The rest of us hurried to catch up, with Joe once again lingering long enough to bring up the rear. I found myself wondering what would happen if one of us tried to split the party, the way they always seemed to do in the horror movies Maggie and Dave liked so much. Given the size of Joe’s head, and the number of teeth it contained, I wasn’t in any real hurry to find out. Let Becks take the suicidal risks. She was the group’s remaining Irwin, after all.

Dr. Abbey waited for us at the head of a narrow alley that smelled of salt water and damp. “I was starting to think I needed to send search parties,” she said, and ducked between the racked-up tanks, starting into the darkness.

“I don’t like this,” said Alaric.

“Too late now,” I replied, and followed her.

The source of the smell quickly became apparent: The tanks making up the sides of the alley were filled with salt water and contained a variety of brightly colored corals and plastic structures. I paused to peer closer and recoiled as a thick, fleshy tentacle slapped the glass from the inside. Dr. Abbey snickered.

“Careful,” she said. “They get bored sometimes. They like to mess around with people’s heads when they’re bored.”

“They who?” I asked, pressing a hand against my chest as I waited for my heart to stop thudding quite so hard against my ribs. There was a distinct heaviness in my bladder, telling me that I needed to find a bathroom before I lined myself up for too many more exciting surprises. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“Pacific octopus.” Dr. Abbey tapped the offending tank. The tentacle responded by slapping the glass again, before it was joined by two more near-identical appendages, and a large octopus slithered out from a crack between two pieces of coral. “We do a lot of work with cephalopods. They’re good subjects, as long as you can keep them from getting bored enough to slither out of their tanks and go around wreaking havoc.”

I glanced to Becks. “Isn’t this the part where you should run screaming?”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ve got no problem with octopuses. It’s bugs and spiders that I don’t like. Octopuses are cute, in their own ‘nature did a lot of drugs’ sort of way.”

“Girls are fucking weird,” I said.

You should know, George replied.

I smirked and leaned in for a closer look at the octopus. It settled against the glass, watching us with its round, alien eyes. “That is a freaky-looking thing,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“Barney here is for testing some of the new KA strains we’ve been developing,” said Dr. Abbey, removing the cover from the tank. The octopus promptly switched its focus to the surface of the water. She stuck in a hand, and it reached up with two tentacles, twining them firmly around her wrist. “We haven’t been able to infect him yet, although he’s shown some fascinating antibody responses. If we can just figure out what’s blocking infection in the cephalopod family, we’ll be able to learn a lot more about the structure of the virus.”