Up From The Deep by Vaughn Jackson (highly recommended books txt) 📕

“Yeah, I hear that thing throwing a fit,” Chaplin said.

“No, listen, behind all that.”

Raymond strained to hear. Behind the shrieks and thrashing of whatever it was, he could just make out the pulsing repetition of a helicopter. Shah emerged from the water screaming, cutting his focus.

“Chaplin,” Raymond said, “go help him.”

The young man ran to the end of the boat and was about to dive in when he saw the purple luminescent glow surrounding the screaming commander. Several spindly legs, different from the giant creature in color and structure, clawed over the man’s face.

“Doing something to the water,” he gasped out. “Bugs. Acid. Burns. Don’t…come…in.”

The water reddened around the man as his skin began to bubble and burn, torn away by the chitinous legs that twitched just above the surface of the waves. The commander seized violently, then went still, and sank into the sea while chunks of his flesh drifted on the sloshing waves.

Chaplin sank to his knees.

The creature ceased its thrashing, and a harsh rumble echoed from beneath the waves. The sac around its neck began to deflate, and the spines at the end of its frills began to tremble. Without warning, its head snapped to the right, and all the tension in the air around it vanished. The rumble died off, and the sea around the creature grew calm. It let out a slight warble. Raymond followed its gaze and watched a whale pod surface and spray near the horizon. The creature warbled again and dove beneath the surface, sending the ship skidding in the opposite direction and spraying the deck with water. He watched its shadow rush toward the pod and vanish into the distance.

“What just happened?” Greenwood asked.

“I think...it realized it was hungry,” Raymond said. He looked to what remained of the stern and saw Chaplin slumped in the rising water. “Go get him, before he throws himself into the waves.”

He watched her limp to the young man’s side. She put a hand on his shoulder and talked to him for a moment. She helped him to his feet and then returned to the cabin whose floor was now an inch underwater.

The helicopter drew closer; Raymond could hear its propeller over the rush of the sea air and the keening cries of the distant whales. He clenched his eyes shut and committed to memory the face of every lost officer. Shah. Peters. Cage. Sizer. When he finished, and their faces still danced behind his eyelids when he relaxed his focus, he opened his eyes and watched the sea, hoping that the creature wouldn’t decide to finish what it had started.

Chapter 2

Devonte spun around in his chair and tapped the keyboard at his desk. The computer hummed to life, drenching the dark room in fluctuating shades of red, blue, and green. A single red notification lingered in the bottom right corner of the screen. Devonte opened the message. It was from his forum buddy, D-Base.

Did you hear about the seismic activity near the Mariana Trench, KK?

Devonte swiveled to face his second screen. He googled “Mariana seismic” and scrolled through the search results. There had been an earthquake of some kind, and an abandoned oil rig sank.

Looks pretty standard to me. Submarine earthquakes are common, he sent back.

He sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desk. D-Base was always online. They’d get back to him soon. Why were they bringing up something so routine? He scrolled through his usual forum, checking for any signs of strange happenings. A man in Hawaii reported seeing massive spikes travelling through foggy waters during a fishing expedition, but further investigation determined that the “spikes” had been rocks connected to a nearby uncharted island. In Japan, a woman claimed to be hunted by several “black, spiky dogs with blue fangs”. Her blood had tested positive for LSD, and further investigation was halted.

The chat icon popped up. Devonte clicked it.

That’s what I thought at first, but...

But what?

…

It’s a challenge. See what you find. Let’s correlate! :) Back later.

Just tell me!

D-Base’s icon changed to “Away”. An emoticon sticking its tongue out replaced the small green “Available” indicator.

“Motherfucker.” Devonte rested his head in his hands. D-Base always did this. Whenever they came to a conclusion first it was a game, or a test, to see if Devonte could get there too. He enjoyed the game, just not this early in the morning. “Fine then. I’ll do it better.”

He pulled up his computer’s console and logged into a live satellite feed. NASA’s live satellite feed. The backdoor was reaching its expiration date. In a few days the open port would cycle, and he’d have to work his way back in. He wasn’t sure if they didn’t know, or didn’t care about his actions, either one suited him just fine. Each satellite was identified by a lengthy and unique string of numbers. For now, he checked to see which satellite had most recently done a pass over the trench. He pulled up the live feed for the past week. The satellite’s connections included a seismometer, an EC meter, and a flow detector. Several other data feeds sent a constant stream of information back to mission control, and to Devonte.

“Time for a good, old-fashioned romp.” The program was designed to take in data from a set time period and search for anomalies using his self-made machine learning algorithm. Devonte massaged his temples, looking at the large amounts of data. “It’ll need more data.”

He expanded the program to pull from the past years-worth of data. It would take much longer, but it would be more accurate.

“And now we wait.” He reached for a half-empty water bottle, finished it, and tossed it in the trash can. In a small journal, he made a note to recycle it later. He usually forgot to anyway, but it made him feel better that he was trying.

A few hours passed, and a new notification popped up, an email. He double-clicked it open. There was