n object presses against Elisa’s back. Seems too big for a hand, but it flexes like one, with palm cradle and finger posts. Another presses to her chest, five claws pricking, just barely, her breasts and stomach. There is strength enough here to squash her, but instead she is lifted, as gently as if she were a butterfly, until her head is out of the water. She coughs against the rolling muscles of a large shoulder as she’s floated backward to shallower depths. She can’t form coherent thoughts: He is holding her, his scales under her hands both soft as silk and sharp as crystal, and though no words pass, everything, everything is being said.

Her body jerks. He’s reached the limit of his chains. She snaps awake, establishes footing, and pulls from her sodden apron pockets the best tools she and Giles could scrounge: A bolt cutter and pair of pliers she’d smuggled in under her coat. The grooves across the creature’s body glow red, but only for an instant. He stares at her, only inches separating their eyes, and then stands upright, his chest emerging so that she can access the chains locked to the harness. Removed from water, his gills begin to fluff, but there is no doubting any of this. He understands. He trusts. He, like she, has nothing left to lose.

She wedges the bolt cutter around a chain link. Instantly she perceives that she’s made a fatal misjudgment. The link is too thick, and the cutter blades can’t get a grip; it’s like trying to bite a basketball. Elisa snugs the chain into the blades and tries to gnaw at it, but it has no effect beyond the flimsiest of scratches. She pockets the cutters and jams the needle nose of the pliers inside a link and tries to pull open the jaws to break it from within. This method gives her no leverage. Her hand slips, and the tool tumbles into the water. She doesn’t try to save it. There’s no point. She’s as red-handed as possible, soaked inside the F-1 pool with Giles waiting outside, with no way at all of cutting the creature free. It feels like a mercy when a man’s voice speaks from the darkness.

“Stop,” he says.