But then she knew as she heard that crackling noise in her head once again, followed by the scraping/scratching sound. Her eyes peeled open. There were voices in her mind, garbled voices all shrieking simultaneously. Their volume amplified until she pressed her hands to ears and screamed. She fell over, crawling on her belly, inching forward. It was Regina. Her voice was calling out of the black depths and she was forcing herself into Javy’s head, trying to find the proper wavelength and make contact.

No, no, no! Go away, you fucking witch!

Javy got through the door, managing to climb uneasily to her feet, stumbling down the short corridor, bouncing off the bulkheads. All the while, Regina’s voice cut through the static in her head, rising to a shrill, feverish pitch. Seconds later, she made her way into the control center. And they were all there—Bell, Hubbs, and Murphy. Alarms were ringing off. The motion detectors outside the habitat had been triggered. The sonar alarm was whining.

“What is it?” she asked, damp with sweat and shivering with fright. “What in the hell is it?”

“Something’s out there,” Murphy said, studying the sonar screen. “Something big.”

On the screen, the habitat was a large red triangle at the center. At the outer edge was a red circle, the seabed echo as read by the sensor as it rotated. And hovering about the habitat was a quickly darting, red blob, which was their visitor.

Bell was in the galley, staring out of one of the bubble viewports, trying to get a look at what was out there. Hubbs was with him. Both looked pale and tense.

“Some kind of creature,” Bell said. “I caught only a glimpse of it.”

Hubbs nodded slowly. “I saw something white like a tentacle, but just for a second. It looked like that thing that Orr showed us, the image from Gundry’s cryobot five years back.”

Javy looked out the ports, but saw nothing in the outer lights, just the lake out there—cold, dark, and forbidding. That voice was still trying to get into her head, but at least that awful fishy odor was gone. There were reasons for it, she knew, but she honestly didn’t want to know what they were.

She crossed over to the hatch that led into the rec room. There were more viewports there. As she approached them, the voice rang out in her head, each reverberation sinking into her brain like an icepick.

(Alice Alice Alice)

Javy made her way to one of the viewports, bracing her hands against the bulkhead so she didn’t go right over.