The notion that little Felix had murdered Bill—cut him apart and dissected him—defied any kind of credibility, but there it was. That cute little precocious eight-year-old child had committed bloody murder and then sliced Bill’s body open to play with the man’s guts?

Tobi slowed on the stairs, peering at the tube windows. They should have been crystal clear, allowing a visual experience as he descended beneath the waves, and then got a view of the underwater scape where the reef dropped off. Instead, each of the oval windows was covered with green-blue, leaving the tube so dark that the lights illuminated the steps.

Well, hell, that was just more of the shit that he was going to have to hose off. But what was it about that algae and the Pod? Last he’d seen it was coating every square centimeter of the pilings and water line. Worse than any moss or algae he’d ever seen on Earth’s oceans.

Another thing to put on his endless list.

As his feet thumped off the stairs, he rubbed the back of his neck. During all those years in Ashanti, they’d grown into a tight-knit community. A sort of extended and sharing family. Like him, Jym, and Casey. Didn’t matter that Tomaya was his daughter and little Saleen was Jym’s, or that two men and a woman could be as good as married. Sure, Casey and Jym both had PhDs, and Tobi was a lowly Pod Technician Level 1. They loved each other for one another’s human qualities. Back in Solar System people would have looked at them askance. In the Maritime Unit they were accepted as who they were.

But it was all coming apart at the seams. So many beloved friends, dead. The realization of how perilous their existence was, and now Felix had used a vibraknife to murder Bill. Bill, of all people? For God’s sake why?

And little Toni was comatose, his neck swelling, and it appeared to be nothing that Anna Gabarron could cure?

To his, Casey, and Jym’s horror, that morning Tomaya had been bleary-eyed. Said she wasn’t feeling good. That her neck hurt.

Ruto, felt that nervous tension build in his stomach. Tomaya hadn’t been herself. Not for a couple of weeks. She’d been listless, sometimes so vacuous it was like she was suddenly sleepwalking. Then, after someone touched her, she’d be right back, as if unaware that she’d ever gone blank.

“Give her a bit,” Jym had told him. “She’s under a huge amount of stress. We’re in a new place, an entirely new environment, and it turns out that it’s full of sea monsters. Bill is murdered, and her friend Felix did it. Casey almost died in the sub that day. Tomaya will figure it out. The miracle would be if she wasn’t reacting to all of this.”