Trapped in the van, Ford found himself forgotten in the midst of an increasingly hellish nightmare. Fleeing workers and emergency crews raced past the van by the dozens, oblivious to the desperate American handcuffed inside the vehicle. The cuffs dug into his wrist as he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle his hand free. He shouted frantically at the people running by.

No one listened or even glanced in his direction. They were all too busy trying to get away from… what?

* * *

Joe crept along the gantry toward the pit. One level below, a crew of unusually courageous emergency workers warily approached the edge of the giant sinkhole. All at once, some enormous creature, its exact contours obscured by darkness and a net of heavy steel cables, shoved up against its cage. An angry screech conveyed its displeasure at being trapped.

The earsplitting cry convinced the workers to turn and run like hell. Joe didn’t blame them; it was a natural response to the gargantuan monster trying to force itself out into the world. He would have run himself if he hadn’t spent the last fifteen years looking for answers. This could be his last chance to find out exactly what had destroyed the plant years ago—and why Sandra died.

Luckily for the fleeing mortals, the creature retreated back into the pit after its failed attempt to breach the net. Brody was impressed by the size of the cage, admiring the foresight and ingenuity of the engineers who had designed and implemented the ambitious safety measure. The creature’s bellicose howl faded away. It appeared the cage had worked.

Thank God, Joe thought. He wanted desperately to lay eyes on the creature, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see it run amok. That monster’s caused enough havoc already.

Then a giant black appendage rose up through a gap in the cables. Joe’s eyes bulged at the sight. At first he thought it was a limb of some sort, but then he realized that it was actually just a single hooked claw. His mind reeled at the sheer scale that implied. For the love of God, how big was this thing?

The crooked talon hooked onto the taut steel cables, gripping them. It began pulling downward on the net, exerting tremendous force. The heavy cables stretched and strained at their moorings. The catwalks overlooking the pit started to tip precariously as they were wrenched loose, so that they dangled at alarming angles above the sinkhole and the creature below. All six cranes, each over 150 feet tall, began to tip toward the pit like fishing poles being dragged down by an over-sized catch. Twisting metal squealed as if in agony.