“AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

Lucy screamed as she fell.

It felt like she was screaming, at least, but no sound seemed to be coming out. And falling might not have been the right word either, since now it felt more like…

Floating.

It was warm. Kind of cozy, actually. Like she was out for a relaxing swim in the ocean on a beautiful summer day. Maybe it had just been that weird thing when your body jerks as you’re falling asleep. That was it. She must have just dozed off.

Lucy kicked her feet. Nothing happened.

Oh, that’s not relaxing.

She tried to move her arms.

Nope.

She tried flailing, and it accomplished…a slight wiggling forward motion, as far as she could tell. She couldn’t quite see anything either, since it was darker than the bottom of the pot the last time she’d tried to cook. But when she focused…

[System activated]

[*Ding!* Congratulations, you have learned the passive meta-skill “Awareness”. Meta-skills are transferred between class evolutions.]

Lucy gave another yelp as her “vision” expanded into a small sphere around her body, which was sent drifting by the tensing motion. She could tell she was in a small, dark room deep underwater, but nothing more. Eventually she bonked into something hard and started going back the other way.

Okay, step one. Learn how to move.

Part of Lucy’s brain was panicking right then and going into survival mode, but the other half still thought she was dreaming, and might as well see how things developed. She rarely remembered her dreams at all, and she’d never been able to lucid dream. The only thing she’d managed when she tried techniques to lucid dream was to induce a terrifying experience of sleep paralysis.

Her heart raced as she thought for a moment that’s what was happening, but then she felt her body respond.

She focused on tensing up like she had when she’d screamed. It wasn't easy. In fact it was awkward and took an absurd amount of effort, but soon she had enough control to send her body floating vaguely, and after some practicing she was able to direct herself in any direction she pleased. Not that it was much help, since she just kept bouncing off something that felt like craggy stone, but…

There!

The squishy…whatever it was that made up the outer limit of her body bumped into an opening in the rock. She could barely make out its shape in the darkness, but it was there, and she wiggled towards it.

With some grunts of effort Lucy managed to wedge herself into the hole, whereupon she got promptly and firmly stuck.

Damnit! She thought, feeling like she was heaving for breath despite her apparent lack of lungs. Since when was dreaming so difficult? She sat there for a moment and gathered her energy, which she seemed to have extremely little of.

Okay, let’s go over the situation. I’m underwater. I’m tiny. I was just in a small room made of black rock, and now I’m stuck in the only exit. Should I just go back in?

It was tempting, but Lucy was already getting tired of being trapped, and besides, there was nothing interesting in the small room, and she was starting to get bored. She couldn’t see very much of the wider tunnel outside, but at least she would have room to move and see what was around.

After a few minutes her mind was clear and her will was focused. With every microgram of effort in her tiny body she pushed, and—

Popped free. Finally. She gave her gelatinous body a little shake to get off the flecks of dust that clung to her outer layer as she stood in the wide outer tunnel.

Oh yeah baby! Get fu—Ahhhhh!

Something scuttled across part of her body near the ground, which she did not appreciate one bit. Lucy jerked back, then watched warily as the spider-like creature disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. Then she felt her metabolism pick up as she realized what the creature was.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Bacteriophage. Nasty little things, especially up close like this. Good thing I’m not a—wait, am I a bacterium?

As soon as her mind filled with the intention of the question, text popped up, clear and crisp against the blurry shapes of her vision.

[Class: error:UNKNOWN]

[Sub-Class: Microbe. Current Evolution: None]

[Skills: Awareness (Meta), Gene Stealer, Protective Barrier, Reform Body]

[Next Evolution: 0/100]

[Energy: 97/100]

Gene Stealer, huh? Like those badass—

Lucy’s heart sunk as she saw the Protective Barrier skill and something jogged in her memory, a phrase she’d been familiar with since that first biology class in college years ago.

She sighed.

Do I really have a phospholipid bilayer right now?

For some reason, that little phrase made her reality sink in more than anything else that had happened so far. She told herself she was dreaming, but her body didn’t believe it. Everything was unfamiliar, yet far too real to be a dream.

Unable to hold it back any longer, Lucy burst into tears.

Or would have burst into tears, if she hadn’t been a one-celled organism with no lungs.

***

If this is a nightmare, I’m ready to wake up now!

Lucy wished she could at least say the words out loud, but when she tried she only felt a weird bubbling sensation on her membrane.

She had been wandering down the tunnel for some time now, and nothing had happened.

That’s what scared her the most. Lucy had never had a dream where she was just sitting around while nothing interesting happened around her. It was always some weird and nostalgic memory from high-school, or a social event gone wrong. Actually, it was often a weird memory of a high-school social event gone wrong, now that she thought about it.

In one part of her mind, Lucy decided she would make the most of this strange new situation. If it was a dream, she would have an interesting story to tell over lunch. If it wasn’t…

In a distant, far off corner of her mind, she screamed and screamed and screamed and—

AH!

She tried to scream for real as something big and...poky poked into her, and pain lanced through her side. Something red appeared in her vision, but she ignored it.

She thought for a moment the bacteriophage was back, but quickly realized this thing was a lot bigger. Bigger and… blobbier.

Lucy whirled around to face the threat, only to lose control of her new body and send herself flying straight up instead. Even with her body spinning wildly, she was able to get a good “look” at her opponent.

It’s ugly, was her first thought. Then her microbiologist brain kicked in, and she reminded herself that all life had its form for a reason. There was a beauty to the relationship between form and function in evolution, even if the resulting organism wasn't always the most aesthetically pleasing.

Lucy decided being supremely gross looking must have conferred some sort of survival advantage in this organism’s (undoubtedly short) chain of evolution.

The monster was slimy and grey, and thin black-streaked spikes jutted out in an even spread across its oval-shaped body, making it look like some kind of lumpy, slimy sea-urchin, though with fewer, shorter spikes.

It passed quickly underneath her and she congratulated herself on the timely dodge she had made by accidentally throwing herself upwards.

Still getting the hang of this new body, she thought, as she tumbled.

Then the current stirred by the prickly monster’s passing pulled her back down, and something stabbed into her again. The pain was fierce and immediate, and Lucy felt panic begin to rise. A little red “-2 HP” appeared in her vision and slowly drifted away.

Lucy quickly decided that the appearance of a health-bar was, by far, not the most concerning thing happening right now, and she would deal with it later.

[HP: 6/10]

Some Protective Coating that is!

The force of the impact sent her flying down the corridor in a direction she hadn’t explored yet, which gave her a few seconds to question every decision she’d made in her new life.

It was really just the one though, huh? Maybe she shouldn’t have come out of her nice little chamber so soon. It hadn’t been so bad in there, after all, had it? Sure it had been dark. And empty. And tiny and…okay, she’d had to leave it. Lucy wouldn’t say she was claustrophobic, but she did appreciate her personal space, and it was bad enough being trapped in a new body without also being stuck in a room barely bigger than she was.

But I don’t like it much better out here!

The spike monster lumbered after her, drifting through the water between them like some sort of prehistoric, half-formed beast. She tried to wiggle away from it to some success. Mostly because it rammed into her from behind and sent her freewheeling even farther down the corridor, then stopped and just stood there back in the corridor for a moment, shaking slightly. Another number had appeared when she’d been hit, but she’d been too dazed to see what it was.

Lucy wasn’t sure if it was smelling for her or what, but she made good use of the monster’s hesitation, moving down the tunnel as fast as her new body would allow. Which was extremely slow, and felt almost as awkward as her first date oh so many years ago.

As she moved, she considered what the creature might be. It looked similar to some kind of spiky amoeba, but the “vision” her Awareness skill gave her was poor enough right now that she couldn’t say for sure. And in any case, there were a lot of different kinds of microorganisms that might fit the description. She decided as she fled that it was probably some form of heliozoa.

Great, she thought, as she fled. Now I'll know what killed me. How useful. If she were in her lab, Lucy would have been able to pour a single drop from any of a dozen vials to completely destroy the creature, but here...

A surge of water pressed into her from behind, and Lucy knew she wouldn’t be able to outrun the organism chasing her. As bulky and slow as it seemed, she was slower, with no method for propulsion other than wriggling her body. She started looking for an escape route out of the wide corridor she was in.

Mentally willing it, she pulled up her health bar.

Okay, no problem, she told herself as it materialized. I’ve been hit three times and each attack seems to do 2 damage, so I can still take two more—

[HP: 2/10]