It was midnight and Denise had been looking at the ceiling for the last hour trying to think of a better idea than thinking her daughter had some sort of fish disease, which was impossible, but she couldn"t think of anything else. She couldn"t stand laying in her bed anymore, she needed some answers.

Quickly standing up off her bed, she headed to the front door as quietly as she could, she didn"t want to wake Darya and Marty up who was sleeping in their room. It may have been the last day of school but that wasn"t going to stop the kids from spending time with each other.

She picked her keys up silently as she headed out the door and to her car. Starting it up, she pulled out of the driveway and began down the small road to her office at the marine biology lab for the town of Wave Crest. She was one of the only two that worked full time for the town. Her and her lab partner, Johnson, were the best in the region. They met in college and got a job at the same time. They work well together and have made the ocean life and people better since they started there. But she wasn"t going to tell him what she"s doing there at twelve-thirty at night.

Unlocking her office door she pillaged through the sample fridge for the vial she was looking for. When Darya was in her office earlier she talked her into giving some of her blood for some more tests. Darya hated needles so it was a stretch to get her to agree. But she did and now Denise had something to study along with the skin sc.r.a.ping she had from her as well. Remembering that she still had an old slide of blood from when Darya was born, she grabbed that as well.

When Darya was born, Denise was about to start her lab cla.s.ses and when they took her daughter"s blood when she was born she asked if she could keep a slide for her cla.s.ses. Fifteen years later and she still has it in her office. Mostly for the memories but right now it was for science and her peace of mind.

She sat at the microscope and laid out the samples next to it. She put the old sample from her infant daughter on there first. She looked at the makeup of the cells and saw that they were normal, just like any other human"s cells. She knew that wouldn"t give her any answers if any since she would have seen something back then and she didn"t.

Sliding the new slide of blood from the sample vial she took a longer look. At first glance, the cells seemed to be fine, normal even. But the longer they stayed under the microscope the more irritated they were becoming.

"It"s like the blood is reacting to the oxygen around the gla.s.s slide. It"s supposed to be airtight for the most part but I guess some got in there. Maybe this is why she"s getting the rash? It"s not just her skin reacting." She spoke quietly to herself as if there was someone in the room with her.

She had an idea, she took the skin sc.r.a.pping and rubbed them onto another gla.s.s slide. Fixing it under the metal security tabs she peered into the scope and looked at the skin she sc.r.a.ped from her daughter"s leg earlier in the day when she thought she saw something that she never would on a human girl before; scales. She looked at the skin sample and saw the one thing she was hoping she wouldn"t. It was true, what she had seen on her daughter before was real. But how could her normal human daughter have scales, not just on her skin, but in it?

And how has her daughter not seen this yet?

She backed away from the scope for a moment and thought about the blood sample again. She knew she"s seen the reaction with the cells and oxygen before, with a certain type of fish"s blood sample.

She got up quickly and began to go through the fish blood samples. But before she got too far she heard the door to the office open and close.

"Denise? Why are you here so late? I thought you went home hours ago?" Johnson asked her as he walked into the room with a bag full of samples slung across his shoulder with a curious look on his face.

"Sorry Johnson, I had this project that was bugging me and I couldn"t sleep without looking at some samples. What are you doing here?" She asked Johnson as he walked further into their shared s.p.a.ce.

"I was doing some late-night diving and found a few things we needed for our projects. Thought I would bring them back before it got too late and they need to be kept cool." He said as he walked to the project table and sat his work bag on it, he started to unpack the bag as Denise put up the blood sample from Darya that she wasn"t supposed to have.

"Well, I"m off. The project wasn"t as interesting as my head was making it out to be. Guess I got worked up over nothing. I"ll see you in a few hours?" She said while heading for the door. She left without another word, leaving Johnson there to wonder what she was doing here this late.

Johnson liked Denise, and there was a moment when they first met in college that he thought there could be something between them, but after finding out she was having some guy"s baby he backed off. He still wondered where Darya"s father was, Denise never spoke about him. He got over it and became her friend instead, but now his friend was keeping something from him and it was in that fridge in her office. He opened the door and looked in the fridge. There was nothing out of the ordinary until his eyes landed on a vial that didn"t have a label.

"That"s odd." He whispered.

Taking the blood he drew a few drops of it and dropped them on a gla.s.s slide and put it under the scope to see what she was looking at. His breath hitched in his throat when he saw the cells begin to become irritated under the scope and under the pressure of the oxygen that hit it as the blood sat between the two gla.s.s slides. Without a label on it, he wasn"t sure if the blood was from a fish or a human. It seemed to have characteristics of both which confused him.

"What the h.e.l.l are you working on, Denise?" He asked himself as he took the slide out from under the scope and looked through it with the help of the fluorescent light above him.