Just before she closed her eyes and began to drift, however, she thought she saw the strangest thing. Mark had torn off all his clothes, and now his body was awash in a golden glow, and where he’d been moments before was another shark instead.
“Get away from my son!” shouted a great, booming voice, and instantly the other sharks disappeared, swimming for their lives.
“Father!” shouted Mark as he swam toward Chelsea. “She’ll die if we don’t help her right now!”
With a wave of his fin, the great titan, currently in the form of a whale, sent a bolt of golden light straight at the unconscious young woman, and it enveloped her entire body, seeping slowly into her.
“She was never given her choice, son,” Paribdus reminded him gravely. “It won’t go well with her if the week passes without her consent. You know this. Do what you must to save her from that fate.”
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“If I’d wanted her to die, I wouldn’t have asked for your help to begin with,” Mark pointed out. “Thank you.”
“And I suspect I’m right in assuming you won’t be bringing her below?”
“I—don’t think she’d be very pleased by that idea right now,” Mark hedged. “We are working on a very important project. We’re trying to find ways to clean away the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The humans were the cause, of course, but so far all they’ve learned to do is make the mess worse instead of better. This research can help them fix that. You know that trouble affects all of the ocean, and not just their portion of it.”
Sighing deeply, Paribdus agreed with a shake of his massive tail. “Take your girl to the surface before she wakes, Caerulus. She certainly won’t understand why she can suddenly breathe in the water if you don’t, and the last thing we need is a hysterical fledgling to deal with. Remember, she must be made to accept this fate before the week is out.”
“Yes, sir,” Mark said as he shifted back into human form and slung a strand of golden light toward his wet suit, bringing it back to him so he could put it on. Fully clothed again, he retrieved Chelsea and his tank and brought her to the surface. A small island in the distance seemed much closer than camp and would offer them the privacy they were going to need. Mark brought her there and laid her on the shore, lying down on the beach at her side.