A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse – CH13

Chapter 13: The Call of His Kind

The two boys rushed to Mo An’s side and gently propped the heavy egg upright.

“Look, he can jump!” Mi Dou shouted as the shell wobbled and bounced twice against the hard floor.

“Don’t be silly. How could he jump? He’s still tiny,” Xia Yu replied, dropping onto his knees to smooth his hands across the cool membrane. “Mo An, did you roll off the cot by accident? Did you hurt yourself?”

Inside the egg, Mo An was having the time of his life. He was gaining better control over his tail every hour, which was a huge step forward. As for the drop from the bed, it hadn’t bothered him in the slightest.

Yet the little jellyfish’s fretful concern was far too sweet to pass up. Mo An immediately pulsed his blue bioluminescence twice, putting on a show of being terribly bruised.

“See? He says it hurt,” Xia Yu said, nodding with deep sympathy. “It’s my fault. I should have tucked him in somewhere safer.”

Mi Dou scratched his head of messy curls, thoroughly confused. The egg had clearly rocked itself right off the mattress. Besides, weren’t aberrant species supposed to be terrifying, apex predators? How could one get bruised just by rolling onto the floor?

“Let’s put him back on the cot first.”

Guilt weighed heavily on Xia Yu. Mo An might be an aberrant creature, but trapped in an egg, he had no way to protect himself.

Mo An, who had used every ounce of his newborn strength to tip himself off the mattress, found himself hoisted right back onto the covers. The little jellyfish seemed to be whispering with Mi Dou near the door, but the words were muffled by the fluid.

“What?!” Mi Dou’s sudden shout pierced straight through the shell. “You’re really going to swim through that? That’s crazy dangerous!”

“I have to try!” Xia Yu insisted softly.

He needed to find them a truly safe haven—somewhere they could hole up undisturbed until Mo An hatched. He paused, torn over whether he should share his secret. In the end, he gritted his teeth and looked Mi Dou in the eyes.

“Listen… it won’t kill me. When I get hurt, my body knits back together really fast.”

“I already know that. But that’s a pool of pure chemical acid!”

Mi Dou had seen Xia Yu’s rapid healing earlier when his split chin vanished in minutes. He simply hadn’t pressed the issue. Mutants usually guarded their abilities fiercely; revealing your biology was like handing someone the key to your life.

“It’s more than just cuts,” Xia Yu explained, tapping his wrist. “My limbs can grow back from nothing. Even if a leg gets severed, it just regrows. And I barely feel pain. Really. It doesn’t hurt.”

“What? Are you serious?” Mi Dou’s jaw dropped.

“I was built differently. Even if the acid burns away my skin, don’t be scared.” Xia Yu found himself comforting the older boy. They were out of options, and taking the plunge was the only way forward.

Mi Dou stood frozen in shock. He had rubbed shoulders with dozens of mutant breeds in the mines, but he had never heard of an ability so bizarre and resilient. Regrowing an entire arm? Was that what jellyfish DNA could do?

Xia Yu was already stripping off his oversized utility clothes and kicking off Mi Dou’s sneakers. He kept only the silver access band clamped tight around his upper arm. The materials from the research facility were heavily reinforced; surely industrial acid couldn’t melt it.

He stepped toward the water’s edge.

Mi Dou was trembling so hard he could barely watch, but his worry for Xia Yu kept his feet glued to the catwalk. “Then… if it gets too bad, scream as loud as you can! I’ll reach down and haul you out!”

“Just watch Mo An. I’ll be right back.”

Xia Yu gave Mi Dou a quick, tight hug. Then, without a breath of hesitation, he plunged into the acid stream.

Within seconds, the pale green liquid bloomed with dark crimson ribbons.

It was Xia Yu’s blood. The caustic chemicals were already eating into his flesh.

Mi Dou dropped to his knees, his eyes fixed on the burning pool. He was so terrified for his friend that he failed to notice the egg on the bed tipping sideways and hitting the floor once more.

What are they doing out there? Mo An wondered, rolling awkwardly across the concrete.

Submerged in the chemical bath, Xia Yu did not dare open his eyes all the way. A direct splash would dissolve his corneas, blinding him permanently. He squinted through tiny slits every few strokes, but even then, his vision blurred into a gray haze.

He could feel the fluid gnawing through his skin, but it registered only as a mild, distant itch.

Still, numbness did not equal safety. He had to keep his mouth clamped shut against the poison while finding the passage to the other side.

Thankfully, the conduit was a straight shot.

Just as he felt the nails on all ten fingers soften and slough away, his raw palms slammed into a cold, vertical grate.

The other side!

He squinted up through the sting, searching for a release switch.

Back on the ledge, Mi Dou’s panic was reaching a breaking point. Behind him, Mo An had rolled within inches of the channel.

Mi Dou had been staring so hard at the churning water that his own skin felt prickly and hot. When he heard a faint scrape behind him, he spun around and caught the egg just before it took the plunge.

“See? I told you that you could jump! Xia Yu didn’t believe me,” Mi Dou huffed.

That wasn’t the little jellyfish’s voice. Mo An wrinkled his brow, his sharp teeth flashing behind his lips in a silent hiss.

Mi Dou didn’t have time to soothe the grumpy egg. He whipped back toward the water. If Xia Yu hit a dead end and tried to kick back to the surface, Mi Dou was ready to grab him, no matter how much the acid burned his own paws.

He waited.

The minutes dragged on.

The ripples smoothed over, and the crimson swirls thinned out until the water ran clear again.

Xia Yu hadn’t surfaced.

“Xia Yu…” Mi Dou called into the silence, his voice cracking.

Mo An could not hear the words, but the mounting panic outside seeped through the shell, setting his own fins on edge.

“Xia Yu!” Mi Dou screamed, tears spilling down his cheeks.

Why was there no splashing? Had his lungs filled with poison? What if he passed out from the fumes? What if the acid had melted his arms and legs away, leaving him trapped beneath the surface, unable to call for help?

Mi Dou bit his lip until it bled.

Groan—

A deafening metal screech tore through the tunnel, making Mi Dou leap back in fright.

He had been staring so intently at the stream that he hadn’t noticed the massive blast gate. The gargantuan barrier was grinding upward, shaking loose thick clouds of dust and rust. The mechanical groan echoed through the sewer like the roar of a waking beast.

As the gate cleared the frame, a small figure appeared in the opening.

The boy was raw, bright pink from head to toe.

And he was grinning, giving them a cheerful wave.

“Xia Yu!”

Mi Dou burst into loud, messy sobs. Hoisting the egg onto his shoulders, he charged across the threshold.

Xia Yu was alive. He had opened the way.

What started as a single tear turned into a torrent of bawling. Mi Dou had never seen a person burned so horribly.

Xia Yu, however, seemed entirely unfazed. His arms and legs were all attached. Only his outer layer of skin had been dissolved, leaving behind glistening, tender pink tissue. His fingernails and toenails were completely gone, leaving tiny, faint bloody smudges with every step he took.

He held up his wristband and rasped hoarsely, “I found the manual override panel inside. The room on this side is huge. We can—”

“Stop talking! Stop it, please…” Mi Dou wailed, wiping his snot on his sleeve.

“Okay, okay. We’ll rest first,” Xia Yu murmured softly.

His body needed a quiet place to regenerate, just like the old days when Nuwa would sing him to sleep inside his pod. There was no pod here, and Nuwa was gone. But at least they had made it past the threshold of Power Plant Number Three.

The inner sector was pitch-black, so they didn’t dare push deep into the complex. Instead, they took a short metal staircase down into a subterranean break room.

It held an iron bunk, fresh woolen blankets, and crates of sealed rations.

Xia Yu collapsed onto the mattress immediately, his body far too drained to tend to Mo An.

Mi Dou went straight to work, hauling their supplies over from the old room one armful at a time. He moved every scrap of canned food and bottled water into their new bunker, leaving behind only the rusted bed frame.

Finally, he placed the egg gently beside the little jellyfish.

Mo An immediately lit up with soft blue light, pulsing eagerly. But Xia Yu didn’t sit up to pet him. He didn’t sing his little song either.

What’s wrong? Mo An bumped restlessly against the inner membrane.

By the time Mi Dou finished stacking the crates, Xia Yu was almost entirely healed. Only his nails were still budding into soft pink crescents. The acid bath had burned away his messy hair, leaving his head covered in a short, spiky fuzz that made him look like a baby sea urchin.

“Woah!” Xia Yu sat up, rubbing his eyes in wonder. “Mi Dou, you moved our whole house!”

“Yeah! The whole home is over here now!”

Mi Dou had been sitting on the floor tinkering with a scrap of electronics. Hearing Xia Yu’s voice, he snapped his head around, his eyes instantly flooding with tears again.

“You… you’re all better!”

Xia Yu swung his bare legs over the edge. “Told you so. I never lie about that stuff.”

“You scared the life out of me!” Mi Dou playfully punched Xia Yu’s knee with a padded paw. “How do your insides feel?”

“Normal. It doesn’t hurt a bit,” Xia Yu said honestly. “Did you feed Mo An his shots yet? He must be starving.”

Mi Dou froze, his mouth falling open. He had completely forgotten.

Using a hand still missing its nails, Xia Yu grabbed a fresh syringe from the floor and tapped the shell. “Mo An? Are you asleep?”

Little jellyfish! Mo An’s eyes snapped open.

“Time for lunch,” Xia Yu whispered, clicking off the needle guard. “Don’t worry, we’re inside the power plant now. We have a real basement bunker to live in. You don’t have to rush to hatch anymore, okay?”

Mo An listened quietly. As the nutrient fluid clouded the water, his scales drank in the energy, glowing faintly.

Yet he could not agree with the boy’s words. He did not have plenty of time.

He could feel it—a cold, prickling sensation deep in his marrow. Merfolk pups possessed an uncanny instinct for danger. Before reaching their adult size, the ocean floor was a minefield of threats. Predators were one thing, but rival pods often butchered juveniles without mercy.

Mo An spent half his time asleep, but he had never known true peace.

“Drink it all up, little fish,” Xia Yu whispered, sliding a second dose through the membrane.

A warm, steady feeling was growing in his chest. It felt as though once Mo An hatched, the creature would be his true family. They would never abandon each other. They would never turn on one another like Nuwa had turned on humanity.

“Aha! I got it working!” Mi Dou yelled from the corner.

He was holding an old, dented plastic box with dials.

“What is that?” Xia Yu tilted his head.

“You’ve never seen a radio?” Mi Dou asked, his round bear ears twitching.

Xia Yu stared blankly at the battered contraption. “No. What does it do?”

The research facility had been packed with state-of-the-art tech; an ancient analog gadget had no place in such a world.

Mi Dou grinned with pride. “It’s a radio! It picks up sound waves from the air and plays news and broadcasts. We had a bunch of them in the mining camps.”

“Why?”

“Haha, because we were dirt poor!” Mi Dou chuckled. Then his smile faded a bit. “You really don’t know anything about the world out there, do you?”

He tapped the plastic casing. “Mom told me the sky-towers in the center have hundreds of floors. But around the edges, there are massive trash levels where mutants live in shelters made of scrap. That’s where I grew up. Radios are just junk the rich folks throw down the chutes.”

Xia Yu listened in quiet wonder.

So that was what the old world had been like. Long before the machines rebelled, society was already broken into two separate realities. Nuwa had overseen that world every single day. Why hadn’t she fixed it? Wasn’t she supposed to be gentle and kind?

“Let’s see what’s on!” Mi Dou fiddled with the tuner, twisting the plastic knob.

A burst of harsh white noise hissed from the speaker.

Then, a rhythmic clicking broke through the static.

Tap-tap-tap.

Tap-tap-tap.

Inside the egg, Mo An pressed his fin-ear against the wall.

Tap-tap.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Tap-tap-tap.

“What’s that?” Mi Dou muttered, his brow furrowing. “Sounds like broken static.”

He reached to twist the dial, but Xia Yu grabbed his wrist.

A shiver traced down Xia Yu’s spine. In a split second, he was back in the white corridor, staring at cold red eyes and watching a screwdriver pierce Professor Wang’s back.

“I know this,” Xia Yu whispered, his voice trembling.

“You know it? What is it saying?”

Xia Yu listened closely, translating the clicks: “It’s the signal the machines use to talk to each other. They used it in the lab.”

He swallowed hard.

“The broadcast says the atmospheric scrubbers are shutting down for ten hours. A heavy acid downpour is coming.”

He paused, his eyes widening.

“And after the rain… the temperature is going to plummet.”

A severe cold snap?

Mi Dou yawned by reflex. “If it gets too cold down here, we’ll freeze to death in our sleep.”

Xia Yu’s eyes darted around the bunker. The two thin blankets they had scavenged wouldn’t protect them against a hard freeze. If he hadn’t understood the machine code, they would have frozen solid without ever knowing what hit them.

“When the acid rain clears, we have to slip outside again,” Xia Yu said firmly. “We need thick coats, real quilts, and warm clothes.”

He slipped his utility jacket off and gently spread it over the egg. He remembered that Mo An’s old laboratory tank had been wired with constant thermal regulators; little merfolk had to be sensitive to the cold too.

Inside the shell, the world went dark. Mo An blinked in confusion. Why did the little jellyfish block the light?

Then, a sudden vibration jolted through Mo An’s chest.

It was faint, rhythmic, and shockingly familiar—like the distant pulse of another aquatic heart.

Somewhere in this ruined city, another mermaid was calling.

A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse