“That was fast,” Skylar said.
“I found him asleep in a chair near the tanks,” he said.
“I’d love to know Magus’s reason for having him here.”
“I get the sense Magus thought he’d have inside information on us,” Argan said. “Guess he’s not so brilliant after all.”
She looked at the key ring in Argan’s hand. “There’s only one key.”
“Yeah, I don’t know, we’ll see,” he said, trying it on an adjacent door. It worked. It was a supply closet. He tried another door. It was deceptively large, and full of animals in cages. “More things to set free.” He shook his head. They closed the door and tried the next. The key worked for all of them.
When they opened the door to the nursery, Skylar was slow to recognize it. She almost shut the door without going in. It looked nothing like she remembered. Many adolescent-aged children sat hunched in folding chairs, half-asleep. The walls were dingy white, nothing on any of them but for one “Hang in There” poster taped crookedly to one wall.
Each of the kids had a bib number attached to their pajamas. A line a dozen long led into what appeared to be a doctor’s office.
“What is going on?” Skylar asked Pamela. “This is very wrong.”
“Oh, this is right,” Pamela said with a creepy smile. “These children are about to hit puberty. We’re shrinking their thymus.” She acted like she was talking about a haircut.
“What?” Argan asked.
“Oh, it’s standard procedure.” Pamela waved off his concern. “Everyone has it done. Right about the time true self-awareness starts to solidify in a human, we shrink the thymus. It helps ease them into adulthood.”
“This is the most screwed up thing I’ve seen yet,” Skylar said.
“They don’t know it’s happening. You didn’t know it happened to you. It happens during the dream state,” Pamela said. “They’ll wake up tomorrow none the wiser.”
“They’re children!” Skylar snapped.
“Not really,” Pamela said. “They’re adolescents. Their childhood is all about gone. They won’t miss their thymus.” She chuckled.
Skylar had no idea how to help the children there. She didn’t know how to help anyone here.
“Fifty-three?” Pamela called out to the group, and a thin girl with pin-straight hair stood up.
Skylar didn’t fully understand what shrinking the thymus meant, but she knew in her gut that any manipulation of the human body like this was unnatural. “Don’t go in there!” she shouted to the girl.
The girl just looked through Skylar and entered the exam room door.
“No use,” Pamela said. “They don’t see you.”
“They have to see me, my son saw me before,” Skylar said.
“Again, this is the dream state. But you have to ask yourself: Was it your son’s dream, or yours?”
Skylar started to panic. “He was real! As real as right now, as real as you …” she gasped. Is Pamela real? She was another woman, here in Atlantis, saved from being thrown in those tanks. Is any of this real? She was losing her grip on reality; she looked at Argan for grounding.
“Your son?” Argan asked.
Skylar winced. “Oh, Argan.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I never told you … we were apart last year and then when we weren’t, there was never a good time …”
“To tell me you had a son?” Argan asked calmly.
“Well, yes and no.” She paused, now unsure of any of her past. It was all blurring with the experiences she was having now, and she couldn’t differentiate any of it. “I had a pregnancy. And then I came here, I thought in a dream, but now I’m confused. And I met him.” Her eyes lit up with love. “I met a sweet mophead of a toddler, and he was an angel. But then the pregnancy ended.”
Argan’s face saddened.
“It all happened at the insane beginning of this whole ordeal. Rhia died soon after and we were apart, and …” She stopped and looked at him. “It really doesn’t matter. I am sorry to not have told you.”
“Joshua?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Okay.” His face wore confusion. He shook his head as if to try to shake it from his mind—and quickly, the darkness Magus had infused in him started to show. Skylar could see it in the veins on his arms, running through them like black ink.
“Argan, what is happening?” she asked as the ink traveled up his neck.
He backed away from her. “Something’s wrong. I need a minute.”
“Argan, wait!” She stepped toward him. “I want to help you.”
“Don’t, Sky.” He ran toward the door. “I don’t know how you could.”
Skylar knew he had to process this information, but she had no idea what Magus had done to him. A part of her wanted to iron things out right then, but she knew that wasn’t possible. She had to let him go.
“Okay,” she said to an empty doorway.
He bolted down the long corridor that seemed endless. He passed Kyle, who was now awake and diligently cleaning the massive tank. Argan looked into the tank. Deep in the middle, a large, dark object caught his eye. It was a cage of sorts with thick bars of coral and kelp. Pod shaped, it looked like a clam on its side.
“Don’t tell me the mermaids get put in that thing,” he said to Kyle.
“I’m not sure,” Kyle said.
“It’s a soul cage,” Heather said, walking up behind them. “It’s an underwater keep, a place between worlds. The prisoner is neither here nor there but suspended out of time. If one survives the soul cage, they are forever changed. They say it’s infused with the magic and wisdom from beyond time.”
Argan turned to face her and she saw the black veins across his arms and face. “You aren’t well. Let me examine you.”
“Hell no.” He shook his head and his pupils dilated quickly. He looked back at the water. “Has anyone ever survived it?” he asked. “This soul cage?”
“No,” she said. “But the Archer hasn’t used it in a very long time. He keeps it in there as a reminder to the mermaids of the men they lost. Those who tried to help them.”
Argan looked up through the glass ceiling. The brilliant sunlight had dimmed considerably. “Something’s different,” he said. “The sun’s lower for the first time since I’ve been here.” He looked toward the north; the moon was rising. The sound of the running water from the fountain below drew his attention.
“The fountain.” He pointed out the window. “It’s running.”
Heather looked down and gasped. “I’ve never seen that,” she said worriedly. She looked in the sky. “The moon … I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Something’s shifting. Can I count on you to help us?” Argan asked, glancing at Kyle. But Kyle quickly picked up the hose to his pool vacuum and skulked away.
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t. He’s … I owe him a debt, my life, everything. I just can’t.”
Argan’s eyes flashed a look of compassion. The darkness brewing within him seemed to subside. “I understand. He’s your father. But I have to go, and please don’t stop me.”