The air was too damp. Not warm like the ocean breeze, not cool like a basement. It was just… wet. Breathing felt like drinking. The humidity clung to my skin and filled every breath like I was still underwater, just… slower. More patient.
The green glow was back.
Same as before. Same as the dream. A gentle, queasy bioluminescence that bled down the walls in rhythmic pulses. Not quite flickering—more like pulsing. Breathing. Matching my heartbeat. Or maybe I was matching its.
The ceiling hummed. Low and constant. A lullaby for someone who’d long since drowned.
I sat up slowly, my limbs stiff and tingling, like they’d been asleep for a century. A blanket stuck to my skin. Standard-issue, gray. It smelled of salt and antiseptic.
I was in a bunk. Not a bedroom. Not a hospital. Just a narrow cot built into the wall of a metal hallway—lined with more bunks, more sleepers. Some of them were still. Too still. Others stirred and coughed, murmuring things in languages I didn’t recognize.
The place had the feel of a morgue. A morgue trying very hard to pretend it was a dormitory.
Above me, a soft female voice spoke from a ceiling vent.
“Good morning, resident. You are now entering Day 2 of your orientation period. Remember: Unity. Calm. Obedience.”
I shivered. The way she said it—it didn’t sound like instruction.
It sounded like a threat.
The corridor outside was just as green. Just as cold.
Every few steps, a camera blinked to life above my head. The red dots tracked my movements like hunting lasers.
The floor was grated metal, damp underfoot. The walls were lined with panels labeled in sharp block text: SECTOR 3 / HAB-02 / OXYGEN LINE STABLE.
I passed tanks.
Huge ones.
Glass walls taller than the ceiling, set deep into the bulkhead. They pulsed faint blue light, their surfaces crawling with condensation. Inside, shadows drifted—too large to be fish. Too slow to be normal.
One pressed against the glass as I walked past. Its eye opened.
And I swear—it didn’t follow me.
It led me.
I followed the blue floor light again. A thin glowing strip embedded in the metal, like a vein guiding blood back to the heart.
It took me through winding corridors and narrow walkways, past sealed doors marked with biohazard symbols, and open ones that led to observation rooms filled with cracked monitors and half-flooded desks.
Eventually, it brought me to a room labeled COMMON UNIT C.
The door slid open without a sound.
Inside were people.
I froze in the threshold like a deer on a flooded highway.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
People milled about the room like they’d forgotten what movement was supposed to look like. Stiff, awkward, too slow or too fast. Some stared blankly at the wall. One sat at a table, endlessly peeling the skin off an orange and placing each strip in a perfect spiral. Another rocked in a corner, singing to a stuffed animal that looked like it had been stitched from seaweed and plastic.
And the Caretakers stood behind them. Always just behind. Watching.
Black suits. Visors. Not a word spoken.
One of them turned to me. Tilted its head.
“Resident Nadia. Please receive nourishment.”
A tray appeared. Slid toward me on a shelf that extended from the wall like a tongue. A metallic packet sat on it, labeled: NUTRI-MIX // Gen.12
I stared.
“Consume. Hydrate. Proceed.”
I didn’t want to. But I did.
It tasted like cold paste and iron. Like the inside of a machine pretending to be food.
My throat burned on the way down.
I found the only empty seat and sat.
A man next to me whispered without looking.
“You’re new.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice hoarse. “You too?”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We’re all new. No one stays old long.”
I stared.
He kept peeling the same apple over and over. It wasn’t even whole—just a bruised lump with a dozen knives worth of cuts in it. He never ate it.
“My name’s Hal. I think,” he said. “They call me that sometimes. You shouldn’t look at the tanks too long. They remember your face.”
“The tanks?”
He leaned closer.
“Some of them are one-way glass. The fish see you. They see you. And they don’t blink.”
He licked his lips.
“None of them blink.”
The voice returned overhead.
“Residents, prepare for environmental integration briefing. Please proceed to Briefing Hall 4B.”
Everyone stood. At once.
It was the synchronization that hit me the hardest. Like they didn’t hear the announcement so much as feel it.
Even Hal stood—apple core still in hand, untouched.
I followed. What else could I do?
Briefing Hall 4B was a half-sphere with a domed ceiling that showed live feeds of the ocean above us—if you could call it live. Nothing moved. Just green-black water and the occasional flicker of motion that never quite made sense.
The seats were arranged in concentric circles around a platform. On it stood a Caretaker.
It didn’t speak. It didn’t need to.
The screen behind it lit up.
And the music started.
The same watery melody from before. Just notes now. No lyrics. Like a nursery rhyme that got lost at sea and forgot its own name.
Then the voice returned.
“Welcome to the Aquarium.”
“Our mission is the preservation of life, knowledge, and structure in a post-surface world. You are now part of the last living archive of humanity.”
“Your presence ensures continuation. You are vital. You are chosen. You are becoming.”
That word.
Becoming.
It landed in my gut like a seed.
Something began to sprout. And it wasn’t human.
The next few days bled together like watercolors in a leaking pipe.
Eat. Sleep. Briefing. Scans. Injections. More whale song humming through the pipes. More odd shadows drifting in the water outside.
I watched my reflection fade in the mirror. Not from lack of light. Just… fade. My face stopped showing up clearly. First it blurred, then it shimmered. Like my skin was forgetting how to be solid.
Hal whispered once while we were brushing our teeth:
“They don’t want us to remember. They want us to merge.”
“Merge with what?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he shoved a tissue in my hand and walked away.
I unwrapped it.
Inside was a drawing.
A spiral.
Not ink.
Blood.
On Day Five, I found the door to Tank 00.
It wasn’t marked like the others. No signs. No lighting. Just a thick bulkhead down a forgotten side hallway behind a storage unit.
But I felt it calling.
Not heard. Felt.
When I touched the door, my vision went black for a second. Not fainting—just gone. Like blinking inside a dream.
And I heard it.
A voice.
No words. Just pressure.
A suggestion.
“Come deeper.”
When I returned to the Common Unit, Hal was gone.
“Transferred,” the Caretaker said, when I asked.
“To where?”
It tilted its head. “Forward.”
And just like that, the apple was back on the table.
Untouched.
Waiting for someone else.
That night, I dreamed of the ocean floor.
But not the one I knew.
This one was upside-down. Coral grew from the sky. Fish swam in reverse. The light came from beneath me. And there were doors.
Thousands of them.
Each one opening, breathing, pulsing like gills.
And something was behind them.
Watching.
Smiling.
I woke up to a film of brine on my skin and fingernails tinted green.
And I knew.
The Aquarium wasn’t just a shelter.
It was a crucible.
And it had started changing me.