“I’m still getting the same anomalous results from the nanopore sequencer,” he said. “I don’t know if the pressure or the radiation is affecting the MinIon unit.”

  “What’s the radiation reading out there?” Adam asked.

  Datuk sat back and cringed slightly. “Eight hundred rem. Bad enough to cause acute death.”

  “What about in here?”

  “Hundred and sixty.”

  Phoebe swallowed. She had begun to feel nauseous, but she didn’t know if it was an early sign of radiation poisoning or if it was simply due to tension.

  Bryan grimaced. “Approaching fourteen thousand meters. Between the pressure and the radiation, I’m only keeping us down here a quarter hour. After that, we’re heading up.”

  From his tone, he would brook no argument.

  No one tried.

  None of them wanted to stay down here any longer than possible. For the past hour, the Cormorant had begun to pop and groan under the increasing pressure.

  It had kept them all tense.

  Phoebe had tried to distract herself by listening to the forest, seeking solace in the quiet chorus around her. With that same goal, she twisted and faced Datuk.

  “What problem are you having with your sequencer? Maybe I can help?”

  Datuk gave a frustrated shake of his head. “I keep getting the same error. The MinIon is normally very precise, able to pick out and differentiate individual DNA and RNA bases. Same with polypeptides and other polymers. But in the DNA I collected from the specimen, I’m registering adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine.”

  Phoebe shrugged. Those four bases—abbreviated as AGCT—composed the four-letter code for most life on the planet. “So what’s the problem?”

  “According to the MinIon’s results, those four bases make up ninety-eight percent of the sample’s DNA. I’ve repeated the test and keep getting the same number. Plus or minus a few decimal places.”

  “What makes up the other two percent?”

  Datuk frowned. “That’s just it. They’re still registering as AGCT, only they’ve been tagged as anomalous.”

  “Why?”

  He stared at her. “Though those bases are configured the same, those AGCT molecules are composed of silicon atoms instead of carbon.”

  She frowned. “Is that even possible?”

  “Maybe. In labs, they’ve created microorganisms that can enzymatically produce organo-silicon properties. Even RNA- and DNA-like bases.” Datuk sighed. “But the error I’m reading could just be due to contamination, a confusion from silt or sand being present on the sample. Silicon is everywhere. It makes up thirty percent of the earth’s crust. It’s hundreds of times more abundant than carbon. Silicon-based lifeforms had been theorized, but carbon is more versatile and why life on Earth is based on that atom.”

  “Maybe not all life.” Phoebe stared out at the seas. “Could this lifeform be some sort of chimera? Sharing both types of DNA bases—carbon and silicon.”

  “I don’t know. But it might explain how these creatures survive down here. Few species of fish can live at these extreme depths because the protein produced by normal DNA ceases to function under these pressures. Maybe the organo-silicon genes produce unique proteins that help them survive.”

  “Maybe,” Phoebe agreed.

  Datuk sighed and sat back. “It’s all speculation. Without more research, it’s impossible to say.”

  Adam interrupted them. “Look to the left.”

  Phoebe faced her window. A shimmering movement drew her eye. A glowing streak sped across the dark forest. It undulated and twisted. Tentacles flared, then contracted. Lights flashed and traced through like fire. The panic of its flight and the distress of its blinking were easy to read.

  “It must have accidentally brushed into the irradiated area,” Phoebe said. “Then in alarm, it fled the wrong way. Deeper into the dead zone.”

  The polyp-like creature rushed out of the forest’s fringe and into the open space. It flailed and spun, rushing at them.

  “It’s heading for our lights,” Datuk said.

  The beast sped up to them and circled the Cormorant. Its head was bullet-shaped, somewhere between squid and octopus. Four globular eyes ringed its edge, using each to study this strange foreigner in its midst. It flared out eight arms and wrapped them over the glass scallop, as if begging to be let inside.

  But there was nothing they could do.

  It clung there, flashing and blinking, pleading. Through its translucent skin, four hearts beat a timpani of clear panic. Over a long minute, the glow faded from its body. The fearful squeezing of its hearts slowed as it succumbed to the radiation.

  Phoebe placed her palm over the glass.

  I’m sorry.

  It finally fell away, its glory dimming, fading back into the gloom, becoming part of it.

  Closer at hand, Datuk extended the Cormorant’s hydraulic arm toward the specimen, trying for another sample.

  Phoebe reached back to him. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  Datuk nodded and retracted the arm.

  They sat in silence for several breaths.

  Datuk spoke first. “It definitely appeared to bear characteristics of a rudimentary octopus. Maybe it truly is the progenitor of the species. The missing link. An explanation for what has baffled evolutionists when it comes to an octopus’s anatomy, physiology, and intelligence.”

  “But what about those bits of organo-silicon DNA?” Phoebe asked.

  Datuk sniffed. “Maybe we shouldn’t entirely discount the paper I mentioned during the first dive. The one about octopuses coming from space.”

  Adam turned to him, clearly skeptical. “What did the article claim?”

  “The main argument is that our planet could have been seeded by extraterrestrial retroviruses—which are very mutagenic—during a cometary bombardment that struck Earth during the Cambrian period. The date does correspond to the emergence of retroviruses in vertebrate lines, viruses that seemingly came out of nowhere. The paper speculates that it was those mutagenic retroviruses that sparked the Cambrian Explosion of life—an event half a billion years ago when nearly all the major phyla of the modern world came into being. The paper also postulates it was those viruses that produced the unique and inexplicable biology of octopuses.”

  “So extraterrestrial viruses gave us octopuses?” Adam said, clearly scoffing at such a statement.

  Datuk shrugged. “What I find most interesting in retrospect—especially with what we’ve witnessed here—is what marked the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion. It was a pivotal event. A critical advancement that allowed life to spread across oceans and onto land. It immediately preceded the arrival of octopuses and squids.”

  “What was that critical advancement?” Adam asked.

  Phoebe knew the answer. She stared out at the dark forests around them. “It was the emergence of hard body parts in animals. Starting with the skeletons of coral.”

  3:45 P.M.

  Adam kept close watch on the bathymetric screen. “We’re approaching fourteen thousand meters.”

  “Blowing ballast,” Bryan said. “Going for neutral buoyancy.”

  Solid weights were jettisoned off the Cormorant’s exterior. The vehicle’s descent slowed to a crawl, then finally stopped.

  Adam noted the depth reading.

  13,978 METERS.

  That’s close enough.

  “What’s the sonar showing?” Adam asked Phoebe.

  She pinged the bottom. “The haloing from before is still there, only more distinct. Some portion of the seabed is a mile under us. But I’m still seeing lots of blank spots, gaps in the sonar sounding.”

  “Then let’s take a look,” Adam said.

  Bryan rotated the underwing cameras, pointing them straight down. Their eyes had been rolled up during the descent to protect their lenses. “Pulling up the feed from cameras one through four.”

  He tapped switches, and the large monitor over the helm bloomed to light. It was divided into four zones, one for each camera. But their views were stitched together to form a single large image.

  The view was blurry, but Bryan zoomed in and out, focusing each lens until a crisp image of the seabed revealed itself.

  Gasps rose from the group.

  Adam hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t that hellscape. The bottom of the cavern appeared to be a moth-eaten ruin. Massive pockets, fissures, and gaps split up the landscape. They must be what formed those blank spots on the echosounding. If sonar couldn’t penetrate those dark depths, then they must be impossibly deep, maybe delving all the way through Earth’s crust.

  Adam dismissed this thought and focused on what he could see. The intact sections of the seabed were blistered with huge calderas, all fuming with black smoke.

  Phoebe pointed a finger at one. “What is that?”

  From his geology classes, Adam knew the answer. “Submarine volcanos. But these don’t spew magma. Instead, they blast out liquid carbon dioxide. There’s one in the Philippine Sea. The Eifuku volcano. It reaches temps of more than two hundred degrees. But those down there, that deep and large, who knows how hot they get?”

  “What about those dark yellow spots on the seabed?” Datuk asked. He reached over Phoebe’s shoulder and waved a finger across a series of pestilent-looking blemishes, ending at a huge pool of the same.

  “I don’t know,” Adam admitted.

  He squinted at them. The largest looked to be a good mile across. A black crust rimmed its edge. The shoreline was a dark umber that grew lighter until at the center it was a glowing yellow sun.

  Phoebe leaned closer. “They’re lakes of molten sulfur. I’ve seen pictures of them elsewhere but never in person. And certainly never that huge. The largest looks as if it’s eddying around a central pool of molten rock.”

  Bryan pointed to the bottom-right corner of the monitor. “Is that the tail end of a submarine?”

  They all shifted their attention, reminded of why they were down here.

  “Can you adjust the cameras?” Adam asked.

  Bryan slid the four lenses in that direction. As he did, the full length of the lost submarine came into view. It looked like a crumpled child’s toy abandoned on the ground. It was framed and half covered by shattered trunks and branches of coral that had fallen with it. The rest of the collapsed forest must have rained down into those bottomless gaps or been burned up in the volcanos and molten pools.

  Too bad the sub hadn’t met the same fate.

  As if summoned by this thought, something massive shifted out of the neighboring forest. It burrowed under the deadfall, remaining mostly hidden. Brief glimpses of it showed a tunneling black mass patched by rough spots, as if it was carrying a carapace of rock with it. It was huge, three times the diameter of the submarine, dwarfing the crumpled boat.

  It bulged upward at one point, breaking through the broken coral, shrugging the tonnage aside. Its dark skin pulsed with a deep glow. It wasn’t the bright bioluminescence of the creatures inhabiting the forest. Instead, there was an ancient quality to it, the glow of a dying sun. It shone from deep within it.

  Still, there was no mistaking what it was.

  Phoebe admitted as much. “It’s a tentacle.”

  At the edges of the forest, shadows shifted, shining with the same somber glow, marking the locations of other tentacles. The lead one reached to the sub and shoved it away. It then retreated, curling as if repulsed. The inner glow dimmed. Even it was struggling with the level of radiation.

  Another limb snaked out, no longer hiding. Its length was heavy with patches of rocky carapace. Still, it took its turn to push the submarine farther out into the open. Then spasmed back, burned by the radioactive ember.

  They watched as this effort continued. Tentacles pushed, then retreated, again and again, slowly shifting the submarine across the hellish landscape.

  Phoebe was the first to understand the ploy, noting the determined trajectory. “They’re trying to drive it into the molten lake. To destroy it.”

  Adam glanced to Datuk, remembering his claim that the local quakes might not have been random, but purposeful. That the shaking could’ve been an attempt to drive out the hot splinter that had lodged in their forest—and when that didn’t work, they broke the crust under it and dropped it into this hellscape.

  Is that what we’re witnessing?

  Datuk seemed to believe so. “It looks like a toxic clean-up job.”

  “But what is it?” Adam challenged them. “Those tentacles down there. They look somewhat like those octopus-like creatures, those overgrown coral polyps. But it’s clearly different.”

  “It must be far more ancient,” Phoebe said. “Maybe a great ancestor. It could be hundreds of millions of years old.” She turned to Datuk. “I wager if you tested its DNA, you’d find many more silicon-based sections.”

  “What do you mean?” Adam asked.

  Phoebe returned her attention below. “I think we’re looking at a blurring of geology and biology. A mix of silicon and carbon life.”

  Adam wanted Datuk to argue with her, but he remained silent.

  Phoebe continued, “Over untold millennia, the polyps of the coral forest probably started shedding the silicon in their DNA, the stone from their bodies, evolving and becoming more free swimming.”

  “Until there were just traces of silicon in their DNA,” Datuk mumbled. “Enough to sustain them at these depths.”

  “Then eventually those last vestiges were cast off, too. As life swam freer, venturing into less hostile waters, the silicon DNA and its proteins were no longer needed.”

  “Until the creatures became the baffling oddities we know today,” Datuk said. “The octopus.”

  “Or possibly they’re the source for all life,” Phoebe expounded. “Either way, some of that past has endured. Down deep. And I wager even deeper there could be greater mysteries, ones that we may never fully comprehend.”

  Adam remembered her description.

  A blurring of geology and biology.

  As they watched, those rocky tentacles finally rolled the submarine to the edge of the molten lake. The boat’s weight cracked through the blackened crust at the rim. It slid down into the depths, vanishing beneath the sulfur.

  Adam pictured it falling ever deeper, rolling toward the molten rock at the center. That realization sat him straighter. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We have a few more minutes before we have to leave,” Bryan said, still transfixed by the sight.

  “No. We don’t.”

  Bryan glanced at him.

  Adam pointed down. “The Chinese sub was likely armed with ballistic missiles.” He faced everyone. “Equipped with nuclear warheads.”

  Datuk gaped at him. “Will they explode?”

  “It’s not likely, but let’s not take the chance.”

  Bryan shut down the cameras and began hitting buttons with clear anxiety. “Dumping all ballast.”

  The Cormorant started to ascend.

  Phoebe stared up. “We have a long way to go.”

  More than eight miles.

  “We can do it,” Adam said, though he was unsure what sort of reception they’d get up top. There continued to be no word from the Titan X.

  A loud grumbling arose around the vehicle as it shot upward. It shook the Cormorant and grew steadily in volume and strength. They all shared worried looks, knowing what it was.

  Another quake.

  “How much farther until we reach the fissure?” Adam asked.

  “Pinging sonar up there now,” Phoebe said.

  Adam waited breathlessly.

  “Another half mile,” she reported.

  He leaned forward to view her screen. It showed a bottom-up view into the crevice. Once they reached it, they still had to climb another three thousand meters to clear it. He prayed he was wrong about the nuclear warheads below.

  But if I’m right, we need to be well away from here.

  Phoebe continued to ping the roof over their head.

  Adam sat back, knowing there was nothing he could do. They were at the mercy of buoyancy and pressure.

  “No, no, no . . .” Phoebe moaned.

  Adam leaned forward again. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head and hit the sonar button, casting another wave upward.

  He studied the image and spotted a small dot dropping from the bottom of the fissure. He pointed at it. “What’s that?”

  “Can’t tell. Likely some falling debris. Maybe a rock dislodged from the cliffs overhead.”

  “A damned big rock,” Adam warned.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She studied the screen. “We have a far bigger problem.”

  “What?”

  “The fissure.” She faced them all. “The quake is closing it.”

  Datuk jerked forward. “What?”

  Adam stared up. “If so, we need to get moving faster.”

  All eyes turned to Bryan, who shook his head. They were already ascending as quickly as they could.

  “Can we reach the fissure in time?” Adam asked.

  “Yes,” Phoebe said, “but it’ll do us no good.”

  Datuk frowned. “Why?”

  “The fissure is two miles long,” she reminded them. “At the rate it’s sealing, we’ll never make it through in time.”

  40

  January 24, 11:55 A.M. WITA

  Bali Sea, two miles off the coast of West Nusa Tenggara

  Gray climbed from below into the patrol boat’s wheelhouse. Yeung manned the helm and guided the interceptor through seas still choked with ash. Upon Gray’s orders, they were trying to get upwind of Mount Tambora, to clear its heaviest pall.

  Though the volcano remained quiet, it still steamed and smoked. Bright lava showed through cracks in its cooling crust. It was a reminder that danger still lurked close at hand.

  Not that the damage wrought hadn’t been devastating enough.

  Gray frowned as the boat swept past the ruins of a fishing camp on a tiny atoll. It was smothered by ash. Boats had been washed by tsunamis deep into the ramshackle town. A pair of goats stood on a rooftop and bleated at their passage, the noise sad and forsaken. Nothing else appeared to be living on the tiny island.