There once was a fish — bright, swift, clever.
She flowed with the current like it was instinct. Like the ocean itself spoke her name.
She prided herself on being adaptable, always knowing which tide to follow, which predator to—
"Huh?"
Collins blinked.
The sentence stopped mid-thought.
He stared at the abrupt white void below the last line — no ink, no closure.
Confused, he quickly turned the page.
But one day, she met an old tortoise — ancient, immovable, wise in the way that only slowness can make one wise.
He had seen a thousand currents rise and fall. And the fish, for the first time, felt something she'd never known: insecurity.
Collins raised an eyebrow, leaning in closer.
"I've swum far,…"
Again, it cut off. Another page had been torn out.
He clenched his jaw and flipped forward again, clinging to the hope that the narrative would resume.
"What have you seen?"
The tortoise smiled, deep and quiet like the seafloor.
"Maybe not... unless you find the secret to lasting."
"What secret?"
He leaned closer. "There's a creature called the jellyfish — barely more than a thought. But it regenerates. Endlessly. Its life rewinds. If you were to eat it… its cycle could become yours."
And then—
Another blank. Another page torn.
Collins exhaled sharply and flipped ahead again.
She found a young jellyfish drifting under moonlit water — small, translucent…
"…God damn it," he muttered under his breath as he hit another silent gap. The next page resumed again — fragmented.
She swallowed it whole.
And then she began to die.
Her body burned, twisted, convulsed. Her gills closed. The poison sank deeper—
Cut. Again.
He skimmed the next few pages, each one offering a sentence or two before collapsing into emptiness.
In her final moments, as her…
She turned to the tortoise and asked: "Why? Why did you lie?"
"To see if it was true," the tortoise said…
And so the—
Gone.
That was it.
No resolution. No full story. Only haunting fragments of something mythic, something cruel.
Collins stared at the diary in disbelief. Then, slowly, his disbelief turned into anger.
"Motherfucker! What the actual fuck is wrong with this piece of crap?" he shouted, slamming the book closed with a thud that echoed through the tent.
He sat in silence for a few seconds, breathing hard, as if expecting someone — or something — to answer back.
But there was only the wind outside.
No ending. No closure. Just a string of unanswered questions and the unsettling feeling that there was something more beneath the missing pages — something he wasn't meant to understand yet.
He stood up with a low growl, tossing the diary aside as he turned to head toward the lab.
In the lab, Collins stormed in, still simmering from the frustration left behind by the diary.
He spotted Meesha by the terminal, eyes fixed on lines of code scrolling across the screen. Without hesitation, he raised his voice:
"What the hell was that, Meesha? Your so-called philosopher's masterpiece had entire pages missing."
His tone dripped with sarcasm. "Inspiring stuff — if you're into puzzles with half the pieces gone."
Meesha didn't even turn to look at him. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, and her voice, when it came, was flat. Hollow.
"I told you to read it all, didn't I?"
Collins paused.
There was something off in her voice — a kind of cold detachment that unsettled him.
He'd seen Meesha annoyed, sharp, sarcastic — but never… like this. Never so distant.
Before he could formulate a response, she continued, interrupting the silence with surgical precision.
"Anyway, it doesn't matter whether you've read it or not. I already pulled a backup from the inventory archive."
She finally turned, just enough for him to catch her profile — blank, unreadable.
"We don't have time, right?" she said.
Her eyes flicked toward the screen, then toward the sealed chamber across the lab.
"Let's move you to Version 5 as fast as we can."
Collins stood still.
Something in the air had changed.
The name Version 5 hung in the room like a quiet threat — or a promise.
He opened his mouth to object, to demand clarity — but the words withered before they could leave his throat.
All he could manage was a quiet, unsure:
"…Okay."
No protest. No hesitation.
And with that, they turned — one with urgency, the other with quiet resignation — and walked toward the re-integration chamber.
Toward Version 5.
Toward the abyss.