With that, he left the bathroom, returning to his room. His colleagues were still sleeping; only Fen was missing, having just gone to the toilet. The bathroom was a big communal one shared by the whole floor.
He sat down at the singular desk they had in the room and looked out the small rectangular window. Outside he could see the blue world that he called home. He could hear the ocean waves slowly splashing against the edge of the city and smell the salty air that was everpresent on a city floating across the sea.
Dark thoughts entered his mind again as he saw scenario after scenario flash by his eyes, in none of which he had a happy ending. Too dark were the stories he had heard from his friends and others who had seen certain things. Of people awakening, becoming "tainted" and then just vanishing, as if swallowed by the earth... or, well, the sea, in their circumstance.
Others told of people who had managed to get through their training only to find a violent end to some things that lived under the ocean or on some hidden island somewhere. He had only sparsely heard of anyone getting through that, and even then he had never heard anything about any happiness these people felt.
And now he was one of the unlucky few who had been "blessed" to awaken. He couldn't feel anything different about himself, but he knew exactly what had happened. He remembered the feeling that had woken him, the things he had seen and felt in the mirror. It was all just as the government announced it. He put his head into his hands and stared into the distance for a while.
Behind him the door opened, and Fen re-entered the room. "Hey Nemo, not going back to bed?" Nemo turned and looked at Fen. The youth was of a similar height to him but much stronger. He had also worked at the harbor for 2 years longer.
Other than that, Fen had the typical blonde to white hair that most people atop Atlantis had, and while his eyes were not the typical light blue, they were still blue, just with some brown, just like Nemo's own.
"No, I don't feel like sleeping anymore. By the way, I dreamed of something and wanted to ask you something." Fen, who had been ascending the ladder to his bed, quickly climbed up, lay down, and covered himself with his thin blanket.
"Sure, tell me what you want to know." Nemo suddenly felt a bit nervous. The topic he was going to bring up was normally a taboo one, since many people had lost a friend or family member to the rooting.
One such person was Fen, whose sister had become tainted when they had both been around the age of six. Years went by when suddenly an officer came to inform Fen of her death. Until this day it was a sore spot for the always happy and vibrant young guy.
"Can you... could you tell me..." Nemo hesitated to talk about it. Fen looked at him expectantly. I know I'm going to ask it anyway; I should just say it quickly. "Can you remember how it was when your sister became tainted?"
Nemo could feel the mood shifting before he could see the change in Fen's expression. Still, to his credit, he did not immediately turn around and break the conversation off.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I dreamed that I got tainted myself and was scared." Nemo lied. Fen seemed a bit suspicious but decided to answer nonetheless.
"I don't know what I could tell you that you don't know yourself already. Once you are tainted and the government knows of it, they take you away to get trained. Then after training, you get thrown out to complete tasks until you find your inevitable and unknowing death. What else do you want to know?"
Nemo looked at him. He could see the frustration of his friend, but deep down he could also see his pain and the helplessness he must have felt when they took his sister.
"Why do you say that all of them die?"
His friend looked at him as if he was talking to a crazy person.
"Have you not lived in this city your whole life?" What is the life expectancy of the newly tainted? 1 in 5, maybe 1 in 10? Please, you are just deluding yourself if you think that the awakened are heroes. They are only heroes as long as they live; after that, they become martyrs, and one or two years later, everyone forgets about them."
Fen had gotten louder during his answer and awakened the other men sleeping in the room.
"What are you guys yelling about?"
A sleepy voice came from the bed under Fens.
"Don't butt in; Nemo just asked Fen about his sister."
Another voice answered him, coming from the bed under Nemos.
"Is he stupid? He should know better than to ask such questions."
"We all know he is stupid; what I didn't know is that he was also tactless, not letting poor Fen have his peace of mind."
Nemo was embarrassed. He had thought he had been quiet enough for none of them to wake up, but it seemed they had heard most, if not all, of the conversation. At least the awkward tension of the earlier conversation had been erased by his friends.
"What good is it anyway to talk about these things? It's not like we won't have to be at work tomorrow, busting our asses to fix the nets of Mr. Clyde or Mr. Harris."
"That is very true."
Nemo looked around at the sleepy faces that had lifted themselves up from all the beds around him. He could feel bittersweet emotions rising in his heart. He knew these people, and he liked them a lot.
They were similar to him in temperament, and they got along very well. He would have liked to spend his life among similar people, but fate had something different in store for him. It had death, pain, and suffering for him. No happiness, no relief, no family, nor peace.
Nemo did not know just how right his fears would turn out to be.