Chapter 19: Song of the Sirens

The transition happens without warning.

Hana is walking back to Residence D from the hospital—the night air cool against her face, the streets quiet at 2:00 AM—when the world shifts. One step on Tokyo concrete. The next step on something that isn't ground at all.

Water.

She's in water.

Not falling into it. Not drowning in it. Just suddenly surrounded by dark blue that should be killing her but isn't. Her lungs don't burn. Her eyes don't sting. The pressure that should be crushing her at whatever depth this is feels instead like an embrace.

What—

Her legs are gone.

Where they should be, starting just below her hips, is a tail. Scaled. Powerful. Moving with an instinct she doesn't remember learning. The sensation is bizarre—muscles she's never had responding to commands she's never issued. Her body underwater, breathing water, existing as something fundamentally inhuman.

"Interesting choice of transformation."

The voice comes from nearby. Hana turns—an awkward motion with a tail instead of legs—and finds herself facing another figure in the dark water.

Leandra. One of Artemis's handmaidens. The confident one. The frontwoman of the Huntresses.

She's also a mermaid now. Her tail is darker than Hana's, with a faint blue sheen that catches what little light penetrates this depth. Her expression is amused, curious, entirely unalarmed.

"You've done this before," Hana says. Her voice sounds strange underwater—clearer than it should be, carrying in ways that violate everything she knows about acoustics.

"Artemis likes variety in her tests." Leandra moves closer, her tail propelling her with casual grace. "You haven't."

"No."

"Then you'll want to listen carefully." Leandra gestures upward, toward a lighter region of water that suggests surface proximity. "The challenge is simple. There's a ferry up there. Greek crew, drunk half of them, celebrating something. They're heading toward rocks that will tear the hull apart."

"And we're supposed to..."

"Guide them to safety. Through singing." Leandra's smile is sharp. "Siren rules. The one whose song proves most compelling wins."

This is absurd, Frost notes. A singing competition while people's lives are at stake.

That's probably the point, Sage observes. Testing priorities. Competition versus cooperation.

"What happens if we fail?" Hana asks.

"The ferry crashes. People die. Artemis returns us to our normal forms with the knowledge that we let mortals drown."

"That's not acceptable."

"No. It isn't." Leandra's expression shifts—something more serious beneath the surface confidence. "So let's not fail."

The surface is chaos.

The ferry is maybe a hundred meters from where they break the water—a medium-sized passenger vessel, lights blazing, music audible even from this distance. The ship lists slightly as it moves, the result of either poor navigation or crew impairment. Probably both.

Beyond the ferry, barely visible in the darkness, Hana can make out shapes that don't belong in open water. Rocks. A reef formation, maybe, or a peninsula extending from an island she can't see. The ferry's current course will intersect with those rocks in perhaps fifteen minutes.

"The rules," Leandra says, treading water beside her. "We sing. The crew hears us—really hears us, not just sound but meaning. Whoever's song proves more compelling guides the ship."

"How do we know whose song is winning?"

"You'll feel it. The connection. Like a thread between you and them." Leandra's voice drops. "Sirens weren't just beautiful singers. They were manipulators. Their songs pulled at something deeper than hearing."

Manipulation, Vex notes. Your specialty.

Is it?

"Ready?" Leandra asks.

"No."

"Good. Neither am I."

She begins to sing.

The sound that emerges from Leandra's throat is nothing like human music.

It carries across the water with impossible clarity—a melody that seems to exist in multiple frequencies simultaneously, harmonizing with itself. The words are Greek, ancient Greek probably, but Hana understands them anyway. The meaning translates directly into feeling: longing, belonging, the promise of safety in surrender.

The ferry's engine pitch changes. The ship begins to turn—slightly, almost imperceptibly—toward the sound.

She's good, Quinn observes. Really good.

Of course she is. She's been doing this for fifteen years.

So how do you compete with fifteen years of experience?

Hana opens her mouth. Lets sound emerge.

Her voice is different underwater. Transformed along with her body, reshaped into something that can carry through water and air simultaneously. The melody she chooses isn't ancient or mythological. It's the spring comeback single. The song she's been rehearsing for months, the choreography her body knows better than walking.

But the lyrics shift as she sings them. The Japanese words transform into something more fundamental—not language but emotion, not meaning but intention.

Come this way. Safety here. Trust this voice.

The ferry's movement stutters. The turn toward Leandra's position pauses, the ship caught between two competing calls.

"Interesting technique," Leandra calls between phrases. "You're not trying to seduce them."

"I'm trying to save them."

"Same thing, for sirens."

They sing in counterpoint now. Leandra's ancient melody weaving around Hana's modern adaptation. The ferry rocks between them, its navigation uncertain, its crew responding to forces they can't comprehend.

The rocks, Sage warns. Eight minutes at current speed.

The reef is closer than Hana calculated. The ferry's erratic course has wasted time, and the competing songs aren't helping. If they don't unify their approach—

"Stop."

Hana cuts her song short. The sudden silence makes Leandra falter, her melody breaking mid-phrase.

"What are you doing?"

"We're going to sink them." Hana's tail works instinctively, keeping her stable in the choppy water. "The competition is pulling them apart instead of guiding them."

"That's not how the challenge works. One of us has to win."

"One of us has to save them." Hana meets Leandra's eyes. "Which matters more?"

The question hangs in the salt air. Behind them, the ferry continues its uncertain path toward destruction.

"If I concede—"

"Don't concede. Cooperate." Hana moves closer, close enough that their tails nearly touch beneath the surface. "You know these waters. You know siren technique. I know how to analyze situations and find solutions. Together, we guide them. Neither of us wins. Nobody dies."

Leandra's expression cycles through something complicated—resistance, then consideration, then grudging respect.

"Artemis won't be happy."

"Artemis set up a challenge that could only succeed through cooperation. She'll be exactly as happy as she planned to be."

A long moment.

Then Leandra nods.

They sing together.

Not competing. Not harmonizing exactly. Something between—their voices creating a path through the dark water, a sonic channel that guides without compelling. Hana focuses on the destination: the safe passage to the left of the reef, the deep water that will carry the ferry past the danger zone. Leandra focuses on the connection: maintaining the crew's attention, keeping them oriented toward the sound.

The ferry turns. Smoothly this time. Decisively.

Five minutes to the rocks, Sage calculates. Four. Three.

The ship passes the outer edge of the reef with meters to spare. Hana can see the rocks now—jagged formations that would have torn the hull like paper. The crew never sees them. Their eyes are fixed forward, following the song that leads them toward safety.

Two minutes. One.

Clear water.

The ferry's engine pitch stabilizes. The ship straightens its course, heading toward whatever port awaits in the darkness ahead. The crew blinks, shakes their heads, returns to whatever celebration was underway. They won't remember the music clearly. Just a sense of direction. Just the feeling that something guided them through.

"We did it," Leandra says.

"We did."

They float in the dark water as the ferry's lights recede. The reef lurks behind them, its rocks invisible now but still deadly. The challenge is complete.

What happens now?

The transition back is gentler than the transition forward.

One moment underwater. The next moment standing on solid ground—a patch of rocky coastline that Hana doesn't recognize. Her legs are back. Her lungs breathe air. The only evidence of transformation is the salt water soaking her clothes and the strange ache in muscles she temporarily didn't have.

Leandra stands nearby, equally drenched, equally human.

"That was..." Leandra trails off. "Different. Usually Artemis's challenges are more competitive."

"Maybe that was the test. Seeing if we'd figure out competition wasn't the point."

"Maybe." Leandra wrings water from her hair. "You're strange, Hana. Not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone more selfish. More calculating." A pause. "Artemis described you as interesting. She didn't mention you'd be this... practical."

Practical is one word for it, Frost notes.

Decent is another, Quinn adds.

"The ferry crew," Hana says. "What happens to them now?"

"They finish their voyage. Sober up. Wonder why they feel so good about a night they can barely remember." Leandra shrugs. "The timeline smooths itself. No evidence of divine intervention."

"And if they'd crashed?"

"Then the timeline would have smoothed that too. Deaths. Investigations. Consequences that ripple outward." Leandra's voice hardens. "Artemis doesn't create challenges without stakes. The danger was real."

So the cooperation wasn't just symbolic, Sage observes. It was necessary.

The competition would have killed them, Vex agrees. Two songs pulling in different directions. The crew would have been paralyzed. The ship would have hit the rocks.

"You figured it out faster than I did," Leandra admits. "The cooperation thing. I was still trying to win."

"I've had practice seeing through false binaries."

"Is that what it is?"

"That's what a lot of things are." Hana looks out at the dark water, at the last traces of the ferry's lights disappearing toward the horizon. "People set up situations where you're supposed to compete. Fight for position. Defeat the other person. But sometimes the only winning move is refusing to play the game."

Leandra is quiet for a long moment.

"Artemis told me about you," she says finally. "About your situation. The transformation. The group you're trapped with."

"Trapped."

"Her word, not mine." Leandra's eyes meet hers. "Is it wrong?"

Hana considers the question. The contract. The debt. The body she didn't choose.

"It's complicated," she says. "It was trapping, at first. Now I'm not sure what it is."

"That sounds like the beginning of acceptance."

"Or the beginning of something else." Hana shakes her head. "I don't know yet."

The return to Tokyo happens between one breath and the next.

Hana stands on the sidewalk outside Residence D, salt-crusted and shivering, the building's security lights casting harsh shadows across her waterlogged clothes. The time on her phone reads 2:47 AM—barely any time passed in the mortal world, despite what felt like hours with Leandra.

Artemis's time dilation, Sage notes. Convenient.

The news alert appears on her phone while she's waiting for the elevator: "Greek Ferry Crew Terminated After Near-Collision Incident."

The article is brief. A ferry in the Aegean, operating without proper navigation checks, nearly crashed into a reef formation. The crew has been fired pending investigation. No passengers were harmed.

Real consequences, Hana thinks. Not for the people on the boat. For the people responsible.

The elevator arrives. She rides it to the sixteenth floor in sodden clothes, leaving a trail of salt water on the polished floor.

Her apartment is exactly as she left it. Laptop open, trading software running, the numbers that represent her escape fund growing slowly in the background. She strips out of the wet clothes, showers, changes into something dry.

Then her phone buzzes.

Unknown number. But the message is signed.

"You could have won. You chose not to. That's interesting."

A pause. Then a second message.

"Artemis was right about you. You're worth watching."

And then a phone number. Followed by three words:

"Call me. - Leandra"

Hana stares at the screen. At the number that connects her to something beyond the bubble of idol life, beyond the industry machinery, beyond even the strange mythology that seems to be wrapping itself around her existence.

She saves the contact.

Whether she'll use it, she doesn't know yet.

But having the option feels like a small victory in a world where options have been systematically stripped away.

Outside, Tokyo continues its endless motion. The sun will rise in a few hours. Practice will begin. The schedule will resume.

But for now, there's just this room. This silence. This small electronic bridge to something different.

Hana sets her alarm for 5:00 AM and sleeps without dreams