The flotilla of steamships continues its voyage to your destination...

Your sea voyage is relatively calm for the next couple of days.

Brittany has become a little more capricious and easily tired.

You have quite easily managed to notice her jealous glances at you and your other female companions.

You have also begun to notice that she sometimes has bouts of nausea.

Elijah N. Moore was overcome with anticipation of the upcoming achievement of his goal these days.

Republic of Florida…

After centuries of wandering through dangerous post-apocalyptic wastelands, he was finally close to finding a new home for himself and his family.

Your new female companion Xinying Wang was rather modest and a little shy of your other companions. However, they were mostly friendly to her appearance on the ship.

Rear Admiral Lajos Buchanan does not communicate with you much. He is busy leading the sailors and planning the sailing route. And, it seems, he is unhappy with the very fact that the flotilla had to change its usual sailing route and visit the Great Community of Petronius. You sense some anxiety in his gaze and in his phrases.

"The sea does not tolerate carelessness and mistakes, Mr. Blake ..." - Lajos Buchanan prefers to answer your attempts at questioning only with such abstract phrases.

On the last day of your stay on the territory of a strange settlement located on the rusty ruins of a pre-war oil platform, you tried to find at least something useful among the things of Vern Mikes.

Alas, this ghoul was of little help to you.

It seems that the most useful technical devices in this settlement have long since broken down (or were sold to someone in exchange for more sought-after resources).

The President of the Great Community of Petronius answered your questions, but you quickly realized that he had been living an isolated life for hundreds of years and that he had little interest in the changed world (exception - trading with pirate captains, which allowed his settlement to obtain the necessary resources for survival).

The settlement he leads is one of the transit sea points used by pirates. But this settlement is far from the only such point. You managed to learn from him that the shores of the continent to the northeast of here are covered with jungle and that among these jungles there are some inconspicuous bays where pirate fleets can find refuge.

Vern Mikes also allowed you to study old journals and books that had been stored in his office for hundreds of years.

Among the piles of old documentation, you found only information confirming the history of the origin of this strange settlement located in the middle of the sea. Hoping to eventually find some useful information (such as possible locations where other similar settlements might have arisen), you took with you the half-rotted documentation about this oil platform and read it in the evenings in your cabin.

What you read was information about the pre-war situation, which was radically changed by the Catastrophe of the Nuclear Global War: "Petronius is a deepwater compliant tower oil platform built from 1997 to 2000 and operated by Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico, 210 km (130.5 mi) southeast of New Orleans, United States.

A compliant piled tower design, it is 640 meters (2,100 ft) high to the tip of flare boom from the mudline (sea floor) and was arguably the tallest free-standing structure in the world, until surpassed by the Burj Khalifa in 2010. This claim is disputed since only 75 meters (246 ft) of the platform are above water and it is unknown if the structure could support itself on land, as it is partially supported by buoyancy.

The platform is located to exploit the Petronius field, discovered in 1995 in Viosca Knoll (block VK 786) and named after Petronius, the Roman writer. The seabed is 535 m (1,754 ft) below the platform. The compliant tower design is more flexible than conventional land structures to cope better with sea forces. It can deflect (sway) in excess of 2% of height. Most buildings are kept to within 0.5% of height in order to have occupants not feel uneasy during periods of movement.

Construction began in 1997 by J. R. McDermott with the seabed mooring system. The contract for the platform was budgeted at $200 million with total costs of around $500 million. The 4000-tonne North Module was installed in November 1998, but the attempt to install the slightly lighter South Module in December of that year ended with the unit on the seabed. A replacement module was built and installed in May 2000.

In the period 2030-2035, as a result of the US government's emergency policy in the area of ​​accelerated increase in oil production, the facilities and structures of this oil production platform were expanded…»

As you read these lines, you felt sadness and bitterness due to the realization that the scientific and technological development of human civilization has been thrown back many centuries.

And this whole nightmare on a planetary scale happened due to the fault of humans themselves...

"At least I have a chance to soon reach at least some settlement on whose territory there are at least relatively acceptable conditions for civilized life..." - you think, trying to fall asleep in bed.

Alas, the hope of quickly reaching the goal of your journey collides with an extremely unpleasant manifestation of the surrounding cruel post-apocalyptic reality...

On the morning of the third day after the departure of the flotilla of steamships from the territory of the Great Community of Petronius, you wake up from loud screams coming from the corridor...

You quickly jump out of bed and get dressed...

Leaving the cabin, you see that groups of armed sailors are running onto the deck...

"What happened?!" - almost none of them are distracted to answer your question.

You barely manage to get to the captain's cabin on a ship.

Rear Admiral Lajos Buchanan looks angry, he is shouting orders at his subordinates. His tone is demanding and peremptory.

Before you can approach him, the deck of the steamship tilts slightly!

A little more and you would have fallen, losing your balance!

Glancing briefly in your direction, the Rear Admiral says: "Damn reefs! This is the very reason I didn't want our ships to deviate from their normal sailing route!"

It seems that sailing the ships on a new route really did lead to trouble...

The steamship shakes again...

You fall to the floor, as do some of the sailors present in the captain's cabin.

Screams...

And you also hear the sounds of gunfire from the ship's cannons and machine guns!

You stand up, almost tripping over a chair that rolls across the floor due to the tilt of the deck.

Lajos Buchanan looks out the open window.

Through the telescope he sees something more terrifying than the reefs...

"Volley from the starboard side!" - the Rear Admiral orders in a hoarse voice.

You, realizing that your presence is only a hindrance, run out of the captain's cabin.

Running out onto the deck, you see how the sailors are firing from the ship's cannons and machine guns.

The target of this shooting...

What you see ahead...

It's simply terrifying...

One of the steamships, moving ahead, seems to have collided with the reefs.

But the problems do not end there...

Now the entire hull of this steamship is engulfed in the huge slimy tentacles of some colossal sea predator.

Perhaps this monster was once something like a squid...

But over hundreds of years of exposure to radiation (and something else), the mutations of this creature have led to a nightmarish result.

And now you see that this disgusting giant predator is grabbing bodies of sailors with huge tentacles (the length of which is longer than the height of a ten-story building).

The bodies of people are squeezed by the disgusting flesh of the monster...

The bodies quickly turn into a bloody mass...

The screams of people seized by horror...

The huge mutant squid devours the flesh of dozens of people, grabbing their bodies with terrifying ease and speed.

All this time, the two other steamships are firing at the sea monster from all possible weapons.

However, this colossal mutant squid does not seem to be frightened by this shooting...

The monster's tentacles cover the deck and the entire hull of the ship...

A deafeningly loud crack is heard!

With horror, you see that the hull of the steamship, which has fallen into a critical situation, is being destroyed.

The tentacles wrap around the entire deck of this ship...

A piece of the hull separates from the main mass of the ship...

The steamship begins to sink quickly...

Volleys from cannons...

Probably, some damage was done to the monster after all...

The monster makes a disgusting sound, because of which you fall to the deck and cover your ears in pain.

You lose consciousness for a short time.

In the meantime, the two surviving steamships change their route.

Both ships turn sharply in a northeasterly direction.

At this time, in the captain's cabin, Rear Admiral Lajos Buchanan gives orders to his subordinates: "Damn all this shit! We've lost one ship out of three! A hundred corpses! And this fucking monster is probably not the only predator living in the waters of this reef! I want to save at least the remaining people! I order you to turn towards the coastline and follow the usual route! This way we have a better chance of not encountering a new danger!"

At about the same moment, in the ship's hospital, an elderly woman named Sarah Laverien, who is the ship's doctor, is treating the injuries of those few sailors who managed to leave the ship destroyed by the monster and save themselves by swimming.

The thoughts of this short, elderly mulatto woman are far from complacent: "Fucking boastful idiot-narcissist Montgomery Ratcliffe! The deaths and injuries of these young guys will be on your conscience, bastard! Your fantasies of expansion could lead the Republic of Florida to disaster… Unless true patriots take proper measures beforehand…”