Page 46 of Lagoon

Something horrifying jerked through him at her words. She was right. He grimaced. “So, back to Nancy and Anderson Scott.”

“Yes,” she said, “back to that.”

“I can text him.” He held up Nancy’s phone. “I can tell him everything.”

“But you haven’t?”

“You think I should. Like, no question?”

She didn’t say anything.

He set down the phone. “I think Anderson Scott is a bad person.”

“Oh, you think.” She was sarcastic again.

“I know everyone speculates that these one-percenters are sociopaths or whatever, but yeah, there’s something off about him. You read these texts and you see it. So, I guess I just don’t know if contacting him is the best idea. Because I think he might drop a bomb on us and wipe us out if he thinks it would be better for him.”

“Oh,” she said. “But at the same time, he could do that if we called anyone else, right? To get out of here, we need some organization with funds, and the best defense against AndersonScott would be the media, but then everyone would know that we’d mutated like this—”

“You’ve really thought this through.”

She bowed her head.

He sighed heavily. He picked up a hand and turned it over in front of his face. “I was thinking, uh, and I don’t know why, but I guess I was thinking that when this happened, I’d be darker than everyone else. My scales, I mean. But it’s exactly the same. Am I not Black anymore?”

“You wantmeto answer that?”

He looked up at the sky overhead. “You know what’s very weird right now? This conversation is not making my stinger go down. Or my dick for that matter. They seem to work in tandem. They go up and down together. I could swear this conversation would make me not turned on.”

“Maybe it’s my scent?”

“Could be.”

Another long silence stretched out between them.

She spoke, her voice hoarse. “I haven’t… really seen one.”

“Okay,” he said and things jerked in his crotch. His balls got tight. He’d examined all this at one point, alone. The stinger was right between his cock and his balls, like an extra cock.

She got out the gun and settled it against his temple.

He went still. “Angela?”

“Show it to me,” she whispered.

He grunted.

“I’m not going to shoot you unless you scare me,” she murmured.

“That’s reassuring,” he said softly. “What if I don’t want to show you? You shoot me?”

“Let’s not pretend you don’t want to show me, Luther,” she said witheringly.

He barked out a laugh. “Okay, you got me. Uh, I think… to get it out, I need to stand up and push my pants down around my ankles.”

“Fine.” She got to her feet.

He did too.

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