You Can't Speedrun Healing

Epilogue

Sky had caught him red-handed last night and called the police. They found all the creepy texts, the evidence this wasn't his first time... I didn't want to believe any of it was true. I kept telling myself not to think about it, just keep thinking about Subnautica. I wasn't really here, I was Ryley Robinson exploring Planet 4546B and encountering my first reaper. Maybe I was just a reefback lazily swimming above the grassy plateaus.

The police kept saying that word over and over again... rape. They told me I was raped repeatedly. They asked me questions that I didn't want to answer because it'd make it real. It'd mean I accepted the fact it happened to me, and I didn't want to. I was just a river prowler looking for my next meal.

Dominic was put in jail for life, and I was court ordered to see a therapist. I didn't want to say anything to my therapist, though. I just wanted to be a ghost ray swimming around the cove tree, innocent and unaware of what was going on.

My therapist was persistent, though. They managed to get me to tell them Dominic had been my step dad. I quickly withdrew after that and imagined I was a ghost leviathan juvenile eating anything that looked tasty in the lost river.

A lava lizard said Dominic was a lockpicker and worked with metal a lot, but I wasn't there for it because I was exploring the crash zone to get to the Aurora.

A sea dragon leviathan said I didn't like Dominic, but I wasn't there for it because I was in the jellyshroom caves exploring the Degasi base.

A warper said Dominic had done something very, very bad. It was so bad that something had spread like an infection. I didn't want to be there, but they teleported me back to them over and over again. I was lost in the lava zone...

The sea emperor helped the therapist understand everything. With me finally trying to heal, I was able to spread my own enzyme 42. My 'Kharaa' was Dissociative Identity Disorder, but now my Planet 4546B was healing. There were still some infected individuals on the planet, but we helped them as we found them.

There were no more casualties from Kharaa in my headspace.