Unraveling the Mystery

The spray was salty against Sam's face as the ship plowed through the waves. Some unshakeable feeling, some incessant, maddening prickling of unease, gnawed at him. His eyes fell upon the rows of capsules lining the hold, their sterility reflected back by the dim overhead lights. Something about it was wrong.

He elbowed Akhtar, who was staring with great concentration out of a porthole, a deep crease etched between his brows. "Akhtar, you alright?" There was a tinge of concern in Sam's voice. Akhtar popped out of the spell of his thoughts, and his eyes blinked as if disoriented. "Huh?" he blinked. "Yeah, yeah, fine. What's up?" "These capsules," Sam gestured towards the belts of rows, "they have oxygen. Why? What are they really for?" He furrowed his brow a bit more in thinking about what Sam was saying, and then a flicker of realization was caught by his eyes. "Damn, you're right," he whispered to himself. "I never even thought about that," went on Akhtar. Just then, brisk with determination, interrupted Arjun's voice: "I know how to open them." Sam and Akhtar turned around with surprise etched on their faces. "How?" they both nearly chorused. A mischievous glint lit up the eyes of Arjun. "Each of them has a button on the backside; if somebody falls in, the button will get pressed and the outer shell will pop open." His determination increased. Both looked at each other and started pushing the capsules. Their muscles were straining the push and grasp motion tightly in hopes of triggering the opening mechanism. Suddenly, Arjun yelped and then plunged headfirst into one of the pods, with a surplus of mechanical hissing filling the air. The capsule hissed open, revealing what was inside. Sam, Akhtar, and Arjun kept mum. Inside the capsule, resting in its soft lining, was a baby. Not some sort of weird bioengineered specimen but a regular, fairly healthy human being. Their lungs seemed to have been punched right out of their bodies with the What the—discovery. It was illogical; it broke the ability to understand what their mission was all about. What were these babies doing here? What kind of operation were they entangled in? Cold dread began to settle over them as this horrifying truth started to dawn. Their father's experiment—a labyrinth of secrets, much more twisted than they ever could have imagined—weighed on them but stoked a fire also. Having discovered something monstrous, the thirst for knowledge has never been stronger. The need to visit this new, strange darkness, so as to know the truth about these little babies and darkness just beneath the surface in their world, had pulsed a newfound urgency through them. United with a new purpose, it had become incumbent on Sam, Akhtar, and Arjun to agree and continue the journey. The members had been thrown into this fight—in this struggle, which was growing terrible—but, undeterred, they all decided at all costs to get to the bottom of the capsules.