Part 2The Fish Have Human Eyes

The pickup point was a secluded hatchery deep in the marshlands, a private facility leased entirely by the Vanderwalts.

It was a twenty-hour haul.

When I rolled into the yard the next day, the massive crates were already staged. Because it was a "short" run relative to cross-country, the creatures were packed in thick, transparent industrial bags pumped full of oxygen before being crated.

The size of them was unsettling. It took three burly dockworkers heaving in unison just to lift one bag into a box.

And the boxes... why black timber? Why not fiberglass tanks or insulated coolers?

lined up on the gravel, the vertical crates looked exactly like rows of coffins waiting for a mass burial.

"Dutch."

Russo had saddled me with a rookie named Mikey. The kid looked like he’d been drafted for war.

"Dutch, stay back," Mikey whispered, scrunching his nose. "The smell... it burns your eyes even through the plastic."

He wasn't wrong. As I got closer, a stench hit me—pungent, metallic, and rotting.

Live fish smell like algae and river mud. They don't smell like a week-old corpse.

My gut tightened, but I walked up to the line. Before the workers could nail the lid shut, I leaned in.

The creature inside hovered in the water, suspended. Its mouth gaped open and shut rhythmically. Its belly was a sickly, translucent white, contrasting with scales that shimmered a bruised grey-blue. The meat beneath looked dense.

I checked the manifest. They were alive.

Then the hammering started.

The workers weren't just sealing the crates; they were driving those seven black spikes in with a violence that made the wood groan.

Clang. Clang.

At the sound, the fish in the bags went berserk, thrashing against the plastic.

That’s when I saw it. A detail that sent a cold spike of adrenaline down my spine.

The fish were blinking.

Fish don't have eyelids. They live in the water; they don't need to moisten their eyes.

But I saw it clear as day. A thin, membranous layer of skin slid down over those milky, bulbous eyes and then retracted.

Blink. Blink.