"KETLEN?!" Nunes's voice sounded alarmed over the radio, despair now evident, cutting through the painful revelation.
Nunes's mind went from zero to a hundred in less than a second. Seeing that insurgent who tortured him for days fall into that water, in a way... was pleasurable.
But the pleasure was ephemeral, replaced by a sudden, viscous terror, like something crawling inside his stomach.
Ketlen thrashed in the water, her screams and deep breaths perfectly resounding through the microphone in her helmet, linked to his. She sobbed between desperate cries.
"AAAHHH!!! HELP MEEEEE!!" Her scream was pure agony, cutting like thin glass blades in his ears.
He looked at her, watching her sink deeper and deeper. Nunes had a phobia of water, especially deep water.
And this wasn't just deep—it was alive, as if sucking the body through every pore.
She was already submerged, but her voice still came, guttural, through the microphone in her helmet.
"NUNES, for God's sake, I d-don't know how to swim, please...!!!" She tried to look through her helmet's visor, but only saw a murky, anthracite blue, thick as wet smoke. An opaque, gelatinous wall blocked her view.
The sea's surface was an opaque blue, almost iridescent, like expired milk mixed with burst pen ink, and foamed in a microbial blue hue, too strange to exist naturally. The water itself... corpse-green, dense, greasy, impossible to see beyond an arm's length.
"I'M SORRY NUNES, I'M SO SORRYYYY!" She squeezed her eyes shut in despair, her last words echoing in his helmet. The sound seemed to come from inside his own skull, muffled and desperate.
He looked at the water. The water looked back.
A thick, slime-blue abyss, with no defined surface, where the horizon dissolved into dark tentacles.
In the distance, a massive animal, similar to a dolphin but five times larger, leaped in an elegant pirouette and returned to the water with a colossal splash. The creature's skin was a wet phosphor-gray, and its eyes... devoid of any emotion.
"Ah..." Nunes's hands trembled. The terror of deep water paralyzed him. Gravity seemed to increase just by him looking.
"Don't go..." The voice in his mind, an echo of his own fear, tried to stop him.
Ketlen screamed so loud in despair that it hurt Nunes's ears, making him close his eyes in discomfort. The sound ricocheted through his helmet like a death alarm.
"PLEEEEASEEEE!!!"
His heart beat even faster, a drum in his chest. He had only trained and swam in small, shallow, crystal-clear pools. Nothing compared to that sea.
It wasn't a sea—it was a suffocating cosmic placenta.
"She's the last woman on Earth." The thought shot through his mind, forcing a decision.
...
He let out a small, quiet laugh, almost a muffled lament, trying to break the fear he felt, a desperate attempt to anchor himself. The sound of the laugh seemed to be swallowed by the atmosphere.
Another scream from her echoed in his helmet, even more desperate than the last.
His body didn't want to, but his mind did.
Nunes plunged into the water headfirst, the absolute cold hitting him like liquid knives.
Darkness swallowed him.
The sight was disturbing, an endless night, with a faint glaucous light—that dead chlorophyll-green—filtering from above. It was impossible to see anything except for bubbles coming from below him, rising in a ghostly trail.
"Where are you? I'm here!" he shouted, his voice distorted by the water.
"NUNES, GET ME, PLEASE, HOLD ME, GET ME OUT OF HERE!" Her voice was a continuous wail, her breathing ragged. It was like listening to someone crying inside a switched-off washing machine.
"Calm down, stop thrashing, stretch out your hand, woman, give it to me!" He tried to calm her, swimming blindly.
"BUT... I CAN'T SEE YOU!!! I CAN'T SEE YOU!!!" She flailed her hands everywhere, desperate, terrified by the darkness and her own helplessness.
"Ketlen! STOP SCREAMING! Damn it! My ears are hurting. I'M HERE, YOU IDIOT!" Nunes's voice exploded with frustration and urgency.
"Then get me out! Pull me, pleaaaaaseee!!!" she cried, unwilling to argue, just begging for salvation.
"Here! I'm here! Look!" He tried to guide her.
She looked around without seeing him, her wide eyes trying to pierce through a curtain of squid ink.
"Calm down... I'm to your right..." he insisted, swimming towards the sound of her.
A fish appeared in the murky water. It was small, almost identical to the deep-sea barreleye fish, its exposed head glowing with enchanting bioluminescence. The light was a pale acetylene-blue, pulsing like a sad lighthouse. It stayed there, merely observing Ketlen with curiosity, motionless, haunting as a deformed angel.
Until...
POOF!—Ketlen's hand, flailing in despair, accidentally crushed the fish's head, dissolving it into a cloud of luminous spores. The blue particles scattered like stardust.
Nunes laughed loudly over the radio, a sound of relief and surprise amidst the chaos:
"HOLY CRAP, YOU SQUASHED THE THING, MAN!"
"HOW GROSS!!! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Ketlen's scream was of repulsion, her terror growing.
"Keeeetlen! I'm here now, look!" He stretched out his hand, touching her shoulder, the contact electric in the water. "Give me your hand, quick!"