Curse of the Seas

Into the Lab

They swam towards the loading bay of the facility. As they entered, there was an abandoned submarine that had sunk to the bottom of the loading bay. There were also lights that were illuminating the loading bay even though the facility had been abandoned for months. They then noticed that the loading bay went upwards, presumably to the facility. They swam up until they surfaced at the top of the loading bay. There was a ladder that led up to the platform beside the water. Given that they had tails, it was much harder to climb them once their human halves were above the water. Amara was struggling to pull her tail out of the water so she decided to try something. She held onto the side rails of the ladder and flapped her tail to launch her upwards while also pulling herself up by holding the ladder. Her tail managed to get out of the water and she landed on her chest. Rodrigo had much more upper body strength so he just pulled himself up on the ladder.

"How are we going to explore the place? Dragging ourselves is a very tiring task," Rodrigo said.

Amara then noticed some wheelchairs beside the wall. "We could use those," She said.

They then began dragging themselves over to the wheelchairs. Since their tails accounted for more than half their body weight, it took a few minutes for them to drag themselves towards the wheelchairs. They eventually managed to reach them and tried to pull themselves onto them. Amara grabbed onto the arm rests of a wheelchair and tried to pull herself up. It took a few attempts before she managed to pull herself onto the seat. She then turned her body around so she was sitting on the wheelchair. Rodrigo managed to pull himself up on his wheelchair on his first try. They were both now ready to explore the facility.

"Let's stick together, just in case anything's still lurking around here," Rodrigo said.

"Wouldn't it be more efficient if we split up and look around?" Amara asked.

"It's a bad idea, who knows if there's some sort of creature in the building with us. If we were to split up, we would be screwed if something were to attack us since we're practically immobile on land. If we're together, we can have each other's back," Rodrigo said.

"But we would be able to find her faster if we split up. We can contact each other anyway," Amara said.

"No buts. My decision is final," Rodrigo proclaimed.

Amara decided not to protest as she didn't want to make Rodrigo angry or frustrated.

Both of their tails were touching the floor while they were seated on their wheelchairs so they had to lift them up a bit in order for their tails to not scrape against the floor while they were exploring. It takes some effort to keep their tails off the floor but they took short breaks in between moving around in order to recover the strength to lift their tails again. They passed through white hallways that had visible stains on them from the facility not getting maintained. They then started exploring different rooms and were surprised to see that the facility uses automatic sliding doors like in sci-fi movies that still work. The first room they went into seemed like some sort of research area. There were tables with papers scattered on them and around the room. They figured this was a good place to look for information regarding the princess' whereabouts.

Amara went over to a table and started reading some papers. Most of the papers contained notes about certain species of animals that the facility was studying. One of the papers, however, caught her eye. It had an image of what seemed to be some mutated creature that had black skin and whose face resembled a grotesque lion. None of them said anything about a mermaid they had in captivity.

"Did you find anything yet, Rodrigo?" Amara asked.

"Nothing of interest here," Rodrigo said. "Let's keep exploring," he said as she started moving out of the room.