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T
he deep water around Sturman went completely black. So that was it, then.
Maria
had finally gone under.

He knew that his boat wasn’t going to keep the much larger vessel from sinking for long, and that she had been doomed as soon as he had affixed her anchor chain to the exposed boom of the seiner. All he could hope for now was that Val had made it safely to the skiff. She would take care of Bud.

The darkness disappeared for an instant as the shoal lit up, its members displaying an internal bioluminescence brought on by their agitation. In the flash of weak greenish light, Sturman saw sets of black eyes, symmetrical rows of suckers, a gnashing beak near his face. Then it was black again.

Even if he couldn’t see them anymore, he knew their intentions from the insistent squeezing, scraping, clawing, dragging. Though he was badly bruised from the attack, the shark suit had kept him relatively safe. Only one of the huge beasts had found a way through it in the darkness, parting his chain mail to dig into his side. Before he could fight it off with his knife, it had done considerable damage to his rib cage. He could feel warm blood seeping out through the wound.

The pressure on Sturman’s arm and shoulder surged as the throng of squid pulled downward in unison, and excruciating pain wracked his body. The shoal had already pulled him to the tether’s limits, gradually forcing the loop of rope around his waist to rise up his torso and almost to his neck, nearly strangling him. He had managed to free his neck by wrapping the tether around his wrist several times in a momentary slack of the line, but with the tension back on the line now there was no longer any way to free his hand. Not that it mattered. If he lost the tether, he was finished. He would be dragged down a few hundred feet in a matter of minutes without it.

The tension rose again, unrelenting and fast, and he screamed soundlessly into the black water as he felt his shoulder pop out of its socket. Blood mixed with the cold seawater in his mouth. He had bitten into his lips or tongue.

He might have let go of the rope at that moment, if he had been able. But his adrenaline steered him through the pain as his limp left arm stretched out above him, bearing the mass of what felt like a thousand pounds of squid suffocating him in the darkness.

His free right hand was still cramped from clutching the dive knife. He had lost the small weapon when his hand began to curl itself awkwardly into a cramp, and then quit working, no longer able to grip. He knew the titanium blade had found its mark many times, but there were simply too many of them. He used his right hand now to shield his mask and mouthpiece as the squid felt their way along his body, seeking an opening where they could feed.

He felt a huge volume of water swirl past him and he knew that
Maria
was headed past him on her way down. Over the whispery sounds of the squid’s chitinous teeth and beaks rasping on his steel armor, he heard loud but muffled pops and groans as his boat succumbed to the sea and moved past him, fading into the depths below.

The line grew tighter once more, his torn shoulder ligaments and muscles screaming. He wasn’t sure if the squid were pulling him down so much as the line from the boat was pulling him in the opposite direction, but quickly the line became impossibly tight and his wrist twisted and stretched, adding to his agony. He was being torn apart under the weight of the shoal. He thought his arm might actually come off, could tear free of his body, as the line grew even more taut, the mass of squid clinging to him seeming to pull away in unison. He heard more than felt the bones in his wrist crack.

An unexpected calm washed through his body. He felt his muscles relax. He stopped struggling, his fear replaced by acceptance.

As he gradually felt his mind separate from his body, from the pain and fear, he wondered vaguely if what he was experiencing was the same sensation gazelles and other animals knew when they were in the jaws of a predator. When they had no hope of escape. He had read that prey animals sometimes simply died in those situations, before actually receiving a mortal wound.

No.

He would die now. But that was not how he would die.

He let go of his mask and clawed along one of the squid with taut fingers, feeling for its eyes. He dug a thick thumb into the firm orb of an eye socket, and thought he felt the squid release him. Another took its place. He seized one of its arms in his hand and twisted, wrenching at it, seeking its eyes also.

The tether pulled at him again, jerking, and he had the sensation of moving upward. Or was he moving at all? Losing consciousness, he reacted slowly as a squid wrenched the dive mask from his face, cold water rushing into his nostrils. Another tentacle tore the regulator away from his mouth, and the shoal dissipated momentarily in the resulting cloud of bubbles. He fumbled for the regulator with his free hand, but it was pointless. They were now pressing against his face, his head. The air hose was gone. His lungs began to burn.

He held his breath as long as he could, exhaling slowly, feeling his arm stretching grotesquely even farther from his body as the shoal refused to relinquish their meal. He grabbed at another squid in the darkness, but his middle finger ended up in its beak and he sensed it being gnawed off. Another of the animals found its way through the chain mail, and there was a separate sharp pain on his lower back as it tore into him. He pushed at the soft bodies ineffectively with his free hand. It didn’t matter now.

His mind wandered, and he fought to focus on a final prayer. He thought of his father. His boyhood home. Maria. Val.

The urge to inhale became overwhelming. In the last seconds of delirium, the dark world seemed to grow suddenly very bright. His eyes widened in the reassuring brightness.

He inhaled.

As the cold water entered his lungs, he coughed, then inhaled again. He arched his back at the sudden, overwhelming burning in his chest, and his body went into shock. He had the calming sensation that suddenly the shoal released him, and that he was alone.

But just as he lost consciousness, he was not.

He saw Maria’s face. Then he knew nothing more.

V
al walked out the glass front doors of the mortuary, wiping her eyes. The pain and grief of saying good-bye had been accompanied by guilt. She was still alive.

Visiting him one last time in the mortuary wasn’t what she wanted. The funeral would be held in two days, back in San Diego, but she needed to say good-bye alone. She couldn’t do it in front of others, least of all at a memorial.

“Are you gonna be all right, Dr. Martell?” His friend, Mike Phan, was already standing outside the building, hands in the pockets of his slacks. He had left his family for a few days to come up to Long Beach and help out with the complications of sorting through the chaos. Mike had also helped law enforcement retrieve the bodies of the dead men while Val was treated in the hospital for a mild case of decompression sickness and the tissue damage inflicted by the shoal. They had searched long and hard and found the badly mutilated corpses of the captain and Tomás, but they still hadn’t found Karl Nikkola’s body. Val knew they probably never would. His oceangoing family would at least be happy to know he died at sea.

She and Mike stood on the grass outside the brick building. The mortuary’s landscaped entrance featured a lush lawn and flowering vines creeping up a small, gurgling fountain.

After a deep breath, she smiled at him. “Yeah. I’m all right. How are you?”

“I’m okay. I really want to get back to my family, though. Losing someone makes you realize what you’ve got.”

Mike didn’t look okay. He looked tired, as she was. The poor guy had probably been awake for most of the past forty-eight hours. He had been selfless and thoughtful to come help out with the search activities and still comfort and keep Val involved. She had only met him once before.

“Go home, Mike. You’ve done your friend a great service. Really. You’ve done so much already.”

“I feel bad about not going with you.”

“It’s fine. I’ll call you back in San Diego.”

Val kissed him on the cheek and then walked down the steps to the parking lot, not looking back. Mike didn’t say anything else.

Bud was waiting for her in the rental car. The short-haired mutt whined and licked her face as she got in the driver’s seat and started the blue compact. It was a beautiful, sunny day, the Pacific alive with smooth, even sets of waves rolling in from the far side of the world. She drove down the coast, looking out at the ocean stretching to the horizon. Bud hung his head out the window, now blissfully unaware of all that had happened even though he had experienced it.
Oh, to be a dog.

This wasn’t the ocean’s fault. She was surprised that she felt angry looking at it. She wanted to be angry with the shoal, with nature—with
something
. But as a scientist, she couldn’t. She knew that Humboldt squid, like sharks or African lions, were no more evil than cold viruses or hurricanes. They were merely filling their roles. They just
were.

She would move beyond this.

She thought of her specimens back in the lab. There was still much to learn from this situation. By understanding why everything about this shoal had been so atypical of Humboldt squid, perhaps she could avert deaths in the future. If the marine worms infesting the shoal did indeed represent a new species, maybe she’d name it after him. She smiled. Who’d want a parasitic marine worm named after them, though, besides her? Maybe Karl. She smiled and wiped away a tear as another wave of emotion passed over her. Yes. She could name the new species of worm after him instead.

When she reached her destination, she parked in front of the huge, modern-looking hospital and smiled. She normally hated hospitals, but not today. She clipped a leash onto Bud’s collar and they headed inside, where she lied to the elderly receptionist that he was her service dog and hurried past before the woman could respond.

When she entered the hospital room he was asleep. She smiled at the new cowboy hat Mike had hung next to the bed.

Sturman was asleep. He looked peaceful, and surprisingly well. He was healing. His face only had a few stitches, but his neck was swollen and badly bruised. Apparently his arm had been broken in six places. He had a dislocated shoulder, a punctured lung, one missing finger, and a host of other minor injuries. Sturman had also gotten a minor case of the bends. Thankfully, he had been mostly unconscious since they had dragged him out of the water, clinically dead, two nights ago. By some miracle, her CPR had brought him back on the deck of the fishing boat. Once onshore, he had spent the first ten hours in a decompression chamber, attended by a doctor.

She looked at the bandages on his shoulder and felt a little guilty. It had been a real tug-of-war once they had employed the power of the skiff ’s outboard motor. But they hadn’t really had a choice. They knew he was almost out of air, and the shoal was simply too strong for her and the two fishermen to pull him to the surface. So they manipulated the rope over the transom of the fishing boat and then used the skiff to start a slow, steady pull, with Sturman’s tether bending ninety degrees as it ran over the curved edge of the transom. The whole time Val had prayed the rope wouldn’t snap from the friction. But it had worked.

When Val had reached into the water to grasp Sturman’s limp body as it appeared just a few feet below the surface, he had been dead, his lungs full of water. He had drowned. But he was still alive now. The doctors had said it was only because of her persistence at chest compressions and breathing air back into his lungs.

So many things had somehow worked out. If the other boat hadn’t arrived when it did, if the tether hadn’t held, if her CPR hadn’t been successful . . .

But he was alive.

She slid a chair next to the bed and sat down. His eyes opened.

“I think the guy you’re looking for is in the next room.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. He would have trouble speaking for several days, since his inflamed lungs had been full of seawater. He coughed a little, wincing.

“Hi there, sleepyhead.” She smiled and put a warm hand on his stubbly head. “You’re kind of cute without your cowboy hat.”

He managed a weak smile. “Your squid thought so, too. Like a bunch of groupies.”

Val laughed. “How are you feeling, cowboy?”

“I’m alive.”

She smiled and moved to sit on the bed next to him. She squeezed his good hand. “I’m glad.”

“Did you see Joe?”

Val swallowed, nodding. “Yes. I said good-bye to him. Mike said the funeral is going to be a closed casket, with a memorial, but I don’t want to be some stranger around all his friends and family. I said good-bye from both of us, just in case you can’t make it.”

“Bullshit. I’ll be there. You should come, too.” Sturman coughed, then spoke in a whisper. “He would have wanted you there.”

“Let me think about it. Will . . . he’d be happy to know that you’re alive. Remember that. Live for him.”

Sturman reached his good arm up and touched her face. “I owe you my life, Val.”

“No more than I owe you mine.”

“I mean it.”

“Thank the shoal. If it hadn’t shown you some mercy, you wouldn’t be here now.”

Val remembered how the weight at the end of Sturman’s line had suddenly disappeared, just when the tug-of-war was threatening to tear the man apart. For some reason, the shoal had released him. She still couldn’t understand why the squid would have let him go.

“Only thing I remember is seeing a face—your face—as I lost consciousness. Funny . . .” He looked away and swallowed hard. “I remember thinking at the time it was Maria.”

Val gently squeezed his hand. “Maybe it was.”