She now recognizes that this small hill is roughly the size of a person. When she studies its shape more carefully, she notes the belly bulge at its center, a half-revealed arm sleeved with thread-like filaments. “Jack.”

“I think I’ve got it.”

She sets down the knife and uses her hands to garden away, peeling back the gray and pink tangles, swiping away the muck glue, finally revealing an eye, then a nose, then a mouth.

“Jack!”

“Got it.” He holds up a jar caked in goop triumphantly. And then he cocks his head at her. “What’s going on down there?”

She gestures with her hand, indicating that he should see for himself.

He crouches opposite her as she peels away more layers, unshelling the body, stripping away a tacky, clinging membrane that feels almost placental.

“It’s the Tapir,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s Professor Gordon. He must have come looking for me here and—” But before Jack can finish the sentence, an arm snaps up and grabs hold of him. The man’s eyes peel open and he makes a noise like the gargling cry of the drowned.

16

They call it Brigadoon, this island off the coast of Washington, because it is so often cloaked in fog. This is their new outpost, a kind of floating laboratory. Why build a fence when you can surround yourself with ripping currents and slate-gray waves that thunder the rocky shore? The campus, at the center of the island, is hidden by stacks of black basalt and spiked walls of evergreens. There is a landing strip and a helicopter pad and a cove for docking. Sometimes a crabbing or halibut boat will putter by curiously, but before it can get too close, a patrol boat armed with .50-caliber machine guns and a 25 mm Bushmaster cannon will direct it elsewhere.

There is no sign identifying this as DOD property, though even that would be misleading. There is nothing decorative about the facilities in the slightest. Brutalist in design, the buildings were constructed for strength, not style. You could say they are meant to withstand sea storms and the constant salt-toothed wind, but you could also say they are meant to confine what is hidden within.

One room contains a bank of screens that broadcast video feeds from Alaska. The cameras are stationed atop cell towers, water towers, and weather balloons in and around Fairbanks, where the sky has become its own special canvas. Faces form in the underbellies of clouds. Gray tendrils like the stingers of a jellyfish dangle downward. Some of the feeds go dark and never find their transmission again.