The empty research room or safe zone as Matthias had termed it was silent. Carissa and Matthias both continued to breath silently but neither of them had spoken after reading the contents of the system provided black binder.

The specifications had been within what Carissa had expecting but the personal kept records of a scientist were normally considered sacrosanct. They weren’t meant to be freely taken by others. Not even by a man who she had killed who hadn’t even fought back as he had slowly begun to transform into a monstrous being.

The actual scientific parts were sparse and mostly empty or had been ripped out but the descriptions that he gave of the experiments on research subjects who had tests performed on them unwillingly combined with the Ocean Gateway system provided description of the vial gave her a clear idea of exactly what this place, the Deep-Water Purification Facility had been working with.

What had surprised her was the amount of non-scientific research and personal information in which the man had put into the binder.

In short, it explained a man who had enough and simply wanted to return to his family before they were caught by cultists, killed as hostages by a military force that had likely ceased to exist or been drowned by the rising oceans.

What was meant to be a game of gods became more realistic when she read a personal account of what actually happened.

Even if this place was entirely artificial and the people within were puppets performing to invisible lines and she had been forced into it along with hundreds of others it remained upsetting.

Matthias had retreated to one corner his eyes reddened and tired as he put his back to a corner and sat with his hands on his knees. The scientist coat had remained unchanged his form, as had the colour of his hair and the added glasses.

Tired. He looks tired. Or drained.

It could also have been the side effects of the golden dust blessing given by the Goldfish mask image of the Ocean God Oannes, the traces of it finally wearing off both their bodies and minds.

He had his limits after all and all his talk of other Ocean Gods providing favours to their own select ones meant that he had a little leeway when dealing with them.

Carissa decided to break the silence first. She was presently trying to imagine herself in a designed scenario or a film set where she could distance herself from the situation.

She had removed her own scientific lab coat and stored it back in her spatial storage back until they had finished their full preparations.

Trying to at least, the personal accounts of the black binder hadn’t made for light reading.

‘Sobering, isn’t it? First-hand accounts of tragedies usually are. At least the items provide answers. The only question is how long we have left. I was infected by the virus long before you and clearly got a direct dosage into my body. Unless this is another trick by the Ocean Gods for what passes for an intermediate level dungeon. I could try and synthesise a cure but the technology in this place appears barely in place as it is. I doubt that we’re going to find a method beyond completing the task ahead of us. Matthias?’ said Carissa.

The young man with platinum hair had removed his coral style sword from his personal storage device clipped onto his belt and held it resting it on the floor.

‘The Goddess tasked me for this...mission. One that I need to achieve. I was trained, entered dungeons but the fact that they choose to use advances of alchemy and science for these purposes makes me reconsider whether this world was meant to be drowned. Perhaps the Ocean Gods did the people of this world a favour rather than a divine punishment. I will tell you that in my world there are two types of dangers whom the Lady would not tolerate. Those who try to recreate flesh and bone and those that decide to use technology to experiment on people. We contain our own alchemists within select towers for a good reason.’ said Matthias as his fingers tightened on the sword.

His face remained expressionless but he had tried to dig the tip of his sword into the hard floor of the research room without success. Minor pieces had been dug up but he hadn’t been able to do much damage, the exact same which Carissa had found herself.

She had been expecting him to talk more but he simply continued to grind and edge of his coral sword along the floor without making much difference.

The walls and floors of this place and likely the ceilings were nearly indestructible for good reason. More for the reason to stop player candidates or players of the water gods to not smash their way through rooms and destroy any sense of challenge that this scenario was designed to give.

Carissa understood better now why Matthias had been worried that they had been placed within an intermediate-player level scenario.

They needed to either finish the quest for this place, find clues and solutions along the way or both of them would end up just like the transformed scientist Hua Pengfei.

Become genetic abominations desperate for someone to kill us.

Or confined in one of the experimental labs that this place built.

Remembering the system quest, Carissa pulled it up in front of her mind’s eye to clarify exactly what her and Matthias’s goals were within this specific scenario.

[Player-Candidate Group: Thalassophobia.

Both of you have entered one of the worst excesses of technology and madness this planet has to offer.

Commonly known as Defence Lab 56 to the general public, the Deep-Water Purification Facility hides both hidden secrets and scientific horrors.

Funded through a combination of private investors, siphoned public and military funding experiments on the nature of the human form were done here deep under the ocean, far from oversight and transparency.

Survive through trial of combat by using your skills, experience and knowledge from your own worlds.

Your immediate mission is to survive until the destruction of the facility either through the hands of the player candidates or the actions of base personnel.

Additional rewards are offered for recovery or collection of any data relating to the facility and current news.

Main Quest Objective: Survive. Escape is not a valid option. Kill or be killed.

Secondary Quest Objective: Enable self-destruction of facility or deploy fail-safe option.

Tertiary Objective: Assist Ocean God Believers in their own trials.

Quest Rewards: Removal of Candidate Status and establishment of full Player Status.

Additional Rewards depend on performance on completion of level.

Individual Ocean Gods may grant bonus rewards for selected player-candidates only.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

The Ocean Gods blessings be upon you all. Remember, the Drowned Gods reward the faithful and punish the heretics.]

As she flicked through it again searching for specific clues there was no mention of what had specified within the black binder.

Nothing of their eventual deaths or the infection. Carissa would examine the system generated details of the vial later once she had finished reading.

She pulled up a page from the Ocean Gateway provided reward at random.

[Personal Diary Record of Hua Pengfei. Diary Entry 26:]

For anyone who finds this, please know that I did this for my family. All for my family. I hope you can forgive me and survive this place. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.

Date: 14th February 20XX

Chief Security Officer Tapia came into her section today, flanked by a few of her soldiers. She calls them ‘security’ but the fact that they come in heavily armed with such precise movements belies their true nature.

She told us that they were on loan from General Lombardo due to further risk of outside threats and increasing reports of supposed cultist activity.

I think she’s been put under direct suspicion by the General as belonging to the growing cultist movement within.

Not that I’d blame them. We continue to work with no fresh news from outside the facility, only promises that our families and loved ones are protected and safe within hidden refuges on the surface.

More lies to comfort us. We’re safe down here but the fact that security has been tightened up so frequently and so many checkpoints have been established have done nothing for my own confidence or that of our colleagues.

Today, I had to send for the cleaners after one of the prisoners was initially infected and his arm and half his throat doubled in size. We managed to move his corpse into an isolation chamber.

The added weight to his frail form pulled him and he cracked his head against an examination table. The virus tried to rebuild his skull into a harder form on the exact corner of the impact but the screams…

I still recall the screams. From a throat that was changing into something...more.

The dosage that was meant to be administered was incorrect, one of the younger ones on my team called it an accident but I don’t know if it was done on purpose or he was simply too keen.

Regardless, I ordered a direct injection of anaesthesia before I personally gave him a lethal overdose and killed him before he could threaten any of us. Threaten me. Threaten the staff under my direct authority.

I know that I failed to follow procedure but there’s only so much death screams that I can withstand before I no longer feel like a human being.

Part of the reason I need to write this down before it becomes another failed test subject. I never knew the name of the prisoner; he was provided as a number.

I’m certain that my actions were reported directly to security. The Chief of Security herself attending in person with armed guards wasn’t a coincidence.

At least the animal wranglers remain friendly when they take their meals. I talk to them sometimes or those on my staff do during scheduled break times. They always talk about their animals and their habits. You’d think they had pets given the situation.

I suppose that we’re no longer testing on their charges makes them more relaxed. The constant rate of failure and the zero-percentage indication of any physical change meant that we had reduced the test animal population to double digits at most.

We were given a security briefing in which we said that results were the only thing that mattered if we wanted to see our families, sunlight or the surface once again.

Not that switching to experimentation on the prisoners has helped, we took animals, got used to it and after the first few human prisoners took the virus under strict armed guard from the suited soldiers and died, we grew used to experimenting on them as well.

Two factors are driving me forward, the first is that we’ve been guaranteed to see our families once we achieve positive test results. The second, makes me sick to be a human but I’m writing this down to be honest with myself.

Scientific curiosity. What would happen if one of the prisoner test subjects was able to become more than human, to turn into a functional superhuman.

They’d be able to fight back against the…. things that are flooding our planet despite our efforts. I’m not stupid. We’re losing. Badly.

I know the cities have likely been destroyed by nuclear weapons if they failed but my family and the others were taken at the same time that we were and we were promised that they would be inside a secure facility deep underwater like this one.

My little Fen …. things and Ju Mei. I am doing this for their sake. I need to know that they’re alive, I’m going to finish writing this and request my mandatory contact time earlier.

Please forgive me for my work but this is to save our planet.

[Diary Entry Ended. Replay? Y/N?]

Shaking her head Carissa had found that she had likely been reading this particular diary entry longer than she had originally thought. She dismissed it from her mind’s eye.

The pathetic tones of the man at the end made her ill. As a scientist he should have taken ownership over his actions, not weak apologies. The dead didn’t care for excuses, only results would have given him a sufficient reason for experimenting on living humans.

‘Matthias? Did you find any clues in any of the entries yet? Matthias?’ asked Carissa.

Her hands were wet and there was a mild pain from them. Lifting them up to examine them she saw that there was blood on her palms, she had gripped her hands so tightly that her fingernails had dug deep into them.

The blood was red but there were minute traces within, her eyes had changed, sharpened and her vision was sharper. Despite her own body feeling weak there was an edge there that hadn’t been there before.

As she examined her bloodied palms the red blood was interlaced with specks of grey liquid and the skin had begun to heal. Slower than her own genetic adjustments were meant to have improved but the process was far faster than she would have been used to at her baseline human levels.

Carissa didn’t like it. She had been infected and the purpose was to turn her into a superhuman. Or she would suffer cardiac arrest, suffer uncontrollable haemorrhaging and die from blood loss. The last option wasn’t one she wanted to consider.

She had already made sufficient adjustments through viral loads to her own form to become more than human once.

Self-surgery through robotics and practice upon her own cloned flesh and half-formed copies of herself to implant a technological mount designed to regulate her body temperature and water around the surface of her skin.

No. She didn’t ask to become an experiment in someone else’s scenario. She had suffered enough to find her own place before she had been drawn into this world against her world.

‘Matthias? Have you noticed any physical or mental cha-’ began Carissa before she saw that the young man had fallen asleep clutching onto his coral sword.

She waited a few moments before he began to lightly snore. It would have made her smile if they weren’t inside a room waiting to enter worse.

Opening her own spatial storage backpack Carissa searched through for any items of clothing which would suit her purposes, she had never received a starter pack like Matthias had but her were insistence she had made sure that he had kept his belongings after he had displayed them all.

She had never been selfish for material possessions. After removing the scientific coat, she had turned back into her original appearance and the grey suit which covered her torso, upper legs and arms.

‘You’ll do.’ said Carissa as she pulled out a t-shirt which she had been initially gifted from her so-called tutorial in the Driftwood Enclave. Stepping over to Matthias she draped it over his rising chest.

As long as they were going to operate as a team, she needed to make sure that they survived. Even if he didn’t physically need a loose t-shirt over him, when he awoke, he would appreciate the small gesture.

‘Have a rest Matthias.’ said Carissa as she added in an afterthought. ‘Dream pleasant dreams of your green world with lakes and a Goddess who cares for you.’

She sat down in an opposite corner inside the empty research trying her best to ignore the open doorway into the next area and checked through another record in the black binder.

There had to be clues of some type contained within which could assist both of them. She recalled the Ocean God Oannes in his Goldfish Mask form had told them that the black vial was dangerous.