Elaine Harper woke to a stabbing pain.
Her eyes flew open in the dim emergency lighting, revealing pearl-blue scales spreading across her legs, the skin below her knees already fusing into webbed structures. Needle-like pains shot between the half-formed scales as if icy daggers were piercing her flesh.
"Awake? Don't scratch." Her mother Lisa's voice came from the other side of the inflatable pad. "The medics say it accelerates the transformation."
Elaine struggled to sit up. Her family of four was crammed into an isolation pod in New York's Central Park emergency shelter, surrounded by hundreds of equally distressed refugees. Beyond the rain tarps, an unprecedented deluge had continued for forty days and nights.
"What time is it?" Her voice came out ragged.
"Theoretically, three days past Christmas." Her father Mark grimaced, displaying his fully transformed silver-blue tail. "But who's counting? CNN says the Atlantic's rising two inches every hour."
The tablet hanging from the pod's frame showed breaking news:
"...this global cataclysm bears chilling resemblance to Noah's Flood. NASA data indicates 97% of landmasses will be submerged within ten days. More alarming are reports of human DNA undergoing some kind of...evolution?"
The footage cut to underwater shots off Santa Monica: several fully transformed mer-people darting through submerged streets with dolphin-like efficiency.
"What the hell is that?" Elaine gasped.
"Our future, darling." Grandmother Margaret wheezed. Her tail was in the worst condition, with large patches of scales missing, revealing weeping flesh. "The White House just announced this as genetic adaptation. They're classifying people as 'Alpha' or 'Beta' types..."
Elaine stared at her transforming body. Three weeks ago, she'd been a marine biology PhD candidate at Columbia. Five days ago, the floods swallowed Lower Manhattan. Now she was becoming one of the creatures she'd studied.
"I'll get rations." Elaine tried standing—or rather, attempting to balance on her half-webbed limbs. A tearing sensation sent her crashing to her knees.
"Don't!" Lisa grabbed her arm. "The Red Cross said the lower pods are already flooding, and—"
"Margaret needs antibiotics." Elaine pointed to her feverish grandmother. As she limped toward the supply corridor, she heard her father's muffled coughing behind her—his emerging gills were bleeding.
The corridor teemed with people at various stages of transformation. There were still-human-looking "Beta types" alongside near-complete "Alpha types." The air smelled of saltwater and something faintly putrid.
"...Alpha types can live at 200-foot depths," a man in a fisherman's cap told his companion. "They're hauling crates of organic food from sunken Whole Foods..."
"And us damn Beta types?" His companion lifted her shirt to reveal sickly green scales. "Walking feels like stepping on broken glass!"
Elaine was about to ask for details when the corridor suddenly shook. The blast doors burst open as four Marines escorted three fully transformed mer-people through the crowd.
Silence fell. The trio had perfect hydrodynamic builds, their iridescent scales gleaming metallically. The tallest one turned abruptly, and Elaine found herself staring into eyes without whites—just solid pools of deep blue, like some abyssal fish.
As the special ops team disappeared into the medical zone, whispers erupted:
"Did you see those gill slits? At least Stage Three!"
"Heard they withstand 500 psi in pressure tests..."
"Why are we transforming so slowly? Will we..."
Elaine ran back to their pod to find Margaret coughing pink froth. Worse, black ooze was seeping from beneath her father's scales.
"The medics call it...transformation rejection." Lisa pressed gauze to her husband's bleeding gills, voice trembling. "Beta types have...a 65% mortality rate."
Outside, the rain hammered the tarps like a doomsday drumbeat. Elaine realized with sudden clarity: This evolution wasn't salvation. It was a brutal selection process.
And her family was losing.