Chương 24: Phil

The water surrounding the downed ghost ship was thick like nacho cheese. Without the blissful taste. As much as he enjoyed sushi, Phil smacked his lips at the thought of cheese and bread. Foods from home. He wondered if he'd be able to get ahold of some now that there were a hundred biomes. Surely one of them had nachos. The thought of introducing the delicacy to Meri and Lilly filled him with a joyful excitement. Then a horrible thought struck them.

"What if… mermaids are lactose intolerant?" he asked out loud. The mere notion shook him to his core. Meri had breastfed Lilly, so surely they could drink milk. Surely. But still… some humans were lactose intolerant. Phil remembered one of his classmates back in elementary school had to drink special soy milk. They'd secretly traded cartons one day. It had been foul tasting. And the other boy went to the school nurse after puking up his entire lunch.

What if his wife and child were sentenced to that same horrific fate? After getting through all the ectoplasmic mucky salt water, Phil wandered around the ship, looking for his quest objective. He'd likely wasted too much time chatting with Oliver and Kiki up on the surface, but he'd just been so excited to meet people from home.

"Now, what is this?" He shoved aside some crates full of rotted textiles to reveal a black crate. Using one of his first skills he'd acquired, a soft current pushed him forward and he floated over to the mysteriously colored crate. Someone had helpfully ripped off the top of the black crate for him. A ruby pendant sat at the top of a pile of bones.

"Jack pot!" Phil pumped his fist.

"Easiest quest ever! I should thank Oliver next time I see him." He snatched the ruby pendant. The bones underneath all shuddered. They wiggled like elongated maggots. After a few seconds they went still. Phil hummed to himself as he swam away from the wreck. He descended deeper into the dark abyss of his biome. There was a slightly uncomfortable feeling of pressure as he swam down. A familiar discomfort that he'd long since learned to deal with. Humming helped.

Unconsciously, he found himself humming the tune of a samurai video game he played as a kid. That [Neon Samurai] girl had sparked all sorts of long forgotten memories about it. He wasn't much of a gamer himself, but his bro loved the things. RPGs and MMO's were his favorite and he'd convinced Phil to play the couch co-op samurai game with him. He wondered if his bro was somewhere in this experiment with him.

In the beginning, after waking up on that beach surrounded by ship wreckage and a bleeding head wound, Phil had searched far and wide for his family. Nothing. But now that more people from home were running around, it didn't seem too crazy. It was sad his family hadn't come to his wedding to Meri. That thought was soon replaced as a giddy grin took over his face. They'd be so surprised when he showed up not only with a wife, but a kid too!

As Phil navigated through a chasm, the bright lights of New Atlantis came into view. It was a bubble of breathable water, free of the annoying pressure that pressed down on him. His wetsuit granted him the ability to breathe underwater, so that wasn't an issue. Even if he lost it, at his Resilience, he'd be fine for an hour. Still, as he pierced through the bubble, he let himself take in a deep breath of the magical breathable water. The mermaid at the gate waved hello to him and he happily waved back.

Everyone in New Atlantis was friendly. Far nicer folk then in Old Atlantis. He was happy this was the city that survived the merge and not the other. He flipped onto his back as he rode the currents used for trafficking civilians around the city. Far above, the very slight impression of the sun pierced through the surface. Using his skill, he pushed himself from the main current and drifted up to a sad building covered in black coral.

"Yo! My friend!" Phil called out as he entered the mortuary.

"Got your pendant!" He tossed the ruby jewelry and caught it as gravity dragged it back down.

"Whea?" came the incoherent response. There was scuffling and two beady crab eyes peered at him from around a black front desk.

"What're you doin' here, Phil?"

"You practically begged me for this thing." Phil jangled the jewelry, swinging it back and forth.

"Come on, mate. I got a wife and kid to feed. Pay up." Carlton heaved himself onto the desk. Above him hung a sign that read Cartlon and Carly's Death Disposal. Only, Carly's name was crossed off. Carlton hadn't taken his wife's divorce well last year. To an onlooker, Carlton would simply appear to be a giant crab. Those in the know, however, knew him to actually be… just a giant crab. But with abnormally high intelligence! This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road.

If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Carlton's legs scuttled forward and he snatched the pendant with a claw.

"Good, good. With this, I can defy death once and for all!"

"I thought you'd want it destroyed. Isn't, like, your whole thing about helping dispose of dead bodies? Also, you don't even have a neck, how are you planning to wear a necklace?"

"Comforting the deceased's loved ones also plays a role in my business," Carlton replied, turning the pendant over in his claws. He caressed it, beady eyes aflame with greed.

"Who will be here to take care of my body when I depart? More and more, the mysterious plague is sweeping New Atlantis. I'm needed here. I can't die. I won't die!" Carlton chuckled. Then he chortled. A minute later, he full on guffawed. For just a second, Phil briefly considered that maybe his old friend might be a bit less sane then when they'd last met. He discarded the idea and instead laughed with Carlton. Big, belly-filled laughter.

When Phil wiped a non-existent tear out of his eyes, he found a notification in his vision. His smile never left his face as he accepted the quest completion reward. A ring fitted with a golden tooth formed in his palm. It was supposed to grant the wearer ten points of the elusive luck stat. It required the user to affix it, so Phil pocketed it. He planned for it to go to someone else. As he said his goodbyes to Carlton, a mermaid with braids like eels slipped into the building, her face downcast.

Phil recognized that look as one belonging to someone who'd just experienced loss. He considered trying to get a quest from her, since his third slot had just cleared. Occasionally though, quests were time sensitive and he really wanted to go home and rest. So, he left his third quest slot open as he slipped back into the underwater traffic. The city's vibe went wonky as he approached his home. The merfolk he spotted in his neighborhood were rarer than usual and they didn't smile like they normally did.

Everything was off kilter since the merge the other day. Phil had tried to ask his neighbor about her sister who lived in Old Atlantis and she'd just stared at him for two minutes then tersely responded that she didn't have a sister. The only ones who would even mention the merge were the merchants, who only would say that they have new imported goods and nothing more. Well, there was one person who acknowledged the weirdness of the situation.

"Daddy!" Phil caught his daughter as she burst from their front door. He laughed and swung her around in a circle, using his skill to create a whirlpool around them. Mermaids aged four times faster than humans, which meant his half-mermaid daughter aged twice as quickly as a human girl her same age. If he thought about what that meant, it scared him. So Phil ignored those sorts of thoughts.

"Lilly!" He laughed and tossed her up, the momentum of the whirlpool twisting out of shape to blast her upwards. She flailed around, giggling. Then she drifted back down and into his arms. While his daughter wasn't completely verbal yet, Phil still noticed that she, alone, reacted whenever he mentioned Old Atlantis. They'd visited last month and seen their undersea zoo. An event seemingly wiped from everyone else's mind. Phil wasn't an idiot. He was willfully ignorant. There was a big difference.

Something had happened to the minds of those in the city when his biome merged with the others and only he and his daughter remained unaffected by that change.

"Oh sweet little daughter, where's your ma at? Tell me, and I'll give you a gift!" Lilly hugged his head in response, covering his eyes. He laughed again and floated into their home. It smelled a bit rancid, they were still in the process of potty training Lilly so weird scents weren't too surprising. He'd need to hunt down the smell's culprit in a second. Pulling Lilly off his head and down into his arms, he scanned the house, seeking out both the poo and his wife.

"Meri?" Phil called out.

"I met some more people from back home! Can you believe it! Just like that Terry guy from earlier! Well, actually, they were nothing like Terry at all. One of them looked all dark and brooding with an edgy hat but turned out to be an affable mate! The other was a secretive samurai girl. I never even saw her face. Meri? Where are you at?" Lilly squirmed out of his arms as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, her back flipper swatting him as she slipped away.

Before he could scold her or laugh again, his eyes fell on a prone figure floating in the center of the kitchen. A magical stove had a pan with strips of seaweed. They burned, little more than blackened charcoal. That revealed the source of the strange smell. In all five years of living in this biome, somehow Phil had never once come across the scent of burning seaweed before. His mind was caught on that detail. He was unwilling to let it move past it.

Because that meant he'd have to acknowledge the mermaid, floating in the center of his kitchen. Meri, his wife and mother to his child, was dead. New Quest! The notification broke him from his stupor. He had one quest slot available. He accepted. Then he quickly read the details that appeared in his vision. It was equal parts clear and opaque. However, Phil understood it for what it was. Whoever was running this experiment wanted him to suffer.

They couldn't stand the idea that someone like him, an experimentee, would be capable of finding happiness in this disaster-zone of a hell. An open window allowed a slight current to sweep in, twisted Meri's body, so her lifeless eyes stared up at him. The 'plague' that had taken her did more than simply kill her. Her gorgeous azure eyes were blobs of ooze. Her radiant smile had blackened gums and missing teeth. Phil ran a finger down her cheek. In that moment, he desperately wanted to give up.

He wanted his heart to stop and to join his beautiful wife in the forever sleep. Instead, he hugged her corpse tight and whispered his goodbyes to her. Just as the experimenters doubtlessly knew he would, he turned his back on Meri and retreated to his remaining lifeline.

"Lily," he said quietly.

"Come here and take this ring. We need to leave now."