"The Former Things Have Passed Away, Edi"

Brave men formed a line, Edi in the midst of them. They were silent, though there was a spirit of excitement - and of nervousness and trembling hands, stirring bodies. Guards were standing around them, equipped with buzzing, humming automatic rifles.

"Men", the sensei sounded out, loudly, his voice bearing itself all the way to those in the back of the formed line. "We are marching for the 'outer brink'. Do stay in line, or something like this may befall you", he said and extended his open hand towards his 'subjects' to present a demonstration. One of the guards pointed his gun at another guard and pulled the trigger. An invisible projectile hit the victim, made him fall backwards, hard onto his back, and left him shaking on the sandy floor, as if possessed by an uncontrollable demon, manifesting in a horrible manner. "This is merely the 'stun' setting. Do not tempt us to adjust the effect of these rifles upwards, to something entirely different that we will not demonstrate here today", he warned them. And the men listening fell totally mute as if subdued.

They made ready, all wearing white jackets, the guards and staff wearing tough vests and sturdy footwear as well - and they began walking. While marching, some were doing exercises to master the rhythm of their breathing, some were nervously discussing and cooking up combative strategies in between them, and some were just silent and focused.

Large metal doors flew up, and he got to see the outside of his new home for the first time. It was unlike anything he could imagine. There were what looked like houses with foundations of concrete, decorated with all kinds of coral and seashells, some smaller huts on stilts - probably food storage units, risen from ground level to keep out vermin and other disturbances. Villas and sheds, all these buildings separated by some kind of illuminated road - it was lighting up and giving off vibrations and pulses now and then.

"What are these road things for?", Edi asked the guy marching next to him in the line. He looked properly mellow and seemed like a friendly soul.

"They're for the bullet, my dude", he responded, as relaxed as his response was uninformative.

"The 'bullet'? What, like a bullet train? How is that powered here, in a cave?", he asked, perplexed.

"I am no engineer, bro. Ask that guy if you get a chance, I think he used to work on the power plant or whatever", he said and pointed to a short fellow ahead of them in the row. Edi took note and kept studying their environment as they were marching towards a battlefield unknown to him - yet.

They were walking on a strangely smooth road, when it suddenly turned bright with an angry kind of red, and gave off rough vibrations, as to wake up any eventual sleepwalker. "Everyone off, to your side", a commander rang out. The rows of men split up and got off the road on the side they were closer to. They waited a minute or so, then something powerful screamed past them from behind, a thing that went so fast Edi could not possibly say what it was, how tall it was, or what colours it boasted.

"Was... Was that a 'bullet'?", he asked anyone around him, trembling with fear of a creation he had not witnessed anything to its like. He got some overbearing looks and raised eyebrows, and they kept walking.

As he had thought, they were in a chalky sort of cave, the walls of a similar sort of material that his cell was constructed out of. Gems glimmering high up, embedded in the frame of the cave. They had passed some flocks of children playing in the sand, families walking to and fro, and other gatherings of "regular" people when everything around them fell strangely quiet. It felt like they had entered a vacuum, a space of no sound or noise, yet roaring, like the repetitive rumbling and throwing off a monster waterfall far in the distance.

"Now, men, the 'outer brink' ahead. Do not step outside it, or the pressure will collapse your entire body on itself immediately", a commander warned. "Do not stand too near it either, or else something outside of it might reach for you and drag you in", he added, in a serious tone.

And quite right, there it was. Edi had not seen anything like it. The walls and ceiling of the cave stopped, and there was something like a membrane, like an entire wall of water rising before them. Rushing and rumbling like a waterfall, yet curiously silent, and protecting them from the unimaginable masses of water - practically an entire ocean just waiting to fall in on them, to crush them under its weight, drag them into malicious torrents, and fill their lungs with salt water.

"What... In God's name is that? A bubble wall? A... What?", Edi wheezed out, panicking.

"That, my boy, is the 'outer brink'... Or rather, the inner one and the outer one", a calm voice said, coming from behind Edi.

They got past the houses, and into an open zone, seemingly void of any other people or constructions, riddled with signs that read "Warning! Approaching the brink zone. No entry for civilians". All of Edi's hairs were standing upright, all muscles contracting. Yet there was a construction there, a bunker of sorts. The sign read "Private property - do keep out", yet the sensei had a key for the unnecessarily big padlock.

The company entered a chamber of equipment - diving equipment, to be more precise. It had gigantic, bulky diving suits hanging on the walls all over. Harpoon guns that seemed to be attachable to the suits. Shell cases like he had not seen before, marked "predator repellant".

"We are running teams of three and three - we will go with group 'Yankee' initially. Suit up, and we will demonstrate the mechanics and go over what we want from you today out there", one of the commanders briefed.

An older chap grabbed a suit, stepped into it, screwed on one arm and got help with the other, and the finisher was the enormous helmet. A commander set on his harpoon gun and loaded up his other arm with the "predator repellant" shells. Two younger guys followed his example, and soon, the three were ready. All of them stepped out of the bunker, and into the open field. Some 60 to 50 feet from the water wall.

"See the shark? Up there", the older guy called out from within his 'astronaut helmet'. He pointed to the top of the wall, where the contours of a majestic, blood-thirsty fish roaming for a feast, was visible. The sensei got in front of everyone, and he was wearing the arms of a suit.

"Look, men. The assignment here is to get acquainted with your gear. We suit up, step past the 'inner brink', where the pressure is pretty similar to what we have here. There, you will know whether or not your suit is intact and ready to begin adjusting to the pressure outside of the bubble we are currently inside of", he shouted out across the field. Every man listening intently. "We look out for our partners, and keep track of the coms, alerts in our own suits - and we breathe properly", he stressed. "Now, I will demonstrate the equipment we have to defend ourselves against any intruder", he said eagerly, setting back his harpoon.

Edi sat on a heap of wet sand, confused. Nervous. He tried meeting the look of any comrade. But all of them paying full attention to the sensei, who was firing his shots at a target that had been set up some distance away. He took a shot and fully impaled the target.

"I grew up just by the brink zone, just over there", a guy next to Edi half-whispered, and pointed in the direction they had come from. It was the guy that supposedly had "worked at the power plant", according to a chill dude from before. "My mum told me a story of a boy that once had been playing just by the brinks. A pair of razor-sharp jaws had burst through the water and grabbed him, dragged him into the water", he said - Edi paying all his attention to this little, terrifying horror story. "The boy's mother had just seen the vertical waters being bloodied, and he was gone forever", he said.

Edi was baffled. "Are we... Underseas? Is that an ocean?" he asked and pointed to the still, vertical waters.

The guy winked. "Stay away from the brinks", he repeated.