Metal screamed. A soundless, tortured shriek that reverberated through the hull of the sub.
Atsuya Kurose's last conscious thought clung desperately to clarity as the walls of the research sub folded inward like dying paper. So this is how the ocean takes us back.
Then darkness. Complete, unrelenting.
No lungs to fill. No heartbeat to quicken. No voice to cry out. Only… pressure.
At first, it was suffocating. Then… comforting. A weight that pressed from every angle, even through the void of thought. It was as if the ocean itself had wrapped him in an embrace he didn't know he craved.
Something moved beneath him. Eight small, twitching limbs, too quick for human eyes, quivering in instinct he didn't understand. He opened… no, he felt… his senses in a way that made the memory of lungs absurd. Vibrations rolled across him, faint at first, then overwhelming, echoing from every direction. Not sound, not light. Something older. Something alive.
Panic clawed at his mind. A human panic, one he barely recognized as his own. Yet it was wrong. He had no voice to scream, no lungs to wheeze. There was only sensation, and sensation was alien, raw, unfiltered.
And then he realized.
The membrane. A translucent, quivering shell. His body encased within. His tiny limbs pushing against it, feeling every ripple of tension. This was the womb. Or the coffin. Or both.
He twitched. A convulsive, desperate movement. Eight limbs scraping against the membrane. Pressure responded with resistance, then… elasticity. The membrane pushed back. And he pushed harder.
Something inside him a seed of curiosity, or perhaps the ghost of instinct whispered: Break.
The membrane resisted for a heartbeat that felt like an eternity. Then rupture.
Warmth. Wetness. A flood of sensation he had no words for. The water of the abyss welcomed him, cold and infinite. Eight small, slick limbs spread into the void. Each movement a revelation. Every vibration carried knowledge.
He was small. Helpless. Prey. Yet… he was aware. Fully aware.
The first hunt begins, though he does not know it yet.
He twitched again, faster this time, limbs propelling him through the black water. Tiny fins, weak but alive, beating. Tentacles curling, feeling. Searching.
Above him, nothing. Below him, nothing. Around him, everything. The abyss. Cold. Hungry. Infinite.
And somewhere, in the unthinkable depths, something older than memory stirred. Something that had noticed the rupture of his membrane. Something that might have waited centuries for this.
Atsuya Kurose human, marine biologist, thinker was gone.
In his place: a small, fragile creature with eight limbs, an alien mind, and a single, unrelenting instinct.
Survive.