“I promise. I’ll help you.” I opened my mouth and spit out a few words expressionlessly. God knows how much I wanted to spit on this beautiful snake’s face and slap her twice, but I realized that this was my only chance to see Ageres and save him.

“Okay…” Her eyelashes drooped, and her gaze refocused on my face. The light emanating from her green eyes gave me shivers. “But before you go in, I need to show you something.”

I furrowed my brow as I watched her press a button on the wall. The sound of a metal panel opening above my head made me instinctively look up, causing me to stumble for a moment.

Through a glass panel above my head, I saw Raphael, Davenchy, and Eva lying on their sides with their eyes closed, handcuffed to their hands and feet.

“What…what did you do to them?” My eyes almost popped out of their sockets, and the tremble in my voice betrayed my emotional state. I wanted to extend my neck and bite this wretched woman’s throat off!

Sakaral backed away, crossing her arms and pressing the button again with a casual gesture. “Don’t worry, they’re just unconscious. But whether they survive or not will depend on your performance, Desarollo.” She pronounced my name like she was casting a deadly spell on me. She reached into her pocket and produced a needle packaged in a sterile bag, which she handed to me, gesturing for Ryan to release me.

My chest heaved violently, and my gaze lingered on the needle before fixing on her face. I really wanted to strangle her, but I suppressed the impulse and reached out to take the needle, placing it in my pocket.

“I have a condition,” I said, staring at her. “No one is allowed in while I’m taking the sample.”

Sakarar Guaner smiled subtly and opened the cabin door, saying, “We will only monitor you from outside. You’d better not play any tricks. Your poor friends won’t last long.”

My fists clenched suddenly, making a cracking sound in my knuckles. I took a deep breath and stepped inside. The cabin door slammed shut behind me. I was plunged into darkness, but it only lasted for a few seconds. My night vision, which I had gained through my mutation, kicked in.

The cabin was quite spacious. In the center of the deck, there was a dark glass water tank, and Ageres was hanging from his arms, bound by several thick chains. He was gasping for breath, head hanging down. He was so agile and brave in the sea, but now he looked like Jesus on the verge of death, hanging there with his upper body exposed to the surface of the water. As I approached, I noticed a blackened scar on his heaving chest, which was caused by an electric shock.

I stood there dumbfounded for a few seconds, then stumbled and jumped into the water tank, splashing towards him. My chest was filled with broken pain as if hit by a hammer. An emotion swelled up, about to burst out of my heart. My trembling fingers touched the skin near his wound, and my whole body shook violently. Even my throat couldn’t produce complete syllables. But eventually, I managed to utter a sound, “Ageres.”

My voice was quite hoarse, barely audible.

He gasped heavily, and his head swayed, slowly and laboriously lifted up. The deep pupils under his narrow eyelids seemed to lose focus and gradually focused on my face.

“Desharow…”

He murmured softly, his face close to mine, nose against nose, and his voice low, almost like a whisper. I held his cheek as if to make sure he wouldn’t die immediately, and I kissed him, trembling.