Luo Shu held his last breath, disoriented in the churning darkness, while the Pickup Truck Transformer fought a desperate rearguard action behind him.
The hulking machine wasn't going down without a fight. Its spinning wheels shattered skeletal pirates like glass, buying Luo Shu precious seconds. But the Black Pearl had an endless supply of undead crew—for every skeleton smashed, two more leaped from the ship's decks.
"Ants can kill an elephant."
And the truck was no elephant.
Its silicon-reinforced frame was gouged with cuts, its windshield shattered, its cabin flooded. It was now, by all definitions, a waterlogged wreck.
But Luo Shu was the one truly out of time.
One minute.
That's all the air he had left.
One minute to find the surface or drown.
A Higher Critic
Somewhere in the narrative layers, an observer scoffed:
"Pathetic. This 'protagonist' can't even handle a pirate ship? Waste of my attention."
Luo Shu ignored the jab, flipping frantically through the Anomaly Compendium.
Options for aquatic survival?
SCP-109 (Infinite Canteen) – "Water from the stars."
Useless. No cosmic H₂O would quench Negro Perta's vengeance.
Bermuda Vortex's Counter-Spin – A desperate anti-vortex attempt.
Failed. The currents shredded it instantly.
"Go With the Flow" – The rum bottle's legacy.
He activated it—and saw the water's hidden order.
Violent upwellings from the breached fissure.
Chaotic eddies squeezing through narrow passages.
And—there!—a laminar flow, a smooth highway leading straight up.
Fluid dynamics saved his life.
Luo Shu kicked into the current, thrusters at full power, riding the surge toward the surface.
The Vortex Above
The Bermuda Vortex, now 50 meters wide, churned like a grinding wheel of death—sand, stone, and debris whirling in its maw.
Even if Luo Shu avoided being sucked in, the abrasive torrent would flay him alive.
Then—the truck made its move.
It surfaced through the vortex's eye, Luo Shu clinging to its ruined frame, using its body as a shield against the grinding storm.
The truck was a wreck:
Windows gone.
Doors torn off.
Wheels missing.
Body warped.
A scrap-heap refugee—but it held.
The God's Decision
From the sky, The Administrator watched coldly.
The deaths below meant nothing. The vortex's escape? Irrelevant.
But then—he saw the truck.
He saw Luo Shu.
A phone call. Two sentences:
"Bowe. Nuke Guantanamo. Now."
No explanations. No hesitation.
Whether Luo Shu escaped the vortex or not—The God would erase the entire site.