Javy thrashed in its grip, her head shaking back and forth, rejecting what was said inside her mind. Regina was insane. She had always been insane. Frightened. Paranoid. Terrified of the sea, yet she had watched it constantly, fascinated by it and, perhaps, by what waited in its depths.

(YOUR TIME IS NOW)

The tentacles in the water were moving as if excited: bumping and brushing against her, but, again, not in a threatening way. The one before her just hovered there like a confused snake. She didn’t want to assume for one moment that something like this had a sentient brain, a soul that understood mercy and compassion and, worse, tenderness…but that’s how this thing was acting. It could have taken her at any time, crushed her, fed her to its mouth if it had one, or just licked the skin from her face, but it did nothing. Which meant either it was a gentle soul or it was sadistic, enjoying the torment of its prey.

The tentacle moved in again.

Javonivic tensed.

A cylinder of compressed air floated by. She reached out and picked it up. Something savage in her liked its weight and feel. When the tentacle got within reach, almost investigative like a child’s finger, she swung the cylinder with both hands. She hit it again and again until her breath came quick in her lungs and her arms were tired. It did not withdraw. It did not defend itself. It did nothing but accept the beating she gave it. And that was more than confusing, it was infuriating. She had hit it so hard and so many times that she had dented the cylinder and actually chipped paint from it.

“Kill me, goddammit!” she screamed at it. “I’ve had enough, you goddamn ugly fucking monster! I’ve had enough!”

The tentacles in the water thrummed around her. The one before her came in closer again and this time it moved with incredible speed, whipping out to what she thought would be to take her head right off, but that’s not what happened. It slapped the cylinder right out of her hands.

Javy, caught in some hallucinatory netherworld between madness and distorted reality, began to sob. She was not a crier. Moving in a world dominated by men, she had learned to be as tough as them. But now she cried like a scolded little girl, wracked with sobs.

(YOU WERE DRAWN TO THE DEEPS AS OUR KIND ALWAYS ARE)

“No, no, no! It’s not true, Mama…it’s just not true. I’m not like you. I’m not…oh God, I’m not…”