CHAPTER 40: CHAPTER 40; DYING IN THE ISOLATION

The world was under heavy pressure and complete silence, a crushing weight that pushed down on everything.

The facility was called "Dragon’s Depth." It was a modern underground laboratory hidden by a secret group of scientists in the deepest parts beneath the South China Sea.

On paper, it was a place for studying marine life. In reality, it was built to hold and study something that should not exist. And she was that impossible thing.

Her real name was a series of flowing, musical sounds that no human throat could ever make. It was a language made of water currents and deep ocean songs.

To the scientists in their clean white coats, she was just Experiment X. To herself, she was Kailani, which meant "sea and sky" in the language her people had spoken for thousands of years beneath the waves.

She was the last daughter of a dying civilization. She had been captured three years ago when she swam too close to the surface because she was curious about the land-dwellers.

Now she floated in a reinforced tank filled with special saltwater that had extra oxygen and was kept under high pressure.

Her scales had once been a beautiful jade-green that sparkled like precious gems in sunlight. Now they had faded to a sickly grey-green color under the harsh fake lights.

The scales were arranged in patterns that looked like ancient pottery. Each one was unique and beautiful, even in her prison.

Glowing markings ran along her powerful tail and through her long black hair. They pulsed weakly and unevenly. This was the only way she could still show her suffering.

Her webbed hands were held in place by invisible force fields that hummed with energy. They kept her arms spread wide, like she was nailed to an invisible cross.

A ring of sensors and monitoring equipment circled her head. Cold metal pressed against her temples. The machines watched everything, every heartbeat, every thought, every flicker of the ancient power in her blood.

On the other side of the thick polymer-glass wall, Chief Scientist Dr. Zhang Wei stood with his arms crossed. His face showed intense focus as he looked at the data on his tablet.

He had spent three years trying to unlock the secrets hidden in her body, her mind, her very existence. No one was more curious than he was. He desperately wanted to understand and gain this knowledge.

"The psionic signature is rising again," he said to his assistant, Dr. Lin. His voice was sharp and clinical through the speaker system that connected the observation room to her prison chamber. "She is trying to access what the old texts call the Dragon’s Song. Turn the Qi-dampeners up to full power."

A low, deep hum filled the room, It sounded like a ceremonial bell being hit in a temple.

The machines around the tank vibrated with power as they obeyed the command. A wave of sickness passed through the mermaid’s body, making her feel hollow and ill inside.

The Dragon’s Song was the natural telepathic power of her people. It could let them talk to the great sea dragons or control the ocean tides themselves. But now it was being blocked, trapped inside her own mind like a scream behind closed lips. She was a sacred song locked in a soundproof box, a beautiful music that no one could hear.

Three years. Three years of this torture.

They had found her on a remote beach, hurt and confused after a storm had pushed her far from her home waters.

She had been studying the surface world, trying to understand why her people’s hunting grounds had become empty. Why strange poisons were killing their waters. Why ships dumped trash that killed everything it touched.

She had wanted to understand the land-dwellers. Maybe find a way to talk to them, to ask them to stop destroying what they did not understand.

Instead, she had been captured. Shot with tranquilizer darts. Brought to this place.

The first year had been the worst. They tested how long she could survive by slowly draining the water from her tank. They took samples, scales ripped from her body, pieces of her skin cut away, blood taken in amounts that left her weak and shaking.

They put her in extreme hot and cold temperatures to test what her body could handle.

They tried to force her to sing, to use her powers, recording everything, and studying everything.

When she refused to help them, they introduced pain. Electric shocks are sent through the water.

Sound waves that made her skull feel like it was breaking apart. Long periods where they drained all the water and left her gasping on the cold floor of the tank, her body slowly dying without the ocean.

She had learned to hate them. These creatures who called themselves humans. Who took something beautiful and ancient and tried to cut it apart to understand it, destroying it in the process.

"They are fools digging for treasure in a sacred temple," she thought, her mind full of rage and despair. "They will make the ceiling fall on all of us."

On his screen, Dr. Zhang saw something that made him stop.

Strange energy readings, but they were not coming from Experiment X. They were coming from the artifact they had dug up six months ago from a sunken ship near the place where they had found her. It was a glowing pearl the size of a man’s fist that old texts called a "Night Pearl" or "Dragon’s Tear."

The pearl sat on a stand in the corner of the room, behind extra protective shields.

According to legend, these pearls were made from the hardened tears of sea dragons. They held powerful spiritual energy. Dr. Zhang thought that studying it next to Experiment X might help him discover new things about their abilities.

The pearl was now pulsing with light. The glow was getting brighter every second.

"Doctor Zhang, the Night Pearl’s energy is increasing fast!" Dr. Lin called out, her voice rising with fear. "Its frequency matches the subject’s bio-qi field!"