Rolling in the Deep (Rolling in the Deep, #0.5)

by Mira Grant

They saw a great adventure. They saw a glorious and entertaining hoax. They saw profit, ratings, everything but the disaster that awaited them.

Oceanography was a big field, but like all arenas of scientific inquiry, it was plagued by nepotism, rivalry, and the vague belief that whatever your peers were doing, it had to be more interesting than whatever you were working on.

Alien eyes watched the strange metal object as it floated upward. There was blood in the water. Their home had been invaded. They would respond.

Humanity destroys the things it loves. Something mysterious and unique enough to be the source of mermaid legends? We’re going to be all over destroying that.”

Having strong feelings doesn’t actually make you stupid, as it turns out.”

“The ocean will injure us right back if we let it,”

The official record says that all hands were lost at sea. We believe that something far worse occurred. We believe that they were found.

For all intents and purposes, the ocean had simply opened its jaws and swallowed her whole.

Was there any reason in the world to expect a deep-sea predator with that many teeth to be friendly?

“We said ‘pretty women in the sea,’ and that was good enough, because who doesn’t want there to be pretty women in the sea? We turned monsters into myths, and then we turned them into fairy tales. We dismissed the bad parts. We were too interested in…in…in pretty women in the sea.”

“You’re a miracle,” he breathed. “You’re a miracle,” the mermaid echoed, before it leaned up and carefully, almost delicately, ripped away his throat.