“You screamed, Murph,” Bell said. “I’ve never heard anyone scream like that in my life.”

“The faces, they sort of dissolved away into a dark cloud and I saw something…something coming out of it.”

“What?”

“Tentacles…but like none I’ve ever seen before. They had claws on them the way Colossal Squid do, sharp hooks.”

“You think it was a squid? In fresh water?”

Murph shook his head. “No, Chief, I don’t.”

“Then what?”

He explained that he’d only seen the tentacles for a moment. What they were attached to he couldn’t even guess. But since he’d gone that far, he went further. “Squid don’t scare me, Chief. I’ve seen some big ones on dives, everything from Magnapinnas to Giants. I was attacked by a school of Humboldts off Baja one time on a wetsuit dive. They went after me like I was wrapped in fucking bacon. By the time the other divers got me up, I needed forty stitches to stop the bleeding.” He shook his head. “No, this was no squid…not the kind we know anyway. I think it lives in the city. If you hadn’t been there, it would have gotten me.”

Bell was disturbed by the very idea. That much was obvious. “Let’s keep this to ourselves for now. I’ll let Orr know, but I don’t want Javy and particularly Hubbs getting wind of this.”

Bell was worried about Hubbs because he knew he’d seen something in the city. Something bad. He told Murph that he couldn’t get him to admit what it was. No amount of threatening could get him talking.

“Hell, I even told him I’d bust him out of the DSU.  No dice. He won’t say a word.”

Murph nodded. “Sure, I get that, Chief. But if they’re going in there and that thing is in there, maybe they need to know.”

“Not just yet. You leave it to me.”

Murph didn’t like it, but Bell was in charge, so that’s how it had to be.

17
THE THING IN
THE CORNER

That night, or what passed for night down in the habitat, Javonivic lay in her bed, eyes wide open. She was afraid to sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, it was as if her head became some kind of receiver and she picked up broadcasts from the city. They reverberated in her brain. Buzzing, droning sounds that she knew were the voices of the Old Ones calling to her, summoning her to join them in the black depths of the ruins where they would show her things, wonders beyond anything she could image.