Unable to contain myself, I stole a glance over my left shoulder and nearly let go.

More tsunami than wave, the three-hundred-and-ninety-foot foam-spewing blast of ocean was approaching so fast and furiously that I knew it would flay me to the bone against the cliffs before I ever got the chance to drown.

Please God, quick and painless … Reunite me with my family.

Curled up against the slate, I hyperventilated my last breath against the echoing roar—as my fingers were torn from the fissure and my body violently pried from its perch.

Eyes closed, it took me seconds to realize the pain—a vise squeezing my armpits into my clavicle, was actually Oscar’s tentacles and that I was being hoisted up the wall at a miraculous speed.

Make that near miraculous.

Looking down, I caught sight of the wave a second before it exploded into the cliff, igniting a geyser of grit and foam that blasted me full in the face. Blinded, I surrendered to Oscar’s embrace—only to be swallowed by the eruption of ocean that ripped the two of us away from the rock and devoured us in its vortex.

I opened my eyes underwater in time to see the coffee-brown wall of rock accelerate into my forehead with a dull thud … clouded in blackness.

And then I heard my name and ABE summoned me back into consciousness.

I was racing backward along the surface of a raging river, my head and chest cradled by a thick bristle-haired tentacle, the cliffs retreating before me. I could feel Oscar’s remaining limbs fighting to keep our heads above water, the bully ocean sweeping us into its agitated bosom even as it readied its next assault upon the land.

TRANSHUMAN ANDRIA IS BECKONING YOU.

Looking up, I located the platform flying overhead on my left—its biological pilot attempting to match our fluctuating course and speed as she descended. I remember thinking that there was no way she could rescue us, and then a coil of hemp shot out from a portal and Oscar snagged it.

The rope held fast as the Hunter-Transport peeled us free of the receding sea.

Oscar swung us onboard. I collapsed onto the platform, then crawled to the mutated version of my fiancée and verified that she was missing her ring finger. “Andie, thank you.”

THE CREATURE IS HOLDING AN OBJECT. PLEASE IDENTIFY.

“It’s a means to free you from bondage; it’s why I needed your help. Before I explain what must be done, there’s another member of the Oceanus crew on the cliff face. Can you locate her?”

The transport banked into a tight easterly turn, accelerating toward the rise.

Dharma was two hundred feet from the top, clinging like an abandoned puppy to an outcrop. Reaching out, I pulled her onto the transport and into my arms.

Big mistake.

Part biological, part machine, the transhuman female still had Andria Saxon’s memories and her cognitive responses.