Location: Chinese submarine, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

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Kelly’s grip on K’in loosened and immediately the creature stopped swimming. Kelly slipped from the creature’s back and floated for a few seconds before sinking toward the corridor floor.

A dim beam of light pushed its way through the murky water ahead, swinging from left to right, a single eye searching the corridors. A frogman, wearing a completely black, full-length wetsuit and scuba gear, swam into the corridor. K’in darted to the floor and covered Kelly with his body, protecting him. The frogman turned his head-mounted torch to the source of movement. K’in’s white body lit up in the dark water, his red plumes outstretched. He was on all fours, and his legs formed a cage around Kelly.

The diver touched a button on the front of his full-face diving mask. “I’ve made contact with the creature and possibly the male. Please advise. Over.” He nodded several times. “Affirmative. Attempting extraction to the surface.”

The diver swam cautiously toward K’in and stopped. For a few moments, he stared at the creature, partly in awe and partly confused as to how he was meant to extract the animal.

K’in forced himself off the corridor floor, pushing with all four limbs. Before the marine had time to react, the creature’s hands were clamped around his head. Instantly, the diver’s body went limp, powerless. K’in blinked several times, gazing into the man’s eyes—feeling him.

As if satisfied the soldier was no threat, K’in let go and moved to one side. The marine treaded water, slightly bewildered, before shaking off the strange feeling and starting toward Kelly on the corridor floor.

“Affirmative. I have Kelly Graham. He’s alive— but no oxygen supply and is possibly in hypothermic shock. Inform the angel. Will need assistance upon extraction. Over.” The diver struggled to pull Kelly’s body from the floor, the awkward shape of the tank and the makeshift hose impeding his hold. K’in ducked down to the bottom again and grabbed Kelly with all four limbs. K’in held Kelly close to his body and flicked his tail. The diver again shook his head, unsure if any of this was real. He started after the creature, trying his best to keep pace.

The animal seemed to know exactly where he was going, weaving through the corridors, navigating directly for the lockout trunk. The door to the trunk had been blown outward from inside, completely destroying any ability to form a seal to the outside world. K’in headed straight into the ascending tube that led out to the open water. His slender body, clamped to Kelly, slipped easily out into the ocean.

The diver followed suit. Looking behind him as he ascended, he saw the Chinese submarine sitting on the ocean floor, a large hole ripped into one side and the hatch opening to the lockout trunk torn away. A few Chinese soldiers had managed to climb into their ascension suits, strange-looking, orange one-piece jumpsuits that zipped completely over the head and filled with air in order to prevent nitrogen narcosis due to rising to the surface too quickly. They would be picked off by the angel overhead.

The marine contacted the ASDS again. “Be advised, creature and male have exited the submarine and are accelerating to the surface. Male is unable to make scheduled stops—decompression sickness possible. Repeat, decompression sickness possible.” The diver saw the creature squeezing Kelly quite firmly as it sped upward, causing a constant stream of bubbles to escape through the loose knot in the hose.

K’in broke the surface. A strong wind tore across the water’s surface, pulling large waves along. Overhead, a huge Chinook hovered, its massive rotors holding the giant aircraft approximately twenty feet from the water’s surface. Freya was hanging from the side of the open door to the cargo hold. She shouted over the din of the rotors and howl of the wind to K’in, though she was unsure the creature would understand her even if he was able to hear.

“Take me closer. We need to get closer!” Freya shouted orders through her headset.

The Chinook dipped lower, swaying unsteadily as the pilot battled the side wind.

Freya hooked herself to the winch. “Drop me down. I’ll attach a harness to them, and you can pull us up.”

“Yes ma’am,” replied the soldier closest to her.

Freya leaned backward and pushed off the floor with both feet, which were now covered in army boots rather than stilettos. The all-in-one green flight suit protected her from the cold but not the gale that seemed to manhandle her like a badly beaten flag.

She reached the water’s surface where K’in bobbed along. The frogman had also surfaced and was holding Kelly’s head above the water.

Freya held out the harness to the marine. “Grab it! Strap K’in and Kelly together into it!”

The frogman complied, pulling the harness under Kelly’s armpits and then around K’in’s forelimbs. He clipped the harness shut, pulled the strap tight, and gave the okay sign to begin winching. Freya, dangling in mid-air, twisted her body upward and relayed the message. The winch motor groaned into life, slowly pulling the three-person weight from the water.

Freya was back into the Chinook first. She quickly unclipped herself, turned, and waited with outstretched arms for the winch to finish lifting K’in and Kelly. A soldier knelt beside her and grasped the harness as it crested the floor of the open door. They released the creature first. The soldier lifted K’in and placed him gently into a makeshift plastic tank full of seawater. It was only two feet deep, and K’in rested inside with his head poking out over the lip of the tub.

Freya frantically unraveled the strap from the naked Kelly, who writhed from oxygen depletion. She drew a knife from the sheath on her left calf and hacked the end of the hose, allowing air to once again fill his lungs. Kelly’s body relaxed. She knelt in front of him and wrapped his shivering body in a wool blanket and then a foil one. “You have hypothermia and most likely nitrogen narcosis. We need to get you to a hyperbaric chamber. But right now, we are going to try and remove this from your head. It seems they fixed it pretty tightly.”

Freya slashed the straps. This left the hind part of the straps still attached to the back of Kelly’s head but enabled Freya to begin pulling at the regulator. Kelly gagged as the tubing slid out through his throat.

“Wow, they didn’t want that thing to come off, did they?” Her face was screwed up in empathetic pain.

Kelly coughed and dry-heaved awake as the remainder of the tube left his windpipe. “Fuck me. How the hell did I get involved in this shit? This is all your fault, Moby.” Kelly was mockingly pointing a finger behind him in K’in’s direction, though he never looked up from his crawling position on the floor of the Chinook cargo hold. He coughed hard again, swept his sodden hair backward. “Where are the others?”

Freya shook her head slowly. “Tremaine is in a sub below us. It’s how we rescued you. He’s going to stay there and keep in contact through a dedicated satellite link up. Benjamin and the professor were badly hurt. They were taken to a hospital. I haven’t had a report for a few hours though, so I am not sure of their condition.” Her voice trailed off.

“And Vicky?”

“I’m sorry, Kelly. We lost Victoria when the truck exploded.” She hesitated, unsure whether she should comfort him.

“Goddammit.” Kelly’s voice was barely a whisper, hushed in sadness as he stared at the floor. “I’m sorry, Vicky.” He wasn’t sure if he’d said that out loud, but perhaps Victoria could hear him. He composed himself and lifted his head to meet Freya’s gaze. “So where now?”

Freya showed him the piece of paper with coordinates written on it. “There—wherever there is.”

“Okay. We need to get there now. No time for a hyperbaric. I’d know if I had NN. Moby must have done something to me on ascent.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just get us to where we need to be.”

“Okay, but we still need to get this thing off the back of your head.”

“Fine. Just do it.”

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Location: Peru, South America

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“There it is. There’s no road in. We’ll have to set down about twenty miles from the coordinates you specified. The rest is on foot.” The pilot had to shout over the din of the Chinook’s rotors, even though Freya was wearing a headset.

“That’s fine!” she yelled back. She slid the headgear off and stepped back through the cockpit door into the cargo hold.

“Kelly, we are going to have to set down a bit away from the co-ordinates. There are no roads into this place. It means we’ll have to carry K’in with us—are you okay with that?”

Kelly appeared to stare blankly through her.

“Kelly?” she repeated.

He glanced over at K’in sloshing back and forth in the shallow makeshift tank. “Yeah, sorry. Still have a headache from that marine ripping the strap off the back of my skull.”

“You told him to do it.” Freya smirked. “Besides, that was thirty-six hours and several refuels ago—are you seriously still whining?”

“Hey, they’d used some kind of surgical staple. My head still friggin’ hurts. And anyway, it’s nothing compared with how much this is killing me.” He rolled his shoulder slowly, screwing up his face in pain. “Right, so are you gonna tell me where exactly here is? No more conspiracy. Gotta be honest with each other from here on out. Deal?”

Freya eyed him. He seemed genuine. “Okay, deal.” She shuffled round to his side and pulled out a map from a side pocket in her cargo pants. Unfolding it, she flattened it on the floor of the hold and pointed to Peru. “We are here—near the small gold mining village of Huanchumay. It’s a remote part of the Carabaya province.”

“I know this village. It was almost wiped out a few years back by a landslide, right?”

“I don’t know. The General just sent me here. Said K’in would be safe here.”

“Okay. First things first. I don’t want any of these soldiers coming in with us. I know the tribes and locals around these parts—they won’t be happy with these guerrillas wandering around.”

“Okay, that’s fine as long as you can carry him.”

The chopper plummeted, causing everyone on board to reach out instinctively for the nearest object for support. “Hold on, this could get a little bumpy,” the Chopper pilot called back.

The Chinook banked sharply to the left and circled around before straightening and beginning its vertical decent through the only bald space amongst the thick Peruvian rainforest. It hovered a few feet above the ground, unable to land completely on the rough and uneven jungle floor.

Kelly walked over to K’in and looked him in the eyes. K’in stared back, unable to speak, but Kelly knew the creature understood. Without a struggle, K’in allowed himself to be hoisted over Kelly’s good shoulder.

Kelly stepped carefully to the cargo hold side door and peered over the edge. It must have been no more than five to ten feet to the ground, but he hesitated. Jump, he thought. He closed his eyes and stepped off the chopper. The journey to the ground was short, and Kelly hit it heavily. His knees bent and buckled under the weight of K’in, but he managed to stay upright.

Ignoring the pain in his legs and shoulder, Kelly opened his eyes. It was dusk now, and the jungle’s wondrous shades of green and blue had faded into a mass of intertwining, black shapes. Contrasted against a burning orange sky, it was beautiful. Thick, humid air enveloped him, making it difficult to breathe.

As he surveyed his surroundings, a sense of contentment, of belonging, filled him. Kelly turned his head to address the creature flopped over his shoulder. “Is that you or me feeling that?”

K’in didn’t answer.

“Probably both, huh?” It didn’t matter. He hadn’t said it loud enough to hear over the engine of the chopper, and the question was somewhat rhetorical anyway.

A warm hand rested on Kelly’s free shoulder, a delicate touch that was contrasted by Freya’s voice straining over the sound of whirring rotors. “It’s getting dark fast, Kelly. We need to make a camp for the night. It’ll be better to be deeper in the jungle—much harder for us to be found. But the temperature will drop quickly. I have camping and combat gear for us and thermal sheets for K’in. I imagine we have to avoid him desiccating.”

“Good idea,” Kelly yelled back. He slipped the creature gently off his shoulder and lowered him to the ground. “Give me some of those thermal sheets. Let’s wrap him up.”

Freya handed Kelly a large, silver-colored sheet. It looked so fragile as it shone and glistened like tin foil in the late afternoon sun. She then turned to the Chinook and gave an okay sign to the waiting pilot. He nodded. The Chinook rose in the air, whisking leaves and fragments of trees in its wake. She watched it grow smaller and smaller before gunning off into the distance. Freya turned back to Kelly. He had already climbed into his combat gear—dark camouflage pants and jacket, a large backpack over one shoulder, and K’in on the other.

Freya focused on the tiny screen of a handheld device. “Okay. Last encoded message from Tremaine said they are moving out of Monterey Bay. If we need him, we just have to make contact.” She put the gadget back into the side pocket of her combat pants.

“Great. So, ready, Freya?” He sounded genuine and determined and even used her Christian name—all of which he had not done before.

“Are you sure your shoulder is alright?”

“Sure, I can take it. Let’s move.”

They trudged through the undergrowth, Freya shining a light in front, cutting through the gloom. Kelly struggled to keep up with the heavy creature and backpack on his back. The night air cooled, and the sun had been replaced by the white disc of the moon. It hung there, an orb among twinkling sequins sewn into a velvet sky. It was fortunate. Without the moon, the jungle would have been perilously dark.

An hour passed. The scenery didn’t seem to change. Endless vines and trees sprawled in front of them. Freya hacked at the black limbs with a machete, slicing a path through the dense understory. She stopped. A small clearing had appeared. The jungle canopy overhead still protected them from unwanted attention, but the ground before them was treeless for at least forty square feet.

“Let’s stop here,” Freya suggested.

Kelly surveyed the clearing. “This seems pretty safe. I’ll need to dig a hole for K’in.” Kelly swung the creature from his back and gently placed him on the ground. K’in looked up at Kelly with his expressionless face. His near fully formed eyes stared into Kelly’s, communicating with him. Kelly knew K’in was happy to stay put where he was.

The mud was wet and heavy as Kelly dug at the jungle floor with his bare hands. Down on his knees, he scooped chunk after chunk of earth from the same place, forming a large, bowl-shaped hole. A drizzle started and water slowly filled the ditch, causing the sides to collapse. Kelly shook his head. This could take all night. The atmosphere was damp enough. He surmised K’in would be fine. Kelly got up from his knees, now caked in soil, and trudged over to K’in. The creature stretched out his arms like a baby wishing to be picked up.

“Okay, Moby, let’s go.” Kelly picked up K’in by the armpits and walked back to the newly dug pit. He placed K’in inside and covered him with the insulating foil. “There. Wet and moist. You lucky bastard.”

Freya looked up from busying herself with the fire and raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry. Man joke.”

“It’s okay. Anyway, I think I have this going now.”

* * *

Two hammocks had been hung between the trees. Kelly and Freya understood the benefits of not sleeping on the jungle floor. Kelly lay there, staring through the canopy, fixated on a single star, lost in his thoughts.

“I’m sorry about Chris.” Freya’s voice was soft as if she did not want to disturb the tranquility of the jungle hum. “And Victoria.”

Kelly took a few minutes to respond. “Me too.”

“And I’m sorry ... sorry about your wife and daughter, too.” She was nervous, unsure how he would respond. She had learned he could be very fiery and quick to anger.

The sounds of strange jungle animals and insects melded into white noise. Kelly sighed and turned his head to face Freya, lying in the hammock opposite him.

“Chris told you about them?”

“No, he told Victoria. They thought I was asleep, but ...”

“I see. Yes, I am sorry, too.”

“She sounds like she was very important to you.”

“She was. She is—at least, in my heart anyway. It’s a strange thing, you know, to be in love with someone but so angry with them. Chris was my last piece of her, of my daughter. Now he’s gone, too.”

“I think he loved you very much.”

“I loved him.” Kelly faced the sky, fighting back the lump in his throat.

“Chris said you have bad dreams about them.”

He sniffed hard. “Yeah. But lately, they’ve stopped or, at least, been replaced. I think it’s Moby Dick over there. Somehow, we’re connected. He can project emotion into me. That thing we recovered is like an amplification device. I think that’s how they did it.”

“How who did what?”

Kelly turned back to face Freya, who was now propped up on her elbows, looking back at him.

“His species. I asked the professor how these guys were supposed to have communicated with the ancient people on this planet given all the different languages. I think they used those orb things to amplify thoughts, feelings, and memories. The professor said in most records of these creatures, there was mention of some kind of object with them. Something about the book of Thoth and Egypt, and the round thing that Oannes guy was holding. Anyway, he was already connecting with me, but when the Chinese had us hooked up to that thing, it was so much stronger. I feel calm around him.”

“Oh.”

“He’s like a baby. A bit like a blank slate. But imagine one of his kind that was educated. Imagine what they could have communicated.”

“And that is what the professor and Benjamin wanted? To use K’in to heal the world?”

“I guess so. Though I think they lost their way and went a bit nuts. I think they figured the world could tear itself apart until only a remnant of humanity was left, making it easier to start again, making K’in’s task easier. I don’t know. It was a bloody, hare-brained scheme if you ask me.”

“Then why are you still helping?”

“Because. Chris reminded me that it’s not all about me. Izel would have helped. She was selfless. Something I failed to learn from her in life. Perhaps I can learn it now.”

Freya smiled weakly. “Sometimes, you have to lose something to find something.”

He looked at her for a few moments. Maybe she wasn’t as vacuous as he’d thought. “Yeah, perhaps you’re right.”

“Good night, Kelly.”

“Good night, Freya.”