CHAPTER 10

The massive submarine plain, divided by a broad trench, was unlike most abyssal depths. Tucked into the topography of an impossibly shallow, expansive bank on which ringing islands rested, the plain lacked a prominent presence of the creature’s enemy—the larger, toothed leviathans that might seek even it as prey. Despite its formidable size, it sensed that, like all its living relatives, it was virtually defenseless against them in the open ocean.

As it blindly felt its way along the bottom, one of its snaking limbs made contact with a slow-moving, armored isopod lumbering along the bottom. It absentmindedly snatched up the oversized, insect-like creature, passing it slowly up to its maw and tucking the morsel into its sharp beak.

The beak closed. The shell cracked.

But the proteins and fluids from the crustacean’s body only made the creature hungrier. More impatient.

A curious and imaginative animal, it quickly became bored if not stimulated. Cruising through blackness but sensing nothing made it anxious. The pangs of hunger from its stomach increased.

A change in the current.

Chemicals, diluted in the flowing water, contacted its receptors. A cocktail of compounds. Wastes and secretions expelled by another animal. Not a dead one, although the organism sometimes scavenged on carrion littering the seafloor. No, this was living.

Prey.

It moved faster.

The scent was faint, and likely some distance away. In haste, the creature lifted off the bottom with a coordinated push of its limbs and contracted its balloon-like body, forcing a volume of seawater behind it as it jetted into the current. Prey was scarce. The animal it sensed ahead could not be overlooked once found. It felt its hearts momentarily cease to beat as its body contracted. It relaxed. It pulsed again, again stopping its hearts.

Swimming came at a cost. Its three hearts, working in concert to transport oxygen through its massive body, ceased to function with each expulsion of water. But it could move many times more quickly over short distances if it was free of the friction of the bottom.

In a rhythmic series of contractions, it hurtled forward into the light current, displacing tons of seawater with its huge form. Every few hundred feet, it ceased propulsion and drifted back toward the bottom, halting a temporary state of cardiac arrest and allowing its hearts to resume beating.

But it could not rest for long.

As soon as oxygen could replenish the cells in its brain and muscles, it pulsed forward again. The taste of prey continued to increase, driving it forward. It was shallower, up toward mid-water. The great organism angled upward.

A swirl of the current. In it, a much denser mingling of fluids emitted by the animal ahead of it, and the organism again ceased propulsion.

It was close. They were close. Distracted, as they too hunted for much smaller quarry.

From the clicks emitted by the prey above, the creature sensed that there was more than one of them. Two, or more.

Its hearts quickened.

It infrequently encountered this, its prize prey. The animals were fairly large, though much smaller than itself. It had been weeks since it had come across them last. They were one of the only food sources that could now effectively sustain its great body.

It sensed the animals passing overhead, and gathering its muscular limbs beneath it, it thrust its body upward in the dark water. Jetting water to continue rising, it turned its expansive limbs above it and thrust them outward in all directions. Seeking . . . then finding.

Contact.

The tip of one arm struck something solid. The clicks in the water intensified.

The creature immediately twisted and thrust its body in that direction. It spun and plunged all of its limbs blindly toward where it had found the source of food.

But the prey had now become aware of its presence. Its arms swept the water desperately, and one of them again made contact with something. The limb reacted immediately, autonomously, coiling its tip around the undulating animal’s smooth, tapered body. But the prey animal was powerful. It thrust its powerful tail flukes, and despite the deceptive strength of the organism’s arm, the single limb could not maintain purchase on the thrashing body.

The prey escaped.

The organism lashed out its limbs, one final time, toward where it sensed the prey animals were rapidly departing. It swept the black water. Nothing.

The clicks faded. Then it was silent.

The prey was gone.

The creature relaxed its muscles, settling toward the bottom. Soon it again felt the cold current as it neared the unseen plain. It turned into the flowing water.

And continued to hunt.