Anger began to burn within Aimee, and it blew apart any diplomacy she had planned. “Your mission?” Her jaw jutted, and she lifted her head. “You think you can take ownership of American property?” She smiled at the way his head turned to her a fraction. “That’s right, that derelict submarine is the Sea Shadow. You try and even set foot on it, and there’ll be war… and one you can’t win.”
Yang sauntered closer. “You still think you can win a war with us?” He threw his head back and barked out a single laugh. “Our cyber-technologists will shut down your launch programs before they even start.” He leered at her. “By the time you figure out what went wrong, your country will be ash.”
Aimee lunged at him. “You fucking…”
Yang’s backhand knocked her down. Shenjung and Soong rushed to her, shielding her, but Aimee pushed them away, and wiped her mouth.
“You weak sonofabitch, you’re as good as dead, and don’t even know it. One by one, either in the next few minutes or hours, the thing down here will catch you, rip you to shreds, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. You can’t even hide, because it will find you, dig you out, and rip walls apart to get at you.”
She felt exhausted, beaten. “Forget the submarine. We need to be gone from here, and we need much better defenses. At least combine your forces with the HAWCs. That way we might, just might, be able to make it.”
Yang tilted his head. “So it’s our supplies, ammunition, and protection you need? If you think we will assist your team, you are wrong.”
Aimee’s head dropped for a moment. “We’re all going to die.” She looked up slowly, turning to Soong. “Make sure you stay in the center of the group, don’t lag behind. Predators always pick off the stragglers first.”
Aimee exhaled in exasperation. She suddenly realized that she had failed. She followed the thought — if she failed, then there was no turning the Chinese back from trying to get to the submarine. The future was set, and there would be justification for conflict — war. Millions would die, and she was here, and Joshua up there. She felt a cramp in her stomach at the thought of him being alone.
“Ho!” Yang pointed, and the team marched on.
The gunshots jerked Alex back to his senses. They were close, and he recognized the sound of the handgun — a Glock 22, plastic casing, feather light with a lot of punch, and an excellent weapon for wet environments. It was a jungle weapon and also part of the HAWC arsenal.
He slowed as he burst into a clearing and skidded to a stop. The trees were flattened, some of them with trunks a half dozen feet across, and others sunk deep into the soft ground as if something heavy had pushed into the jungle and rested there. There was a coating of ammoniac slime over everything that hung in the air like a stinging mist. Alex eased back into the tree line, wary. He knew that the nightmare predator that stalked, and probably attacked, his people was the most successful and inventive monstrosity that he had ever faced. His best chance of survival — everyone’s best chance of survival — was to simply avoid it.
Alex let the vines fall in front of him, and remained motionless. Aimee had once told him that cephalopods had acute vision that was triggered by movement. He just let his eyes travel over the foliage of the hundred feet of crushed plants, and the canopy and edges, looking for anything, no matter how camouflaged, that might have hinted at its presence.
Alex’s enhanced vision could pick up details at a granular level and also allowed perfect sight in night-black environments that was well beyond normal human vision. He could also “see” thermal variations. If something was warmer or colder than its surroundings, he would know it.
After another moment he stepped out and walked a few paces into the clearing. There was something black and glistening red, incongruous among the mud browns and drab greens. He quickly moved to it, snatching it up. He recognized it — he wore the same thing. It was an armored HAWC suit, its ceramic plating and Kevlar weave tough enough to withstand a shotgun blast, but here it was torn apart like paper. It was coated with streaks of blood and gore. The creature had taken at least one of the HAWCs, had peeled them out of the suit, and he could guess what happened after that. He dropped the armor, its obliterated remnants making it impossible to even guess who it had belonged to.
Alex wiped his hands. They were sticky, as the blood hadn’t fully coagulated — it was minutes fresh. Both his team and the thing were close by.
Come on guys, Hammerson would have made you read the reports, he whispered. You know what you’re up against. Alex reached out again — he could still sense the huge presence, but it was further out now, and moving away. He grabbed for his signal finder, quickly checking the readout and then cursing. The predator was headed in the same direction he needed to go… and the direction he bet his HAWCs had gone.
“Damnit, it’s tracking them.”
“Alex.”
He turned at Cate’s voice, and stepped in front of the bloody debris. “Stay there.”
She froze, wheezing, her face beet red. “What is it?” She gasped. “I can smell… phew… cat pee.”
“Ammonia; it exudes it. Allows it to leave the water without drying out.”
“This thing — is it your Kraken?”
“My Kraken?” Alex turned to face the cliffs. “Yeah, my Kraken,” he whispered. He imagined the beast pursuing the HAWCs, or maybe traveling parallel to their position, staying just out of sight. Its huge, boneless body keeping compressed and low, flowing around and over the trees and foliage like a slimy, muscular wave as it kept them in sight, staying close to its food… or its new toys.
Cate looked from the massive depression in the foliage, and then up at him, her eyes round. “This big? There’s nothing like this in the fossil record.”
“Yes, there is. According to one of the scientists who was with us, it was called an orthocone.”
Cate frowned, looking around again. “Cameroceras, orthoconic cephalopods, I know them. They were the apex predator of their time. But that was during the Ordovician period, hundreds of millions of years ago. And they only grew to about thirty feet, max.” She waved an arm around at the flattened trees. “This thing must have been…” Her lips compressed. “Hundreds of feet.” Her brow creased even further. “And it had a large conical shell, like some sort of mollusk.”
Alex kept his eyes on the jungle. “Seems it had plenty of time to evolve. It’s still the apex predator, but it’s developed a whole bunch of new skills.” He looked around. “It only used the shell in the water, and could leave it behind when it wanted to pursue us into the caves. It was able to flatten its body, get into the smallest of crevices, flowing almost like liquid. And it was a mimic — a very good mimic.” He looked at her.
She was frowning as she listened, but nodded. “Many creatures, and certainly many cephalopods, can mimic their surroundings, or even other animal shapes… in a fashion.”
“Not like this thing,” Alex responded. “It could create near perfect images of our people. Once it had ingested them, it could… become them.”
“That’s impossible.” She turned away, arms folded.
“That’s what I would have said… before.” He sighed and looked past her towards the dark sea. “Maybe it felt it only needed the shell in the water. Maybe your leviathan friends out there caused it to retain its armor. Got a weakness, after all.” He wondered how he could use this, but quickly gave up. “We’ve got to hurry, there were gunshots.” Alex looked down at her, wishing he could leave her behind, but knowing that would spell her death. Urgency now coiled within him. “Cate, we need to try and catch up… with my team.”