Standing in front of a large bathroom mirror, Carissa observed the still healing scar tissue on her chest below her breasts. She kept the white dressing gown on. In spite of being alone in her own space for months, she had kept herself to some self-imposed boundaries.

‘Ah, I turned off the water here. Time to make use of these teeth.’ said Carissa as she reached into a bathroom cabinet and took out a pack of standard medical mid-strength pain killers and threw a few into her mouth. Her sharpened teeth sliced through them and she swallowed them in one gulp.

Carissa admired herself in the mirror. Her long reddish-brown hair shined, her features was young for her age, considering she was twenty-three she could pass for an eighteen year old, but her eyes belied her choice.

‘This body is mine to do with as I want. Not to self-harm though, Liam had the wrong idea there.’ said Carissa as she faced the mirror side on and observed her nictating membrane activate with conscious effort.

She missed Liam, she was honest. The spark truly remained. The only reason she had chosen to call him in the first place. They had been such a large part of each others lives for close to five years, each day they had never left each other’s sight. Always working together, even for her parents funeral and visiting his family.

If anything Liam was a highly capable man who would do anything in the ideal of protecting her or her research. Except he had betrayed her trust once and she had divorced him and chosen to live a separate life for her own purposes.

Part of her had wanted to talk to him longer but it was soon buried by the genetic enhancements which had been built on initial foundations introduced by her parents before she was even born.

‘Are you still there Liam? Outside my gates and considering what else to say to me. I’m too tired to check the sensors of Last Refuge to truly find out. If you loved me, truly loved me you’ll find me. No matter how far I swim or how deep, you will need to find me. Hah. Was talking to myself was a habit before I lived here or if I’ve become insane? No. A coping mechanism. Note to self, the genetic alterations to my brain are taking longer to adapt.’ said Carissa as she began to reroute unnecessary power from the generators and make sure all doors, windows and security gates were remotely secured.

Time was not be on her side. A few words would either leak and electronic traces would pick up her trail soon enough, those who despised her for supposed betrayal of those who had wanted open oceans. They outnumbered those who worshipped her in their madness. She had neither encouraged nor discouraged them but ignored them.

When both groups had tracked her location she had needed to move, to find a place of security away from the eyes of the world to keep her personal projects entirely private and free from outside influence.

‘This final place of my rebirth and recreation into a form suitable for my plans is empty. Empty and…. soon to be fulfilled. A tomb to my memory, the last record I was here.’ said Carissa.

Carissa had toyed with the idea of following in the footsteps of an ancient Emperor who let his capital city burn to the ground while he watched. His name long forgotten but his myth continued. He had become a god of flames in his own time she recalled, his counterpart goddess was one of cold and ice. An Empress of Ice who lived while her husband the Flame Emperor was lost to time. A mere story for childen and young people to read in books.

Old stories of the long forgotten past of Belphus. Or were they real? Godhood, an impossibility in today’s world but a reality in theirs. Too many mysteries and secrets in this world. Far too much held close out of fear or greed.

‘Would I become a legend in my own time? Are the old stories real?’ said Carissa aloud.

She could have set the home security personal system to record her words and forgotten, mostly she didn’t care. Any transfer of information from the machine would only flow to Liam’s own twin device and he wouldn’t share her secrets or personal information.

Not after he had taken her initial main prototype project to cleanse the oceans of Belphus and with a little alteration had attracted enough initial investment to make them both beyond wealthy.

Liam, I offered you the chance.

Carissa had pre-set her electronic research information earlier in the morning to be deleted in the next hour. The automatic recording function of her present words wouldn’t give any specific clues into her present and sole working prototype.

‘This is a recording for you Liam. I’m making the right choice. Of course, you’ll have to go through a lot of encryption and even this data could be corrupted. Oh, the explosives are set on a timer. Don’t worry, I won’t be here when they go off. I’m going off on my own adventure. A shame you could never join me. No, no. I’m joking. Or am I?’ said Carissa as she suppressed a laugh.

She could have prepared of the building to self-destruct on a pre-arranged timing system as she lay in the cool arms of the deep ocean waters and her last material possessions destroyed. The concept was mad of course, it would be the same as directly throwing her presently enhanced human form off the edge of a cliff and into the ocean below.

No, she had plans and action both carefully prepared for her survival and dedicated embrace into the waters of her world.

She wanted to slowly adapt herself, explore, to have the absolute freedom she had dreamed of as a young girl. To become a mermaid of her own design.

Keeping Last Refuge as a back up sanctuary was a good idea, even if Liam entered it or others did she had back-up security systems and hidden entrances and tunnels riddled through the building.

‘A waste of a life and time spent on worthless ideals. But this, what I’ve become…no, what I’m going to change into has been worth it.’ said Carissa.

At this point anyone considering her living conditions would have either called her insane or not understood why for a woman who was meant to be mentally ill, the entire property was both immaculate and entirely minimal.

The only room inside the building which had any personal possessions of value was her small working office. A single dark gray sofa bed, desk, chair, lone bookshelf with her notes and final research materials and her writing materials.

Sparse enough to be considered barely lived in, she’d eaten her main meals in her research laboratory. Any form of electronics beyond basic lighting had long been stripped out and disposed of.

A single piece of technology rested upon the top of the sofa, one of the more costly purchases which her ex-husband Liam had insisted upon. She had used it earlier to call him to come over to her and provide a secure form of communication along with her specific address.

Other methods of communication with the outside world she no longer trusted, only holding onto an expensive modified security phone which she had been advised by experts to be encrypted and also secure without her biometrics to access.

Carissa was not willing to be harassed any further by those who either hated her or lusted after her fame and beauty.

To become a multi-billionaire at the relatively youthful age of twenty-five was unusual, even more so when she had never studied business in her life but had focused on the triple subject of biology, oceanography and technology.

‘For the final touch, I’ll need a decent book title. My last work for an uncaring surface world. Suitable…suitable…’ said Carissa.

Before Carissa had met her husband, she had made sure all of her personal experimental materials were thoroughly destroyed and all of her genetic traces wiped clean.

The furnace had disposed of the cloned test bodies and animal subjects and the ashes washed into the ocean waiting deep below.

‘Liam wouldn’t tell anyone. No. Not openly, company controlled and contract workers but not in public. I don’t care what he said. I am beautiful. I will be reborn.’ said Carissa to herself.

Showing him her transformed body was a moment of hubris, but she had wanted to show it to someone, anyone before she left the dirt world for one filled with watery wonders.

Given Liam’s emotional state she doubted he would tell anyone immediately, he had also been catapulted into fame and riches but he wasn’t arrogant and kept his ego in check.

No, for him it was all about having the resources to make a difference to the environmental state of the planet, it had been a large part of what had made him so attractive to Carissa in the first place. Ideals, and the strength and will to act on those ideals.

An investigative and skilled research team might be able to find minor traces of her implants but they wouldn’t be able to make it bond with the human structure.

At most they would have an inkling of a patch to create a superhuman which involved water, she had created false technology to throw them off the trail. Her entirely failed prototypes which were built to fail were scattered inside her research laboratory and in several of the notes hidden inside journals in the bookshelf in her small office.

‘Enough. I can’t keep waiting.’ Carissa muttered as she glanced at the modified security phone.

Running one finger across the desk she picked up the rough draft book she had spent time writing. The title made her smile, it summed up her entire life and the words held real meaning. She was so tired now, the long duration for her transformation had drained her emotionally and mentally.

For a moment she held herself back from picking up the book concerned Liam had been right and she was simply a woman who needed treatment. No. His concern might have been real but in listening to him she had made major mistakes in her life, perhaps if she had been a little more experienced or a little less naive growing up, she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him in the first place.

Carissa undid her bathrobe and folded it neatly on the sofa. The ancients had tombs in which they left riches and hoped to be served in their second life. This house, this room would serve as her final giving to the world.

With her current reputation and status on the planet her last recorded words in the surface would polarise the population. She was sure Liam would publish them in a final attempt to understand her.

He had always called her a complicated but innocent woman. Even when he had cheated on her by stealing her research and producing the results and selling the final products onto the global environmental markets, he had claimed she was the original creator.

Liam would have been easier if he had found someone else to have a physical relationship with but other partners had never crossed their minds.

‘I’m beautiful and in the process of transforming. My last words will be for you Liam.’ said Carissa.

Holding the book in one hand she opened a draw on her desk and pulled out an expensive gold-leaf pen and wrote one final personal brief message to her ex-husband.

She wasn’t willing to twist a knife in old wounds, she simply wrote she had loved him and they deserved each other once but she wished he would find true happiness in his life. He could meet her once he was brave enough and could find her research notes or enable his own method.

‘Good enough. He’ll get nothing else from me though.’ said Carissa.

Letting her long hair hang loose she reached into the desk draw to take out an item of personal value.

One was the wedding ring which Liam had given to her when he had proposed back in their university days. The ocean demanded sacrifice and had hungry gods, hungrier creatures. The source of life and the destroyer of worlds.

All she had left would suffice. Money and other material possessions would have other little value. The only thing she possessed in the immediate vicinity was the modified security phone.

‘Messages and phone calls can be tracked. Even now. Off to the deep waters with you as well.’ said Carissa.

She would dispose of it before she undertook her new journey. Her injuries from the surgery had entirely yet to heal it would suffice. Rebirth would never be a price freely paid, there was always a cost.

To make sure the phone would suffer sufficient damage she would need to unlock the hard casing first, otherwise it would still be tracked by its opposite number which would be held by Liam.

They were unique and costly but she had been trained in how to dismantle the essentials.

Picking up the modified security phone Carissa held in her free hand. She placed the book on the table surface before considering to reset the security doors and access points which she had previously told Liam when he had left.

‘No point. The vultures and scavengers will find me regardless. Eventually.’ said Carissa with a flourish of her hand.

For Carissa escaping into the deep waters of the world would free her from the terrors of the surface. Still, she would leave open the doors to this place.

Her ex-husband would return and as word spread, they would find nothing except falsified research notes, a sterile and vacant surgical suite and a single copy of her hand-penned last book.

Her hand vibrated as the phone gave her an emergency alert. Her mind paused for a moment before she considered an issue or Liam had contacted her again. He would, he was always needy for her attention.

The private security company had told her the modified phone was only one of two unique prototypes in existence.

Her absolute privacy should have been guaranteed except for being contacted by one other when she allowed it.

Her deep green eyes which had shifted from a light blue to the viral load which had altered her physical structure gazed to a message. Her eyes focused in the light with the inner translucent eyelid protecting her eyeball unconsciously.

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