He used the controls to release more slack and moved to the edge of whale’s gut to investigate the enormous wound. Vincent crouched, and ran one hand along the edge of the flesh – fairly clean cut, as though someone had taken a very sharp knife to it. A portion of rib was showing, the gleaming white bone was a massive plank thicker than his waist. It, too, was cleanly sheared off, but at its edge what he hadn’t seen from the helicopter’s cabin, something that didn’t belong was wedged in the edge of the bone.

Vincent drew forth a pair of pliers from his tool belt, and leaned out. He grunted; short a few inches. He leaned out farther, his boots beginning to slip towards the dark water, and just got the tip of the thing in the pliers. He gripped the object, tugging, twisting, and straining.

“Come o-oon, let fucking go.” He braced and tugged again. The object popped free, and he fell back on his ass. Beneath him he felt the rumble of a deep moan, and he looked back alarmed. “Jesus Christ.”

“You okay down there, boss?” Regina’s voice held a degree of concern.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. It’s just… this guy, he’s still alive.” Vincent knew the damage the huge leviathan had sustained meant it was doomed to die slowly, and there was nothing he could do for it. If he had dynamite, he would have rigged a charge against its head, and put it out of its misery.

He looked down at the object in his hand, lit up by the helicopter’s spotlight. “Is this what did it to you, big guy?” He held a fragment of a tooth, broken off some-ways, but still several inches long. He had no idea how big it might have been if fully intact.

“So, looks like shark attack it is then.” Vincent looked down again at the wound. He could see clearly now that the cutting he imagined was actually sawing done by something serrated – exactly like the razor-sharp serrations he felt on the shard of tooth. It would have been perfect for making the cut. But the wound size… it was way too big for a single animal to make.

He remained crouched, his forearms resting on his knees, and let his eyes travel to the dark water. It was impenetrable, and about two hundred feet deep in this area. But he also knew that just a few miles away, the edge of the continental shelf dropped away to cold, dark fathomless depths of an abyssal plain. He suddenly felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. He looked around at the whale, and then back to the water. The helicopter’s spotlight made him and the whale glare brightly, a glowing beacon for miles in every direction, above and below the water. But his ability to see anything ended at a few feet below the surface.