The harbor was gone.
What remained was a massive scar carved into the earth — an empty basin where ships once floated, where seagulls once screamed. Now, the air smelled like rust and lightning, and the walls of the basin pulsed with faint red veins, glowing through the mist like embers under skin.
Daltonecleus arrived first with Bianca and Lowkey. The Foxes trudged through the muck in silence, their boots crunching against wet glass. The Shark banners lay torn and waterlogged along the dock rails.
“Gods…” Bianca whispered. “It’s empty.”
“No,” Daltonecleus said. “It’s waiting.”
At the far end of the drained harbor, they saw them — Spence and Onyx, covered in salt and blood, dragging themselves out of the sediment. They looked like survivors of a different world.
Spence lifted his head. “She’s gone.”
Daltonecleus frowned. “Who?”
“Asherbaby,” Spence said hoarsely. “Or what’s left of her.”
Bianca froze, eyes wide. “You saw her?”
Onyx’s gaze darted to the ground. “She was in the water. Sleeping. Breathing. And when we touched her, the ocean died.”
By noon, the other tribes had arrived. The Elephants stood like sentinels along the rim, rifles ready. The Falcons hovered on the broken cranes, Nakamaru’s visor reflecting the red light that crawled across the basin floor. The Snakes slithered in last — Afodave, 3kidsandkitty, Mindblaster, and Guccimane, their eyes scanning every pulse of energy.
Afodave was the first to speak. “It’s evolving. Whatever she was connected to down there… it’s rewriting itself.”
Mahershalalhashbaz leaned on his cane, murmuring, “The flood withdraws only to return greater.”
Bianca looked at him sharply. “You think it’s coming back?”
“It always comes back,” he said softly. “Faith, death, the sea — none stay gone for long.”
They set up camp at the basin’s edge as night fell. The air shimmered with residual heat, and static electricity danced across the mud. Spence sat alone near the edge, staring into the hollow where the capsule had been.
Daltonecleus approached him, careful. “You should rest.”
Spence didn’t answer. He pointed toward the basin. “The water’s breathing again.”
Daltonecleus followed his gaze — and saw it. The mud was shifting, contracting rhythmically like a lung. Ripples formed where no water remained.
“What the hell is this?” Daltonecleus muttered.
Afodave ran over, eyes on his scanner. “Signal spike. It’s coming from below the basin.”
“Alive?” Bianca asked.
“Worse,” he said. “It’s calling something.”
The ground split open.
A roar — wet, guttural, seismic — erupted from the depths as red light spewed upward. The tribes scrambled for footing as the basin floor cracked apart, revealing a massive cavity beneath, filled with roiling liquid light. From its center rose a creature of impossible scale — part machine, part flesh, part city.
Its body was formed from the wreckage of ships and buildings, fused with alien coral. Faces flickered along its metallic skin — distorted, human, screaming. The “water” that poured out wasn’t water at all. It was alive.
Spence gripped his rifle. “The ocean learned how to walk.”
The battle began without warning.
Falcons opened fire from the cranes, their bullets sparking harmlessly against the creature’s armor. The Elephants unleashed heavy ordinance — plasma mortars that ripped chunks of molten flesh from its shoulders. But the pieces didn’t fall; they crawled back, rejoining the mass like worms seeking their body.
The creature bellowed, sending out waves of red fluid that crawled up the harbor walls like tendrils. Every drop it touched began to move — slithering, forming smaller creatures, twisted parodies of humans.
“Shoot the red!” Subzero roared. “Keep it from reaching the streets!”
3kidsandkitty moved like lightning, slicing through the smaller spawn with her twin blades, each strike leaving green trails in the air. Guccimane covered her with plasma bursts, muttering, “This place keeps getting worse, man.”
Mindblaster screamed suddenly, clutching his head. “It’s in me! It’s in the network!”
Afodave pulled him back. “Disconnect, now!”
“I can’t—she’s talking to me!”
Bianca heard it too — a whisper threading through the chaos, cutting straight through her mind.
“Don’t let them drown me again.”
“Asherbaby…” she breathed.
The main creature lifted one colossal limb — a ship’s hull fused with alien bone — and slammed it into the basin wall. The shockwave hurled soldiers into the air. Onyx disappeared beneath the red flood; Spence dove after her without hesitation.
Daltonecleus tried to rally the others, but his words were lost in the roar. Bianca moved forward instead, walking straight toward the edge of the basin, the red tide rising around her boots.
“Bianca!” he shouted. “Get back!”
She turned, eyes glowing faint green. “She’s not our enemy. She’s trapped!”
“Bianca, no—”
Before he could reach her, the ground gave way, and she fell into the flood.
Underwater, the world glowed. Bianca’s body twisted in the current as the red liquid swirled around her, luminous and sentient. Then the light changed — red to green, then white — as a figure emerged from the glow.
Asherbaby.
Not the corpse from the capsule, not the ghost from the crystal. This one was real — breathing, terrified, reaching out.
Bianca reached back, their fingers brushing — and then everything exploded with light.
When the storm cleared, the harbor was full again. The water shimmered faintly green, calm, still. The creature was gone.
The survivors pulled themselves from the mud in silence, coughing and bleeding, their armor corroded from the contact. Spence lay beside Onyx, unconscious but alive. Afodave sat cross-legged, staring into the glowing water.
“It absorbed her,” he said. “It absorbed them both.”
Daltonecleus didn’t speak. He just stared at the ripples — and saw her.
A faint silhouette under the surface. Two, actually. Moving together.
Bianca and Asherbaby — one light, one shadow — drifting side by side beneath the waves.
Night fell again. Dominion’s skyline pulsed with faint green light once more — steadier, slower, gentler. For the first time in months, the hum of the city felt almost peaceful.
Mahershalalhashbaz stood at the edge of the pier, staff glowing softly. “The city remembers mercy.”
Subzero looked at the water. “And vengeance?”
The elder smiled faintly. “Mercy is vengeance that learned patience.”
Daltonecleus turned from the shore, his face set. “We need to move inland. Whatever that thing was, it came from deeper than this harbor.”
Spence looked back once, eyes reflecting the water. “She saved us.”
“For now,” Daltonecleus said. “But the tide always returns.”
