10 X 18: DOMINION By Martin Category: Casefile Rating: R for language E-mail : rossprag@fgi.net The Windy City becomes a city of terror when an unknown denizen of the deep surfaces in Lake Michigan...

Lake Michigan

Chicago

10:56 p.m.

This was how Jared Stackhouse often envisioned his perfect world: An inky sky spattered with the cold, dead stars of a distant galaxy, reflected on an undulating expanse of equivalent nothingness. An Earth depopulated of everyone “smarter” or “more mature” than himself, of everything that stood in the way of the few things that brought him any solace or joy. A planet for Jared Stackhouse alone.

On one of the rare occasions when Jared strayed from MTV or Skinemax, Jared had watched an old Twilight Zone that had featured The Penguin. He didn’t know who Burgess Meredith was, only knew he was The Penguin from Batman , one of the few old-time shows (aside from the occasional Twilight Zone ) that passed Jared’s test of cool. It was kind of like Austin Powers, without the sex (which was unfortunate, Jared thought any time Julie Newmar donned that skintight catsuit on TVLand, wished he could get himself some of that).

Anyway, The Penguin (on the Twilight Zone) was this geek who worked in the New York Public Library. All he wanted was to enjoy the thousands of books around him, but his boss and his old lady were control freak assholes who were always climbing his butt. Jared had thought the old guy was a re-tard for wanting to read books all the time, but he could understand people fucking with you every time you just wanted to have some fun. Jared, more than most of his friends, understood this. Penguin just wanted to par-tay, even if it was in a lame way.

Anyway. The Penguin went down to the library basement one day to sneak a peek at one of his precious books (not even a Hustler or other suitable whacking material), and somebody nuked the place – microwaved New York until all the cheese and sauce turned into a nasty crust. Jared almost got hard thinking about it, though he didn’t see how The Penguin would have survived (he tried to surf stuff about bombs on Google, but he mistyped and wound up spending the afternoon perusing boobs). The rest of the show had something to do with The Penguin piling up all the books he could find in humongous stacks and getting ready to read ‘em all (whatever, dude) when his glasses get busted. Jared thought that was pretty cool and laughed his ass off, all empathy for The Penguin lost.

But the thought of that Earth, burnt and scorched, all of the assholes nuked like organ-filled chimichangas (except maybe a few hot babes), nobody bitching and nothing to do for the rest of all time, that had stuck with Jared, a wet dream for the young and alienated. Tonight was the closest he’d come to envisioning this perfect world, as he lay on his back between the inky sky and the undulating water of Lake Michigan .

The only thing that spoiled this illusion tonight was the blinking lights of the Sears Tower and the Hancock and the titans that taunted him from nearly a mile away off the Lake Shore. And Shawn, who’d had like a 6-pack of Coronas and a half-bottle of Quervo and who wouldn’t shut his fucking mouth for one second.

“Dude, your dad’s gonna fuckin’ ground your fuckin’ ass ‘til you’re fuckin’ 40 he finds out you ripped his boat,” Shawn, the son of one of Chicago’s preeminent investment bankers, sang, sounding like some boy band queer on a scratched CD.

“Shut up,” Jared muttered.

“Yep, the Congressman gonna reinstate the death penalty just for you, dude,” Shawn began the second chorus.

“Shut. The fuck. Up,” Jared growled. “Swear to God, man.”

The banker’s son and the congressman’s son, both on the advancing edge of 17, were floating on U.S. Rep. Daniel Stackhouse’s (R-Ill.) marine cruiser, which they’d snuck past the port authorities and Coast Guard and taken roughly a mile out. Indeed, although he had no jurisdiction or authority to reverse ex-Gov. Ryan’s death penalty moratorium, Rep. Stackhouse would find some draconian parental penalty for his errant son, when he showed up. This time around, Jared had slipped the leash – i.e., the private high school in which Stackhouse, staunch defender of public education, had secured his son – two days ago, and he and Shawn had clubbed and drugged their way through the Lower Loop before remembering where the congressman left his extra keys.

The boat lurched, rolling Shawn into Jared. Jared shoved him away, and the Clear Majority shifted again.

“Jesus, dude,” Shawn yelled, clamoring to his feet. The endless lake was black and smooth and the night sky crisp and transparent, but the vessel listed and rocked as if the boys were battling a storm at seas.

“Fucking chill,” Jared directed. “I’m gonna check the cabin.”

Before Jared and Daniel Stackhouse had reached Stage Four Cold War status a year or so ago, the legislator had taught his son all the ins and outs of navigating the expensive watercraft, and Jared instinctively checked all the instruments and equipment. Nothing out of line, but the boat was still flailing.

Throwing open the door to the cabin used largely for drinking and sun poisoning/motion sickness recovery, he quickly ascertained the cause of the tumult. Water was gushing into the compartment at an alarming rate – too rapid a rate for the pumps to handle. Jared felt a cold rush of fear that sliced clean through all the booze and grass he’d done that evening.

But underneath an almost impenetrable layer of adolescent alienation and indulgence, Jared possessed a 135 IQ and a keen sense of survival that until lately had shepherded him through several academic crises and a sexual misadventure with one of his father’s colleagues. He scrambled for the radio as the proper frequency flooded back into his brain. The cruiser continued to list, and that dumbass Shawn was yelling his head off, as if anyone could hear them in the middle of a fucking Great Lake.

The Coast Guard crewman responded crisply, trained militarily to notch down emotion and provide reassurance to civvies who’d screwed themselves into a watery corner.

“We’re goin’ down, man!” Jared yelled. “We’re fuckin’ taking on water. It’s like something punched a hole in the hull! You gotta get here NOW!”

“Calm down, son,” the officer said smoothly. “You know your approximate location?”

Jared’s eyes swept the instruments, and he rattled off the Clear Majority ’s bearings.

“You got a flare gun on board?”

“Shit – I don’t know! Wait, I’ll check it out.” The boy quickly located it under the instrument panel, leaned outside, fired a screaming flare into the black sky, and watched it blossom. Jared grabbed the handset.

“Good man. You think you can make it a few more minutes, ‘til we get there?” The transmission began to break up, and Jared was hit with a wall of static.

“I don’t know – it’s filling up pretty fucking fast!”

“You got enough jackets for everybody?” The officer’s voice came weakly through the interference.

“Yeah, I-I think.”

“Get ‘em on and keep this line open. Roger?”

“Yeah.” Jared no sooner had answered than a shrill shriek broke the silent night.

“What was that, son?” the voice on the other end crackled. “Somebody hurt?”

Jared didn’t hear him – he’d rushed outside to see his friend flailing toward him, eyes wide, mouth working. Shawn looked like some mime asshole they’d pranked in Lincoln Park , some geek in white makeup pushing against an imaginary wind.

“Shawn! What the fuck?” Jared yelled. Then his feet froze to the deck. Shawn had some sort of weird belt or girdle or something on. It was mottled, like a palomino, and it looked like wet leather. Had the moron tethered himself to the rail? With what?

“Huh-huh-huh-huh…” Shawn whispered hoarsely. He couldn’t get the word out, but Jared knew. Especially after the belt around his middle shifted and tightened itself. Shawn released a heart-wrenching sob and reached for his friend. Suddenly, he was yanked backward, his back smacking violently into the railing. Shawn’s legs buckled, and as Jared’s breath caught, the teen’s body was squeezed through the rails and he disappeared into the darkness.

“SON! SON! WHAT THE HELL’S GOING DOWN THERE?!?” Jared heard the radio blaring through a new crackle of heavy static, but he was locked in place despite the groaning and rocking of his father’s boat.

A dark shape emerged from the water, grasping the rail. A second followed, and a third. They were long, snakelike appendages, mottled like the belt around Shawn’s waist. The arms, legs, whatever tightened, and Jared knew whatever was attached was ready to board.

It was larger than he had expected, and its vague familiarity did nothing to ease the flow of adrenalin through his organs and joints. Perched at the edge of the rail, it stopped, and an eye blinked open – a huge, inhuman eye with a rectangular pupil, but all the more chilling because there was something vaguely human within it.

It took Jared a few seconds to identify that something.

Intelligence.

The captain of the Coast Guard cutter felt Jared’s screams in his bones.

Shedd Aquarium

Chicago

11 p.m.

The Rhinoptera bonasus reflected in Seth Kristakos’ round lenses as it circled its tank in the Caribbean Reef. The cownose ray was deceptively placid – its streamlined tail could deliver a deadly dose of venom to the foolhardy predator. While he was a malacologist by training, Kristakos was fascinated as well by the lower vertebrates and cartilaginous fish – bridges between two major domains of earthly existence, transitional species in the movement toward applicable intelligence and, therefore, dominance over the planet.

Of course, a central nervous system and the beginnings of a mechanically advanced skeletal system does not necessarily gain a species admittance to the zoological Mensa Club. Kristakos had been present when the Shedd’s giant Pacific octopus had extracted a live clam from a closed pickle jar in something under three minutes. Scientists now realized the cephalopods – the squids and octopi – had developed along lines of intelligence that could well parallel Man’s.

Humankind in its sublime egotism equated opposable thumbs and spoken language, Starbucks and Survivor with supreme intelligence, but that yardstick was created by Man’s own mind. While he was a reasonably observant Greek Orthodox as well as a renowned oceanographer, Kristakos was open to the concept of a divine agenda with humanity as but one cosmic player. This line of speculation had caused more than one lively debate both at St. Sophia’s and with colleagues prone toward more politically correct atheism.

“Dr. Krista-, Kristakos!”

The hefty scientist turned sharply. The night crew was used to his nocturnal meanderings through the Shedd’s darkened wings and rattlings and murmurings in the labs beyond the public’s view. But the custodial and security staffs, largely African-American and Latino, still frequently stumbling over his name.

“Guillermo,” Kristakos nodded genially. The tall, mustachioed maintenance man halted, panting, before him.

“Doc, I think maybe there’s somethin’ wrong with one of your fish,” Guillermo Ortiz blurted. “You better come.”

Kristakos knew there’d been an infection problem with a couple of the Hippocampos – seahorses – downstairs, but that wasn’t his particular area of expertise. “Maybe we should call Dr. Whitten.”

“No, no,” Guillermo insisted. “Not a fish, your, you, know, the octopus. The big one.”

Kristakos’ bearded head shot up. “The giant Pacific?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the custodian said, excited. “He’s, he’s all—Oh, shit, you gotta come with me, Doc.”

The scientist was unusually fleet of feet for his age and girth, and the pair quickly reached the cephalopod’s tank. A few of the night crew, as well as Mike, one of the uniformed security guards, stood transfixed before the tank.

The creature was stationary, its large eye staring incomprehensively toward the human throng. Kristakos was brought up short, and his heart began pounding.

Blood red, cobalt blue, steel gray, mustard yellow, mauve… Octopi were known to rapidly shift colors – this was a communicational device of sorts – but Kristakos had never witnessed such a range of colors or in such lightning-fast succession.

“Christ,” he murmured.

U.S. Coast Guard Salvage Storage Facility

Chicago

Two days later

“I know this is beyond your purview,” Lt. Mark Prendergast began reluctantly. “But we’ve got some contradictory findings here that could use another set of eyes. Pardon me, another couple of sets.”

Monica Reyes turned from the rail of the metal platform that provided a perspective of the Clear Majority’s hull. The cruiser had been upended so the Cook County Police Department and the FBI forensics crews could examine the gaping hole.

“Someone obviously sank this boat,” the FBI agent stated. “But whoever it was was roughly a mile offshore, and your people found no evidence of another craft in the area.”

“Once Capt. Fagerland’s men determined this vessel had been sabotaged – there would have been nothing in the area that could’ve torn the hull open -- we tried our best to preserve the evidence,” the lieutenant explained, his baritone echoing off the corrugated walls of the steel storage building. “But you can understand, with the boat taking on water so rapidly, there was significant contamination of the crime scene, I guess you’d call it. The hull definitely was breached from outside – no chance either of those boys had anything to do with it. Though neither one of them is in any shape to tell us much of anything.”

Shawn Carstairs’ body had not yet been found by any of the Coast Guard cutters continuously scouring the area, and Jared Stackhouse remained in a non-responsive, catatonic state at a Gold Coast hospital. Whatever he’d seen had scared the living shit out of him, and Special Agent John Doggett knew that was why Deputy Director Kersh had asked him and his partner to stay in Chicago after Rep. Stackhouse’s son had been located.

After 9-11, the congressman, who had voiced strong support for military action in Iraq, had not been ready to chalk up Jared’s latest disappearance to juvenile rebellion, and Doggett and Reyes, along with a dozen other local agents, had been dispatched to find the boy.

“Looks almost like it was hacked out,” Doggett observed. “I wanted to sink a boat, I’d probably blow it up, or at least bring along a torch or some kind of heavy-duty tool. Especially I was underwater.”

Prendergast peered again at the breach. “Pretty primitive job, all right. And what’s even more worrisome? That hull’s not exactly made of cotton candy. Even if a group of men did this with hand tools, it would have taken hours. You can see that a lot of these cuts are clean – straight through the hull. Whoever did this had a lot of power behind them.”

“Or whatever,” Reyes murmured.

“Pardon? You didn’t say whatever?”
Doggett smiled slightly. “I think Agent Reyes simply wants to explore all possibilities. Right?”

She nodded earnestly. “Absolutely.”

St. Michael’s Hospital

11:36 a.m.

“So, did you say ‘whatever’?” Doggett asked mischievously as he strode alongside her through the tubular concourse that led to Jared Stackhouse’s private room.

“Actually, I’d think it would seem obvious,” Reyes responded. “A diver or even a crew of divers would have to have come from somewhere, and I assume you’re willing to concede that a Russian nuclear sub or Jacques Cousteau’s bathyscaphe didn’t do this.”

“Now who’s being close-minded? Never mind, don’t answer. But why is ‘what’ still a better answer than ‘who’?”

“The sheer animalistic nature of the damage to the boat, for one,” she ticked off, subconsciously uncurling a finger. “A human being would had to have some motivation for sinking it, no matter how psychotic. Even if the motivation had been psychotic, this could hardly have been an impulsive act, a mile out into Lake Michigan. If it had been premeditated, as you suggested earlier, the saboteur would have brought along more sophisticated equipment, since being that far offshore, working on the hull that long, would have required some pretty sophisticated gear.”

“OK…” Doggett conceded.

“So our suspect must be able to survive for an extended period underwater, have the brute strength to tear through a boat’s hull with fairly primitive tools, and, given the victims and the impulsive nature of their actions, been motivated by a random impulse, such as defense of its domain.”

“Whoa,” her partner exclaimed, halting and then sprinting to catch up. “You’re suggesting some kind of undersea Rottweiler, defending its turf? Flipper with FOX attitude? If this thing you’re talking about lives underwater, what threat does a boat with two snotnose teenagers aboard pose?”
As the glass tube opened into the hospital’s east wing, Monica studied the directional signs and again set off. “If this thing is big enough to do the damage it did, it very well might dominate its environment. Unlike the oceans, Lake Michigan is not densely populated with large predatory creatures. It probably lives relatively unmolested, and the sudden presence of an intelligent creature capable of building and controlling a vessel might bring out its survival instincts. And remember – small, lone pleasure craft probably aren’t that common at night, when the thing can come to the surface without attracting attention.”

“But you’re neglecting one thing. This so-called thing appears to have his own Sears Craftsman card. What animal you know can work a jigsaw or a Phillips screwdriver?”

This time, Reyes stopped, allowing a flock of nurses to swarm past the agents. “Actually, Jane Goodall, the primate researcher, discovered chimps fashion primitive implements to perform certain tasks. Last summer, some scientists at Oxford reported a crow made a hook out of a straight length of wire, to retrieve a small bucket of food.”

“With each passing day, I feel more and more like I’m talking to Mulder in drag,” Doggett grinned grimly. He took his partner by the elbow. “There it is, Miss Mutual of Omaha.”

An attractive woman, suburban chic in her mid-40s by Doggett’s guess, glanced up from a wing chair next to Jared Stackhouse’s bed, placing a novel on a nearby table. Congressman Stackhouse had rented St. Michael’s President’s Suite, but the comfortable setting appeared to offer little relief to Gwen Stackhouse, whose eyes were puffy and vein-streaked, or to her son, whose eyes were open but vacant.

“Ma’am, I’m Special Agent John Doggett, and this is my partner, Monica Reyes,” Doggett greeted, glancing at the handsome, athletic boy hooked to an IV and monitors beside Mrs. Stackhouse. Jared’s mother didn’t rise, but she smiled wanly. “I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but we’re trying to fill in the gaps in what happened to your son.”

“He hasn’t said a word or scarcely moved since they rescued him,” his mother sighed. “All they can guess is he experienced some type of terrible shock. I’ve tried talking to him, reading to him, but nothing appears to work.”

“Had he given you any indication of his plans Saturday night?” Reyes inquired.

Mrs. Stackhouse pushed a lock of grayish blonde hair from her temple. “Like his father, Jared’s willful. Unlike his father, he’s seldom cognizant of the consequences of his actions. He’d periodically disappear from the private school Dan had put…the school Jared attended, usually to drink and do drugs with classmates or horrible people he’d meet in the city. I had no idea how he hooked up with such people. Sorry, no time for class snobbery, I guess. No, he gave us no indication. Dan’s already launched a major investigation into security at the marina.”

Reyes nodded thoughtfully, and then perked. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Doggett turned, but Reyes already was out in the corridor.

“Ah,” he began, not knowing what he could gain here in Reyes’ absence. “Lemme ask you, Mrs. Stackhouse: Who do you think might’ve sabotaged your boat? Does your husband have any enemies, political or otherwise?”

“He is a congressman,” she offered wryly. “Seriously, this is a mystery to me. I can’t imagine some dark conspiracy shadowing my husband’s boat and coming seemingly out of nowhere to sink it. Two boys on a cruiser hardly sounds like a prime terrorist target. If this had been out on the ocean…”
Mrs. Stackhouse paused, and Doggett knelt beside her chair. “Yes, ma’am? If the accident had occurred on the ocean…?”

“No,” she shook her head vigorously. “It’s too absurd.”

Doggett stood, and the two floated in silence until Reyes returned. The agent’s arms were full of books and toys – primarily stuffed animals. Her partner’s jaw dropped, and Gwen Stackhouse peered at her as if she were some interesting documentary on PBS.

Reyes deposited the paraphernalia on a rolling hospital table and wheeled the table to Jared’s bedside. She picked up the first toy, a plush pink shark, and held it before the boy’s unblinking eyes. He might have been a side of beef, Doggett thought.

“Miss, Agent Reyes,” Mrs. Stackhouse murmured, not quite alarmed.

Reyes held up a hand, and picked up a succession of toys, from purple starfish and cerulean blue whales to silvery dolphins and a green sea serpent. Jared’s reaction to each was the same – blind, staring incomprehension.

Reyes selected the final plush animal and displayed it for the teenager. His eyes blinked almost immediately, and he began to swallow. Jared’s fingers twitched, and his legs nudged at the sheets.

Doggett glanced at the boy’s monitors, which suddenly were alive with activity.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Stackhouse gasped as she came out of her chair. “Stop it. Immediately. WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

“Monica…” Doggett warned.

Jared’s jaw began to work, and animal sounds struggled in his throat. His mother lunged at Reyes, seizing the toy animal. She yanked, and part of the plush beast came off in her hand.

Reyes removed what was left from Jared’s view and brushed the agitated boy’s hair back from his forehead until he again became still. Mrs. Stackhouse rushed to him and grasped his motionless fingers. Reyes held the toy out to Doggett, who took it silently, staring at it incredulously.

“No,” he breathed, shaking his head at the partially amputated orange octopus.

Shedd Aquarium

1:20 p.m.

Seth Kristakos licked the last traces of brown German mustard from his plump fingers as he sucked a shred of ham from his teeth. He was returning to the new Scaphopodia studies from Oxford as Sarah, the Shedd’s intern, rapped on his doorway.

“Dr. Kristakos,” the small blonde called timidly. “There are a couple of people here to see you. From…From the FBI.”

The scientist dropped the journal onto his cluttered desk. “FBI? Ah, yes, please – send them in. And if you could, let Dr. Rao know I’ll be a few minutes late for our meeting.”

Sarah disappeared, and a few seconds later, a craggy-faced man with a military haircut and a pretty brunette appeared.

“Wondering when you might show up,” Kristakos smiled, crossing his fingers over his stomach.

**

The main hall of the Shedd was crowded with students, retirees, and tourists both rural and foreign as the agents and Kristakos emerged from the aquarium’s staff quarters.

“The freshwater octopus has been the stuff of urban legends for decades,” he said, ducking a galloping kindergartner. “A few ‘specimens’ have even turned up here in the Midwest – most likely, marine octopuses released as a hoax, abandoned pets. There’s even a chance some saltwater cephalopods may have wandered into freshwater bodies – all octopuses go through a sort of crazy stage called senescence. They wouldn’t last long – cephalopods can’t breathe in fresh water.”

“A number of cryptozoologists believe it may be possible some species simply have evaded detection,” Reyes countered. “Octopuses are bottom dwellers, generally, aren’t they?”

“Well, I don’t want to sound like an academic elitist, Agent, but every bit of documentation I’ve seen is highly suspect at best,” Kristakos said. “There’s one overriding problem with the entire premise. If a freshwater octopus had evolved, there should be some evidence of intermediate species in estuaries – species that would have bridged marine and freshwater cephalopods.”

“OK, then,” Doggett said, extending his hand.

Kristakos held up his hand. “However.”

“Oh, boy,” Doggett sighed.

“This way.”
A large crowd was gathered before the giant Pacific octopus’ tank, and Doggett and Reyes had to badge a gawky, bearded grad student and his video camera away from the glass.

“My God,” Reyes gasped. Doggett’s eyes were wide, and he glanced at Kristakos.

“I’m gonna assume that isn’t normal,” Doggett murmured.

“It’s been doing that for three days now, steady,” the malacologist said. “By our count, it’s cycled through 14 separate colors, in no particular sequence, including at least three shades I’ve never seen in any species. The color shifts themselves are normal: Unlike humans with their central nervous system, cephalopods appear to have ganglia – nerve clusters – distributed throughout their bodies, as well as muscle-controlled chromatophores, cells that cause the color shifts. Changes in color are believed to be a form of communication, though God knows what they mean.”

Doggett nodded as the giant Pacific blushed, then darkened to an inky blue. “So if you don’t know what they mean when they’re just chatting, what the hell does this mean?”

Kristakos studied the tentacled creature. “Well, it’s not precisely a scientific theory, but my guess is it senses something out there, and it either confuses him or scares the living shit out of him.”

“Doc,” Doggett laughed harshly, “my perps usually have two legs. This goes ‘way beyond Agent Reyes and I’s training.”

Reyes stared at the octopus, her brow furrowing. “Except for one thing, John.”

The scientist and the ex-cop turned toward her.

“This is the first time this has happened, correct?” she inquired.

“Absolutely,” Kristakos said.

“Well, then, I have to wonder. If this is a reaction to whatever’s out there, where’s it been all this time?”

Marko’s Olympia

Chicago

6:23 p.m.

Dr. Peter Hefting studied the rich color of his ouzo before savoring a sip of the potent Greek liquor. His liver-spotted forehead wrinkled in rediscovery.

“Dear me,” the old man sighed. “My forays into Greektown are all too infrequent, Seth. When I first came to the States in 1954, this was one of my favorite districts of this marvelous city. Kalamata olives, spanakopita, dolmada, the true miracles of your people, the alphabet noneth.”

Kristakos smiled as he popped a cube of feta cheese into his bearded jaw. “I knew it would draw you out of your cave, Pete.” He turned to Doggett and Reyes, ensconced on the other side of the blue-checkered tablecloth. “You’re fortunate that one of the world’s experts in all things Cephalopoda happens to live in the Windy City. Pete was part of some of the original pioneering research into cephalopod intelligence. Are you familiar with the Marshall Plan, agents?”
“The U.S. program to rebuild Europe after World War II,” Reyes supplied.

“Teacher’s pet,” Doggett replied, a smile on his rugged face.

Kristakos snagged a large purple olive. “Among other things, funds from the Marshall Plan were used to finance research at the Naples Zoological Station into the brain of the octopus, in the late 1940s.”

“Nice to know where my pop’s taxes went,” Doggett commented dryly.

“This was no frivolous research, Agent,” Hefting chided, waggling a stick thin index finger. “The world was merely beginning to plumb the potential of computer science. Your U.S. Air Force engineers hoped the complex nervous system and reputed intelligence of the octopus. A group of us -- Italians, Americans, and Brits like myself – spent years attempting to unlock the secrets of these amazing creatures.”

“How intelligent are they, Dr. Hefting?” Reyes asked. “I’m familiar with some of the research on primates and dolphins.”

“I daresay cephalopods tower well above the rest of the invertebrate world,” the old scientist declared proudly as a darkly beautiful waitress deposited his spinach pie before him. “Much of our work in Naples is, of course, classified, but the documentation of cephalopod intelligence is quite extensive. In 1992, two of my colleagues, Graziano Fiorito and Pietro Scotto, used food and mild electric shocks to train a group of octopuses to differentiate between a red ball and a white one. A second group of octopuses, in another tank, watched the first group repeatedly grab the red ball. The second group learned even more quickly than the first to seize the red ball. That was the first demonstrated example of invertebrates learning by watching behaviors.”

“How are they with tools?” Doggett interjected, sipping his thick black coffee.

Hefting’s head snapped up. “Pardon? Tools?”

“What Dr. Kristakos hasn’t mentioned yet is that this alleged freshwater octopus is suspected of sawing a hole in the bottom of a boat.”

Hefting’s thick brows rose. “The lads in the accident on the lake the other night? Seth, you believe a cephalopod was responsible for that?”
Kristakos shrugged. “I know, I know – the whole notion is absurd.”

“Well, certainly the notion of a freshwater species. But the concept of cephalopod dexterity and strength? Remember the Seattle Aquarium incident, Seth? A 40-pound octopus smashed the quarter-inch Plexiglass lid of its tank. And as far as the ability to manipulate objects, you yourself witnessed your giant Pacific unscrew that jar.”

“But I’d think it would be quite a leap from reasoning out how to open a jar to retrieve a bivalve morsel to sawing methodically through the hull of a boat,” Kristakos protested.

“Convergent evolution,” the white-haired Englishman piped, as if closing a case.

“Well, there you go,” Doggett murmured through a mouthful of ground lamb and grape leaves.

“Convergent evolution explains how species as diverse as insects, birds, and bats developed the ability to fly,” Reyes explained, absorbed. “It’s the way organisms have adapted along parallel lines to meet the demands of their environment. Or, in the case of the octopus, developed a retinal structure remarkably similar to that of the human eye.”

“My God, Seth, I may be in love for the first time since that Japanese oceanographer, what was her name?” Hefting murmured delightedly. “My friend is correct. Who’s to say we aren’t at some new stage of convergence? Scientists are documenting new examples of subhuman tool use every year, and the octopus would appear to be a prime candidate for that next great evolutionary leap. Apes will never win any Darwinian competition with man in the running, and cetaceans – dolphins – may be mental giants within their own ecosystem, but they hardly exhibit the physical attributes necessary to world domination. Cephalopods are masters of adaptive camouflage, can squeeze into confined spaces that would confound the world’s greatest contortionist, and possess a level of mental prowess no other invertebrate can even dream of.”

“So why now?” Reyes posed. “If this super-cephalopod exists, why is it only now attacking boats and sending the native octopus population into a Spectracolor frenzy?”

Kristakos sat back, his face lined with reluctance. “Do you remember I mentioned something called senescence?”
“Squid schizophrenia,” Doggett stated.

“In a manner of speaking. “What if our cephalopod is in some kind of advanced state of senescence, Pete? We don’t know how senescence might manifest itself in unknown cephalopod species. What if, for lack of a better term, this creature is crazy? The violence is a result of its senescence?”

Hefting nodded sagely, then turned to Doggett. “Officer, I wonder if I could bother you to issue an APB for an emotionally deranged, superintelligent, tool-using freshwater giant octopus?”

“Well, when you put it like that….” Kristakos conceded.

Residence of Peter Hefting

9:12 p.m.

Hefting hadn’t got out much since his 81^st birthday, and he had enjoyed the evening despite . Seth was a convivial colleague, one of the few who could keep up with him in malacological discussions. Agent Reyes was both a beguiling woman the scientist might have pursued 40 or 50 years ago and a surprisingly learned individual. Hefting had even relished Doggett’s refreshing honesty and cynical pragmatism.

Reyes was the potential problem, he realized as he threw the locks on his huge oak front door and hung his overcoat in the foyer closet. Doggett was too grounded in proletariat reality to take this notion seriously, much less pursue it to any logical conclusion. The woman was open to all possibilities, and eager to explore the darker recesses. Hefting wondered how such a creature ever was drawn to government work.

The library was warm and comforting, a gas fire blazing in the hearth under the oil painting of the mythological kraken – the likely rationale for most maritime mishaps of a previously “unenlightened” age.

Hefting lowered himself into a luxuriant leather wing chair and plucked the portable phone from its cradle next to the chair. The number was a complex one, but Hefting’s memory had not faded with his physical prowess and libido. The scientist did not bother to mentally calculate the time in the European zone he was calling.

“Yes?” the iron voice at the other end of the line crackled after a single ring.

“Hefting. Our Pandora’s box appears to have been opened. The kraken has been sighted.”

Hefting patiently waited out the silence.

“You are sure of this? It’s been so many years, and the environment out there…How could it possibly have survived?”

“Obviously, your cryogenic energy source exceeded our wildest imaginings. Our dirty little secret is out, and it appears to be hungry for blood.”

“It’s killed?” the man asked.

“Once, and we have a witness. He’ll keep his tongue for the moment, but I fear he may recover soon.”

“And what will he tell anyone? A fantastic tale of sea monsters? One more cryptozoological puzzle for the public to devour and ‘legitimate’ scientists to dismiss.”

“His father is a U.S. congressman, and there are two federal agents on the case.”

More silence. “Nonetheless. I assume they’ve sought your expertise.”

“We theorized a bit, threshed out the possibilities, and, I believe, successfully disposed of the notion.”
“And ‘we’ would include…?”

Hefting gripped the handset anxiously. “And why would you be interested in that? I can assure you they couldn’t possibly conceive of the enormity of what we did.”
“Do I hear a note of guilt?”

“Of course,” Hefting snapped. “We dreamed of improving mankind’s lot back then, of rebuilding the world. Instead, we spawned a nightmare. We don’t need to compound our sins with any more murders.”

“Your sins, my friend,” the Germanic voice murmured. “But do not despair. As usual, I will attempt to contain the problem. We will seal your little pet back into Pandora’s box, eh?”

The line went dead. Hefting began to cradle the phone, then retrieved it and punched in the first five digits of Kristakos’ number. Then he envisioned the headlines, the destruction of his reputation, particularly within the scientific community. He hung up the phone.

Strughold would clean it up. Hefting only hoped he would do a more thorough job than had his predecessors.

Lake Michigan

6:02 a.m.

“Jesus, they’re like freakin’ monsters out here,” Keith Rankin assured the men as he cut the engine. “See, what you got out here is a lack of predation. They got no natural predators, no sharks or nothing, so they got nothin’ to do but feed on smelt and such and just get bigger and bigger.” Rankin’s left shoulder popped as he stretched his arms to their maximum span. “Like that.”

It was all bullshit, at least as far as the 54-year-old “fishing guide” knew. But he knew by the glint in the pair’s piglike eyes that he’d hooked another prime catch. The weekly $20 he’d laid on Donny at the Navy Pier information shack in exchange for referrals had been a wise investment, and the two Downer’s Grove attorneys had cheerfully handed over a stack of bank-crisp Benjamins in advance.

Keith had never cared much for the folks on the south side of town, but he liked the hip-hop imagery of that term. Benjamin Franklin looking up at the two suckerfish as they paid Keith his fee, that wiseass look people thought was just wisdom on his face. Old Ben and Keith probably would’ve been great buddies, tossing down Wild Turkey and trashing the broads they’d laid despite Ben’s hopelessly receding hairline and Keith’s expanding Bud gut.

“We were hoping to get down to the Keys this summer, the wives and us, but after 9-11, you know, the market took a nosedive, and my tech stocks tanked,” the tall one babbled. Rankin nodded sympathetically at the man costumed ludicrously in Eddie Bauer and Land’s End . Rankin’s only major investment had been rub-off tickets from his favorite liquor retailer, and they always tanked, one buck at a time. But these yuppies didn’t just want to bag Moby Dick; they wanted to be Guys and to be pals with Guys.

“That’s a freaking shame,” Rankin agreed. “But everybody’s got one of those freakin’ marlins hangin’ on their wall – it’s like catchin’ goldfish at the Walmart, they practically peddle ‘em like those shot glasses you get at the tourist shops. You get yourself one of these freakin’ Lake Michigan whales, now, that’s a trophy.”

“Whales?” the short, four-eyed one rasped, his face graying from a badly concealed case of seasickness.

Rankin forced a grin. Assholes get a bunch of college letters behind their names, they start shedding brain cells by the millions. “I’m talkin’ figurably, pal. Just take my word for it – you don’t gotta spend a fortune on sunblock to bag a prizewinning fish.”

An hour later, the lawyers were beginning to grouse. The expensive marlin gear they’d hauled along for the expedition (Rankin was a fishing guide, not a freaking outfitter) hadn’t once twitched, and the little guy, who’d been deceived by the overcast morning, was starting to blossom sunburn red amid the blotches of queasy gray.

“Where’s the whales?” the big guy demanded resentfully, turning from his pole. “Greenpeace must be hiding them.”

Rankin knew this was coming, always did, though the Greenpeace part threw him. “Jesus, you think this is Bassmasters or somethin’, they flop right onto the deck like on cable? You gotta finesse these bastards, wait ‘em out a little. You say you done this before? You wanna head back in or somethin’?”

It worked like magic. Rankin had never taken a psych course or read a book much more profound than Swank or Gallery, but he’d learned one fundamental truth about yuppies: No matter how much they pulled in from deskwork and hyped-up fees, no matter how much they laid down for their duds at Marshall Field’s or Carson-Pirie-Scott, no matter what kind of castle they lived in in one of those gated compounds west of town, they couldn’t stand not to be Guys. They grooved to Motown like those tight-ass ex-“hippies” did in that drippy movie he’d seen once on WGN, but their trigger fingers twitched toward the automatic doorlocks if some black dude crossed the street in front of them. They played polite games of touch football on the weekends, charred free-range chicken on monstrous grills that were probably designed by the freaking Pentagon, and got buzzed during Sunday football on high-priced vanilla-butterscotch-raspberry ale. And a few times a year, they packed up their state-of-the-art rifles and lures and designer tents and set out to make wilderness history. They could verbally beat a teenaged rape victim to a pulp in court, defend a six-figure surgery fee to a patient without batting an eye, but you question their manhood, their Guyhood, and they turned into freaking little sulking girls.

“Hey, just yanking your chain, man,” the tall man laughed. “Great day out, huh?”

The little man urped, his cheeks puffing, but Guys don’t chuck all over the rail, and he bit down on it.

“Yeah, the motor musta put ‘em on guard, but you just wait…” Rankin added, knowing immediately it was overkill. But then, as if on cue, and totally surprising Rankin, the tall man’s line lurched and tightened.

“Holy mother-fucking—” the big man shouted, scrambling forward and seizing the pole.

“Don’t fight him – ease him in, finesse him,” Rankin advised. It was something he’d heard on a cable fishing show. The “guide’s heart was pounding, and he wondered absurdly what was on the other end of the heavy-gauge line.

The line went slack, and all three men sighed in unison. Then it suddenly tightened and pulled. The tall man’s Nikes squeaked on the filthy deck as he tugged at the arcing pole. He “oofed” as his stomach pressed into the rail.

“Reel it in, Neal!” the little man yelped.

“Yeah,” Rankin encouraged with less enthusiasm than wariness.

The tall man began to bend over the rail as he worked the taut line. Suddenly, the line slackened again, and he flew back onto the deck, his head thumping hard.

“Neal?” the little man inquired. His inquiry was cut short as a large, grey mottled arm whipped over the rail and seized the suburban fisherman. He screamed, the sound cutting into Rankin’s brain and bringing him back to reality. The guide, functioning on adrenalin, stumbled to the cabin and grabbed the “Genuine Philipine” machete he’d had a cousin buy off the Internet. Slipping past the fallen yuppie, he raised the blade.

Whatever the tall man had had on his line now had wrapped tentacles wrapped around the little man’s neck and chest. Afraid he’d slice into the amateur sportsman, Rankin aimed carefully near the railing and used the rusting metal as a cutting surface to drive the machete through thick but surrendering flesh. As the tentacle came free, it flopped onto the deck, twitching with still-active ganglia. The other tentacle slid free of the little man’s throat, and he thudded to the painted wood beside his friend.

The boat rocked with a hard impact, and Rankin braced against a second hit. But instead, he saw a huge, streamlined object surge away from his vessel, just under the surface, trailing plumes of dark liquid.

Fearful the creature might return and that his passengers might die, leaving him holding the legal and possibly criminal bag, Rankin scrambled to the radio and issued a mayday. The Coast Guard responded, got a location, and instructed him to stay put until they could arrive. He numbly rogered and went back out on deck, uncharacteristically praying the thing wouldn’t come back.

Rankin nearly stepped on the rubbery tentacle he’d severed from the beast, and now, as his panic began to recede, he examined it closely. It still twitched slightly, and his chest tightened as he stared at the wiggling appendages that split off from the tentacle.

“Merciful unholy Mary,” he whispered…

**

“The fuck was that thing?” Rankin asked Doggett and Reyes, as if he expected them to supply an answer. “It had fingers, fucking fingers.”

They were huddled in the Coast Guard’s substation, Rankin slopping coffee on his pants as his hands trembled uncontrollably, the agents and Lt. Prendergast ringed before him.

The tall man, an attorney named Neal Maiers, was being treated for a concussion, while his partner, Bill Unverferth, had been declared dead at the scene, the victim of a cardiac arrest. The man’s throat chest were scarred and bore circular cuts from the cups that lined the underside of the creature’s tentacles. Reyes summoned Seth Kristakos as soon as the agents received the call, and the scientist was now examining the dismembered tentacle.

“I mean,” Rankin continued, brown droplets spreading on his brown ducked thighs, “It was almost like the thing knew what it was doing. Like it distracted me and the big guy by yanking on his line, then grabbed the little one.”

“The likely weaker specimen,” Reyes noted, looking to Doggett. Her partner’s face remained impassive. Prendergast again looked perplexed. “It devised a strategy to misdirect them and then selected the easiest prey. It has the ability to reason, John. And again, it picked a small craft, with three relatively defenseless, weak humans on board.”

Rankin sucked in his gut despite his shock.

“No offense,” Reyes smiled sheepishly. Doggett tugged her gently away from the fishing guide.

“Not in front of the straights,” he growled benignly. “You actually think this thing set up a diversion before it came in for the kill?”

“Convergent evolution, John, remember?” she said. “You saw the fingers on that tentacle.”

“I don’t know I’d call ‘em fingers, Monica,” Doggett drawled, glancing nervously aside at Prendergast.

“What else would you call them? Like man, like other vertebrates, this creature has adapted to its environment by developing the ability to grasp and manipulate. And with it the cunning to compete with the only animal in its ecosystem that poses a threat. Look at the victims so far: Two teenagers and three middle-aged men, none exactly Steven Seagal. All attacked under isolated conditions. It doesn’t outmatch itself.”

“Whoa,” Prendergast finally inserted. “What the hell do you think this thing is?”
“Definitely an octopus,” Kristakos boomed from across the room, turning from the tentacle spread out on a now-soiled towel. The malacologist was flushed with excitement as he strode toward the trio. “The shape of the tentacle, the structure and markings of the integument – the, ah, skin. The ‘suckers’ on the anterior side of the tentacle. It’s clearly an octopus species.

“But it’s unlike no other species I’ve ever seen – certainly not an American octopus, or say a giant Pacific. Its markings seem suited to a freshwater environment – the muddy grays and browns of a lake or river system rather than the more vibrant, brighter colors of a marine system. Likely camouflage in a freshwater ecosystem. Extrapolating from the portion of tentacle we have, I’d say this specimen could be as large as 40 to even 60 feet. The largest giant Pacific ever captured measured 31 feet from arm tip to arm tip.”

“Jeez,” Doggett breathed. “What about those, uh, those things at the end of the tentacle?”

“The fingers?” Kristakos asked. Reyes looked at the floor as her partner turned abruptly toward her. “I’m afraid these are what we’d call fingers. Each of the four appear to have their own independent musculature and sets of nervous ganglia. My guess is that they would be fully functional.”

“My God,” Doggett shook his head. “Where in the hell did this thing come from? Where’s it been hiding out all this time?”

Lt. Prendergast rustled. “There is one thing. Probably has nothing to do with anything.”

“I’m open to any suggestions,” Doggett said.

“Well, the night the Stackhouse and Carstairs boys were attacked, there was an inordinate amount of electronic interference in Stackhouse’s transmission. Things started out pretty clean, but – and I know this will sound ridiculous – the static started out about the time we figure his friend was attacked. Then today, our guys reported heavy electronic interference with their communications equipment as they were responding to Mr. Rankin’s distress call.”

Reyes’ brow wrinkled. “What could that mean?”

“Tracking?” Kristakos suddenly whispered. He looked up. “Sometimes, when wildlife agencies want to trace the movement of migratory or reintroduced species, they fit them with electronic tags, leg bands, so they can track them more easily through radio signals. Is that what you’re thinking, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” the military man shrugged. “But a signal like that could account for the kind of interference my guys experienced.

“Where do you hang a tag on an octopus?” Doggett grunted.

“More likely an implant, maybe even a computer chip,” Kristakos mused, darkly. “Of course, that would explain how this species adapted to fresh water without an intermediate habitat. It was bred in a controlled, manmade environment.”

“Or created,” Reyes suggested.

**

Reyes was printing out another sheaf of notes when the knock at the door sounded. She glanced at the bedside table: The digital readout on the alarm clock flashed 6:43 . She sprinted to the door in her stocking feet, grinning embarrassedly at Doggett.

“Sorry about supper – I got wrapped up in my surfing,” Reyes explained.

“So, how are the Backstreet Boys?” Doggett teased. “What did you find?”
She sat on the edge of her mattress. “Just a few odd pieces that don’t fit. I got to thinking: Where would anyone get the idea of breeding a ‘super octopus’?”
Doggett smiled inscrutably. “How about the Naples Zoological Station?”

Reyes’ eyes widened, and a dimple appeared. “And you don’t believe in extrasensory perception? The Naples scientists have been heavily involved in research into octopus intelligence for decades. The octopus’ brain was too complex to apply to computer engineering, as it turned out, but what if the research led somewhere else?

“Two of the scientists involved in the Marshall Plan work – Tessio Rappacini and Frederico Giardano – quit the project in about 1952, and I can’t find much on the web about their work from that point through about 1958. Then both died unexpectedly in 1963, Rappacini was murdered supposedly by a robber in Rome, as he was heading home from his university, and Giardano shot himself in front of a dozen witnesses at a conference. The two deaths occurred within a week of each other.”

Doggett plopped into an armchair. “Something happened that made Giardano kill himself and somebody kill Rappacini? But what?”

“I keyed in ‘1963,’ ‘Lake Michigan ,’ and the ‘St. Lawrence Seaway ,’ which feeds into the Great Lakes from the Atlantic ,” Reyes related. “One of the few repeat hits I got concerned freighter that sank in Lake Michigan after a fire broke out. Twenty crew members died, and the freighter never was salvaged, but there was suspiciously little news coverage.”
“What are you thinking? Whoever raised this thing had it shipped in through the Great Lakes ? Why? And what’s it been doing for 40 years? Nursing a grudge?”

Reyes grabbed her temples. “Arghh!! My brain is numb from too much surfing. I need some weiner schnitzel. Kristakos said we should try Berghoff’s – it’s a German place, just six blocks away.”

“Yah, mein fraulein. Then I think we should drive down to Oak Brook.”

“Where’s that?”
“Where Peter Hefting lives. Hefting was involved in the Naples research, and he’s suspiciously close to the action here. Kristakos gave me some names of Hefting’s colleagues, and you’ll never guess when he moved to Chicago. Try 1962.”

St. Michael’s Hospital

8:15 p.m.

The first thing Doggett and Reyes saw as he badged their way past a collection of Rep. Daniel Stackhouse’s aides into the hospital room was a weeping Gwen Stackhouse, wailing and convulsing as her husband held tightly to her. The congressman spied the agents and, with a single nod, directed them into the hallway. Doggett glanced quickly at the still Jared Stackhouse, tubes and IVs now removed.

“He coded about 45 minutes ago,” the doctor, a middle-aged Asian man, informed them in the hallway. They’d been beepered as their red cabbage had hit the table. “We worked on him for almost 20 minutes, but we couldn’t get a rhythm. What’s strange is, he checked out fine, from a cardiac standpoint, when we checked him at 6 p.m.”

Doggett frowned. “You plan to do an autopsy?”
The doctor’s brow arched. “An autopsy? I grant you, the circumstances of his arrest are odd, but why should his death be considered suspicious? And besides….” He trailed off, looking at the congressional staffers standing sentry at the hospital room door.

“Just see if you can get the process rolling, please, Doc? I’ll clear it with the congressman.”

The physician looked uncertain, but nodded and hustled down the hallway.

Stackhouse emerged a few moments later, waving off a solicitous aide. His eyes were tired and old, his thick black hair slightly mussed. “So are you any closer to finding out what killed my son? I’ll put any resources I can behind you on this. I want answers.”

“We may have an idea, sir, but we may need your help in confirming it,” Reyes said cautiously. “What kind of connections do you have in intelligence, in the military?”
The legislator looked baffled. “I sit on the Select Committee on Foreign Intelligence, and I was largely responsible for getting Connie Truman in as Secretary of State. I have some contacts. But I’m confused, Agent. I thought my son was the victim of some kind of accident, some kind of animal attack.”

Doggett’s throat tightened; he could empathize with this bereaved father. “Sir, this may sound a little unorthodox, and I wish we didn’t bother you for this. But we need two things: For you to authorize an autopsy of your son…”

“What?” Stackhouse asked hollowly. “All right. I guess it can’t hurt Jared at this point. What else?”

“We need some information on a man who may be implicated in what happened to your son.”

“Who?”
“I’d rather not say right now, ‘til we have some proof,” Doggett said, gently. “I’m gonna have to ask you to trust us.”

Stackhouse laughed harshly, his eyes empty. “Guess I’ve heard that line before.”

Peter Hefting residence

7:30 a.m.

“Jared Stackhouse is dead,” Agent John Doggett stated flatly as Hefting opened his front door. Doggett and Agent Reyes both wore grim expressions.

Hefting grasped the door jamb, and felt the blood flow from his face. “My dear God. They…”

“They did what, Doctor? Killed Stackhouse?”

The old scientist searched for a lie, a story that would make this go away, but he felt weariness wash over him.

“Please do come in,” he sighed.

**

“I offer no excuses, no rationalizations,” Hefting began quietly as the trio settled in behind their coffee in his richly paneled dining room. “But you must remember that these were uncertain times when mankind’s future appeared to be in the balance. The world was reeling from Hitler’s madness; my own England was digging out of the rubble. And now communism loomed large in Russia, China, North Korea, and we knew that despite old alliances, we faced another threat of global proportions.

“I had, as you noted, done some covert spying among the scientific community for British Intelligence, mainly rooting out colleagues with fascist ties. I was a young man then, eager to use my science to keep the world free. That was how I happened into the Naples project – it was a sort of reward for my efforts on behalf of Mother England. It began as I said: An earnest effort to tap the depths of cephalopod intelligence. Then, as we began to uncover just what those fantastic creatures were capable of, some shadowy types started to pop up. M.I.5, your CIA, others of less sterling credentials, and they exploited our dual senses of fear and patriotism in the pursuit of what today would be considered an insane, even evil scheme.

“The war, and particularly the Nazis, had opened whole new avenues of science and, by extension, warfare. We, your people and mine, were looking for any weapon that might keep the Communists at bay, that might keep the developing countries in free hands – or at least hands we could control. Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, psychological weapons, germ warfare. If you had any idea… But I digress. It was 1951, and we were on the brink of the Cold War, when I and my colleagues, Tesso Rappacini and Frederico Giardano, were asked to enter into a new area of research: Development of a biological weapon of an entirely new type. We had identified several octopus with extraordinary cognitive abilities, and we were asked to determine whether those abilities could be genetically refined and enhanced – in short, whether we could breed a superpredator.”

“A freshwater superpredator,” Reyes amended, her voice filled with controlled emotion. “The rivers were key to commerce in Europe and Asia – fishing, movement of grain and supplies. If you could disrupt those movements, deplete local fish populations used to feed troops, halt economic activity in less developed areas…”

“As I said, it was a time of uncertainty and desperation,” Hefting repeated weakly. “A group of went to work on this biological weapon, using conventional breeding and selection, behavioral training, and some genetic techniques our Nazi ‘friends’ had developed to fine-tune this new species. Though the science of biotechnology was barely in a prenatal state in the ‘50s, we were able to arrest the process of senescence – keep our Frankenstein mollusk in a permanent state of frenzied insanity. It was among the most aggressive specimens I ever witnessed: I watched it decimate a tank of ten Octopus vulgaris – common octopus – within a six-hour period, spotting out the weaknesses and behaviors of each animal in turn. It was horrifying but exhilarating nonetheless.

“However, times were beginning to change by the late ‘50s, and we were informed the project would be terminated, along with our creation. I must say, I was a bit relieved, as I know my colleagues were. We returned to the banality of academic life and routine marine research, and we never heard from our shadowy friends again. That is, until 1963, when the successor to our original government sponsor called Drs. Rappacini and Giardano and myself with a flood of anxious questions about our ‘kraken,’ as we called it. After the folk monster of the sea. It seemed the military had not terminated the kraken after all. Now, they wanted to revive our work. By this time, I was working with Northwestern University and the Shedd Aquarium, and they wanted to transport the kraken to an unidentified lake in Southern Illinois where I could evaluate its potential use in certain regions of Southeast Asia. I was adamant that I wanted nothing further to do with their abominable scheme, but they threatened to expose my earlier work to the scientific community – increasingly, a major stronghold of liberal, humanitarian belief. I’d be the Dr. Mengele of zoology. I reluctantly agreed to cooperate.

“Of course, then, in typical ‘intelligence’ fashion, they lost the beast when the cargo ship secretly carrying it through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes went down. I warned them that this could be the makings of one of the worst ecological disasters ever to strike North America, but they assured me the kraken had been cryogenically preserved – frozen – for the journey across the ocean. Another application of advanced science the military has squelched. They assured me the creature could not survive prolonged freezing on the floor of Lake Michigan, and we all crossed our fingers and said a prayer. Until two days ago. The species must be as hardy as it is relentless.”

“So what do we do?” Doggett demanded. “How do we stop this thing?”
“I have no idea,” Hefting admitted, his voice faint with genuine regret. “We never anticipated the need.”

“Damn you,” Doggett said evenly.

“I suspect that won’t be necessary, Agent,” the old man murmured.

Lake Michigan

10:33 p.m.

“I remember my pop taking me night-fishing one time, some lake upstate where a state trooper he knew liked to hang out,” Doggett mused, breaking the last half-hour’s tense silence. Reyes and Kristakos glanced up from the bench across from him, the latter astonished by the abrupt reminiscence, the former smiling affectionately at her partner.

“I was about 12, and I guess he thought we’d better get it in before my hormones started bubbling and I started thinking I knew more than anybody else in the world and I grew a big chip on my shoulder. He never was a real talkative guy, and we just kinda sat there in the dark, our lines in the water, not much hope we were gonna catch anything. Just my pop and me.”

It was the “staked goat” strategy, and it was the best they could come up with. Neither Skinner nor Kersh were crazy about the agents setting themselves up as cheese in a trap, especially with a civilian aboard for dessert. Lt. Prendergast was no easy sell, either, especially when he was coerced into agreeing to hang back a good half-mile. And the management of the Shedd expressed grave reservations when he requisitioned enough armament and drugs to take out Moby Dick and his two toughest cousins. The three of them now sat quietly under a smudged sky, the quiet water rustling occasionally with a gentle breeze.

“So we’re just sitting there, waiting for fish that aren’t gonna come, when Pop finally pipes up. He looks at the sky for the longest time, and asks me if I think we’re alone down here, you know, if I think there’s life up there. Of course, I don’t know what I know…I mean, I don’t know squat cause I’m just a wet kid, so I say hell, no. Well, he doesn’t tell me not to say ‘hell,’ like he usually woulda, if he hadn’t just swatted me one. He just sits there nodding real calm-like, then says, ‘Lotta responsibility, ain’t it?’ Took me damned near 20 years and a stint in the Marines to figure out what he meant.”

Doggett blinked at his shipmates, as if embarrassed by the spontaneous tale. Reyes smiled at him in the moonlight, and after a second, he grinned back. Kristakos leaned back, clasping his fingers behind his head, and stared up at the stars beyond the clouds.

Suddenly, the boat lurched, and Kristakos grabbed the rail.

“Get away from the edge,” Doggett barked. “Now.” He shoved the rifles across the deck to Reyes and the scientist. “OK, we gotta let this thing get almost on top of us, right, Doc?”

“Keep firing into its head, right into the brain,” Kristakos confirmed, dry-mouthed. “That’s the only way we’ll know we’ve shut this thing down.”

The boat rocked again, and Doggett heard a loud thud against the hull. He checked his load, and braced against the cabin entrance. The impacts became more frequent, and he didn’t initially hear the steady whupping from the sky.

“John,” Reyes called as calmly as she could, eyes wide, weapon at the ready. Doggett looked to the rail, where a long, snakelike appendage was coiling onto the deck. Its “fingers” were active, alive, like independent organisms. Kristakos backed away from the probing tendrils, his gun shaking and banging against the deck.

“Not ‘til we see the whites of his eyes,” Doggett cautioned as a second tentacle appeared, then a third. A fourth one, somehow underdeveloped – no doubt, the regenerating replacement for the one Rankin had lopped off -- poked through the rails.

Then a huge lump began to rise toward the deck, and Reyes gasped as the eye blinked open – half-catlike, half nearly human. She was sure she only imagined it was staring straight into her.

“What the hell?” Doggett yelled as she aimed at the beast. The helicopter’s rotors had grown louder as it came in low and fast and without lights. Suddenly, a spotlight glared into his eyes, illuminating the glistening surface of the creature poised at the rail.

The chopper swept around, behind the agents and the scientist, and the giant cephalopod’s head exploded in a spray of flesh as a volley of shots shattered the night. The guns continued to blast from overhead, and what remained of the kraken slid into the black lake.

Doggett was the first to find his feet, and he swung the weapon onto his shoulder. But as Lt. Prendergast’s launch roared into view, the helicopter already was soaring off, away from the Chicago skyline…

J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building

8:10 a.m.

Two days later

“Autopsy of Jared Stackhouse,” Deputy Director Alvin Kersh said, displaying a manila envelope for Doggett and Reyes. “No finding of any evidence of foul play. Gwendoline Stackhouse, wife of Congressman Daniel Stackhouse, called the director this morning to ask why you felt this procedure was necessary. I had no answer for her.”

Kersh then picked up a stamped form. “Your request for a similar post-mortem on one Peter Hefting, 81, obvious victim of cardiac arrest. Request denied.” The director silenced Doggett with a well-manicured hand, and selected a folder from his blotter. “And finally, your report, a worthy tribute to Jules Verne and Herman Melville by way of Stephen King. Why don’t we take another run at this, Agents, and this time, try for the non-fiction section?”

“Sir,” Doggett began.

“John,” Reyes cautioned, jerking her head toward the door,

“For once, Agent Reyes, you are the voice of clarity and common sense,” Kersh murmured.

Shedd Aquarium

Chicago

9 p.m.

For not the first time, Guillermo Ortiz cursed the younger generation in his native Spanish, scraping at the dayglo green gum one of the school tour groups had left on the bottom riser above the marine mammal show tank.

Despite his current irritation, he liked this part of the aquarium. It was like some tranquil clearing by some bay Guillermo otherwise could only have imagined. Some times, when he returned to his crowded, two-room apartment in Cicero, it was a backdrop for his dreams – dreams of exotic creatures and even more exotic senoras. Often, his wife, Isabelle, was the recipient of his fervent nocturnal imagination.

The illusion of this peaceful cove was completed by the tall glass wall that separated the killer whale tank from the great Lake Michigan. Had he not suffered a morbid fear of the water, Guillermo sometimes fantasized about diving down among the dolphins and whales and peering out into the murky Great Lake, see what occasionally ventured to shore to gape at the huge finned creatures within the aquarium.

He glanced down toward the huge glass partition, and for a moment, Guillermo froze, locked in place. The custodian peered down again, and this time laughed, his self-directed ridicule bouncing off the “rocks” and trees.

Sometimes, Isabelle had warned, imagination can be a dangerous thing. While he normally shrugged off her jibes, drowning them out with Tecate, Guillermo knew this time there was some truth in her words.

The last of the gum scraped from the risers, he creaked to his feet, ready to tackle the rain forest pavilion. He’d have to share his little fantasy with Luis the security guard, how the light and the reflections had made him imagine seeing a huge eye looking straight at him from below the lake’s surface…