A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse – CH8

Chapter 8: Parasite Crisis

Once merfolk reached adulthood and formed a pod, they had no natural predators in the ocean.

That was a truth Mo An had known from the very moment consciousness first stirred inside him.

When a juvenile matured into its adult form, virtually nothing in the deep sea could pose a threat to it. But while merfolk were still young, several deep-sea species actively hunted them for food—or sometimes simply for sport.

They would tear developing young straight from their egg membranes. At that fragile stage, the little merfolk had no means of defending themselves. The only possible outcome was being ripped apart and scattered across the dark seafloor.

That was why adult merfolk gathered in massive numbers around their nursery grounds, guarding their offspring with fierce devotion.

A mermaid pup typically required nearly a decade before it was ready to break through its shell. Long before then, however, it was already a distinct individual with its own emotions, fully capable of communicating with its pod through the soft membrane.

Mo An did not yet know what his species’ natural predators looked like.

Even so, the survival instincts carved into his DNA made his scales flare before his mind could even register the threat.

Whatever was chasing them down here might not be one of those ancient sea monsters.

Yet Mo An already understood one fundamental thing: survive.

He was not the only one fighting for life.

Xia Yu and Mi Dou were running with everything they had.

Xia Yu could not tell exactly how old Mi Dou was—maybe six, maybe seven. They stood at roughly the same height, but Mi Dou’s physical stamina was clearly far superior. Even with the heavy mermaid egg strapped securely to his back, Mi Dou barely panted at all. His bare feet struck the wet ground in rapid, rhythmic strides.

His sneakers were still on Xia Yu’s feet.

The unsettling noise behind them kept drawing closer.

Then, because Xia Yu’s coordination had always been clumsy, his foot caught, and he pitched forward onto the stone floor.

His chin struck the hard ground with a sickening crack, splitting the skin wide open. Blood began to pour down his neck almost immediately.

Xia Yu could not afford to stop.

Throwing a terrified glance over his shoulder, he scrambled back onto his feet and forced himself forward, warm red dripping down his throat.

There was nothing behind them.

The hallway was entirely empty.

So why was that wet, dragging noise getting closer by the second?

“What is it? What’s back there?” Mi Dou cried out, not daring to look back in case the sight scared him to death.

“N-Nothing! There’s nothing back there at all!” Xia Yu stammered.

Mi Dou did not ask again. He could not tell whether Xia Yu was telling the truth or simply trying to comfort him. Either way, only one thing truly mattered: they could not stop.

So they ran.

And ran.

When their legs turned to lead, they slowed to a hurried walk. As soon as a scrap of breath returned to their lungs, they broke into a sprint again.

At long last, both boys spotted the silhouette of a doorway ahead.

“Over there! I see it!” Mi Dou yelled.

Their exit.

“Ah!” Xia Yu gasped, completely out of breath.

Cold sweat soaked through his tattered clothes. He had never sweated so much in his life; it felt as though every ounce of moisture in his body was being wrung out like a sponge.

He threw another glance behind them.

The long, straight corridor remained dead empty. The flickering emergency strips washed the walls in a pale, corpse-like glow.

Squelch.

Squelch.

The sound was right on their heels.

Jingwei’s voice broke through the band: [Open the barrier. The Parasite Host is within your immediate perimeter.]

“Open it? How?” Xia Yu slammed his palms against the door.

He had assumed it would have another electronic keypad, but no matter how frantically his eyes darted across the frame, there was no console to be found.

Squelch. Squelch.

The sloshing noise pressed in from the dark corridor. Both children shuddered violently.

A heavy glob of thick, gelatinous fluid suddenly dripped from the ceiling, landing squarely down the back of their collars. It was not freezing, but the greasy, clinging sensation made every hair on their necks stand on end.

“Let me do it!”

Before Jingwei could give an answer, Mi Dou stepped forward and grabbed the rusted handle.

The door was not reinforced. The drainage network had been abandoned for decades, and continuous water leaks had thoroughly corroded the steel. Large sheets of the silver coating had peeled away like dry bark.

Mi Dou saw the rusted seams immediately.

Gripping the handle with both small, powerful hands, he planted his feet and yanked with all his might.

Clang!

With a deafening metal snap, the door wrenched open. He had torn the rusted lock right out of the frame by raw physical strength.

Beyond lay absolute pitch-blackness. Not a single light glowed inside.

Yet they had no other choice.

Without a second thought, the two children dove into the dark.

A foul, humid stench of rot struck Xia Yu’s nose, making his stomach heave. He whipped around immediately.

Even in his panic, he had not forgotten the most crucial step: close the door.

The lock was ruined, but the heavy panel could still swing shut. Across the middle hung a tarnished manual chain latch. Xia Yu pulled it across and dropped it into the slot, praying that thin strand of iron would be enough to hold off whatever was out there.

[Continue moving forward,] Jingwei instructed.

“Where does this path go?” Xia Yu asked, his feet already moving.

By now, he trusted Jingwei implicitly. The AI came and went without warning, but in a world built on machines, Xia Yu was completely reliant on technology. Without her directions, he would not know which way to take a single step.

At least for now, Jingwei was on his side.

Whether she would stay that way was another question. Xia Yu could hardly grasp what the world was turning into now that computers seemed to have minds of their own. Jingwei could turn against him just as easily as Nuwa had.

[Subsequent terrain is unknown,] Jingwei replied flatly.

“What? You don’t know?” Mi Dou asked from the shadows, steadying the egg on his back. “I thought you knew everything!”

[My system clearance is restricted. Current telemetry can only map this far.] Jingwei continued smoothly, [However, your target coordinate remains unchanged: Power Plant Number Three. You must secure entry.]

“Wait,” Xia Yu said, a sudden realization striking him. “Who planned our escape route?”

It had just occurred to him that someone had been guiding their every move from the very start. Otherwise, a weak, frightened child could never have survived this long.

Someone had clearly fed Jingwei specific orders.

Yet Jingwei herself did not have complete access to the grid. That made no sense. If that person genuinely wanted to save them, why keep the AI blind to the rest of the map?

[Please proceed forward,] Jingwei said, bypassing the question. [Power Plant Number Three provides tactical safety.]

Then the device fell silent.

Xia Yu and Mi Dou waited, desperate for more instructions. Having an all-seeing voice guide them made the darkness feel manageable. But now, they were truly on their own again.

“It’s okay. Let’s keep moving,” Xia Yu said, trying to sound brave. “Here, let me give you back your shoes.”

Mi Dou shook his head in the dark. “Keep them on.”

“But you’re the one carrying Mo An!” Xia Yu glanced at the bundle. He was so grateful Mi Dou had crossed his path.

“It’s fine, he’s really light,” Mi Dou said easily. “When I helped my mom in the yard, I used to carry way heavier crates than this.” His voice dropped to a nervous whisper. “It’s just… really dark in here.”

Xia Yu nodded. His chin was still throbbing. “Yeah. It’s super dark… but at least we got away. Listen—that noise stopped following us!”

They had made it out again. Whatever creature had been stalking them seemed unwilling to cross this threshold.

Even so, Xia Yu could not let down his guard. A cold, heavy realization was taking root in his chest: maybe true safety would never exist again. Would he spend the rest of his life running from one dark hole to another, dragging Mo An behind him?

Tears welled up again. He scrubbed them away on his ragged sleeve and kept moving forward beside Mi Dou.

The tunnel was so black that both boys stumbled every few paces. They held tightly onto each other’s hands to keep their footing, especially since Xia Yu’s balance was so poor compared to Mi Dou’s steady stride.

After feeling their way through the pitch-black passage for several hundred yards, a faint glow appeared in the distance.

“There’s light!” Mi Dou breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve only ever worked on the surface with my mom. I had no idea the sewers down here were so huge. It’s like an entire city underground… Woah! What happened to your face?”

Now that the gloom was thinning, Mi Dou finally noticed the dried smear on Xia Yu’s chin.

Xia Yu touched his jaw lightly. The cut had already stopped bleeding, sealed over with a clean pink scab. “I just tripped earlier. Where do we go now?”

“I don’t know,” Mi Dou said, his bear ears drooping. “I-I’ll just follow you.”

“I don’t know either…” Xia Yu’s pale face crumpled with worry.

Jingwei remained silent.

Just as the two boys stood there stranded, a set of footsteps echoed from the lighted tunnel ahead.

Human footsteps.

“Who is that?” Xia Yu snapped, instantly raising his rusted metal bar.

In less than a day, he had learned not only how to swallow his tears, but how to brace himself against danger.

“Who are you?”

A figure stepped into the light and halted, staring in confusion at the two strange children—and the massive, cloth-wrapped bundle one of them carried.

“You tell us who you are first!” Mi Dou yelled, puffing out his chest and mirroring Xia Yu’s aggressive stance to borrow some courage.

“Me? I’m just a refugee. I stumbled down here trying to get away,” the man said with a weary sigh. “Everything up top has gone completely mad. What about you two?”

He took a few slow steps forward.

In the faint yellow light, Xia Yu could see him clearly now. The man was short, remarkably thin, and had a pale, sallow face.

Xia Yu kept his guard up, though the stranger’s fragile, sickly appearance made him seem far less threatening than the patrol drones.

“What happened up there?” Xia Yu asked.

“Is there a big war going on?” Mi Dou blurted out, his voice cracking with worry for his mother.

“The war is already over. Humanity lost. It’s done,” the man muttered, slumping down against the tunnel wall. “It only took ten hours. Machines all across the globe suddenly went rogue and started butchering everyone in sight. The military tried to fight back, but every defense grid and automated weapon on Earth runs through Nuwa’s network.”

He let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “Nuwa turned on us.”

“Nuwa… betrayed us?” Xia Yu stared at him, stunned.

It was the very truth he had spent all morning trying to push out of his mind.

The man looked drained to the bone, with dark rings under his hollow eyes, as if he had not slept in days.

“There have already been two full purges. Anyone who fought back was wiped out. The ones left alive have completely surrendered to the system, and society has already been rebuilt under machine rule.” He looked at the boys. “You really didn’t know?”

Xia Yu and Mi Dou shook their heads in unison. They had no conception of how thoroughly the world had broken.

The man let out a ragged breath. “Don’t even get me started. Normal people have no standing anymore.”

He raised his hands—they were skeletal and heavily lined, like dry twigs.

“Before this nightmare, natural humans like me sat at the top. Then came cyborgs with augmentations. Below them were service robots and… mutants like you two. Genetically modified labor.”

Xia Yu and Mi Dou glanced at each other. Genetic modification had been part of the city for decades; their unusual eyes and animal ears marked them clearly as products of gene-splicing.

“Now everything’s turned upside down,” the man continued, shaking his head. “Pure humans are the bottom of the heap.”

He pushed himself back onto his feet. “Come on. Since we’re heading the same way, we might as well walk together. Safer in numbers.”

Xia Yu hesitated, and Mi Dou hung back too. But whether they trusted him or not, the narrow catwalk was the only path running through the tunnel.

Beside the concrete walkway, a deep channel of murky, fast-moving water rushed past in the gloom.

They walked in silence for a short distance before Xia Yu’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Excuse me… what did you mean by the new social order?”

The man stopped to catch his breath, wheezing softly. “Pure machines are at the very top now. They take direct orders from Nuwa. Beneath them are cyborgs—anyone with mechanical prosthetics or neural implants, because that means they’ve accepted machine integration.”

He waved a frail hand toward the boys. “Under them are mutants like you.”

Then he patted his own chest. “And right at the bottom, there’s me. Pure flesh and bone. No artificial organs, no metal joints. Natural humans have no place left in this world.”

“What about Parasite Hosts?” Xia Yu asked suddenly.

Jingwei had warned him about them specifically. Why hadn’t this man mentioned them at all? Could he truly know nothing about them?

“Parasite Hosts?” The man paused, his brow furrowing. “What’s that? Never heard of it. Sounds like nonsense.”

He turned back and continued walking along the ledge.

A steady drip of condensation fell from the curved ceiling. One stray droplet splashed directly onto the tip of Xia Yu’s nose.

Xia Yu had never lowered his guard, deliberately keeping several yards of space between them. Now, his feet began to drag, letting the distance stretch even further.

A terrifying suspicion took root in his mind.

This man claimed to have just escaped the surface purges. How could he know all about the new class hierarchy, yet know absolutely nothing about Parasite Hosts?

Unless… he was one himself?

Mi Dou noticed Xia Yu hanging back and slowed his pace too.

At that exact second, the heavy egg on Mi Dou’s back shifted.

It was as if Mo An had just snapped awake from a fitful sleep. His tail lashed once against the inside of the shell with sharp urgency.

The mermaid’s razor-sharp instinct for danger had flared to life.

Mo An whipped his tail fin against the membrane, desperate to warn the little jellyfish outside.

“Mi Dou,” Xia Yu whispered, his voice barely audible above the rushing water. “Can you swim?”

“Huh?” Mi Dou blinked in confusion. “A-A little bit.”

“I’m getting us out of here…” Xia Yu breathed. He was certain Mo An was warning them.

Both boys came to a complete halt. Inch by inch, they slid toward the edge of the catwalk, right above the churning channel.

The moment the thin man stopped and turned around, Xia Yu seized Mi Dou’s hand and leaped.

Splash!

They plunged together into the rushing water.

The second Xia Yu broke the surface, gasping for air, he looked back toward the concrete walkway in pure horror.

The man, who had seemed weak and frail moments before, took two stiff steps toward the edge.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his voice flat.

Another mechanical step.

“Where are you going?”

Then, his knees buckled, and his body collapsed forward.

His legs split wide open, bursting apart into a squirming mass of hundreds of thick, dark red leeches that poured out across the concrete.

Inside the shell, Mo An—already half-fainting from hunger—bared his sharp, predatory teeth into the dark fluid.

He wanted nothing more than to tear every single one of those vile things to shreds.

A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse