‘Liam. Welcome to Last Refuge. The place where I have been reborn. Don’t you love me now? Look at my new form. I’m doing it. I’m actually realising my dream. I’ll become a true mermaid.’ said the woman as she stood there naked and proud.

The man paused in disgust, bile rising up from his throat as he saw the abdominal scars that had mostly recovered on the body of the woman who had once been his wife. His love and his first serious girlfriend. She had been a brilliant woman once, one of the most famous and despised woman on the planet depending on your viewpoint.

She’d called him and he answered, all the way on the drive to this isolated lighthouse in the middle of nowhere next to the ocean. He walked through a series of unlocked security gates and past barbed wire fences to the door where she’d been waiting for him in a pristine light blue dressing down.

He’d almost thrown up on the doormat when she’d let her gown drop to the floor and showed off her naked form.

‘Carissa. I don’t hear from you for months. Nobody else has even heard from you in at least a year and you call me out to this isolated lighthouse for a strip show? Last Refuge? This isn’t funny. Please, at least tell me that you’ve been taking your medication. We can fix your body. Cutting yourself doesn’t help anyone. Please.’ said the man.

She was a tall woman, her hair a strong mix of natural brown and reds with a rare beauty verging on the edge of unnaturalness.

‘…Liam. I’ve done it. Don’t you understand? Why the self-regulation alone, I can control the flow and temperate of water within two metres of my person. I don’t need the necessary body fat to survive. Granted the power drain means I need to consume a suitable number of calories but still aren’t you happy for me? Medication? I was treated Liam. Don’t you dare turn on me. I am refreshed. Reborn.’ said Carissa.

‘I see a beautiful, intelligent woman who was once brilliant before she grew ill. A scientist who changed the face of our planet and enabled an environmental change that will enable us to carry on as a species. And right now, the woman that I loved had cut up her own body out of some delusional sense of purpose and is standing in front of me naked. You need help Carissa. Serious treatment. I can help you. You called me for a reason, you know it as well.’ the man replied.

Liam felt bile rise up from his stomach. The scars looked healed enough but still fresh enough that she must have cut herself a few days ago at most. The sutures rose from her lower pelvic region up to her breasts.

Another time, when they had been together the thought might have aroused him to see her naked but now all he wanted was to throw up the meagre contents of his breakfast. He didn’t know why she’d called him but he wished he’d never picked up her call.

‘I see. You listened to me before I made you money, and now you’re famous, rich and successful beyond your wildest dreams. Well, I don’t need you now. I’ll get my dream. Further alteration will have to wait until I’ve healed but I’ll do it Liam. Truly become a mermaid You don’t know how much I’ve had to work for it, the sacrifices I’ve made. The experiments.’ said Carissa.

She gazed at the man with a fierce intensity in her eyes, if he had noticed her face, then the man called Liam would have noticed her open smile, teeth sharper and whiter than any human teeth have a right to be.

Her self-improvement on her body had not only been related to surgery and technology. A little genetic altering had made further changes.

‘…Carrisa. If you ever thought that I loved you then please, come back with me to see others. You have so much more brilliance to offer the world. Please. You’re not alone. Do you even know what you’ve done to your body? Are those scars even healed? They don’t look healed. We can keep this private, between us. I’m going to enter the door. Please. Let me come in and take care of you. This isn’t too late to fix.’ responded Liam.

‘Weakness and fear. I don’t know why I expected anything else from you. Leave Liam. I thought you might…no. I don’t need a companion who’s too scared of his own failings to join me. You were barely anything before you met me. A research assistant at most with a keen eye for business. I’ll grant you that. But you can get out right now. I’m going to rearm the security protocols just in case you get any funny ideas about trying to force me out. Not that I’ll be in this location much longer. The automated defences are going to be active, and I’ll be reborn into the embrace of the only goddess this sad little planet has known. The mother of our species.’ said Carissa.

‘Carissa…I have no clue of what you’re talking about. You disappear from my life and the world for a year and all traces of you evaporated. In the world outside they think you died. This brilliant, beautiful scientist who came up with the method of cleaning the waters of the world, free of pollution and human degradation. Granted, a portion of the population hates you but they’re poor. This...self-mutilation of your body. You don’t need to do it out of guilt. You forget Carissa, we were married for eight years. I know you. This is wrong. You know deep inside that you’re only hurting yourself out of anger.’ said Liam.

The woman turned away from the man. Her nude body slightly glistening in the light of the room.

‘You’ll find that it doesn’t matter soon enough. I’ve been working on a book that will include all my post-research notes on the ocean cleaning technology. Enough to keep you in the public eye for a few more decades and with as many women as you want to sleep with.’ said Carrisa.

‘Carrisa…I didn’t want anyone else. You were my first and last. I’ll leave but others will find you, they’ll have traced my movements. You can’t hide forever. Please let me come inside and we can discuss this. Please.’ said Liam.

‘Too late. I need a few more treatments and then I’ll be ready. This prototype form can withstand far more than it looks. Besides, I know you came here because you loved me once. I was prepared to share a new life with you. Nobody will find me.’ said Carissa.

‘Goodbye Carrisa. I see you’ve made up your brilliant mind about this. It’s funny, if anyone on the planet could be successful it’d be you. You always did have an amazing sickness in you but not like this. Not with your body. I’ll leave but you can call me. No. I’m going to call you. One last attempt to change your mind. I’ll call.’

‘Goodbye Liam. I loved you.’ said Carissa.

Not turning around to watch her ex-husband and once boyfriend depart as she hit a button on the wall with the palm of her hand setting the main door to close and reactivating the security systems.

The doors would self-lock behind him and he’d never try to approach her without direct permission. He was weak that way in her mind. Her thinking may have been affected by the gene therapy which had sharpened her teeth and mind but she knew his behaviour both inside and out. He’d think and think before he took any final action. He had always been the hesitant one.

A book title rose in her then. She had the thought as soon as Liam had left her. She watched him leave through a screen on the wall, hidden cameras tracking his movements as the security protection systems rearmed themselves once he walked past them.

How much do you love the oceans?

A fitting title for her last span of time living as a human being living on the land. She picked up her fallen bathrobe and wrapped it around her nude form, tying it up as she walked. Her body still needed a little more time to adjust to the implants and she had always felt the cold, it was to be expected with the lack of moisture within the air.

She’d need to work on the book to get it finished and a copy left behind when the hate groups finally came storming down the gates of her last refuge. Carissa would make sure that Liam got a copy of the book as well, the unabridged version, she may not have loved him now but she’d keep her promise.

After all, without his intervention she would never have experienced an extreme push to finally transform herself into a true mermaid. The ocean was waiting for her entrance, all she needed was a little more time and the final test of a lifetime. A transformation into a being of higher beauty, a creature that would survive.

Her body though would need a little more time to recover from the surgery as she had pushed herself a little bit when she’d sent the message to Liam to come to her hidden place. Her Last Refuge against an uncaring world.

Carissa put out a hand to the smooth wall on her house. The texture was bare although she didn’t feel enough through her altered skin. In order to survive under colder waters, she’d had to find a compromise for the lack of body fat that humans possessed.

She passed her way through the structure that she had purchased, corridors and rooms empty and bare. Furniture removed and belongings that were casually tossed away without care nor concern. The emptiness of the house reflected her mind, minimal and uncaring.

The purchase of the property had been a good choice, she had made sure that it was done privately without alerting those looking for her presence. Time though, she knew would not be on her side. A few words would either leak and electronic traces would pick up her trail soon enough, those that hated her were more than a few for her supposed betrayal of the human race.

‘Empty and…. soon to be fulfilled.’ said Carissa.

Carissa had toyed with the idea of following in the footsteps of an ancient Emperor who let his capital city burn to the ground while he watched. His actions remembered but his name long forgotten.

She could have paid for a fixed demolitions of the building to go off on a fixed time, then as she lay in the cool arms of the deep ocean waters, she could watch her last material possessions literally go up in smoke.

‘A waste of a life and time spent on worthless ideals.’ Carissa talked aloud to herself.

At this point anyone seeing her physical body and living conditions would have either called her insane or not understood why for a woman who was meant to be mentally ill, the entire property was both immaculate and entirely minimal.

The only room inside the building which had any personal possessions of value was her small working office. A single dark gray sofa bed, desk, chair, lone bookshelf with her notes and final research materials and her writing materials. Sparse enough to be considered barely lived in, she’d eaten her main meals in her research laboratory. Any form of electronics beyond basic lighting had long been stripped out and disposed of.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A single piece of technology rested upon the top of the sofa, one of the more costly purchases which her ex-husband Liam had insisted upon. She had used it earlier to call him to come over to her and provide a secure form of communication along with her specific address.

Other methods of communication with the outside world she no longer trusted, only holding onto an expensive modified security phone which she had been advised by experts to be encrypted and also secure without her biometrics to access.

Carissa was not willing to be harassed any further by those who either hated her or lusted after her fame and beauty. To become a multi-billionaire at the relatively youthful age of twenty-five was unusual, even more so when she had never studied business in her life but had focused on the triple subject of biology, oceanography and technology.

‘For the final touch, I’ll need a decent book title. My last work for an uncaring surface world. Suitable...suitable...’ said Carissa.

Before Carissa had met her husband, she had made sure that all of her personal experimental materials were thoroughly destroyed and all of her genetic traces wiped clean.

The furnace had disposed of the cloned test bodies and animal subjects and the ashes washed into the ocean waiting deep below.

‘Liam wouldn’t tell anyone. No. He’d think and think. I don’t care what he said. I am beautiful. I will be reborn.’ said Carissa to herself.

Showing him her transformed body was a moment of hubris she knew, but she had wanted to show it to someone, anyone just before she left the dirt world for one filled with watery wonders. Given Liam’s emotional state she doubted that he would tell anyone immediately, he had also been catapulted into fame and riches but he wasn’t arrogant and knew to keep his ego in check.

No, for him it was all about having the resources to actually make a difference to the environmental state of the planet, it had been a large part of what had made him so attractive to Carissa in the first place. Ideals, and the strength and will to act on those ideals.

An investigative and skilled research team might be able to find minor traces of her implants if they knew roughly what they were looking for but she also knew that they wouldn’t be able to make it bond with the human structure.

At most they would have an inkling of a patch to create a superhuman which involved water, she had created false technology to throw them off the trail. Her entirely failed prototypes which were built to fail were scattered inside her research laboratory and in several of the notes hidden inside journals in the bookshelf in her small office.

‘Enough. I can’t keep waiting.’ Carissa muttered aloud. She glanced at the modified security phone before she put it down.

Running one finger across the desk she looked at her book that she had spent time writing. The title made her smile, it summed up her entire life and the words held real meaning. She was so tired now, not just physically but the long wait for her transformation had drained her emotionally and mentally.

For a moment she held herself back from picking up the book concerned that Liam had been right and she was simply a woman who needed treatment. No. His concern might have been real but in listening to him she had made all of the major mistakes of her life, perhaps if she had been a little more experienced or a little less naive growing up, she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him in the first place.

Carissa undid her bathrobe and folded it neatly on the sofa. The ancients had tombs in which they left riches and hoped to be served in their second life. This house, this room would serve as her final giving to the world.

Likely, given her current fame and status on the planet her last recorded words in the surface would polarise the population. She was sure that Liam would publish them in a final attempt to understand her.

He had always called her a complicated but innocent woman. Even when he had cheated on her by stealing her research and producing the results and then selling the final products onto the global environmental markets, he had claimed that she was a genius.

Liam would have been easier if he had found someone else to have a physical relationship with but they had both been virgins when they met and the thought of other partners had never crossed their minds.

‘I’m beautiful and in the process of transforming. My last words will be for you Liam.’ said Carissa.

Holding the book in one hand she opened a draw on her desk and pulled out an expensive gold-leaf pen and wrote one final personal brief message to her ex-husband. Rather than twist a knife in old wounds, she simply wrote that she had loved him and they deserved each other.

‘Good enough. He’ll get nothing else from me though.’ said Carissa.

Standing fully naked in her scarred body and letting her long hair hang loose she reached into the desk draw to take out an item of personal value. One was the wedding ring which Liam had given to her when he had proposed back in their university days. The ocean demanded sacrifice and had hungry gods, hungrier creatures. The source of life and the destroyer of worlds.

All she had left would suffice. Money and other material possessions would have other little value. The only thing that she possessed in the immediate vicinity was the modified security phone.

‘Messages and phone calls can be tracked. Even now. Off to the deep waters with you as well.’ said Carissa.

Carissa would dispose of it before she undertook her new journey, despite the fact that her injuries from the surgery had entirely yet to heal it would suffice. Rebirth would never be a price freely paid, there was always a cost.

To make sure that the phone would suffer sufficient damage she would need to unlock the hard casing first, otherwise it would still be tracked by its opposite number which would be held by Liam. They were unique and costly but she had been trained in how to dismantle the essentials.

Picking up the modified security phone Carissa held in her free hand. She placed the book down upon the table before considering to reset the security doors and access points which she had previously told Liam when he had left.

‘No point. The vultures and scavengers will find me regardless. Eventually.’ said Carissa with a flourish of her hand.

For Carissa escaping into the deep waters of the world would free her from the terrors of the surface. Still, she would leave open the doors to this place. Her ex-husband would return and as word spread, they would find nothing except falsified research notes, a sterile and vacant surgical suite and a single copy of her hand-penned last book.

Her hand vibrated as the phone gave Carissa an alert. Her mind paused for a moment before she considered that it had either an issue or Liam had decided to contact her again. He would, he was always needy in that way. The private security company had told her that the modified phone was only one of two unique prototypes in existence. Her absolute privacy should have been guaranteed except for being contacted by one other when she allowed it.

Her deep green eyes which had shifted from a light blue to the viral load which had altered her physical structure gazed down to an unknown message. Her eyes focused in the light with the inner translucent eyelid protecting her eyeball unconsciously.

[Candidate. Do you want to fix the oceans?]

Carissa knew that this was another cruel joke. Liam had decided to use his rough grasp on her psychology to shock her instead, she was tired of him. Tired of everything.

Her eyes fixed on the message Carissa spoke mostly to herself. ‘No. I already did; all you need to do is pay for it. Sign your life away or pay with everything you own. Stupid Liam’

Carissa knew that talking aloud wouldn’t make any difference. The message still felt odd. She felt a deep itch at the back of her mind, the alterations to her genetic structure had changed more than her physiology.

She had needed to remove certain ethical constraints from her brain in order to be able to process proteins and fats. Cannibalism might have to be a necessity if she found a drowning sailor in the future. Anything living in the water knew how to maximise energy usage, the deeper down you went the less life-giving sunshine touched.

Protein was protein. Best to plan for an emergency. Her own teeth would find it hard to get any purchase on her changing flesh. A buzzing sound rang out this time as one of the security measures on the modified phone warned her that an outside source had contacted her. This time she looked at it again, recalling that the tool to dismantle it was inside the desk.

‘Again. One is a joke, twice is an annoyance, three times is a threat to be removed.’ said Carissa.

Her eyes ran down to the screen once more to see the same message repeated word for word.

[Candidate. Do you want to fix the oceans?]

‘Time is running out. I need to move.’ said Carissa aloud to herself.

Carissa had enough threats to her life previously to take it seriously enough. The word candidate meant that she had been marked, or targeted. Fixing the oceans indicated that whomever had contacted her knew of her, that was obvious enough. The alternative was that she was being recruited by a company or organization that she was unaware of.

In order to break through the private connection to her modified phone which had cost her roughly the yearly entire food budget of the population of a small country they would need to be specialised. Threat or offer. She had no inclination for either. The phone would be making the trip with her, ideally, she would be deep enough for it to be lost.

‘If the person who sent this message thinks they killed me then they’ll regret their attempt.’ said Carissa.

Carissa needed to prepare earlier than originally planned. Reaching inside the desk her finger hurt, blood swiftly coagulating to avoid loss as her implants responded to her will and drew any excess moisture from the air around her.

An old necklace with a single shark tooth on it, a reminder of the times when she had found it so hard to process her own emotions. The scars that had healed and been cut over and over until she had first met Liam. She had made many modifications to the tooth over the years, the shape remaining the same but reinforced and strengthened enough times to keep as she grew older.

‘One last item for good luck’. Said Carissa.

Still entirely nude except for the necklace around her neck, the modified security phone on one hand and a gold ring on her finger she headed for the one place she knew that would be ignored and offer both her a quick exit, a place for prayer and the entry into her new world.

The open top roof with the extended sea view platform, it would provide the means for her to enter the ocean without having to leap off. She’d need to make sure that her implants and physical modifications worked fully, usually through a series of tests but as the message on her secure phone had shown her, time was not on her side.

Carissa didn’t know how much time she had left until her final bastion, her refuge would be found and she would be under pressure from either those who wanted her hidden secrets or individuals who would actually throw off her the edge, prepared or otherwise.

Naked with her bare feet, Carissa walked into the elevator that would take her to the roof. The camera above scanned her identity before confirming and opening with a light chime. Her skin slightly tingled with soreness after her various treatments. As the elevator doors closed, she bid her old life farewell with a smile on her face.

‘None will find me. Never again, I’ll find my own true freedom.’ said Carissa.

Her sharpened teeth glistened in her reflection in the polished metal of the doors as she took the gold ring off her finger and let it slip through the gaps as they closed.

She never heard the sound it made clattering to the ground. Carissa had always let her emotions be flexible. Adaptability was built into her.