The blue crystals sang in Elaine's veins.
She lay in the base's medical pod, watching luminescent tendrils pulse beneath her translucent skin. The elder—who called himself "Patriarch"—pressed a prism into her palm. As light refracted through it, the wall projected images of Bikini Atoll, 1946: her great-grandfather in naval uniform, standing on a deck where the salvage net held not nuclear debris, but a humanoid figure encased in crystalline.
"You named it 'Coral Key.'" The Patriarch's gills exhaled blue mist. "In truth, it was the genetic cipher to wake the Arks."
The hologram shifted, showing the moving crystal city in the Atlantic emitting subsonic pulses. Elaine's temples throbbed as her retinas automatically decoded the pattern—an exact match for the Harper family crest.
"It recognizes bloodline." The Patriarch pressed the prism to her sternum. Crystals branched outward like dendrites. "But Project Neptune corrupted that link. Turned you into weapons—"
Agony detonated behind Elaine's eyes. Memory fragments erupted: Age five, grandmother guiding her through Florida's dark reefs, coral lighting up with runes at her touch. Age twelve, shadowy figures in hazmat suits taking her bone marrow. And one week before the rains—her own cells under a lab microscope, the "contaminants" now building new organs inside her.
"Qi knew." Elaine struggled upright, realizing the jellyfish sphere had fully fused with her ribcage, its creatures now forming 3D star charts. "He saw the records in Naval Intelligence—"
Sirens shredded the air.
Monitors showed five leviathans converging on continental shelves, their paths spelling Greek letters: "Νέκυια"—a ritual to summon the dead. Worse, the waters around Margaret's New York Ark were boiling, crystalline merfolk emerging like puppets.
The Patriarch's scales darkened. "The Arks are waking the departed."
Elaine's fingertips sprouted crystal shards, stabbing into the console against her will. The system decrypted a file, playing Qi's final recording: "...Neptune's true goal was never salvation. It sought compatible hosts for ancient genes. Elaine, what they implanted in your grandmother was—"
Static erased his voice. The feed cut to live footage: Deep Hunter submarines encircling the base. And standing atop the lead vessel—Qi, his mechanical prosthetics now fused with crystals, eyes replaced by swirling galactic vortices.
"He's become a Symbiot." The Patriarch trembled. "The hive has his nervous system."
Elaine's bones crackled as another transformation began. Coral-like spines erupted from her vertebrae, each etched with Margaret's runes. In the pain, she understood at last—what Harper women carried through generations wasn't DNA.
It was a living key.
When the first torpedo hit, Elaine's throat produced sounds no human could make—a war cry in a language older than Babylon.
Every jellyfish in the base flashed crimson.
The seabed began to quake.
The settlement's training chamber had been converted into a pressure tank, where twelve Type-Beta merfolk floated in oxygen-depleted simulation waters. Elaine's gills burned as if inhaling shards of glass with every breath. Her wrist monitor flashed—19% contamination; five more points would trigger quarantine.
"Final test." Commander Zhao's voice crackled through hydrophones. "Endure 300-meter equivalent for ten minutes, or forfeit."
Pressure spiked. Elaine's eardrums ruptured instantly, blood swirling like crimson coral around her head. Competitors hit emergency buttons one by one, dragged out by robotic arms. At 280 meters, the tank tilted violently, slamming her against the observation window.
Outside stood Qi Ye.
The marine biologist's lab coat couldn't conceal his faintly glowing scales. He was recording data with a silver device, but what stunned Elaine was his gill patterns—unlike military personnel's, they resembled the abyssal creatures from her shelter nightmares.
Agony brought blue flashes across her vision. The monitor screamed:
CONTAMINATION SPIKE: 27%...34%...41%
Bones creaked. Just before blackout, she suddenly sensed subtle vibrations—a female octopus's heartbeat in the breeding zone, soundwaves of microbes decomposing corpses on the seabed, even the hydraulic system's wear frequencies.
"Pressure adaptation activated." Qi's device blared red as he scrawled notes. "Phase one genetic unlock!"
Elaine's tail flared into a fan-shape, new translucent membranes etched with fractal patterns. More astonishingly, rotting scales sloughed off, revealing pearlescent replacements—mineral structures matching Engineer DNA.
The test terminated abruptly. As Elaine was hauled out, Xu Miao and five Deep Hunters blocked the exit. The woman who once robbed her now wore military insignia, her cybernetic arm gleaming.
"Type-Betas don't mutate like this," Xu's bionic eye scanned Elaine's new scales. "Unless they're Project Neptune strays."
Qi stepped between them, a Naval Intelligence badge peeking from his pocket. "Under Deep Sea Biological Protection Act, Article 17," his voice surgical-steel cold, "this woman is now my research subject."
Behind observation room's blastproof glass, General Mo lowered his binoculars. The elder's scaled face showed no emotion, but his adjutant noticed him thumbing an old pocket watch engraved with Ω—identical to the radiation detector serial from Elaine's great-grandfather's Bikini Atoll logs.