Ayame patrolled the aquarium, tracking the faint, pulsing anomaly signal.
The animals, subdued by sedatives and environmental tweaks, had restored a fragile calm to the facility. Yet the signal her sensors detected throbbed like a living thing, hinting at a threat still lurking within the walls.
Back in the control room, she scoured the monitors for the signal's source. The data pointed to the whale exhibit.
"The whale?" she whispered, disbelief creeping into her voice. "No way…"
She sprinted to the whale exhibit, where a vast pool housed a humpback whale, typically serene, gliding gently across the water's surface. But now, an eerie tension gripped the area. The water churned unnaturally, and a low, guttural groan reverberated through the aquarium.
As Ayame reached the pool's edge, the surface erupted. The whale breached—but it was no longer just a whale.
Its body was grotesquely swollen, its skin a patchwork of horrors: shark teeth, octopus tentacles, stingray barbs, and fish scales clung to it, writhing as if alive. Its eyes blazed red, and its maw bristled with an unnatural number of jagged fangs. The whale had devoured the escaped animals, fusing with them into a monstrous abomination.
"How… how did this happen?" Ayame's voice was drowned by the creature's roar.
The monster smashed through the pool's wall, flooding the corridors with water and debris. Glass shattered, steel warped. Ayame leaped back, but a tentacle lashed out, slamming her against a wall. Her suit tore, her left arm's joints sparking with damage. Alarms blared in her systems.
Yet she staggered to her feet. Her programming demanded she protect the animals—even this twisted remnant of the whale. She had to fight.
The monster charged again. Ayame grabbed a high-voltage net from the control room's emergency kit, aiming to restrain it.
"Calm down!" she shouted. "I'll bring you back!"
She hurled the net, ensnaring the monster's head. Electricity surged, and it flinched. But with a deafening bellow, it tore the net apart with its tentacles and lunged. Ayame ran, luring it toward her plan: trap it using the aquarium's heavy-duty defenses.
She dove into the shark tunnel, confirming the monster followed. With a flick of her device, she sealed the tunnel's bulkheads at both ends. The creature thrashed, shattering the glass walls. Water roared in, battering Ayame's frame. Her sensors screamed of overload, but she pressed on, activating the tunnel's emergency electric trap. A high-voltage surge coursed through the water.
The monster endured, its tentacles snaring Ayame, crushing her. Her chest plating cracked, and though pain was impossible, an unknown error surged through her systems. As the creature opened its fang-filled maw, Ayame summoned her last reserves, activating the emergency laser cutter in her arm.
"This ends now!" she cried.
She sliced through the tentacles and, with desperate resolve, plunged into the monster's maw. Its innards were a nightmare of animal remnants and corrosive slime, melting her suit. Spotting a glowing, core-like organ, she fired the laser into it. The monster screamed, the aquarium shaking violently. The explosion hurled Ayame out, slamming her onto the tunnel floor.
Silence fell.
The monster lay still, its whale-like form crumbling. Ayame's body was critically damaged, her vision flickering. Her sensors confirmed the aquarium's animals were calming—sharks, octopuses, penguins, fish—all back in their tanks, swimming peacefully.
"They're… safe," she whispered, her voice faint, systems teetering on shutdown.
Crawling to the control room, she mustered her final strength to send an emergency signal to the human staff. Until they arrived, she would stand guard over the animals.
Morning broke.
The aquarium was in ruins, but the animals had miraculously survived. When the staff found Ayame's wrecked frame, her device held a single recorded message:
"I protected the animals. My duty is complete."
The scars left by the whale-monster became part of the aquarium's lore. But through Ayame's sacrifice, the animals greeted a new dawn.
おわり