Apocalypse Reborn: Zoe's Odyssey

The Submerged Reflections

Zoe and Specialist Leo tried moving to different seats in the subway car, yet each time they did, the fish-men followed them, adopting the same postures and surrounding them again. Apart from this, the fish-men exhibited no further actions. Zoe considered using her gun, but was uncertain of the consequences should the fish-men lose control.

Initially, in the sewers, there was only one fish-man. Zoe and Specialist Leo, with their two guns, managed to defeat it. Now, with twenty-five or possibly more fish-men, a confrontation seemed like a one-way ticket to disaster.

Specialist Leo, unnerved by the fish-men's stare, recalculated the pollution level and was shocked to find it had risen to 79%. Zoe, still not fully understanding the implications of pollution levels, listened as Leo explained that a D-level pollution area ranged from 60% to 90%.

"What should we do?" asked Specialist Leo, "Fight our way out?"

Zoe gritted her teeth, "Ignore them."

"Ignore them? How?" Specialist Leo was almost at his breaking point, struggling to ignore the fish-men.

During Zoe's induction, she was only asked if she was afraid of monsters or corpses. Her answer was no to both. It seemed her mental fortitude was indeed at 100%, as she truly feared nothing before her.

"By ignoring them, you prevent them from polluting you," Zoe stated firmly.

Specialist Leo, desperate for a solution, asked, "What do you see them as?"

"To me, they're just rotten fish."

Understanding dawned on Specialist Leo; to Zoe, these menacing figures were nothing more than seafood. This perception shift helped him see the fish-men not as a threat but as a potential gain.

Zoe proposed a radical idea, "What if we could mentally pollute them instead?"

Leo was intrigued, "How?"

Zoe explained that mental pollution stemmed from repetition and the unexpected. For instance, a fish-man riding a subway, doing nothing but staring, was unnerving because it was abnormal yet repetitive.

Armed with this new strategy, they continued their journey through the train, searching for the pollution source. They found an old-fashioned touchscreen phone, an anachronism in their world of implanted chips and advanced technology. The phone played a video of Zoe and Leo themselves, picking up the phone in a recursive loop.

As the situation grew increasingly bizarre, Zoe's resolve wavered, her mental fortitude tested by the relentless psychological assault. They approached the driver's cabin, where the driver, shrouded in mystery, never showed his face, but instead revealed an endless series of the backs of heads.

The most chilling revelation came when Zoe noticed a fish-faced figure clinging to the outside of the driver’s cabin window, smiling grotesquely. It dawned on her that the source of pollution might not be inside the train, but had been lurking outside all along.

In a world where the normal becomes the conduit for the abnormal, Zoe and Specialist Leo faced their greatest challenge yet - surviving the submerged reflections of their own reality.