“I told you he’d scare her. Would scare me too, looking like an undead zombie spouting cryptic crap.”
Behind Jason, Hip and Percy stood in the doorway.
“I just need some sleep,” Jason shot back, looking over his shoulder.
“Uh-huh. And when are you gonna actually let yourself have any?” Hip made his way into the room and nudged Jason aside. “Hey, Speedy. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
My brows scrunched up as I stared at the two men. “Are either of you going to tell me why my arms look like a lizard had sex with a rainbow? And why I just woke up in the bathtub!?”
“We will. Though, don’t you think you might want to get out of the tub first?” Percy asked, his voice warmer than usual.
I looked down and tried to use my legs, but they wouldn’t budge.
I looked back up at Hip.
“Need help?” he chuckled.
I nodded. Hip reached over and without much effort scooped me up out of the tub and carefully placed me on my feet. He and Jason support me as I tried to walk.
Getting a good look at my body, I noticed that I was in a super large shirt that went down to my knees. Said T-shirt was also soaking wet and clinging to my body like an ugly skintight dress. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wearing any underwear underneath the shirt either.
“Please tell me I was always in the shirt and none of you changed my clothes,” I said looking back and forth between my two glorified walking staffs.
Jason blushed, bringing some much-needed color back into his cheeks. “Unfortunately, we can’t tell you that.”
I groaned. “Oh, great.”
As the two of them half carried me out of the bathroom, I caught my reflection in the mirror and gasped.
Do you ever have those moments, where you look at your reflection and the person staring back didn’t feel like you?
Well, the person staring back at me was definitely not me.
This person was beautiful, with long hair that—despite being wet—curled gently down to the shoulders. She had brilliant multicolored eyes, one a deep green, and the other a more familiar hazel brown that looked back at me. But this gorgeous reflection was also not human, as scales like the ones on my arms graced the tops of my cheeks and in my mouth were fangs. I had fangs!
I gulped. “Oh my God, I’m a mutant.”
“No, you’re not.” Jason said, his tone comforting.
“Well, I mean, technically she is.”
Jason growled. “Not the time, Hip.”
They pulled me away from the mirrored horror of my reflection into a somewhat large and recognizable room.
“We’re in the cabin? Where’s my father?”
“One thing at a time, Atalanta,” Percy said as he held out a towel for me to dry off with.
It was useless while I still wore the shirt, but at least I could feel some semblance of dryness. Gently, Jason and Hip guided me over to the air mattress. I couldn’t help but notice that there were a bunch of pillows and blankets covering it and the floor around it.
Wait, did Percy just call me by my first name?
Now settled down on the mattress, my attention switched between staring down at my arms in near horror and back up at the guys in utter confusion.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
Percy crouched down in front of me. “Let's start with asking, what is the last thing you remember?”
I studied my hands. The webbing between my fingers had little veins that ran through them.
“I remember talking to my dad about going out on his boat.” I replied.
“And nothing else?”
I shook my head as I continued to marvel at the shimmering scales. “No.”
I felt a finger come up under my chin and lift my head to look directly at Percy. “That was two weeks ago.”
“T-two weeks?” I squeaked.
He nodded and began to explain to me about going out on the boat with my dad, how there was a storm, how I hit my head after jumping overboard to save my sister, and the five of them coming to the rescue. Ajax and Hip saved my father, who was in the hospital. And Cal…was missing.
He left out a considerable chunk, specifically the chunk where I been in a two-week long coma and somehow turned into some sort of mutant. What he did say, I could hardly believe, precisely because I didn’t remember any of it. Our father would have never gone out during a storm.
It was a lie. It had to be.
This was some weird hoax made to scare me. My hands were just covered in clever makeup.
Finding my strength, I stood up and stumbled out of the room. “Cal! Dad!”
I called for them as I walked through the cabin, slowly at first, until I was running through the rooms over and over again to be sure that I wasn’t crazy. They weren’t there. Judging by the layer of dust that had settled onto the boxes in Cal's room, they hadn’t been there for a while.
I tore into my room and began to rifle through my things.
“Where is it?” I shouted.
“Where’s what?” one of the guys said behind me.
“My fucking phone! We never leave the house without our phones!”
“Oh,” Hip walked out of the room and came back a minute later as I continued to destroy my room. “It was on you when you went out to the boat. It was pretty wrecked by the water.”
He held out my phone. I snatched it from him and tried to get it started but the stupid thing was dead. I threw it to the ground in frustration, breaking it apart in the process.
“Oh, no.” I groaned, slumping to the floor, and tried to pick up the pieces of the phone.
Jason, who I hadn’t even realized was in the room, got on his knees next to me.
“They aren’t going to answer, Atty.” He said gently, holding out his own phone.
I flinched at his use of Cal’s nickname for me and snatched the phone from him. The date that was in big white letters on his screen confirmed that it had been a good two weeks from the date I knew it to be.
“No! Because if what you said wasn’t a lie that means that…” My voice cracked. "that means that my sister is dead! And I can't believe that.”
“The likelihood that a human could survive that long out in open water…they aren’t good odds,” Percy said from the doorway.
“She’s not dead!” I unlocked Jason's phone, having to maneuver around the long claw-like nails at the end of my fingers, and dialed her number.
It went right to voicemail. It never went to voicemail. We always made sure our phones were charged.
I redialed it with the same result. I then called my father’s phone. It was the same.
I took a deep breath in. I would not lose it. I would stay calm.
Stay calm.
I felt for the wall beside me and leaned up against it. It would help me breathe.
Yep, everything was fine. There was a reasonable explanation for all of this. The phone lines were just down. Yeah, satellites fell out of the sky and messed up all our phones. Two weeks hadn’t passed, I wasn’t some mutant swamp monster, my family was okay.
My freaking arms felt so uncomfortable that even rubbing them wasn’t making them feel better.
But I was fine.
Everything was okay.
“Someone get Ajax,” I heard someone whisper.
Ajax was here too? That was good. He would be upfront with me about everything, because obviously these three were lying.
I felt the heavy footfalls coming towards me, but I couldn’t see him because the world had begun to go dark around the edges. That was normal, though. It was supposed to happen.