The assistant had no idea there would be someone behind him.
His attention had been so entirely focused on the guards ahead that when the person behind him clamped a hand onto his neck, he almost jumped right out of his skin.
Without a second thought, the assistant whipped out his sidearm, intending to shoot his pursuer. He didn't expect the person behind him to react even faster. The moment the gun cleared his holster, a hand casually reached around from the shadows and easily snatched the weapon right out of his grip.
The assistant: "..."
The auditory hallucinations in his ears suddenly froze the moment the weapon was taken, followed by a sharp, piercing shriek that sounded like a ghost.
"Looking at how sneaky you're being, you must be the one who killed the doctor."
The person behind the assistant continued speaking calmly. The hand pressing against the neck slid down to the assistant's shoulder, applying just enough leverage to force him to turn around.
As the auditory hallucinations howled in his mind, a cold sweat broke out across the assistant's forehead. He turned his head, only to be completely stunned to find a standard Reserve soldier standing right in front of him.
The gun resting in the soldier's hand was the very weapon that had just been stolen from him.
"...You are not human," the assistant muttered, staring at the soldier for a long moment while a throbbing pain tore through his brain.
The Reserve soldier standing before him was Lansi.
Lansi hadn't expected the assistant to see through his disguise so easily. He looked back at the man in surprise, hesitating over how to respond.
But when the assistant got a clearer look at Lansi's face, his expression twisted into an even deeper look of dread—
Inside his mind, the auditory hallucinations began to scream frantically.
In the past, the assistant could always make out the words of the voice guiding his actions, but right now, the hallucinations had devolved into a chaotic mess of broken, unrecognizable syllables.
The "entity" in his mind seemed to deeply crave the "Reserve soldier" standing before them. The moment it saw Lansi, its raw emotions burst forth in an absolute frenzy. Because of this reaction, the assistant deduced that the soldier could not possibly be human, and was likely inextricably linked to the voice in his head.
"Are you okay?" Lansi asked.
Watching the assistant's facial features contort as he raised a hand to violently smack his own forehead, looking as though he were losing his mind, Lansi felt a wave of unease. He was genuinely worried the man was having a complete psychotic break.
"Lansi?"
Winsor approached from behind them at that exact moment. Seeing Lansi standing over the assistant, a look of surprise crossed the dark merman's features.
The moment Winsor's voice rang out, the shrieking hallucinations in the assistant's mind stopped abruptly.
The torment had finally ended.
The assistant collapsed directly onto the ground, entirely spent. He stared blankly up at the two individuals standing in front of him, his expression utterly defeated.
What on earth... had he just run into?
"I caught the assistant," Lansi announced, pointing down at the man sitting on the floor. He tucked the stolen handgun into his waistband, looking like a proud pet seeking praise.
Winsor walked over and silently observed the assistant, who was staring mutely at the ground.
Now that the assistant had inadvertently tripped the base-wide alarm, Winsor and Lansi had to make their escape immediately. Fortunately, Lansi possessed an excellent memory. Drawing on his engineering background to map the structural blind spots, he had quietly guided them past the incoming guard squads. They had taken a hidden path descending from the upper levels of the lighthouse, only to collide directly with the fleeing assistant who was hiding in the exact same spot.
"What is your purpose here?" Winsor stepped toward the assistant and demanded.
The assistant didn't answer. He stared unblinkingly at Winsor's face.
In Winsor's presence, the assistant's facial features began to drift uncoordinatedly, his entire face twitching violently. At the same time, the assistant raised his hands, clawing and twisting at his own ears in a bizarre, frantic manner before banging his forehead hard against the ground—as if desperately trying to gouge something out of his own skull.
"...He hasn't completely lost his mind, has he?"
Witnessing this bizarre display, Lansi was at a loss and couldn't help but mutter under his breath. Otherwise, how else could one explain the assistant's unstable behavior?
Winsor didn't reply. His gaze remained fixed on the twisting man. After a tense silence, Winsor suddenly stepped forward, shoving the assistant to the floor and pinning him flat against the ground.
With his face pressed hard against the cold floor, the assistant breathed heavily, the veins on his forehead bulging as his skin flushed. Yet, perhaps because he realized these two were not part of the island's patrol squads, he deliberately held back and didn't utter a single scream that might alert the guards outside.
Lansi blinked in confusion. "Shouldn't we just knock him out? This seems a bit excessive."
Lansi figured that if they wanted to deal with the assistant and make a quick escape, they could just tie him up like a tight bundle and leave him in the corner.
"He carries my aura," Winsor said smoothly, lowering his head. He reached out, pressing his palm firmly against the assistant's skull. Parting the man's short hair, his fingers suddenly pinched a strand of impossibly black hair near the base of the neck.
Sensing something was wrong, Lansi stepped closer and squatted beside Winsor. Looking closely, he realized the strand of hair Winsor was pinching was moving entirely on its own, coiling between Winsor's fingers while emitting a faint, high-pitched scratching sound.
"What... what is that?" Lansi's expression soured at the sight of the phenomenon.
"He is being controlled," Winsor replied, his expression darkening as he watched the black thread twist against the back of the assistant's head.
He immediately recognized that this parasitic thread had been deliberately implanted by Will. Winsor hadn't expected Will to cross this line. Typically, Winsor was accustomed to observing the natural cycle of life and death from a distance; he considered it his absolute baseline never to interfere with a species' internal survival.
However, Will's willingness to use his own biological material to directly manipulate human behavior proved that the entity possessed no boundaries whatsoever.
While Lansi and Winsor were inspecting the parasite, a sudden echo of heavy footsteps rang out from the corridor. Startled, Lansi immediately ripped his military helmet off and tried to push it onto Winsor's head to hide his face.
"What are you doing over there? Hands where I can see them!"
Before Lansi could cover Winsor, a sharp voice cut him off. A patrolling guard stood right at the entrance of the passage, weapon raised.
"We caught a suspect!" Lansi quickly raised his hands to signal his innocence, pointing down at the pinned assistant while adopting the most harmless, honest tone he could muster.
"The research assistant?" The guard froze, his eyes darting back and forth between Winsor and the man on the floor.
Because Winsor's manifested appearance carried an innate aura of authority, the guard was visibly hesitant to treat him as a threat. A brief internal conflict played out on the guard's face as he weighed logic against his instinctual impression of the two "Reserve soldiers."
"The assistant is the one who killed the doctor," Lansi added quickly, offering a rapid explanation. "There's something highly abnormal attached to the back of his head."
To further demonstrate they had no hostile intent, Lansi gestured toward the glass container they had left on the side table. "We were bringing this specimen container up to report to the doctor, but when we arrived, we found him already dead."
The guard frowned, still harboring a sliver of suspicion regarding Lansi's story. His gaze shifted back to Winsor, and his sharp vision immediately caught sight of the writhing black thread. The strange strand was incredibly conspicuous, coiled tightly against Winsor's pale fingers.
The guard drew in a sharp breath. "My God..."
Due to the well-documented threat of parasitic organisms in the ocean, everyone within the Alliance was fully aware that mutated marine creatures were capable of infiltrating and hijacking the human nervous system.
With the physical evidence right in front of his eyes combined with Winsor's natural presence, the guard's doubts vanished. He immediately believed their story.
"Do you have a plastic bag or any kind of airtight container?" Winsor asked, keeping his grip steady on the struggling parasite. "If I release my hold right now, the host will likely not survive."
"Yes—right away!" The guard quickly lowered his weapon, reaching into his tactical vest to pull out a small bottle of liquid nutrients.
Though it was meant for emergency physical rationing, the situation required an immediate pivot. The guard hastily unscrewed the cap, poured out the contents onto the floor, and handed the empty container to Winsor.
The nutrient bottle was only about the thickness of a test tube, but it was enough.
No one quite understood how Winsor managed it, but with a swift, fluid motion, he extracted the parasitic "hair" from the skull and dropped it into the glass tube.
The assistant, who had been trembling violently on the floor, suddenly went rigid. A moment later, the frantic panic drained from his eyes, leaving them clear.
"What... what did I do?"
The back of his neck throbbed with a sharp pain, and he could feel a thin trickle of blood sliding down his skin. Yet, for the first time in months, the chaotic howling in his mind had ceased entirely. His thoughts had never felt so crisp and unburdened.
Sensing that the assistant's muscles had completely relaxed, Winsor released his hold and stood up. He capped the test tube and handed it over to the wide-eyed guard.
"Do not open this under any circumstances," Winsor warned.
The guard accepted the container with absolute trepidation, holding the tiny tube as if it were a primed nuclear warhead.
Regaining his composure, the guard turned back to the man on the floor. "Assistant... what happened between you and the doctor?"
The assistant slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. He looked at the guard, a sudden, overwhelming wave of terror breaking across his pale features.
"Get out of here! Hurry!" he gasped. "I rigged the underground facility below the lighthouse with explosives!"
Before anyone could even react to his words, a low, ominous rumble vibrated through the floor beneath their boots. In the next fraction of a second, a deafening explosion ripped through the subterranean levels, violently violently rocking the entire foundation of the base.
---
By the time the smoke began to billow into the sky, Lansi and Winsor were already seated aboard a small yacht, skimming rapidly away from the island.
Because the underground detonation had occurred so suddenly, and with the lead director dead, the base lacked any chain of command to manage the crisis. The entire facility had instantly descended into absolute, chaotic panic. Taking full advantage of the internal distraction, Lansi and Winsor had quietly slipped down to the restricted pier, commandeered a sleek military yacht, and made a clean break for the open ocean.
Lansi sat near the stern, watching the fortified island gradually shrink into a tiny black speck against the horizon. He turned his gaze toward Winsor, who was expertly handling the boat's navigation console.
"I have to admit, I'm surprised you didn't just dismantle that entire base yourself," Lansi noted.
"That facility is being constructed to contain Will," Winsor replied after a brief silence. He kept his eyes on the open water ahead. "To be completely honest, I do not yet know if allowing them to proceed is the correct choice."
Winsor had already resolved to eliminate Will, but due to the sheer density of Will's corruptive pollution, he was highly reluctant to execute the entity personally and risk contamination. Since the human Alliance shared his ultimate objective of neutralizing the rogue deity, Winsor chose to turn a blind eye to their operations. He was genuinely curious to see how human ingenuity would handle the threat.
Furthermore, he suspected that if he intervened too directly in human affairs, it might inadvertently trigger an even more catastrophic sequence of events. He also harbored enough faith in humanity to believe they wouldn't simply let Will manipulate them without fighting back.
By delivering the parasitic control tissue directly into the hands of the island's security force, he had given them the exact evidence they needed to recognize the infiltration. Now, it was up to them to act.
*Our immediate priority is to return to the Alliance mainland and observe how the situation is unfolding within the upper echelons,* Winsor thought to himself.
"Hey, can we pull over and idle the engine for a moment?" Lansi suddenly interrupted his train of thought.
Winsor looked back over his shoulder. "What is it?"
"Look down there—there's a beautiful reef cluster," Lansi said, cradling the transparent container tightly in his arms. He looked up at Winsor with an earnest expression. "I think this would be the perfect place to release Dory and the clownfish."
Winsor stared at him for a short moment, his cold expression softening into a gentle gaze. "Very well."
Once the yacht slowed to a gentle drift, Lansi unlatched the lid of the container and carefully tipped it over the side, letting the clownfish and Dory slip back into the crystalline waters. Down below, far away from the toxic black runoff and human military interference, a vibrant coral ecosystem stretched across the seabed. It was an ideal sanctuary for them to thrive.
`[Hey! I wanted to go on an epic adventure with you guys!]`
The clownfish broke the surface, swimming in a tight circle just beneath the water's edge. Realizing that Lansi and Winsor were preparing to leave them behind for good, its tiny face twisted in clear disappointment. The drama and chaos it had witnessed on dry land had been thoroughly exhilarating, and it felt that returning to a standard reef would be incredibly mundane by comparison.
Lansi chuckled and shook his head. He reached his fingers into the water, gently patting the tiny scales of both the clownfish and Dory.
`[What is unsuited for you will remain unsuited, no matter how exciting it seems,]` Lansi replied softly. `[You possess a wonderful spirit of adventure, but you must never forget your natural limitations. I cannot carry you around in a plastic suitcase forever.]`
The clownfish swished its tail defiantly. `[But—]`
`[Besides, you aren't alone,]` Lansi added with a warm smile. `[Dory still needs your companionship out here. The ocean is infinitely vast; there are plenty of uncharted territories for you to conquer right here in the sea.]`
The clownfish fell silent, absorbing his words.
Dory, who lacked the advanced evolutionary intelligence to fully comprehend the telepathic exchange, merely sensed that her orange companion was suddenly despondent. She swam closer, gently nudging the clownfish with her pectoral fin to comfort it.
`[...I suppose you have a point,]` the clownfish finally bubbled, cheering up instantly. It puffed out its chest with sudden, grand ambition. `[Fine! First, I will conquer the stars and the depths of the ocean, and then—I shall evolve to conquer the dry land!]`
Lansi: "..."
*Wait, did I accidentally over-encourage it? Is this little fish going to kickstart a whole new cycle of amphibian evolution just out of sheer spite?*
Thinking about the terrifyingly long timeline of evolutionary history, Lansi couldn't help but shudder slightly.
Sensing Lansi's sudden, comical gloom, Winsor walked over from the controls, leaned down, and planted a soft, affectionate kiss on his cheek.
He really was incredibly endearing.