3:00 a.m.

Insomnia gnawed at my nerves like a rusted saw, grinding back and forth mercilessly.

On a whim that I couldn't explain, I opened a radio app called "Echoes from Below."

The interface was simple and bare. Black background, blue text.

No ads, no host introduction. Just a single audio waveform, slowly buffering on the screen. The shape of the waveform felt wrong.

It didn't look like soundwaves at all. More like rows of sharp, interlocking teeth.

A pop-up window appeared in the center of the screen.

[Listening Guidelines]

The letters glowed blue, carrying an unsettling eeriness.

[This station's signal may extend into dreams. If you hear the broadcast while dreaming, firmly believe that you are awake.]

Online sales tactics were getting out of hand.

Extending into dreams?

If they could extend the repayment of my bank loans, that would be better.

I snickered and continued scrolling down.

[If you experience dampness behind your ears and detect the smell of seawater, please shut off your device immediately and place it in direct sunlight for a minimum of three hours.]

That was even more absurd.

My phone spraying seawater?

I flipped to the side and fluffed my pillow.

The final guideline was written in a jarring red font.

[On rare occasions, the station will transmit the Predator's Song. When this occurs, remain completely still and hold your breath until the broadcast concludes.]

Hold my breath? Were they trying to asphyxiate me?

I pouted and clicked on [I Agree and Start Listening.]

The so-called 'Echoes from Below' were nothing more than just some white noise, like the wind moving through an empty corridor or a massive creature slowly exhaling beneath the water.

Rumble.

The sound was low and heavy, with a faint electrical hiss like a bad microphone feed.

My eyelids grew heavier as I listened. There was something hypnotic about it, like a pair of cold hands gently caressing the back of my head.

I was starting to drift into slumber. Just when I was about to head into dreamland, I heard a piercing shriek in my headphones.

I woke up alarmed, my heart thumping wildly.

My phone's screen was still lit, and the application was still running.

That was not white noise. It was a sigh in a single breath, whispering against my eardrum.

I took off my headphones and swore.

"What stupid thing is this?"

That was when I felt a cool touch on the back of my neck. I reached behind and touched.

It was wet, sticky, and cold.

I sniffed my fingers.

The stench hit me like a punch. It was overwhelming and rancid like a fish left to rot on the beach for three days.

I was stunned.

The air conditioner was set to room temperature with the dehumidifier mode on.

Where did the water come from?

I subconsciously looked at my phone. The Listening Guidelines popped up once more. The red words seemed to be floating.

[Please switch off your device immediately and place it under the sun for three hours.]

It was three in the morning. Where was I going to get sunlight from?

I felt a chill run down my back. With trembling fingers, I tried to switch my phone off, but it would not budge. The screen would not respond.

The blue waveform was gradually getting more and more violent. The initially calm blue waveform had turned into jagged teeth, as if it were opening its mouth wide.

Although there was no sound coming from the headphones, the app felt like it was screaming all the same.

I immediately threw my phone on the couch in the living room and returned to the bedroom, hiding under the covers.

I had to be hallucinating. It must be because I have been working late recently. I was burned out.

I forced myself to close my eyes.

In the darkness, my hearing sharpened.

The living room was silent.

No. There was a sound.

Drip, drip.

It was like water dripping onto the floor rhythmically. It was slowly approaching my bedroom step by step.

That night, I had an impossibly vivid dream. In my dreams, I was still in my room, except that my room was flooded with murky green water, thick with drifting sediment.

I floated in midair, surrounded by furniture that felt both familiar and wrong.

The wardrobe doors hung open. Clothes swayed inside like strands of seaweed.

I should have drowned. Instead, I was breathing easily.

My chest felt different. It was as if something inside it was opening and closing.

I looked down and saw slits that had split open along both sides of my ribcage. They pulsed greedily, filtering the seawater.

Gills.

Horror instantly flooded my senses. I wanted to scream, but all that came out was bubbles.

Right at that moment, I heard a song in the distance.

The song was ethereal and unnatural, like the sound of metal scraping against metal.

It was that radio application!

The sound didn't travel through my ears. It vibrated in my head directly.

I suddenly recalled the first rule of the Listening Guidelines.

[This station's signal may extend into dreams. If you hear the broadcast while dreaming, firmly believe that you are awake.]

Awake? How could I possibly be awake? I kept telling myself that it was all a dream and that I needed to wake up quickly.

'Wake up!'

However, the song got closer and louder.

Outside my window, something enormous drifted past. A vast black silhouette, blocking what little light that had filtered in.

That thing stopped right outside my window.

A huge, murky eyeball pressed against the glass of my window, staring at me. It was laughing.

I could feel it laughing. The excitement of a predator when it found its prey.

[Believe that you are awake.]

I bit my tongue. It hurt.

I could instantly taste the stench of blood, but my blood did not spread in the water.

On the contrary, it went down my throat.

I was still not awake.

The eyeball was pressing firmly against the window.

Crack!

A long crack started to form on the window.

What would happen if I did not follow the rules? If I did not believe that I was awake, would the dream become reality?

I took a deep breath. Or perhaps, I should say, I took a deep mouthful of water.

Looking at that eyeball, I kept telling myself that I was awake.

"You're awake. You're at home.

"You're working. You're having breakfast."

I kept repeating it as a mantra when something miraculous happened.

The eyeball seemed to sense some confusion and backed off a little. The song started to stutter as if the line reception was bad.

The water started to subside and suffocation crashed in. I suddenly sat up, gasping for air.

Cold sweat had drenched through my pajamas. Outside, the sun was starting to rise.

I touched my ribcage. No gills. The skin there was a little red as if I was having an allergic reaction.

I let out a long sigh. Thankfully, it was just a dream.

I got out of bed to get some water. When I walked past the living room, I saw my phone on the couch.

The screen was black. I headed over, thinking about picking it up. I had just touched it when I withdrew my hand as if I had just been electrocuted.

Beneath the phone was a damp stain. It was not large, about the size of a palm.

However, the shape was a handprint.

Four fingers, sharp tips, suction-cup marks embedded in the palm. It perfectly fit with my phone.

My vision spun. The dripping sound I heard last night was no hallucination. Something really came over and touched my phone.

I rushed into the bathroom and washed my hands viciously until my skin burned raw.

I looked up at myself in the mirror. I saw my pale face and sunken eyes, but something else caught my eye.

I turned to the side to look behind my ear. There was a patch of skin the size of a fingernail, covered in a thin, translucent membrane.

I gently scraped at it with my nail to peel off. It was hard and curvy. Under the bathroom light, it refracted a rainbow sheen.

It was a fish scale.

I called in sick. If I were to head into work in such a condition, I would most probably be seen as mentally ill and sent to an asylum.

I flushed the fish scale down the drain.

Then, like a thief sneaking back to the scene of the crime, I switched my phone on once more.

I could not follow the rule about exposing it to the sunlight for three hours. It was pouring outside.

The weather was so gloomy, just like the deep sea in my dreams.

I tapped into the Echoes from Below application once more, but there was no sound. The waveform interface was gone and replaced by a basic discussion forum.

There were not many posts, but every single title made the hair on the back of my neck stand.

[Help! My wife started eating raw meat! She says it's tartare!]

[Did someone hear the song last night? My cat died of fright.]

[I'm an ENT doctor. I've been receiving a lot of patients with abscesses behind the ears, but when I cut into them, I found…]

With trembling fingers, I tapped into that doctor's post. The original poster's ID was 'The Scalpel'.

The post was of a blurry photo accompanied by a block of text.

[Upon incision, no pus was present, only this semi-translucent, scale-like tissue. Moreover, the tissue appears biologically active. It continues to writhe after being removed from the body.]

[I attempted lab analysis. DNA sequencing indicates that it does not belong to any known terrestrial organism.]

The replies were even more terrifying.

[Dude, run! This is the first stage of Deep Sea-fication!]

[Don't cut it! Those are their egg sacs!]

[I have them too. You can’t scratch them off. The more you try, the deeper the itch goes.]

I touched the back of my ear. The place where I scraped off the fish scale started to itch again. The itch did not feel like it was on the surface, but was coming from deep inside my bones.

I could not help but create an account with the username 'Drowned123'. I created a post.

[I started listening, and a fish scale grew behind my ear. I dreamt that my room was flooded. What should I do?]

I regretted it immediately after I posted it. I was literally falling into a trap.

In less than a minute, someone replied to me. The ID was a strange symbol, like a vortex.

[Welcome to the food chain. Stay moist. Do not resist.]

What did that mean? Food chain? Was I prey?

Then, I received a private message from a 'Dr. Chenowith'.

[Don't listen to them. If you don't want to become fish food, send me your address right away. I have the inhibitors.]

Inhibitors? Did that person know something?

I hesitated. Who could trust anyone on such a strange and dodgy platform?

Right at that moment, my doorbell rang, which made me jump. I almost dropped my phone.

I looked through the peephole to see Albert Winston, my neighbor, standing outside my door.

Albert was a friendly old man who would greet me happily whenever we bumped into each other.

However, he was acting a little weird that day. He had a thick raincoat on. He wore his cap so low I could barely see his face.

It was not raining in the corridors, not to mention that it was summer, so why was he in a raincoat?

"Lily? Are you home?"

His voice sounded muffled as if he was talking through a thick curtain.

No. More like talking through water.

He added, "Could you lend me some salt? I've run out."

Salt?

My heart skipped.

I thought about the saltiness I felt in my dreams. I remembered the eyeball.

"Albert, I'm sorry. I ran out of salt too," I replied through the door.

"No, you do have it. I can smell it."

Albert's voice suddenly turned soft with a hint of greed. "You smell freshly of salt. On you."

Thump!

He banged on the door. It was not something loud and hard, but more like a soft lump of meat slamming against the door.

"Open the door. Let me… Let me have a taste."

Thump, thump.

The thumping got more frequent. I pressed myself against the door, sweating profusely.

"If you're going to continue behaving this way, I'll call the cops!" I yelled

The movement stopped, and there was dead silence.

A long time later, I heard a sigh, just like the one I heard in my earphones last night.

"What a pity. It's not fully ripe yet."

I heard footsteps, but not of leather shoes tapping against the tiled floors. It felt like wet and sloppy, like bare feet against the mud.

I slumped to the ground, staring at the crack beneath the door. Water slowly seeped in, and in the water, tiny threadlike shapes writhed like worms.

I had to get to the bottom of that. That 'Dr. Chenowith' person was probably my only hope.

With trembling hands, I replied to Dr. Chenowith.

[I can't give you my address, but I need to know the truth.]

They replied instantly.

[Smart. Exposing your coordinates too early will only get you killed faster.]

Then, he sent a document link.

[Deep-Sea Bioacoustic Research Log. TOP SECRET]

I opened the document to see the file filled with fragmented audio transcripts and photos of handwritten notes.