A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse – CH1

Chapter 1: Nuwa

[Hello. I am Nuwa. It is my pleasure to serve you. Welcome back, Xia Yu.]

A soft female voice slowly coaxed Xia Yu awake. A moment later, a warm amber glow filled the small sleeping pod.

Xia Yu lay on the soft white pillow and yawned, waiting for the hatch to open. Through the curved glass, he could see all kinds of people walking past outside.

Waking up always made him happy. He looked forward to going out and playing, and he was even more eager to watch his missing parts grow back.

As a genetically modified human, Xia Yu had known what he was for as long as he could remember. A strand of jellyfish DNA had been spliced into his own code, giving him abilities that looked neat but were practically useless in everyday life. For instance, he could make parts of his body turn transparent, just like a jellyfish drifting through the water.

And then there was his other quirk.

Xia Yu glanced at his left arm and started humming without even thinking.

“Bloop, bloop, little jellyfish,

Down in the ocean deep I go,

First I sink, and then I float…”

Nuwa’s voice chimed in. [Is that your favorite song? I hear you sing it every day.]

Xia Yu nodded with a grin. “Yep! I made it up myself. It’s called ‘The Little Jellyfish Song’!”

[It is very sweet. I have saved it to my database. From now on, I can sing along with you.]

Before she even finished speaking, the glass hatch slid back with a quiet hiss. That meant Xia Yu’s full-body scan was complete, and every health reading had cleared green.

This was his second ability.

Whenever a piece of him was removed during an experiment, it would slowly regenerate, much like a jellyfish cut in two could grow into two separate creatures. His body had an astonishing capacity to heal.

“Thank you, Nuwa! Bye-bye!”

Xia Yu scrambled out of the pod, his messy hair sticking up in every direction.

Nuwa was the artificial intelligence in charge of the entire facility. In a place like this, she was one of the very few friends he had.

He was still dressed in an oversized, pale blue surgical gown. The loose collar had slipped off one shoulder, showing smooth skin without a single mark or scar. Only a few hours ago, his entire left shoulder and arm had been taken off on an operating table.

His healing speed was only getting faster. In the beginning, it had taken days to grow back a limb. Later, it took only one day. Now, it was done in just a few hours.

Because Xia Yu felt very little physical pain, the researchers were constantly slicing away parts of his body to run their tests. To him, there was nothing unusual about any of it. He had been born here—or more accurately, manufactured here.

He was already ten years old, yet he had never set foot outside these walls. He had no clue what the world beyond looked like. The institute was all he knew.

There were many genetically modified humans like him here, along with ordinary staff members. But there were far more robots than people.

“Maintenance in progress ahead. Please watch your step,” a mechanical voice warned.

“Thank you!” Xia Yu gave a polite bow and hurried off, his bare feet pattering against the cold floor.

The robots easily numbered in the thousands, far outnumbering the humans. They all shared the same look: dark gray, skeleton-like metal frames with oval heads and two glowing blue optical sensors. They took care of everything from repairs to cleaning across the compound. Only when a direct threat arose would their lights shift to red, prompting them to protect the facility at all costs.

Xia Yu often wondered if he counted as human. He really hoped he did.

As far back as he could recall, their lights had only turned red once. That had been four years ago.

The corridor stretched on in a straight line, lined with endless strip lights and security cameras. Every few steps, Xia Yu crossed paths with another machine. He greeted each one with a small bow before moving on. Normally, he would stop to chat with them or ask Nuwa questions through their speakers, but today he had something much more important to do.

He was going to see his best friend.

He crossed an enclosed glass walkway, stepped into the lift, and rode it down to the sector reserved for the [X-Series]. Xia Yu didn’t know if the base sat above ground or deep beneath it, but the X-Series lived down on Basement Level Four.

Xia Yu himself belonged to this classification. In simple terms, it was the category for subjects considered low-value or useless. No one had ever been able to tell him what he was good for, and no one had found a real purpose for his existence.

The silver door slid open with a soft sigh.

Inside the quiet room stood a familiar figure.

“Professor Wang!” Xia Yu called out happily and dashed across the floor.

His balance had never been great, and he stumbled halfway across the room. He scrambled back up onto his feet without missing a beat and threw his arms around Professor Wang Qin’s leg.

She was the person he knew best in the world, the person he loved most—and the one who had raised him.

“Why aren’t you wearing shoes again?” Wang Qin asked.

She wore a tidy white lab coat over her slender frame. Her graying hair was pinned neatly behind her head, and she carried her usual notebook in her hands.

“I just woke up! Besides, I don’t like shoes. My toes are really nimble!”

Only around Professor Wang did Xia Yu act like a normal, carefree kid. He hopped around her in little circles. “Did I get taller? Do you want to hear my new song?”

Wang Qin set her notebook on the desk and crouched down to his height. Though she was only middle-aged, faint lines had already settled deeply around her eyes. She always carried the quiet, clean scent of dried herbs.

To everyone else in the facility, she was cold and distant. But whenever she was with her X-Series subjects, that icy front melted away, revealing genuine warmth.

“You did,” she said gently, indulging him. “You’ve grown quite a bit.”

She was the one who had given him the name Xia Yu.

In truth, his development had always lagged behind. His body struggled to take in nutrients properly, so even at ten years old, he looked no older than seven or eight. Still, his slight build couldn’t hide how lovely his features were. His round face still held a hint of baby fat, and two sweet dimples showed whenever he smiled.

His most striking feature, however, was his eyes. His irises were an unusually pale, milky tone, but when the light hit them, they shimmered like fish scales, flashing a silvery sheen.

Every time Wang Qin met his gaze, she felt as if she were looking into the unfathomable depths of an ocean trench. Humankind had conquered the skies and drilled deep into the crust, yet the dark abyss of the sea remained a frontier they barely understood.

“See? I told you! Everyone says I’m getting bigger!” Xia Yu grinned, taking her word as absolute truth.

Then, remembering something, he tugged his collar to the side to proudly show off his shoulder. “Look, my arm grew back too!”

“They took you to the operating room again?” Wang Qin’s brow furrowed at once. It was clear no one had informed her.

“They told me I’m valuable!” Xia Yu didn’t really understand what that word meant. He only knew that every time they laid him on that table, they gave him a piece of sweet candy. Once he ate that sugary treat, he would fall into a deep sleep, and the next thing he knew, he would wake up cozy inside his pod.

Wang Qin’s expression darkened. She knew all too well what the researchers were doing. She had already urged them to shut down Xia Yu’s project.

He was just a little jellyfish.

Sure, he could heal rapidly. Sure, he could regrow limbs. But the world had changed. Modern medicine was dominated by cybernetics and mechanical prosthetics; when people lost a part of themselves, their first choice was to install durable hardware to make themselves whole.

Flesh was fragile. Machinery offered practical utility. That was the path society had chosen.

And Xia Yu… was only a little jellyfish.

Her heart twisted with sympathy as she lifted him onto the edge of the desk. She knew those scientists too well; a piece of candy was all it took to coax a trusting child.

“If they ever come to take you for another procedure, promise you’ll tell me first, alright?” She held out her pinky finger.

Xia Yu hesitated, looking conflicted. “But if I don’t go, they won’t give me any candy.”

To him, losing a limb didn’t matter—it always grew right back. But missing out on the candy meant it was gone for good. And it tasted so sweet.

“I’ll get you candy from now on,” Wang Qin promised softly. “You don’t have to let them cut pieces off you just for that.” She paused, smoothing his hair down. “Besides, you’re growing up now. It’s time to focus on your studies.”

She picked up a volume from the shelf and set it in his hands. “Have you finished reading this one?”

“I’ve finished all of them here,” Xia Yu said with a nod. He didn’t particularly care for reading, but there wasn’t much else to do for fun around here.

His other pastime was listening to the rhythmic sounds the robots made when they talked to each other.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

It sounded just like a secret code, soft enough that almost nobody ever paid it any mind.

Xia Yu laid the book aside and dug his hand into his pocket. His fingers found a few stray granules of sugar he had carefully saved from earlier. They were tiny, barely larger than specks of sand. He dusted them onto the back of his hand and licked them off with great care.

“Mmm, so good…”

Savoring the sweet taste, he wandered toward the large tank to visit his best friend.

Of course, this friend had never spoken a word to him. They had never even interacted. The friendship existed entirely in Xia Yu’s own head.

“Hi! It’s me, Xia Yu. Remember me?”

The sugar was gone now. He licked his lips with a hint of regret and pressed his palms flat against the thick glass.

Beyond the pane, floating quietly in the blue saltwater, was a massive egg.

It pulsed slowly, expanding and contracting with the rhythm of a beating heart.

Expand.

Contract.

Expand.

Contract.

A dense web of deep blue veins wrapped around the pale membrane, covering nearly the entire surface. Tiny bubbles periodically seeped from the vessel walls, clinging to the outer shell. Through the semi-translucent skin, Xia Yu could see fluid swirling within—and a figure curled tightly inside.

“Mo An is quiet today as well. He never moves,” Wang Qin said, walking over to stand beside him.

Together, they looked at the strange, marvelous egg.

“Mo An… Mo An…” Xia Yu repeated quietly. He knew the name because he had peeked into Professor Wang’s research notes.

According to her logs, this was a mermaid egg, recovered four years ago from a deep-sea trench and brought here for study. No matter what tests or stimuli the researchers applied, the egg had never given the slightest reaction. It seemed almost lifeless, yet all the readings confirmed the embryo inside was healthy and continuing to mature.

Kept in fresh seawater, its outer membrane had gradually grown thinner over time. Light now passed through it, revealing the faint outline of a child’s body curled around a long tail. The egg had grown to nearly a meter in length.

The young creature kept its face buried behind its arms. Aside from faint patches of scales along its elbows, nothing else could be clearly seen. Whether it was male or female, human or beast, or how dangerous it might be—none of their instruments could tell.

“He has been here a long time,” Wang Qin murmured, gently patting Xia Yu’s head. “I suspect he’s around the same age as you.”

Both merfolk and jellyfish were grouped together under the X-Series banner. Xia Yu was there because his traits were deemed commercially useless. Mo An was there because no one had managed to unlock his secrets.

“Merfolk are solitary and formidable predators,” Wang Qin said, looking at the water. “Even now, we know next to nothing about them. We don’t know their numbers, their diet, their life cycle, or why they emerged. We don’t even know how far down their domain reaches.”

She watched the egg bob gently in the tank, staring at it as if facing an unsolved puzzle.

“Do you know how many deep-sea submersibles and drones humanity lost just to bring this single egg to the surface? Retrieving it was the first concrete proof that aberrant species exist.”

Her gaze lingered on the blue water. “There are living beings in this world who are fundamentally different from us. They weren’t built in a lab, and they weren’t upgraded with metal. Just like ordinary humans, they were born into this world naturally. They have every right to exist here.”

“Aberrant species…” Xia Yu repeated, testing the phrase. “Sounds pretty complicated.”

He couldn’t grasp the concept. Almost everything he knew had been taught to him by Nuwa, and she had never explained things like natural birth or what it meant to exist.

“You’ll understand when you get older,” Wang Qin said softly. Then she stopped, a sudden heaviness settling over her heart.

She was terrified the people running this facility would never allow Xia Yu to reach adulthood. If the X-Series was written off as a failed project, he would likely be broken down for spare biological materials and thrown into an incinerator.

“Then I’ll just eat lots of candy so I can grow up fast!” Xia Yu chirped, unaware of what hung over his head.

Knowing nothing of the outside world, he made promises with lighthearted ease. “Once I’m all grown up, I’ll take you out to see the real ocean. We can go together!”

He didn’t really know what the ocean was either. He only knew that he wanted to stay by Professor Wang’s side. When he was with her, the lonely place didn’t feel quite so empty.

“Alright,” she replied, kneeling down to wrap him in a warm hug. “We’ll go together. Who knows? Maybe your own family is out there waiting in the sea.”

As she stood back up, the laboratory’s automated door slid open without a sound.

A maintenance robot stepped inside, holding a long metal screwdriver in its grip.

“Hi there!” Xia Yu smiled brightly. He recognized this unit—it was the same one he had passed in the hall earlier.

Inside the tank, the pulsing egg suddenly twitched.

For the very first time, the figure curled within lifted its head from its arms. Pale cyan fin-ears fluttered along the sides of its head, thin and delicate like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly waiting to dry.

As the robot drew closer to the glass, a flicker of genuine awareness seemed to awaken inside the egg. It drifted forward through the water toward Xia Yu, gliding nearer and nearer until it pressed flat against the glass wall.

Neither of them noticed.

“Why did you come in here? There wasn’t any maintenance scheduled,” Wang Qin said with a frown. She glanced up at the surveillance lens mounted in the corner. “Nuwa, direct this unit back out. Nothing in here needs servicing.”

The lens clicked, tracking over until it locked onto Wang Qin.

Xia Yu was still checking the corners of his pocket, hoping to find one last speck of sugar. When he finally looked up, he saw a sight that would burn itself into his memory for the rest of his life.

The robot’s blue optical sensors abruptly flashed a sharp, piercing red.

Raising the steel screwdriver into the air, the machine drove it straight through Wang Qin’s back, piercing right through her chest.

Harsh red sirens wailed through the room. The overhead lights went dead all at once.

The whole world seemed to disappear in an instant, swallowed by darkness—leaving behind only two burning points of scarlet glowing from the robot’s face.

A Mermaid’s Guide to Survival in the Apocalypse