Chapter Twelve - Surfacing
His head throbbed and ached. Everything felt wrong. He opened his eyes. Things weren't wrong. They couldn't be better. Alizen was there, her brown eyes gleaming. Wordlessly she leaned forward.
She was going to kiss him.
The anticipation was delicious. The kiss had been long awaited, long coveted. Oh, they had kissed before on arrival and departure but she had always chastely offered him her cheek, the mouth had been denied. She knew what it would mean. Now their lips met. Blissfully he closed his eyes, savouring the experience, soothed, the pain sliding away. It was a perfect moment of gentle rapture, of purest innocence.
But suddenly that moment was over.
He felt her tongue stabbing into his mouth. He reacted with shocked surprise, almost pulling away. He wasn't ready for this. This wasn't what he wanted. Not yet. Then he felt the pain. Her tongue was sharp, dry, hard and bitter. It scratched and scraped at the inside of his mouth, his cheek. He was gagging, choking, coughing.
Drowning.
His eyes snapped open and he was alone in the dark, under the sea, his lungs bursting. Around him the great black scaly segmented amphibious things burbled and wailed his name, chanting it like a chorus.
'Mr Fenton…Mr Fenton…Mr Fenton.'
He struck out, swimming away from those monsters, leaving them behind, heading for the light, the surface. But the words were getting louder, clearer, deafening. They were coming from above. It must be the mermaids singing, luring him to his doom.
His head broke the surface.
His eyes snapped open.
But he wasn't awake. He couldn't be because the face before him was a man from his dreams.
It was the face of a ghost. It couldn't be real. There was something definitely wrong. The skin was healthily tanned and fleshy, the hair was dark.
That was wrong. Wrong colour.
But the eyes were right. They were a piercing blue. Blue and burning with a fierce intelligence.
The last time he'd seen that face it had been completely blue. Blue, over two metres tall and shimmering alarmingly.
He blinked in surprise.
It was the face of a phantom. An impish spirit he had met in his dreams long ago. Long before all this had started.
Wrong. It was when all this had started.
'Mr Fenton.' It was shaking his hand. He was shaking it back. Shaking hands with a ghost.
'Darvad Paize, Mr Fenton. Special Security Team-Leader. Supervisor of this operation.' It smiled the innocently malicious smile seemingly endemic to all SSD operatives.
'I'm so glad you could make it.'