***

Netto stood on the top deck of the boat, surveying the scene.

They were heading directly toward the colony but it wasn't buildings or the bustle of commerce that he saw: it was the drones, smoking in the air, that held his attention. When he zoomed in, he could see the sparks of fire and the crumble of infrastructure.

He gritted his teeth, feeling the sharp points of them sink into the outer layers of his gums. The flush of fresh blood in his mouth did little to calm him.

Zeph stood beside him. Netto didn’t need to see his partner’s face to know the hard look in his eyes reflected in his own.

It wasn’t just fog distorting everything before him, but the thick plumes of smoke and dust that breezed through the air.

Several barges on either side had erupted into flames and were broken and strewn about.

It was quiet, ghoulishly silent except for the calming water displaced by the watership. Now and again, a cry for help could be heard. Netto steeled himself. He looked over the edge to see a corpse, face down, floating. Serpents surrounded it, nibbling at its pale skin, and tearing at what remained of the clothes.

“I’m going to look for survivors.”

Netto turned around and faced Rylie. “I don't want you anywhere near this.”

“Netto and I will go in and do what we can. You and your family should stay here. It's not safe, not with drones in the air. They can mistake you for an enemy and fire on you,” Zeph interjected.

“I won't go anywhere near them. The pod is intact. Someone needs to look for survivors amongst this,” she waved her hand at the broken ships in the harbor. “I know there are people out there who are trapped and need our help. There are no other boats still afloat nearby.”

Netto tilted her face up. “I can't help them if I'm worried about you, but I won't stop you from doing what needs to be done. Do you still have the dagger I gave you?”

“Yes, and a couple of guns. I’ll stay in communication with Da. We'll stay close together. I promise.”

Netto placed a soft kiss on her lips. “If something happens to you...”

“Nothing will. I'll take every extra precaution. But you have to promise me that you'll do the same.”

“I promise.” He let her go with one last lingering kiss and helped her down into the pod. When it turned on, he powered through it, checking for damage and was relieved that it remained intact and unharmed. The outer shell was as hard and as strong as the watership, and the glass was reinforced and uncompromised. She would be safe and it, he knew. It helped ease the tightness in his chest. “See anything, move away, don't stay and check it out. Don't be a hero.”

“I won't.”

Netto nodded and hovered at the open hatch, unable to look away. Rylie took his hand and squeezed and he squeezed hers back. He exhaled and closed the pod, listening to the door click and seal in place. It dropped into the ocean and vanished underneath the waves.

He rejoined Zeph at the top deck as the watership moved forward again. Montihan was monitoring the radio waves and Janet was stockpiling their first-aid. He tried not to think of Rylie, but he kept a corner of his tech connected to her vessel.

Netto would remain with her for as long as he was able.

The colony came into view and with it, a creature born of nightmares appeared at the shore and the onslaught of gunfire and explosions appeared with it.

“And I thought the last one was fucked up,” Zeph muttered next to him.

“It was. This one’s smaller.”

“Its skin looks hard, which means it’ll be more difficult to bring down.”

“Yes,” he said.

They made the necessary preparations to join the fray, double-checking their nano suits that shifted with their bodies and what weapons they had left on board.

The crushing of cinderblock could be heard in the distance but it wasn't accompanied by screams. It gave him hope that the people along the beach had fled inland.

“Let's get us another trophy,” Zeph laughed. “Maybe I can sell the heads and offset the cost of this trip. A man can dream.” He shrugged.

Netto shook his head, only half listening to his partner. The creature rose up and the shape of it could be made out amongst the smoke.

It looked like a starfish but with a long serpentine tail where the fifth point would have been. The skin was cracked and worn like rawhide and stone, a deep grey with a sheen of opalescence. There were ridges along its back—at least he thought was its back. On the bottom, it had thousands of fins not unlike an anemone without the tentacles. The water around the creature was brown with a swirl of green and red mixed together. Blood and toxins.

It rounded on itself and reared up to strike like a snake, and its starfish-shaped head clapped down. He couldn't see its face but assumed it was as monstrous and sea-bearing as the rest of it.

The heavy footsteps of their host came up behind them. Netto turned around to see stern determination on Montihan's face, and a roll of bullets that were meant for the turret it atop wrapped around his arm.

“I won't go any closer. If you're going in, you have to leave from here,” Montihan said, his eyes glued to the beast before him.

“Okay.”

“We’ll help any way we can but I can't risk my daughter's...”

“Don't risk them. Keep them safe, stay safe,” Netto urged, a hint of worry in his voice. It sounded strange to him. Any emotion coming from his lips sounded strange.

He put his foot on the railing and prepared his body to shift. Zeph was at his side with the last of their weapons hooked over his shoulder.

They watched the beast slap its head down in quick succession. It crushed the ground with each impact and as Netto surveyed the port around it, he noticed the piers of the marina were nothing more than floating debris in the sea.

He didn’t see any more corpses but amongst the grey water and smoke, the currents threaded and split to reveal a bevy of creatures below the surface.

Netto didn’t know how many could rise up like the elongated starfish; how many were large, dangerous, carnivores. It was easier to assume the worst.

With one last lingering look at the watership, he dove into the ocean and shifted into his shark. Something was immediately off...

The water was different here. He gulped it down as the fin on his back sprung out, powering him through the incoming wake of the monster and the myriad of creatures that swam around him.

Phosphorus. There was an abundance of phosphate. Netto stopped swimming toward the shore, momentarily stunned by the influx of the substance coursing through his systems. It was natural in smaller dosages but what existed around him was anything but small. It was pollution.

He shook it off and continued swimming, finding that the levels of the chemical remained the same closer to shore. Netto dipped down and inspected the ocean floor, finding nothing but petrified wood, an excess of algae, and partially decayed trash. It churned up and muddied the water and was unlike the rest of the beaches he had encountered thus far.

Zeph swam past him, undeterred by the unusual makeup of the shore. Netto expected a moderate difference but not to this degree...

This was on par with some of the tainted Earthian waterways. Unusual and unexpected from an environmentally-forward government and the EPED’s current standards. His fingers sank into the shifting sand. He watched as it flowed over his knuckles. When he brought his hand up to inspect the silt, it was covered in algae scum.

A shadow cast over him and he peered up to see Zeph hovering above, his eyes narrowed and shielded from the frothy water.

‘‘Phosphates, simple inorganic phosphates, but they seem to be complexed to bio-uptake regulators,’ Netto transmitted to him.

‘Man-made or natural?’

‘Hell of a lot of it for it to be natural.’

He released the remaining air in his lungs, loosing bubbles from the corners of his mouth. There were a half-dozen trails of blood Netto could follow but shucked down his need for it. His taste buds were tainted. He joined Zeph at the surface.

‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘Let’s.’

They swam through the waves and dodged the minor beasts. Many went after them, seeing fresh meat, but were dead before they could attack. Netto rammed his blunted head through the worst of them and tore those that swam in his way in two. He left his own thick wake of blood and gore behind him.

His mouth filled with the putrid taste of toxic water and fish. It made his stomach knot around the parts he swallowed. The algae-laced ocean and phosphate were enough to turn his back on feasting on his fresh kills in the future.

Netto clamped his sharp teeth together and glanced at the crocodile.

Zeph appeared to have a similar disposition toward the meat and water.

They were upon the beast before it was aware of them. Surprise! He roared glumly in his head, only half-focused on the eventual kill, his mind warring between Rylie’s safety and the state of the beach.

Netto didn’t stop to think; he split his mouth wide open and attacked the ridged side of the serpentine starfish. Tough sinew and skin caught between his teeth as he muscled his jaw closed to tear it off. His eyes glazed over as he was thrown about, the speed and chaos fueling his need to kill.

To obliterate and riot against the monster. An ear-splitting crackle filled his ears.

He fused his legs together, his nanosuit opening up, and swam in tight circles, rushing, biting, swimming away, dodging its tail, only to bite again.

Red filled his vision. The scent of copper rushed up his snout, and the sides of his thick neck opened up to form gills.

He gave himself over to the shark. He barely registered Zeph yelling at him to attack the creature’s vitals. He didn’t care; he wanted to tear it apart into a million pieces. The control he had so carefully cultivated vanished under the haze.

The stress of holding back from Rylie released with each mouthful of gore. Netto sank his teeth into the monster’s flesh, imagining it was her. The heady taste of it only made him hungry for more.

His control was gone. And he didn’t care.

***

“JANET! TAKE HIM,” RYLIE yelled over the thunder of gunfire and roars of the battle going on at the shore. Drones flew overhead, dousing chemicals over the nearby fires. That cleared up the smoke enough for her to see the pier and all of its destroyed beauty.

“I've got them,” Janet breathed out as she locked her arms under the unconscious man's shoulders. He was the third one she had found amongst the nearby wrecks, and she knew there more people out there, stranded on ships that were on fire and sinking.

For survivors, they could take chances on their boats and pray for rescue, or could jump overboard and pray that they weren’t attacked before they made it to shore. That's if they didn't drown first.

Janet disappeared from view as she hauled the man onto the watership’s floor. She was covering first-aid while Rylie retrieved the survivors from the water. Da drove the boat as close as he could to each wreck, and helped those that were able to get on the ship from the surface.

Rylie pulled herself up, her hands wrapping around the railing, and looked at the survivors they had saved. There was a dozen of them at least and those who weren't hurt helped her family in aiding others. Many had been stranded for half a day or more.

She flinched and jerked, an explosion ringing in her ears, followed by the terrified screams of some of their passengers. The smell of burned chemicals wafted over her, and a heavy wave of heat, before she had the chance to duck down. She peeled her fingers from the railing and looked back toward the pier as a giant wave hit the watership.

Rylie was thrown back into the pod, a gasp escaping her lips. Netto?

The monster attacking the beach had fallen limp. She blinked her eyes and braced as another giant wave hit them. The water sluiced over the glass shield. Her palms were sweaty on the dashboard.

When the waves lessened in strength, she lifted herself back up and peered at the colony. Her throat burned from the smoke.

“It’s down!” a passenger yelled.

Her eyes found Netto’s blue form in the distance. Even from where she hovered, Rylie could make out the blunt, overly large, unusual shape of his head and the pointed tip of a nose; a thick dorsal fin speared out of his back. He looked her way.

He sees me. She shivered with excitement. Rylie didn’t wait despite the drones in the air but closed her pod and dropped back into the ocean with an intense need to be back by Netto’s side. She drove the vehicle straight onto the sandy shore and he was outside her pod by the time she sprung open the hatch.

Her arms flew around his shifted form and she buried her face into his chest, uncaring of the scum that clung to him.

“I was worried.” She pressed her ear against his chest, needing to hear his heart. Her hands slid up his back as his muscles shifted under her fingers. They opened up before closing again into a seamless patch of skin.

“Zeph got himself another head.” The smell of smoke and ash burned her nostrils; it watered her eyes. At least that was what she told herself as tears sprung up.

Rylie laughed, finding one small sliver of humor in this disastrous situation. “Of course he did. For Janet?” she asked. A smile rose on her lips before it vanished.

“Who knows?” He released her and she looked up at him. “There’s something wrong with the water.”

She shivered and looked back out at the ocean and the burning ships in the distance, her watership moving between the debris. The shapes of more serpents threaded through the waves and she bit back a shiver. “There's a lot wrong with the water,” she responded, numbly. “We found a lot of survivors. They need medical attention as soon as possible. Real medical attention.”

“We’ll do our best to save more.”

Rylie nodded.

Netto continued, “But that's not what I mean. The water is poisoned with phosphates, it's thick, so thick it makes me ill.”

Her heart sped up. If it could make a Cyborg ill? “What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means we need to find the source and stop it.” He turned from her and called for Zeph. The Cyborgs shared an unreadable look. “We’re going to follow its trail.”

“Okay.” She straightened her back and headed for her pod. Netto placed a hand on the hatch and stopped her from opening the door.

“You’re not coming.”

“Yes, I am.” She pulled at the door again but it didn’t budge. “I promise I’ll follow your orders,” she conceded.

His eyes flared again as he caged her against the hatch. For a moment the world vanished and it was only the two of them. She swallowed and wished it were true. She wished for another time where it could only be the two of them and no one else.

“Every order.”

“Yes,” she breathed, her nose filled with Netto’s mechanical heat and the saltwater that dripped down her pod. Her back was wet as her shirt soaked it up.

“Every. One.”

He leaned over her and pressed down, his lips hovering above hers. “Yes, yes.” It became hard to inhale just as Netto backed up and released her. The hatch slid open. Rylie shook herself and brought her thoughts back to the present and climbed in. Her heart and mind were in turmoil.

“Follow us and stay close,” Netto ordered. The door closed and he pushed her vessel back into the water. Rylie took over as she submerged and he shifted outside her enclosure, his gaze remained on her.

“I promise,” she voiced through the barrier, hoping he could read her lips.