Water sways..
The room smelled faintly of mint and metal.
Rose sat upright in the reclining dentist chair, legs swinging slightly. A bright overhead light cast a white halo around her snow-pale hair as the Blue dentist leaned in, examining her open mouth with gentle precision.
"Well then," the dentist muttered with mild surprise, retracting the tool. "All her teeth are sharp, aligned, and snow-white. Not even one cavity. You brush well."
Black, leaning casually against the wall with his hands folded, grinned. "We call it 'biting the toothbrush into submission.' Effective, apparently."
The dentist glanced at him with her usual mixture of professional tolerance and quiet disdain. "Okaaay..? However it's done- she's healthy. You're lucky. Or careful."
"Both. Mostly careful," Black replied, lifting one brow. "Luck hates me."
Rose sat up, swinging her legs off the side of the chair. "Can we go now?"
"We're free," Black said with mock ceremony, walking over and gently tapping her on the forehead like a stamp. "Certified tooth monster. Shall we go make fun of their history?"
As they stepped into the bright-blue corridors of the underwater kingdom, Rose clutched his hand. The streets shimmered with diffused light filtered through thick oceanic domes above. Fish drifted overhead like passing clouds. People moved about their day graceful, reserved, and all very Blue. Yet still, many eyes lingered on them, not the child, but him.
He smiled through it.
"Where are we going now?" Rose asked.
"To the their presumed museum," Black answered, spinning lazily on his heel before continuing forward. "To 'appreciate' the fantasy of their past. You know, all the ways colors used to make life weird and meaningless before it went dark and fun."
They passed a tall man hunched on a bench near the court railings. The man coughed violently into his fist, trying to muffle it—but not fast enough. Black didn't slow down, but his eyes caught the faintest smear of black along the man's palm before it was hidden again.
He filed it away.
When they reached the museum, they were greeted by a striking woman standing just beyond the threshold- tall, composed, her gaze like twin icicles. A Blue, clearly. The markings beneath her eyes glistened faintly, like Blue sapphires in shadow.
She crossed her arms the moment she saw them. "What is this?"
Black lifted his hands with faux innocence. "Just a father and daughter looking to enjoy some culture. Very good and totally not made-up culture!"
She didn't smile, showing disgust. "You drag her here barefoot? This isn't the Red markets or some Orange parade. This is Blue. Show some dignity."
"She refuses shoes," he said flatly, still comical. "And I'm not in the business of making children cry over footwear., it's clean enough in here-"
"She's a White, a pure little lady," the woman snapped. "And you, not even a color, walking her through this district like a slaveholder. You don't see the problem?" For Blues, having a man treating a woman with any sign of authority can lead to jail time. Thankfully for them, they aren't from here.
Rose stepped behind his leg, confused by the tone.
Black crouched down to her level, blocking the curator's line of sight. "Don't worry, sparkle. Just another tour guide with a superiority complex and unbearable sexism! What do we do in this scenario? Play in her fantasy!"
He stood again, turning to the curator with a patient smile. "We're not here to 'conquer'. Just to admire a few broken stones and relics and head back home. Ten minutes. You'll hardly know we were here."
The woman said nothing, but slowly stepped aside, her head high, looking him up and down.
"East wing only," she warned. "Touch nothing."
Black gave her a mock salute. "We'll tiptoe like ghosts."
As they entered the long corridors of the museum, Rose stared up at the ancient banners and glass-encased artifacts. Black stayed close, his eyes flicking toward the polished floors, the ceiling glyphs, and every passing visitor who dared linger too long on their presence.
Rose sat perched on a cushioned bench, swinging her legs idly as her bright eyes wandered across the vaulted museum hall. Blue crystals shimmered along the ceiling, casting soft oceanic hues across the displays. Each wall and podium was lined with relics of ancient Chromatina, scrolls, dresses, broken weapons encased in shimmering glass, and even a holographic rendering of a long-lost Blue siren song.
It didn't take long for her attention to be stolen by another artifact, her feet back on the ground.
Black trailed just behind her, moving with the loose-limbed energy of someone who couldn't stay still if you begged him. He moved from painting to painting like a moth in a gallery, occasionally letting out theatrical gasps.
"Oh my Rainbow," He said, mockingly. " Is this a vintage pre-Fracture brushstroke pattern? Rose, shield your eyes! That kind of technique went extinct for a reason."
She giggled softly, tracing her finger across the air, mimicking the brushstrokes.
He chuckled and knelt beside her. "You think they'd have better taste in art after seven color kingdoms and centuries of expression, but nope. Still stuck painting blue waves and sad women."
"It's pretty," she murmured, eyes fixated on a painting of the sea with two figures holding hands near the shore. "This one feels.. quiet."
He tilted his head, studying it for a moment. "That's how they get you. All that melancholy tucked behind the brush- tragedy disguised as elegance." He tapped the placard beneath it. "Bet you five- Three sweets it's about a Blue who fell in love with someone she wasn't supposed to."
Rose looked up at him. "Was that bad?"
"For Blues?" Black puffed out his cheeks. "Oh Rosie, they call smiling a betrayal. So yes."
The pair moved along the next corridor, past a sculpture of the ancient council table. Black gave it an exaggerated bow and whispered, "No offense to the current council, but this old rock had more charisma."
Rose stifled a laugh, then skipped ahead toward a display of ancient story tablets. Her hand hovered in front of one shaped like a spiral, an engraved depiction of the White lineage branching into seven. She traced the seven rays etched outward.
"She's really been born many times?" she asked.
Black slowed beside her, nodding, his smile thinning just slightly. "White? Yes, many... they sprout when the world thinks it can cleanse itself. Always a candle in a storm, always snuffed out before they start a fire. Your kind doesn't know when to quit."
Rose looked up at him. "And you always try to stop her?"
His mouth opened- then closed. A beat. His eyes softened.
"I have to."
She smiled and gave his hand a quick pat, like she'd just solved a very grown-up puzzle.
He returned the grin, then stood upright, stretching with a yawn. "Alright, alright- last hallway and then lunch. I've heard rumors of an underwater food court. Probably overpriced. Probably soggy. Still, the experience, huh?"
He stepped ahead, moonwalk forward while facing the opposite direction.
"You ever try Blue pudding? It's like eating someone's memory. It doesn't taste like anything- just guilt."
She rolled her eyes, following after him, their laughter echoing faintly through the now quieter wing.
Halfway through, they walked.
He was just about to crack a joke about how Blues only smiled during funerals when the lights above flickered once.. then again. A buzz filled the air, low and dissonant, like the rumble of static behind a wall.
Then-
Distant screams.
A crowd came barreling from the west wing. They came like a crashing wave, parents, guards, scholars, tourists- sprinting and shoving. Someone knocked over a display. Alarms began to blare, their high-pitched chime ricocheting across the crystalline hall.
A woman shouted, "It's breached! It's breached the filtration zone!"
Another voice, garbled over the museum's speakers, cut in with shrill urgency.
"LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL. BLUE SECTOR MUSEUM. CONTAINMENT BREACH. BLACK INFECTION DETECTED. NO EXIT. REPEAT. NO EXIT."
People pushed and clawed past, and in the chaos, Rose was tugged away, her small frame nearly swept by the tide of panicked bodies.
But Black moved faster.
His arm stretched like an unraveling shadow, sliding past knees and shoulders before curling tight around her waist. With one snap, it recoiled back like a whip, placing her firmly into his arms. She blinked in shock, then clung to him with both hands.
He didn't smile now.
He turned toward the sound, toward the blocked western corridor, where heavy metal doors had slammed shut. Emergency glyphs glowed along the seams, sealing it tight.
Absolutely. Here's the adjusted version with the infected breaking through the sealed eastern door, rather than emerging from vents:
---
But the eastern wing… was sealed.
The security shutters had slammed shut the moment the breach sirens started. Dozens of people had rushed toward it, thinking it was the exit. Now, they stood huddled near the cold metal gate, trapped. The silence was suffocating, broken only by anxious breaths and hushed questions.
Then-
BANG.
Everyone jumped.
Another slam.
Harder. Louder.
A ripple of terror passed through the crowd as something struck the shutter from the other side. Again. And again.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CRACK.
Black narrowed his eyes. His grip on Rose tightened as he backed up slowly, his other arm coiling ever so slightly in preparation. The shard in his chest burned faintly like it could sense what was coming.
From behind the shutter, a sound echoed sharply. Then, with a final deafening blast, the center of the gate bent inward. One more hit and it caved entirely, twisted metal flying as if peeled open by monstrous hands.
And from the opening they'd made.. they came.
The first stumbled out, a blue woman with half her face melted and stretched like wax, eyes white and leaking ink. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream, skin graying beneath pulsing black veins. Behind her came dozens more, some crawling, some lurching forward with jerky spasms.
Zombified blues.
But these weren't mindless.
They moved with purpose.
The black ooze that coated their arms and poured from their mouths writhed like it was alive, twitching and reaching as if searching for something. Some of them wore museum uniforms. Others were civilians who hadn't made it out in time.
Their footsteps were wet slaps on the marble floor. Their joints popped as they walked. And their mouths clicked- unnaturally fast- like teeth chattering in rhythm with a broken metronome.
A scream broke out from the back of the crowd.
Then all hell broke loose.
They charged, fast now, animalistic, slamming into the sea of trapped visitors, claws outstretched, jaws wide.
Black acted instantly. His arm snapped out, blackening into the same ooze that made them, stretching wide to block the infected from reaching the civilians behind him.
"Get back!" he shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos.
The crowd shoved and stumbled, but there was nowhere to run. Behind them, the walls. In front of them, death.
The shard in Black's chest pulsed harder now, veins flickering beneath his collarbone. His instincts screamed to let the infection in, to join it.. to stop resisting.
But his arms just held Rose tighter, shielding her as he roared back against the tide.
Not today.
Not her.
He felt it.
Teeth.
Dozens of them. Small, jagged, hungry- sinking into his outstretched arm. Black clenched his jaw, hissing through the pain as his skin tore, chunks of his limb being bitten clean off by the infected in their desperation to make an opening through his shield of flesh.
"Owowowowow!!-"
His eye twitched, fangs flashing briefly behind his teeth. Then his forearm bulged unnaturally. A massive fist inflated at the end, veins glowing faintly beneath the skin.
With a roar, he slammed it down onto the mob.
CRASH.
A crater formed on the floor beneath them. Bones cracked. The nearest infected were crushed under the sheer weight of his blow, black ooze splattering across the walls like tar. But it didn't end there. His arm twisted again, stretching wide like a whip as he cleaved the remaining crowd backward, clearing space between the survivors and the shrieking mass.
He retracted what was left of the limb, steam rising as torn flesh knit itself back together, sizzling. His breathing was uneven. The shard in his chest rattled with heat, like a curse trying to shatter its own prison.
Then he turned to the eastern wall.
He remembered the last time he broke through a barrier like this- Back when he still held most of his strength. Back when the Hive pulsed through him like a god. Now?
He felt hollow.
Still- he tried.
He let the child down.
He slammed his shoulder into it. Nothing. Again. Still no give.
"No," he growled under his breath.
With a snarl, he grew a second pair of arms, fingers clawing and digging into the metal seams of the sealed gate. Sinew split and stretched across his shoulders as his body twisted to adapt.
Each grip dug deeper.
Pull.
Muscle strained. Screws groaned.
Pull.
The steel warped. Sparks flew as the hinges bent under pressure.
"OPEN- !"
One final wrench and the doors gave in. A howling gust of stale air burst through as light from the outer corridor flooded the wing.
"Run!" he barked, voice hoarse.
The crowd didn't wait. They surged forward, people stumbling past him, some crying, others dragging loved ones, a few pausing just long enough to throw him a thankful glance before vanishing into the halls beyond.
But as he stepped back to gather Rose, something moved.
The remains of the crushed infected, arms, legs, torsos.. twitched. The broken forms slid toward one another like magnetized sludge, the black goo crawling and coiling until they merged into a new shape. A thick mass of tar-like flesh began to rise, faceless and fluid, the vague outlines of skulls and limbs writhing beneath its surface.
It pulsed, bubbling with low growls.
The virus wasn't done.
And it was coming straight for them.
Black's pupils narrowed as the mass lifted itself on tendril-like limbs, its surface twitching with half-digested faces and twitching jaws, all screaming silently beneath a thick coat of tar.
He stepped in front of Rose without thinking.
"Back, little Rose," he whispered, his voice cold now, all humor drained. "Don't look. Don't breathe too deep."
The mass surged, letting out a shriek that seemed to bend the air. Its voice was a choir of the dead, an echo of every soul it had devoured and fused into one.
Rose clutched the bottom of his sweater. Her small hand trembled.
Black didn't waste a second. He spun and grabbed her tight, cradling her into his chest. His legs twisted, the sinew snapping, reforming. His lower half stretched unnaturally, rubber-like and fast, slingshotting him forward through the broken metal gate.
Behind him, the fused creature lunged, slamming into the threshold of the eastern wing, too large to squeeze through at first, but melting down and oozing across the floor like a tsunami of death.
Alarms screamed overhead.
"VORUS BREACH CONFIRMED IN SECTOR SIX. QUARANTINE ACTIVATED. ALL EXITS ARE SEALED."
"Oh come on!" Black yelled, sliding around a corner just as a wall shutter slammed shut behind him, cutting the beast off for a moment.
He landed roughly, tumbling and shielding Rose in his arms. She coughed, frightened but unhurt.
"It's alright," he said, checking her face quickly, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I'm here. Not even a scratch, see?"
She looked at him, her lip quivering.
"..Y-You're leaking," she whispered.
He looked down. A large gash stretched across his side, his dark ichor soaking into his clothes. He winced, forcing a shaky smile as he slowly healed.
"Well- what's a father without a little drama?"
But the moment didn't last. The shrieking started again.
The virus wasn't stopping.
The shutters behind them began to bend. Not just from force, but corrosion. Whatever that thing was, it could rot solid steel.
He stood quickly, repositioning Rose on his back and reattaching the band that held her like a sling.
"No time. Hold on tight, little starlight."
He darted down the hall, boots slamming against marble and then tile, turning sharply through corridors lined with art and broken glass. Overhead, he could hear the museum staff barking orders, trying to regain control.
From speakers above:
"Security breach confirmed. Evacuation protocols suspended. Doors locked. You are on your own."
Great. They were trapped.
But he wasn't done yet.
He scanned the halls, remembering the layout. The Blue had mentioned something. An old maintenance shaft. Sealed, but possibly still connected to the city's older plumbing.
And he'd been good at slipping through cracks no one wanted to admit were still there.
He turned a corner, found a heavy bronze statue in a corner alcove. Behind it, a metal grate.
"Perfect."
He planted his feet, grew another set of arms, and shoved the statue aside. The metal groaned, toppling with a loud crash. With a grunt, he tore the grate free and peered inside, a narrow tunnel, wet, slick, but unblocked.
He could fit.
Barely.
He looked back once as the sounds of the fused infection drew closer, clicking, slithering, gnashing.
Rose clutched his neck tighter.
He dove inside.
Everything was going well,
Everything going according to plan,
Until..
The shriek came from behind him- Rose's scream, high and raw.
Black snapped around, just in time to see a thick tendril whip out from the monster's gut, yanking her away. One second she was on his back, and the next- gone, swallowed whole by the churning ink.
"ROSE!"
He didn't hesitate.
He launched himself into the mass without thought, slicing through with an elongated spear of his arm. The heat, the rot, the pressure, none of it mattered. He burst through the other side..
She wasn't there.
His limbs retracted and struck again, and again, diving through different angles, ripping in and out of the bloated beast. The black goo reformed each time, thicker, angrier.
He couldn't find her. His mind fractured.
She is six. She couldn't hold her breath this long.
And then-
Light.
A spark, deep within the core of the beast.
Not white.
Not his shard.
But red.
It flared like a tiny sun through the suffocating dark, violent, not gentle, burning like fire.
And then it exploded.
The monster howled, its belly bursting open with a surge of crimson flame, as if something from the inside was lashing out in sheer, primal fury. Its surface blistered, black slime peeling and seething.
Black saw her.
At the epicenter of the fire. Rose.
Her hair floated around her face, her tiny eyes glowing faint with defiance. She was angry.
She was alive.
He shot forward.
"I see you, hold on- hold on!"
His arms locked around her and pulled her into his chest. She was shaking. Breathing ragged. But conscious.
The monster tried to close in again, shrieking in pain, now enraged.
Black turned, ready to get out only to find the eastern hall completely blocked. Goo coated the walls and barred the exit. Behind them, glass cracked like spiderwebs.
The dome.
He didn't have time.
"Rose," he whispered, clutching her tightly, "Hold your breath, darling-"
He extended his limbs around them, wrapping them in a dense cocoon of protective flesh, thick as rubber.
Crack-CRASH!
The dome above them exploded.
Water rushed in with a howling roar, tearing through the museum like a tidal wave. The monster was pulled with it, its form shredding into tendrils and screams as it vanished into the abyss, ripped downward by the weight of the sea.
But they-
Floated.
The cocoon rose through the chaos like a lifeboat.
Inside, Rose clung to him, trembling and wide-eyed. Her red glow slowly faded as her head leaned against his chest.
He whispered something.. just barely audible.
"Fire.. that was you.."
They broke the surface like two seeds from the storm.
The bubble softened and popped.
Now drifting in the cool night water, he floated on his back, arms limp but holding her close. She was sprawled atop him, clinging tight.
Above them, the surface city loomed in the distance.
They were safe.
For now.