At least A17 remained unmolested. Only a few pepper grains marred its plastic tray. She shook her head at the sight of three pink shrimp lying on their sides nearby. Their legs were not moving, nor their antennas.

  Dead.

  Clearly Kim treated his specimens no better than he treated his fellow colleagues. His rough handling must have killed these specimens. He hadn’t even bothered to separate the living from the dead. The other shrimp avoided that corner of the tank, as if fearful of their dead brethren.

  Jazz nudged one of the bodies with her pincers. A flurry of small green blebs blasted off the pink shrimp. Polyps. They pulsed and spun back to their home, the black branch of spiky coral.

  She grimaced. Had they been feeding on it? She rolled the shrimp over. Its normally translucent legs were all black. One limb broke and drifted away. The shrimp must have been dead for days, further proving Kim’s lack of attention to his work.

  She sighed and focused on her own task. She grasped the thick branch of A17 and drilled out a core sample, making sure to capture several of the polyps, which required chasing a few with the suction tool. She then collected everything into an extraction receptacle. Once the tiny chute was sealed, she pressed a button to slowly release the pressure inside it. The decompression took four long minutes.

  As she waited, she leaned her forehead against the tank. She watched the antics of the pink shrimp. It was hard to be angry at these visitors. Like a passel of rowdy brothers, they cavorted and rolled around the tank. One got too near to A17. A dozen polyps burst off the black stalk and unleashed furls of sweeper tentacles. They battered at the trespasser, whipping it savagely.

  The shrimp writhed in place, legs kicking, carapace flinching. It slowly sank to the bottom, joining the others below. A few polyps followed it down; the rest returned to their roosts inside the coral. As the assaulted shrimp landed on its back, she spotted a fiery glow through its translucent carapace, as if it were burning from within. She shifted for a better view, but the belly went dark.

  She scowled. Must’ve been a trick of the room’s light off the glass. Still, she repeated the question that had been plaguing her all day, staring at the obstinate piece of black coral.

  “What are you?”

  Someone else had a similar question. “What are you doing to my specimens?” a voice asked sharply.

  Startled, she jerked around.

  Kim Jong Suk frowned at her. Anger narrowed his eyes. He stood only three inches taller than her, but he carried himself as if he were taller than seven feet.

  Jazz didn’t back down. “Your specimens? I thought you collected these for a late-night snack. Clearly no researcher would mishandle their research subjects in this manner.”

  Kim’s lips paled to a hard line under a thin black mustache. He was a professor from KAIST—the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He was clearly unaccustomed to someone challenging him, especially a post-grad student, and a woman to boot.

  “Ms. Patel,” he said coldly, emphasizing her lack of a doctorate. “I have time-sensitive research and found your chamber to be mostly empty. And with Dr. Reed gone, I imagine no real science will be conducted here. The tank might as well be put to good use in the meantime. I’m sure whatever busy work assigned to you by Dr. Reed can wait while real research is being done.”

  Jazz merely smiled at his condescension, not taking her eyes off him. “We’re about to identify an entirely new subphylum of Cnidaria. And you’re playing with a species of shrimp that have been studied for years. What is your research? To discover a new way to stir fry them?”

  “Ms. Patel, I’ll have you know—”

  “And I see you’re still here at Titan Station Down. While my boss is six miles under the ocean, exploring an entirely new biosphere. So, whose research is truly more important?”

  By now, the other biologists in the room stared toward them. Jazz was sure the story of this confrontation would spread throughout the station.

  Kim’s hands had balled into fists.

  Jazz’s smile broadened. Try it, bub. She had been raised with three older brothers and knew how to fight dirty.

  The conflict was interrupted by a sharp click from the tank behind her. She turned as the decompression door popped open near the base of the chamber. Her sample was ready for collection.

  She swung around and carefully withdrew the small open-mouthed Nalgene bottle that contained her sliver of coral. While she would have liked to have knocked Kim down another few pegs, she had real work to do. She snapped the decompression chamber closed and collected a matching lid before turning back around.

  Kim crowded close, anxious for her to get out of his way, trying to assert his dominance. Jazz continued to block him, staring down into the bottle. He huffed loudly, but she stood and swirled the content, rolling the black sliver of extracted coral in the seawater.

  “Can you please step aside?” Kim asked her. It clearly strained him to be even this civil.

  She finally relented, feeling that she had affirmed her place well enough. But before she could shift out of the way, the floor jolted. The sharp quake threw her into Kim. On reflex, he grabbed for her hand to hold her up, knocking the sample bottle away. Its contents splashed across their fingers.

  The ground shook for another five long seconds.

  When it ended, she pushed out of Kim’s arms, her face heated with embarrassment. She shook her wet fingers and stared down at the bottle on the floor. She bent to collect it, praying the cored sample was still inside.

  Before she could touch it, something stung her middle finger. It felt worse than a hornet strike. She gasped and dropped to a knee. The intensity of the pain grew into a fire. She turned her hand and spotted a millimeter-size green dot clinging to her finger. She grimaced and brushed the polyp off.

  Kim stumbled back, rubbing his hand on his chest. His face was fixed in a rictus of pain. He had clearly been stung, too. “What was that?”

  Jazz picked up the bottle, which rattled with the sample piece still inside. “Just a coral bite,” she scolded, acting nonchalant while her finger continued to burn.

  She collected the plastic lid and screwed it on. As she did, the pain slowly ebbed. Kim frowned and headed out of the room; apparently his time-sensitive research wasn’t as urgent as he had claimed.

  Jazz crossed to a cleaning station, gathered paper towels and a spray bottle of antiseptic solution, and cleaned up her spill. She dumped it all into the biological waste chute, where the contents would eventually be incinerated.

  Once done, she headed away, embarrassed and subdued. She was sure this incident would also be shared across the station’s tiers. Feeling somewhat defeated, she returned to the lab and stored the sample for the night.

  I’ll start fresh in the morning.

  She headed up toward the women’s dorm. She opened and closed her hand, working away the residual heat in her finger. She felt foolish for breaking safety protocol. She should have sealed the bottle as soon as she had taken it from the decompression chamber.

  While climbing the stairs, she pictured the little pink shrimp toppling to the bottom of the high-pressure tank, chased by emerald polyps. From the fire of that sting, she now understood how the small crustacean had been felled by the attack.

  The polyp’s venom was intense.

  Thank goodness I’m not a shrimp.

  10:44 P.M.

  Kowalski had never been one to settle an argument.

  He usually caused them.

  He stood inside the geology lab with a cigar clamped between his back molars. The stogie remained unlit due to strict fire restrictions. Not that he would have smoked it anyway. Doctor’s orders. Still, he could appreciate the taste and smell of the dried Cuban leaves.

  Before him, William Byrd browbeat the older geologist. Dr. Haru Kaneko sat before an array of monitors, all displaying graphs, charts, and seismic readings. Everyone in the room had felt the last temblor. Apparently, Haru believed it was some final straw, a harbinger of a greater geological event to come.

  “I’ve run multiple projections,” Haru declared emphatically. “The entire region is destabilizing at an alarming rate. Faster than even my earlier models predicted.”

  “But it could also settle just as quickly,” Byrd argued. “I’ve read the assessments from the seismologists at Stanford and MIT.”

  “Those interpretations are outliers, and you know it. Many more agree with my projections—at least to variable degrees.”

  “Those variable degrees range from an event possibly happening in the next few days to years from now.”

  “Yet, the grimmest predictions came from volcanologists. Like myself. Volcanic eruptions pose the greatest threat. And few geologists have studied this region as in depth as I have, nor have they been involved with monitoring this trench over the past weeks. My modeling shows an eighty-three percent probability of a catastrophic event happening within the next twelve hours, maybe less than that.”

  Byrd sighed dramatically and ceded ground. “Then let your team continue to monitor conditions overnight. If you’re still this worried in the morning, then we’ll begin evacuations when the sun is up.”

  Both men turned to Kowalski, seeing if he was willing to chime in. He had only one recommendation. It was a philosophy he seldom lived by—but it sounded good now.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he warned gruffly.

  Haru nodded.

  “We should get the hell out of here,” Kowalski recommended. “How long would it take to evacuate this place?”

  Byrd calculated in his head and counted on his fingers. “With the contingent of personnel down here, and accounting for the number of submersibles, plus the transit times up and down—about three hours.”

  Kowalski scowled. “That friggin’ long?”

  “We’re two miles down,” the billionaire reminded him.

  “Then why are we even arguing?” Kowalski said. “Get everyone packing.”

  Byrd offered a lame excuse. “If we do, it will take us weeks to reestablish everything. It’ll cost us millions. Interrupt countless projects. And if we’re wrong, the press will have a field day about our needless panic.”

  Kowalski pointed to the door. “Better some bad press than a hundred dead scientists.”

  Byrd sagged under Kowalski’s glare. “That’s true, of course.”

  Haru looked greatly relieved, as did the other geologists around the room. It was the depth of their relief that worried Kowalski more than all their charts and graphs.

  Byrd headed toward the door, but before he could exit, a tall dark-skinned man hurried into the lab, stepping briskly up to the billionaire. He stood as tall as Kowalski. His bulk strained his jumpsuit, which was charcoal gray, marking him part of the station’s security team. His only weapon was a collapsible steel baton at his waist. No one wanted to risk bringing a gun down here.

  Well, almost nobody.

  “Sir,” the security chief said.

  “What is it, Jarrah?”

  “Word from Up,” he reported. “A large military ship is steaming toward us.”

  “And?”

  “They refuse to respond to our hails.”

  Kowalski butted in. “What military?”

  “It’s too dark to make out any details. It could be nothing.”

  Kowalski frowned, knowing better.

  It’s never nothing.

  “Have topside keep us updated,” Byrd said. “Let them also know we’re instituting an evacuation down here.”

  Jarrah’s eyebrows rose, but he simply nodded, turned on a heel, and headed out.

  Byrd faced the room. “I think you’re all right. Until matters calm down, it’ll be safer up top for everybody.”

  Kowalski doubted this. His stomach gave a sour churn—and he trusted his gut. He checked his watch, knowing there were others who also needed to be warned.

  He faced Haru. “What about the team diving into the trench?” He pictured Monk and the others. “Maybe you should let them know that the place could explode at any moment.”

  As if affirming this, the station gave another hard shake. Equipment rattled on tables, glassware tinkled, the floor trembled.

  They all waited out the quake.

  Once it ended, Kowalski started to speak—when another jolt struck.

  Followed by another.

  Kowalski pointed to the lab’s radio. “Do it now.”

  16

  January 23, 11:07 P.M. NZDT

  Pacific Ocean, six hundred miles NE of Auckland

  Phoebe leaned forward in her seat. The thrusters thrummed outside, driving the Cormorant over the shining landscape below. It was as if they were gliding over a rainforest, only one that had been painted and daubed by a wild artist wielding a palette of phosphorescent oils. Everywhere, the coral jungle flickered and flashed, tracing through its depths with metallic fire.

  Bryan had cast off another five kilograms of ballast to draw the vehicle to within a few yards of the wonderland. He had also deployed the Cormorant’s gull wings, transforming the DSV into its namesake.

  Lights blazed from the vehicle, casting down and ahead.

  At the back, Adam was monitoring a screen that displayed a scan from the onboard sub-bottom profiler. The hope was, by scanning this low in the water column, that they could finally discover the true bottom of the Tonga Trench.

  “Anything?” Monk asked.

  Adam nodded. “We’re picking up the sea floor. It’s roughly five hundred meters below us. Past all that coral.”

  Datuk bounced a knee in excitement. “That depth would match the deepest part of the Tonga Trench.”

  “And the bottom continues to steadily drop.”

  Phoebe stared below her knees, wishing her eyes were as good as the profiler at penetrating the forest. It was difficult to discern much through the dense canopy. Though, it did appear that the emerald-green polyps grew larger deeper down, steadily increasing in size. The population across the canopy’s surface must be the youngest, the most juvenile of the colony.

  She had also noted that the larger polyps below seemed to be the source for most of the forest’s bioluminescence. Their younger siblings did not seem to possess this property. She knew coastal corals formed a symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae, called zooxanthellae, which photosynthesized sunlight to provide sustenance for both. She wondered if there could be a similar mutualism going on here, only with a bioluminescent alga. Or could there be some internalized chemical reaction that developed as the polyps aged?

  So many mysteries . . .

  As they continued across the forest, something caught her eye. A large shadow appeared to be following the Cormorant, flowing deep through the forest, sweeping around the massive trunks of coral. She had caught glimpses of it before, but she couldn’t tell what it was. It could even just be a trick of shadows from the passage of their lights. Its presence was only notable as a dark bulk that occluded the bioluminescence, like a storm cloud passing over stars. Even now, she wasn’t sure if it was truly there.

  Still, it made her wonder.

  What sort of life made its home at these crushing depths?

  She knew one way to find out and glanced to Bryan. “How much farther is one of the landers? I’d love to deploy a bait box and lure life out of the forest.”

  He checked a sonar scope. Three lights glowed atop a bathymetric chart. “Louie is half a klick ahead,” he reported. “It lies along the path to the wrecked submarine. But I don’t think you’ll have to wait that long to cast out bait.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  Bryan goosed the thrusters to lift them higher as they approached a dark hillock in the canopy—only it wasn’t part of the forest.

  “Whale fall ahead,” the pilot reported.

  Datuk and Monk both shifted to peer over their shoulders.

  “What’s that?” Monk asked.

  “Just what it sounds like,” Phoebe answered. “Dead whales often sink to the bottom of the ocean, becoming a great banquet for deep-sea life.”

  As the Cormorant approached, Phoebe made sure the external 4K cameras were recording everything. The dark hill soon materialized into the bulk of a sperm whale. It lay on its side atop the forest. Even its great weight had failed to crash through the canopy.

  Like any whale fall, it had become a feast for life down here, a bounty dropped into these nutrient-starved depths. Half the carcass had already been scoured, exposing arcs of white rib and lengths of jaw bones. Life scurried and thrashed over the remains: picking and tearing, snipping and worming.

  “What the hell?” Monk asked. “Do you normally find so many creatures down here?”

  “Yes,” Phoebe whispered in awe. “And no.”

  Monk gaped past her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  She pointed to a herd of large corpse-white crustaceans as they ripped into the flesh. They looked like a cross between a lobster and a shrimp. Long antennae waved in front of them.

  “Those are amphipods. They’ve been spotted in deep trenches, capable of surviving at these depths. Their shallow-water counterparts seldom grow larger than your thumbnail. In deep trenches, they can grow to a foot long.”

  Monk shook his head. “Those giants out there are a yard across.”

  She nodded. “As I said, yes, creatures like this can be found down here—but no, never this size.”

  One of the amphipods curled its carapace into a ball—much like pill bugs, their distant cousins—and rolled down the flank of the whale.

  “It’s like something out of a nightmare.” Adam pointed at a bright red crab that stalked over the hummock of decaying flesh. It towered high on jointed legs that stretched fifteen feet across. “Is that creature oversize, too?”

  “Actually, no,” Phoebe said. “That’s Macrocheira kaempferi. A Japanese spider crab. They’ve never been reported at these depths. But then again, less than one percent of these deep ocean trenches have ever been seen by any eyes—human or robotic.”

  She watched a large stingray sweep over the hump of the whale. It stretched six feet wide and twice again in length if you counted its barbed tail.