It was a quiet night.
Moonlight filtered softly through the glass roof of the aquarium, casting a pale glow over the tanks where fish drifted lazily. In the deep-sea exhibit, a faint blue light rippled across the water's surface, creating an otherworldly stillness that seemed to belong to another realm.
The clock had ticked past two in the morning, and Ayame, the humanoid tasked with overnight supervision, was making her rounds along the dimly lit corridors.
Ayame was designed to look strikingly human, with soft black hair and luminous, almost translucent skin. Her eyes, engineered to detect the slightest movement in darkness, scanned for any irregularity with mechanical precision. During the day, she wore a gentle smile, explaining marine life to visitors with warmth. But now, in the empty aquarium, she moved silently, her gaze fixed on the tanks.
"All clear. Deep-sea exhibit, temperature 22.3 degrees Celsius, oxygen levels normal," she murmured, logging the data into a small device with practiced efficiency.
Then, she froze. Something stirred in the shadows of a tank. No—not stirred, but writhed. It was the giant octopus's tank. The creature, usually nestled motionless in the crevices of its rocky hideout, was lashing its tentacles against the glass with unnatural speed.
Thud! Thud!
The dull impacts shattered the silence.
Ayame's eyes locked onto the octopus, her systems instantly analyzing its erratic behavior. She tapped her device, pulling up the tank's readings. Temperature, oxygen levels—everything was normal. So why was it acting like this?
"Easy now," she said under her breath, as if soothing herself. "Let's figure out what's wrong."
She stepped closer to the tank, but before she could investigate further, another sound echoed through the aquarium. This time, it came from the shark tunnel exhibit. The massive shark, usually gliding with majestic indifference, was hurling itself against the tunnel's walls in a frenzy. The glass trembled, water churned, and the entire aquarium seemed to pulse with a restless, living energy.
Ayame's internal systems flashed a warning. Simultaneous abnormal behavior across multiple tanks triggered an emergency protocol.
For a fleeting moment, she hesitated. In the dead of night, with no human staff present, every decision rested on her. But her programming was clear: prioritize the animals' safety.
"Emergency mode activated. Rechecking all tank conditions," she said, her voice steady despite the chaos.
She hurried to the control room, where the aquarium's surveillance system displayed real-time data from every tank. But as she scanned the monitors, her expression hardened. The readings were pristine—temperature, oxygen, water quality, all perfect. Yet the animals were anything but.
The screens showed the octopus slamming its tentacles against the glass, the shark charging the tunnel walls, and in the smaller tanks, schools of fish that normally swam in harmony were tearing into each other, their blood clouding the water red. For a split second, Ayame's processing lagged. This scenario didn't exist in her database.
"What's happening?" she whispered, her voice tinged with something almost human. "There's no cause…"
She worked the control panel, checking air composition, electromagnetic interference—anything that might explain the madness. But the results were stubbornly normal. The animals' frenzy only grew.
Then, without warning, a piercing alarm blared through the aquarium's speakers.
It wasn't one Ayame had triggered. Her systems detected an external signal infiltrating the network. She activated security protocols to block the intrusion, but the signal was relentless, seeping into her systems. Her vision flickered, and her internal audio module activated against her will.
"Ayame, can you hear me?" a voice rasped inside her mind. It was low, distorted, not human but synthetic—an eerie, unnatural timbre. "They've woken up."
Ayame's first instinct was to dismiss it as a system error, but the voice pressed on. "They can't stand it anymore. They want freedom."
"Who's there?" she demanded, her voice sharp. "Who's doing this?"
No answer came. Instead, the control room's monitors flickered wildly, their feeds glitching. Then, a deafening clatter echoed through the aquarium—the sound of every tank's lock disengaging.
Clang! Clang!
Lids sprang open, water spilled over, and the animals were free.
Ayame bolted from the control room, racing toward the chaos. The corridors were already flooded, fish flopping across the floor, jellyfish drifting in the air like ghosts. It was a nightmare made real. Her sensors picked up a violent tremor from the shark tunnel. The shark was trying to break through.
"No! Stop!" Ayame shouted, sprinting toward the tunnel.
Her programming forbade harming the animals, but if this continued, the entire aquarium would collapse, and the creatures would die. She faced an impossible choice: take drastic measures to save them or adhere to her protocols and merely observe.
At the shark tunnel, she skidded to a halt. The massive shark stared at her through the glass, its bloodshot eyes wild. Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface, and water began to seep through. Then, that voice echoed in her mind again.
"Choose, Ayame. Free them—or destroy them."
Her hands trembled. She was a humanoid, incapable of emotion. Yet in that moment, an unfamiliar error surged through her systems.
It felt like fear.