Chapter 56-The worst part

Chapter 56: 56-The worst part

Aymara peeked out from beneath the blanket. The ceiling stared back at her while the storm raged beyond the walls.

She smiled, a warm bright smile that stretched from ear to ear.

The memory returned as fresh as ever. Nathaniel’s arms had been around her, and his heartbeat had been racing beneath her hand. He had asked if she was sure and told her to tell him to stop if she wanted him to and when she had said yes, she anticipated a lip kiss but he surprised her.

Aymara’s heart fluttered so hard that she pressed a hand against her chest. "Stop."

Her heart continued beating very loudly. It refused to hear a word she had to say.

Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

"Seriously." It continued. "You’re embarrassing me."

Aymara rolled onto her side and hugged her pillow. She could still remember the warmth of his cheek against hers, still hear his quiet voice, and still see the redness spreading across his face after he realized what he had done.

That part almost made her laugh again. "He was more embarrassed than me."

She smiled into the pillow. The thought made her chest feel strangely warm, even as another distant crash reminded her that the fortress was surrounded by a deadly ocean.

For six years, she had remembered Nathaniel as the boy she had left behind. But tonight, she had seen something different: the grown man behind those memories.

A man who had been hurt, a man who had learned to protect himself, and a man who still carried the past and yet, somehow, despite everything, there was still a part of him capable of looking at her with warmth.

He had kissed her. The kiss wasn’t enough to erase six years or make everything suddenly perfect. It didn’t absolve her of the betrayal she carried or resurrect the people she had lost. But it was enough to make her believe that perhaps the future didn’t have to be as painful as the past.

It was a beginning. A small, living thread between them and for someone who had watched every precious thing in her first life slip through her fingers, that thread felt stronger than any wall she had built.

Aymara hugged the pillow tighter. Her smile softened. "Maybe I still have a chance," she immediately buried her face again. "No!"

Her feet kicked beneath the blanket. "Why am I saying things like that?"

She rolled onto her back. She was supposed to be thinking about the apocalypse. She should have been checking the ship’s defenses, worrying about the next wave, planning tomorrow’s meals, and making sure Nathaniel took his medication.

Instead, she was lying on her bed thinking about a kiss on her cheek while the storm threatened to drown everything outside.

Aymara sighed dramatically. "The world is ending," she stared at the ceiling as thunder rolled overhead. "And I’m here acting like this... like a child."

A small smile returned. She looked ridiculous no matter how she looked at it.

"But..." She touched her cheek again. "...I’m happy."

She hugged the stuffed animal and rested her head on the pink fluff pillows. The image of Nathaniel continuing to linger in Aymara’s mind.

Just then, the blue screen appeared before her eyes and it glowed red as a warning appeared in the same mechanical voice.

[Warning host!]

[Unknown mutation detacted near the ship]

Aymara’s soft smile drops, the blush on her cheeks vanishes. Whatever embarrassment she had been feeling was swept aside by the warning."So much for a peaceful morning," she groaned.

She quickly gets up, drapes a fur coat over her body and heads out. She informs the system not to alarm Nathaniel. "System, don’t alarm Nathaniel of the danger."

She didn’t want Nathaniel woken up or disturbed by the danger, he had only just gone to sleep.

[Command noted, host]

[Beloved’s sleep will not be disturbed]

"Alright, let’s see what trouble has come knocking on my door step."

She hurried toward the monitor room, her footsteps echoing through the quiet corridor. The moment she entered, dozens of screens flickered to life, and she scanned them rapidly.

The storm was weakening. The endless sheets of rain had thinned to a steady drizzle, and the monstrous waves that had battered the ship throughout the night were finally settling.

Even the ocean currents were slowing, while the wind had lost much of its murderous strength.

For a moment, Aymara’s eyes narrowed. It was almost morning. The first catastrophic storm was passing, but something about the sudden calm made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

The apocalypse wasn’t ending. It was changing into a different disaster.

"Show me the water around the ship," she commanded.

The system obeyed and the situation outside showcased onto the screens.

Aymara’s eyes widened. "What the hell...?"

The underwater cameras revealed movement beneath the surface. It was not one creature but hundreds.

Fish swarmed around the ship, but they were nothing like ordinary fish. Their bodies were swollen into grotesque, waterlogged bulges, their scales hanging in uneven patches like blackened fingernails and glistening with a greasy film.

Their eyes protruded from their skulls on pale, twitching stalks, each one clouded with milky veins. Jagged fins split from their flanks in crooked layers, some bent backward like broken blades, while beneath their bellies, thin, jointed legs unfolded from the flesh in frantic, insectlike spasms.

Their knobby joints bent the wrong way, and hooked claws scraped through the water, dragging them along the hull with a sound that made the cameras shudder.

Their gills yawned open and shut like wet wounds, while their mouths stretched far beyond the limits of their skulls, splitting their faces nearly in half and exposing several overlapping rows of needle teeth. Strings of translucent slime streamed from their jaws as they snapped at the ship.

Some were already biting into the ship’s outer structures, their teeth punching through metal with wet crunches.

Others rammed their bodies against the hull again and again, leaving smears of black mucus and bursts of pale, pulsing flesh across the cameras’ view, as though testing its defenses.

Aymara stared at the screen for several seconds without saying anything. The last traces of her earlier softness had disappeared completely. Then she slowly exhaled.

"The worst part of the apocalypse is starting," she muttered.