Project Aquarius - Log 03

"Sorry to wake you, sir, but you're going to want to see this."

According to the time on Rylan's tablet, it was 2:52 AM. It had been roughly a week since his closure with Mei, of whom he hadn't seen or heard from since, not that he would've wanted to. His eyes turned up toward the window leading into Nixie's tank, only to find that not only were the lights on, but the specimen was nowhere to be found. An oddity to be sure, as she would spend the entire night, with some rare exceptions, at the little platform installed in the bottom of his window, tank-side of course, to allow her to effortlessly see inside.

Unfortunately, as he climbed out of bed, he made his way to the window to look for her. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary at first, other than Nixie being gone, and he looked back at the video call on his tablet. It was the night watchman that they had come by to check on Nixie hourly overnight, to ensure nothing strange had happened. For several months, it was no doubt a boring job, but today, clearly, something had changed enough for him to alert whoever needed to be alerted. That included Rylan, and no doubt, Evelyn as well.

He quickly got into his uniform and sealed it up, already anticipating having to do a dive, and he quickly jogged the short way down the hall to the entrance to the research area. He didn't see anyone there upon entry, and so he quickly climbed the stairs to find the night watchman. He was an older gentleman, probably in his 50's, with graying hair and a mustache, wearing the same exact uniform as he was. Individuality, except for rare circumstances, weren't exactly encouraged at CMI. The man's uniform had a name tag that read C. Maurice.

"Okay, can you tell me what you saw?" Rylan asked as he picked up his rebreather from a small vault of personal items set aside for diving. It was something that he'd used on multiple occasions while running experiments with Nixie that required them to both be underwater for long periods of time. He also grabbed a flashlight, and a knife, just in case. He left it in its sheath for now, but strapped it to his right leg. It was mostly used to trim the seaweed in Nixie's tank, but was certainly sharp enough for other tasks.

"Well, I thought it was a little strange that when I arrived, she wasn't at your window like always. Not the first time, but usually as soon as I arrived, she'd go back. I noticed that she didn't do it this time. I waited and waited, about five or ten minutes? But then I checked the monitors. I didn't notice her on any of them, but there was somethin' strange on the edge of monitor 5. It's about the only place that the cameras don't completely reach, like she knew there was a blindspot there," the man explained, wringing his hands nervously. "I'm not in trouble, am I?"

Rylan gave the night watchman an odd look, but then shook his head. "What? No. You're fine. You did your job. Head downstairs and stand watch for anyone else coming in. The rest of the team will probably be here in a minute or two, I want you to tell them what you told me."

"Y-yes, sir," the night watchman nodded, jogging past him to head downstairs.

For a moment, Rylan glanced back to watch him disappear, then looked back to the water. He finished his ensemble with some goggles, since the salt water of the tank had a tendency to irritate his eyes and make it difficult to see, and then dove in. Normally, the moment he hit the water, Nixie was already at his side, or playfully headbutting him. When this didn't happen, he looked for any sign of her bioluminescence, and found none. He refreshed himself on where the cameras were and what monitors they corresponded with as he swam downward.

He hadn't noticed it until now, but many of the seaweed-like flora had been replanted to the area about around where the blind spot was for added coverage. The flora itself, the sort that grew up to about fifteen or twenty feet at full growth, was purposely selected to give Nixie a place to have some privacy if she wanted it. At some point during the nights, while everyone was asleep and without anyone noticing, she'd dug up and replanted them to the new area one by one. There was no movement of the water, so they only lightly swayed in response to any movement, and he spotted the anomaly that was mentioned when he swam closer. He couldn't see it well with all the flora in the way, so he carefully approached it, grabbing the seaweed and pushing it away to get a better look at it.

It seemed like an egg, or a cocoon of some sort, or even some strange mix of both. It was glossy in a biological sort of way, and he just had nothing to really compare it to, except perhaps a pearl. He ran bare hands along it to feel it, and it was perfectly smooth. Any attempt to apply pressure to it, however, caused him to slip off of it as if it were slick. There was no mucus, as far as he could tell, just perfectly smooth in an alien way that he just couldn't put his finger on, literally and figuratively. He looked around the edges of it, noting that wide, thin, fibrous extensions were attached to the metal wall of the tank in several places, no doubt to keep the cocoon firmly in place.

He'd decided to refer to it as a cocoon for now because it was clear that Nixie was inside of it, seeing as there was no sign of her outside of it, and there was nowhere else for her to go. For the sake of experiment, he shone the flashlight he had on it, but wasn't able to see anything inside of it, no silhouette or anything. Just a pure white cocoon with biological anchors. As a final attempt, he dared using the knife on the anchors, but no matter how he attempted to cut them - stabbing, slashing, cutting - nothing would last for long. If not for the fact that this could mean bad news, he'd have been fascinated at the fact that it healed up quicker than he could do any meaningful damage to it.

Not wanting to exhaust himself, he placed the knife back into his sheath, took a few pictures with his tablet (mercifully waterproof), and swam all the way back up to the surface of the tank. As he grabbed the ladder leading up, he spotted Evelyn, as well as the usual small army of her HR drones, all looking exhausted and annoyed to be there. His research team was there as well, looking understandably nervous as all hell.

"Welcome back. Can you tell us what's going on?" Evelyn asked with no small amount of impatience in her voice. He couldn't remember hearing that from her before, and to her benefit, he chalked it up to her having been awoken as well for an 'emergency'.

Rylan removed his rebreather and goggles, setting them into his own little personal stash of gear. "Nixie has apparently cocooned herself."

Evelyn stared at him incredulously. "Cocooned?"

"Yes. She's surrounded herself in some sort of slippery, hard biological substance and anchored herself to the wall at the very bottom. I tried cutting into it, but my knife simply wasn't strong enough for it. Oh, and over the past several weeks, she'd managed to move a lot of her seaweed closer to the blind spot from our cameras she'd discovered. I figure she managed to cocoon herself completely in less than the five hours I'd been asleep and the team gone." He reached a hand up to try to force some of the salt water out of his hair.

"I see. Any hypotheses?" She asked, lifting her own tablet to tap some notes into it, rapid fire.

"She can't evolve under constant supervision," Rylan replied after a moment's hesitation. "She hasn't made many changes while she's been here. I take a picture of her from all sides, every day, and I haven't seen any notable changes beyond some light, general growth. Nothing crazy like what she was able to accomplish back at the research platform. So I guess the only way she could evolve the way she wanted was to cocoon herself."

She sighed heavily. "All right. Any guesses on what might come out of there?"

"I have a few," he admitted. "But it's probably not a good idea to say them here."

"Fine. It's clear that this has now become a waiting game. I want 24/7 supervision on Nixie's 'cocoon' and I want to be notified the second that thing so much as twitches. I also want a report from someone as to how her moving her tank's seaweed was missed despite cleanings and constant supervision. Understood?" Evelyn spoke directly to Rylan, but he could tell that it also extended to his research team. "Mr. Larsen, I want some written hypotheses on my desk for the CEO within three hours of waking up. Thank you." She wheeled around without so much as a smile or a glance, and she quickly left the room.

Rylan stared quietly after her, then descended to where most of his team was. "Good morning, everyone. If you wanted breakfast, a shower, or both, you're welcome to do so, but I want at least half the team here at all times. Decide amongst yourselves who's going to stay and go, and then switch off. It's going to be a long day." With that, he excused himself back to his room to shower the salt off of himself and get dressed in a fresh uniform. He had time to go back to sleep if he wanted, but he knew that probably wouldn't happen even if he tried.

So instead, he wrote up the hypotheses on what might come out of the cocoon when the time came, how long he predicted it could remain, and even though he didn't need to, the sort of threat level they could expect from Nixie when she did come out of there. Then, he sent it to Evelyn and his team, before getting up to tend to his duties early. Not that there was much to do, when the specimen was predisposed and showing no signs of leaving.

A week went by, and eventually, his team began to relax some. Gone was the anxious anticipation of Nixie leaving her cocoon, replaced instead with some manner of impatience. Understandable, he thought, because there just wasn't much to do. The best they'd come up with was to attach anything they could think of to the cocoon to monitor biosigns. They'd managed to find a way to detect her heartbeat, but not much else bore fruit. Except for a time when they'd made some modifications to an EEG and attached it where they thought Nixie's head might be. It lasted about five minutes before shorting out, and they decided that it wasn't worth the trouble for a potential second attempt.

By the end of the second week, Rylan received a brief message: "Come up to my room." From Evelyn, of course. He'd been up there on two separate occasions, so he was at least somewhat familiar with her living quarters. It was more like an actual apartment than a room, with genuine walls built over the stone and fake windows broadcasting scenes from various cameras attached to floating cities. When Rylan stepped in, he noted the city in question today was Sea Fortress, but situated above the clouds, with an enormous hurricane roaring far beneath it. Probably chosen for the lack of water. It was a nice change of pace.

Situated on the couch in the middle of the room, purposely facing the door, was Evelyn. Rylan stepped inside, and the door shut slowly behind him. "Hey. Everything okay?"

She looked up at him, nodding. "Just stressed. All of this stuff with Nixie has a lot of people on edge, because they just don't know what to expect. We have response teams on call pretty much every hour of every day, and that's not only very expensive, but also not great for morale." She motioned for him to sit in the chair across from her, and he did, relaxing for the first time in a while. At the very least, he felt like he could relax with Evelyn when they were in private. "Do you want anything to drink?"

"You wouldn't happen to have some tea, would you?" He asked, and before she could even respond, a humanoid robot appeared from her bedroom, disappeared into the kitchen, and began to make him tea. He watched the entire time, slightly unnerved. "I'll never get used to that."

"The perks of having a good salary, Mr. Larsen." She began to tap a few things on her tablet, but they clearly weren't meant for him, so he didn't ask.

His attention turned to the streamed footage of Sea Fortress, at least for a few moments, to admire the frequent and violent lightning in the churning eye of the hurricane below. "So, you want to know what we've come up with for Nixie?"

"Yes, please. I figured this way I could get the information they're demanding from me, and you can do it in a stress free environment," she explained, looking up from her tablet, but ready to write notes.

He took a few moments to gather his thoughts, distracted only when the robot returned with a cup of tea, then begrudgingly nodded. "As you saw in my report, I believe that Nixie is evolving into something humanoid. The cocoon has also been slowly growing. Not by a lot, but enough," he explained to her. "I'm sure you've read all the other reports, how she's fascinated by the idea of having me breed her, that she's been changing for the specific purpose of trying to make me attracted to her."

"I see." She tapped a few notes onto her tablet, so good at it that she didn't even have to look down at it to type. "You also mentioned that you thought that her threat level would increase exponentially. Why is that?"

"Well, her brain will have grown with her as well, so there's no telling the extent of her abilities at that point," he explained to her, brows furrowed lightly, as if worried she wasn't taking this seriously. "Before, when we first acquired her, she was just a tiny little fish with a pea-sized brain at best. Over time, she'd grown into something akin to a large dog, brain probably similar in size. Like that, she was able to take over people's minds, as well as read them, INCLUDING some light telekinesis."

"Telekinesis? I don't recall this in your notes anywhere," Evelyn hummed, looking down at her tablet to search through his notes using a variety of keywords.

It occurred to him then that he'd never really mentioned that before, only the telepathy and mind control aspects of Nixie's powerset. "I'd only seen her use it once, when she was manipulating Kim. She was using Kim's hands to keep my own hands pinned, but up until that point, her panties were still covering her crotch and she had no real way to move it out of the way otherwise. I know I'm not crazy, I'm 99.9% certain that was Nixie using telekinesis to move the crotch of Kim's panties aside."

Evelyn stared quietly at him for a moment, then nodded. She seemed a little upset at that, but he wasn't sure what exactly had her upset. Before he could ask, she spoke up once again. "That's information we could've used sooner, but I'm glad we're now on the same page. Anything else?"

Rylan shook his head slowly.

"Good." She waved a hand toward him. "You can go now. I'll maintain the current preparations for Nixie's inevitable return to us for a worst case scenario."

He stared at her quietly for a moment, as if expecting her to laugh and ask him to stay. "That's it?"

She nodded at him. "Yes. That's all." Her gaze turned back to the tablet. Normally, when they were in private, she let her hair down and engaged him normally. This was the first time she'd completely disregarded and dismissed him after conversing with him. He stood up and headed for the door, which slid open as he approached it. Then, he stopped, his brows furrowing. He turned back to Evelyn.

"Hey, real quick," he spoke up, trying to regain her attention.

"Yes, Mr. Larsen?" She asked him, giving him a somewhat apathetic look, right on the edge of annoyance.

"Can you recall what's been happening the past few weeks or so?" He asked her. "Like, vividly? Can you account for everything you've been doing?"

"Of course I can, Mr. Larsen," she smiled at him. "I remember pretty vividly. It's been a very stressful, hectic time. Why?"

"Okay, but like, can you think back any further than that? Say, to that Saturday when you first invited me to your apartment? You invited me in, we made dinner together, we made love most of the night, and I left in the morning just in time for work?"

She stared at him, her brows slowly furrowing. "We made love? I don't recall that, Mr. Larsen. In fact, I rarely invite people up here. You're the first I can plainly recall in a long time." She seemed to grow somewhat more distraught, eyes narrowing at the carpet. "Why are my memories so fuzzy..?" She reached a hand up to one of her temples, rubbing at it lightly. "I can barely remember anything before the past few weeks, after Nixie arrived.."

"Oh, shit." Rylan leaned against the doorway. How hadn't he seen this coming? The sudden shifts in behavior of everyone around him, Evelyn's openness to making love to him, more importantly, the question that she'd insisted that he answer, about what he liked in a woman. Now it all made sense. "Nixie's been controlling people. Probably everyone." He took a moment to think back on the past few months himself, but found that he could remember everything to a satisfying extent that he knew that he was the sole exception.

"Is that why I've been feeling so nauseous in the mornings lately? I thought it was just the stress.." Evelyn asked, sounding almost overwhelmed all of a sudden. "Oh my God, I'm pregnant, aren't I?"

Rylan felt his blood freeze, and he turned his attention away from his own thoughts and back to Evelyn. "Wait a second, I thought that most women on Keanos took that birth control drug to prevent ovulation?"

He watched Evelyn stand and disappear into the bathroom, returning to show him the packet. He'd seen it before on numerous occasions with various partners in the past, including Mei, and knew Kim didn't take it because she didn't believe in it (and was also a lesbian, but that was besides the point), but it was clearly marked for several months prior and she'd stopped taking it about around the time Nixie had arrived, just two weeks before Rylan's own arrival.

"Shit. I got you pregnant.." Rylan began to breathe heavily, not sure what to think. He felt lightheaded. "It's... it's okay, I'll take full responsibility, you don't.."

"Rylan." She spoke to him sternly, surprisingly calm considering the circumstances, reaching out to grab him by his collar. "It's okay." She whispered. "I understand that this all happened against your knowledge. I'll handle this, I need you to handle Nixie for me. Okay?"

He nodded slowly at that, clearing his throat, trying his best to control his breathing. They stared at each other all the while, but she didn't release him until he seemed more in control.

"But just out of curiosity, what would you name our child?" She teased him lightly, a bit of the woman he knew shining through. Maybe she was like this with everyone she was close to, and Nixie simply brought that out of her for Rylan's sake? There was too much to consider, and he didn't want to get light headed again, so he saved that for later. "I'm sorry. That was unprofessional of me." She dusted him off lightly, and then gently pushed him through the door. "We'll talk more about this later, okay?"

"Y-yeah, okay.." And the door shut, separating the two of them. Rylan stared at her door for a moment, then turned to speed walk back toward the elevator platform that brought him up there in the first place. Though, all things considered, it was impressive that Nixie had managed to pull it off, got so good in just two short weeks that she was finally able to get what she wanted, though in a roundabout kind of way. More importantly, she was able to maintain a psychic connection to someone even through meters of thick rock.

A quarter of the way down he felt a rumble, gentle at first, and then gradually intensifying. It got to the point that it made him stumble, and he had to grab onto the railing to avoid falling down. The lights flickered, and the power soon failed. Less than ten seconds later, the emergency lights came on. "What the hell now? An earthquake?" He pulled out his tablet and hailed any of the ones belonging to his team. There was no response. "Their tablets and communications should still work even with the emergency power.."