Dead at fifteen, serial killer by sixteen, about to be erased at nineteen. What a life. Victoria's was quite honestly significantly worse, won't lie, but mine was also not what I had in mind by any means.

  I could imagine a thousand ways Apple and Diego could torture Tori. While Autumn and I sat still tied and sedated in the darkness, Tori could've already been chopped into pieces and I wouldn't have known. My only system of guessing if she was still 'alive' was by gauging how many times Autumn flinched for no reason.

  The ticcing that was also going on was different to what I was looking for. I'd gotten so used to Victoria's Tourettes over the years that I tuned most of it out, even now she was Autumn. I studied her closely, mentally pin pointing which movements were from the condition and which were purely the result of something happening to Tori and flowing through her. It was subtle, but I knew full body shivers weren't a common tic for her.

  "You wanna talk about it?" I broke the silence eventually. "What she's going through?"

  Autumn blinked nervously and swallowed. "Not particularly, no."

  "She's still alive, though?"

  "For now."

  "Okay." I nodded simply, trying to keep her from becoming overwhelmed. "Tell me if that... changes."

  She turned away in an attempt to hide her guilt.

  We could both see and hear perfectly fine now as far as I could tell. Night vision had swung into full effect, her ears had healed from the gunshot-induced shock, and my jaw was healing surprisingly well. It still felt like I'd just woken up from a rough dental surgery, but I could talk. Somehow the duct tape bandage bullshit Apple had used to glue my skin back together was doing its job.

  "She's still blindfolded, that's why I'm not..." Autumn sighed. "Apple's dragging her through a few hallways or something like that. It's–"

  Autumn suddenly sat straight in alarm. Her eyes snapped wide. Her lip quivered.

  "Is she dead?" I couldn't help but blurt like an idiot.

  "I'm... She's outside." Autumn began to tremble like she was cold. "There's wind. It's loud. I think I can hear waves..."

  Her expression fell, and I took that as a cue that Tori was no longer blindfolded.

  "... We're in the middle of the ocean."

  "What." I deadpanned immediately.

  "We're on a boat."

  "No."

  "Zach, w-we're on some sort of ferry, in the middle of the ocean, drifting through... fucking nothingness."

  I almost whimpered from the heavy weight of despair that stabbed me right in the throat. I refused to believe it, even though it was so easy to. The swaying of gravity that kept occurring, the smell of rust and salt coming from outside the room, the cold breeze.

  "When we saw Apple talking to that guy at the docks yesterday..." Autumn teared up, shutting her eyes and slumping against her restraints.

  "Don't say that." I whispered, my voice breaking. "Don't tell me we could've known this would happen."

  "..."

  Fuck, that silence hurt. It left my mind to race and let anxiety suffocate me.

  "Can't you see land at all?" I gulped.

  "Not... in any direction, no." Autumn shuddered. "I don't know where we are."

  "Why the fuck would they pick the ocean?" I scoffed in hysterics. "Why not a basement or an abandoned warehouse or a paddock? They had every chance to kill us when we were unconscious."

  She hesitated as her eyes slowly opened again, the realisation dawning sooner than she could handle.

  "Because their goal is to prevent me from hopping after I die, and if I die out here there wont be anyone near me to jump into."

  I paused for a moment, mulling over her words before replying quietly, "How so? I'd be here, they'd be here–"

  "If they threw me overboard, it could take me hours to die." She shot me a cold glare, the twitch of her eye betraying her fear. "They know how good of a swimmer I am, they saw me at the swimming carnival. I could float for more than half an hour straight when I was human, and I could definitely go far longer now. Add on that since I'm a vampire temperatures don't affect me much and my immune system is on steroids, and I could hold my own out in the ocean way longer than a normal person."

  "Why would...?"

  "To give them enough time to leave me alone?" She shrugged. "Drive the boat far away, make sure no one could find me in time? I don't know how far we are from land, but it's pretty reasonable to assume my curse has a range limit."

  I had no words.

  That was so cruel, like a Titanic reenactment. I didn't want to agree that that was the most likely reason, but I couldn't keep lying to myself. No one could come save us. We couldn't escape. If we were somewhere on land we'd have that chance of running for the hills somehow, but there was nowhere to flee to now.

  "What a way to go." She almost smiled at the irony, leaning her head back against the wall. "I devoted almost my whole life to water – started swimming lessons at four months old and never stopped. Always wanted to one day stand up there with the greats. Y'know?"

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I knew.

  "Maybe in my next life I'll come back as a mermaid." She laughed weakly. "That was why I started actually enjoying swimming in the first place. Every time H2O came on TV I was glued to the screen. There was just something about it, maybe the fact that it was Australian when very few other shows were. It felt like home. I could imagine bumping into one of the girls at the beach so easily, it felt real to me. That show's the reason I dyed my hair blue in the first place, I wanted to look like a siren."

  "Then you grew up and wanted to be a vampire instead." I tried to smile, though the duct tape on my lip made it difficult.

  "Wanted to be both." She laughed ever so softly, the sound identical to the one I'd grown up with. "Anything to escape reality. Then vampires became my reality, and it started seeming a little less fun. It became a practical escape, a plan B. Now I am a vampire, and I'm gonna die in the ocean like a mermaid."

  "Autumn–"

  "I'm gonna drown." Her eyes darkened. "I never thought... that I would die in the water. Always understood it was possible, but got cocky enough to believe I'd always know what to do to save myself. Can't save myself out there, though."

  I was only half listening. My attention was mostly stuck on her face. It was hard to tell how much time had passed from when we were kidnapped to now, be it hours or possibly even days given how weak and hungry I felt, but her features had pretty much finished changing. I'd barely noticed until my vision finally decided to cooperate and adapt to the darkness, but there was no trace of Autumn Laurence left. She had Victoria Evans' eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, freckles, voice. Autumn's dark brown hair had become Victoria's light blonde, though it wasn't the blue hair I'd grown to know. Even her posture had changed; her shoulders, her arms, her body shape.

  The only hint of Autumn remaining was that she just... looked Autumn's age. She was twenty year old Victoria now, despite having died at eighteen just a few months ago.

  I decided not to mention it. She didn't need the extra weight on her shoulders right now. It didn't matter much anyway.

  What did matter was the way she abruptly yelped and stiffened up.

  "What was that?" My voice dropped an octave while my pulse jumped up one. I leaned forward. "Autumn, what happened?"

  She didn't move. Her eyes were wide, locked on a spec of dirt on the carpet below like she'd die if she averted her gaze. Her blinking began to come unevenly.

  "... What happened to Tori?" I asked quieter.

  She swallowed thickly.

  "Nothing, they..." Autumn shook her head. "Diego slapped her pretty hard, I was just trying to make sure the pain wasn't going to force me to swap into her."

  "He–? Diego's there? G-Give me the play-by-play again!"

  "Tori's in some crew room with the two, I don't know." Autumn huffed, eyes narrowing at the carpet. "Diego was trying to restrain her against a table but she wouldn't stop thrashing so he slapped her stunned. Apple's running around trying to find another syringe of Silverleaf extract to sedate her."

  "You didn't think to mention Tori's about to be dissected during your mermaid rant?" I shouted.

  "She's not, he just wants a blood sample." Autumn muttered. "Apple told him off for not getting one earlier, and now the two are bickering while Tori's freaking out– See, I don't think to tell you every single second of input I get because what are you even gonna do? What am I gonna do? Nothing. We can't do anything. It's better if I'm the only one that knows what horrors they're putting her through."

  "... Are you fucking serious."

  "Yeah! I don't want you to know if my other half is being tortured, believe it or not!" Autumn scoffed harshly, looking around in disbelief. "What's the point? We can't do SHIT!"

  "You can't jump into her and fight them off?" I growled. "Can't snap into her, catch them off guard, run for the hills and come free us?"

  "And then what? They'd just catch us again! WE'RE STRANDED ON A FERRY, ZACH! THERE IS NOWHERE TO RUN!"

  "Then we kill Apple and Diego and turn the ship around! Boats have all sorts of emergency communication shit. Flares, radios, sonar, all kinds of stuff."

  "Are you seriously so dense as to assume they haven't thought of us doing that?"

  "There's a chance!"

  "Just give it up!"

  "If we give up, we die!"

  "WE ARE GOING TO DIE ANYWAY!"

  I took the hint and shut myself up. Not so much because I didn't have a response, but because I'd realised we were arguing for each other. I was saying what I wanted her to think, not what I actually was thinking, and vice versa. She was the one who actually refused to give up, I was the one a few cracks away from surrendering. We knew each other so well that sometimes when we'd argue, we wouldn't be trying to convince the other person to believe us, we'd be begging ourselves to. Bullshitting, hoping saying the words would make them true. If the other person said what we were saying, we'd believe them, but they weren't. We both knew that.

  I couldn't find the will to lift a finger unless she'd tell me to. She couldn't find acceptance in giving up unless I'd welcome her into it. Neither of us wanted that for each other.

  Love is sickening.

  "Maybe we could... hijack the steering, like you said." She mumbled reluctantly. "Or at least subdue the others until sunrise. Someone would find us eventually, it's a big boat."

  "Mmhm."

  I felt nothing, really. As cold and numb as the occasional salty breeze that flew in from under the steel door. Even blinking felt like a chore. I wanted to rest. I was too tired to fight.

  "I can't see how that wouldn't work." She offered. "All we'd have to do is throw them overboard instead and then wait for someone to notice us in the daylight. The waves aren't tall or choppy, so we're probably still in or near Port Phillip Bay. If we were really far out in the ocean, the waves would be as tall as buildings."

  "Mm."

  Autumn shivered sharply again and scrunched her face in a wince, dead still for a few long moments. I glanced over to her.

  "He injected her with Silverleaf, but didn't have enough to knock her out." She explained quietly, shifting uncomfortably. "In case you wanted the input again."

  I nodded but didn't reply.

  Autumn took another look around the barren room for help. The cabinets and the desk held all sorts of random objects, but we'd need to be free of our restraints before we could go investigate. She wriggled and squirmed, her wrists burning with every tug at the ropes wrapped around them. The Silverleaf was wearing off for sure, but she hadn't regained her strength or any other helpful abilities yet. The most she could do was awkwardly bend her fingers in hopes of a claw nipping at the ropes, but couldn't reach them quite right anyway.

  "Can you cut your ropes or nah?" She turned to me.

  I snapped out of my thoughts and squirmed but to no avail, shaking my head in apology.

  "Right. Okay, I'm gonna do what you said." She nodded, determined. "I'll hop into Tori, run while they're distracted, come here and untie us, and then we'll go from there. Yeah?"

  "You'd have to blindfold yourself or you'd be sent into a loop the second you look at yourself." I muttered. "But if you're blindfolded you can't cut the ropes."

  "Fine, I'll find a knife or something and throw it in here with my eyes closed." She rolled her eyes. "Is that okay?"

  I took a deep breath.

  "Okay." I met her gaze. "You'll probably just be stabbed or slashed or bitten or killed in the process, but okay."

  "You're being a nihilist." She pouted. "That's usually my job."

  "It's a little hard to be an absurdist in this situation, love." I grumbled, exhausted. "I'm sorry. I'll stop bumming you out. Please try your idea, I trust you."

  "That's a little better." Autumn smirked. "I'll be safe. If anything goes wrong I'll come right back."

  "Uh, before you go?"

  "Hm?"

  I hesitated.

  "If we somehow survive this, you're gonna have to go back to being Victoria Evans again."

  The girl didn't blink. She slowly glanced down at her hair, finally noticing the undeniable golden colour of each strand. Shutting her eyes, she inhaled tensely, holding back a flurry of emotions as she realised what I'd meant, and that her form had reverted.

  "... Okay." She whispered. "Starting now."