A pair of hands twisted a fraying piece of rope between their fingers, passing the end of the line back through the loop and tightening, then working the knot loose before starting over again. A sturdy wind came off the water, causing the woman to clutch her hat, the only thing protecting her from the harsh UV rays bouncing off the waves. Dr. Maura Kates had seen her fair share of salt and sun, enough to make her a bit complacent when it came to sunscreen. She suspected someday she’d be a little remorseful, but for now she had other things on her mind. A trickle of sweat advanced toward the crevice of her chin. She wiped it away. It was bad enough trying to lead an expedition without worrying about your face practically melting off.

  She passed the end of the line back through the loop again, tilting her head down to avoid the glare from the water. They were in the Indian Ocean somewhere between Australia and Indonesia. Sumatra was the nearest island and that was over a hundred and ninety miles away. Even with the wind, the seas were calm, the swells barely recognizable. Perfect conditions for a dive. She checked her watch. It had been nearly eight hours.

  Almost there.

  She pulled the knot tight.

  Maura had carried this piece of white and blue twine with her on nearly all her voyages. The rope had been used by her father to tether his lobster traps. It was the kind of cord that was responsible for occasionally ensnaring whales and had since been banned. She used it to practice all the knots he taught her; figure-eight, square, bowline. It kept her hands busy and her mind free. Free of worry for the multi-million-dollar remotely operated vehicle currently making its way to the ocean floor.

  By now it would have passed 4,000 meters, into the Abyssal Zone, venturing closer to the freezing cold water of the Hadal Zone, that layer of ocean so shadowy and dark it was named for the Greek god of the underworld. There was always the risk that there would be a malfunction or a glitch, that their meticulous engineering wouldn’t be able to withstand the two million pounds of pressure. In that case, their entire expedition would end with an overpriced crushed can resting at the bottom of the sea.

  Maura slipped the knot loose and easily undid her bowline. She liked the bowline best because of how easy it was to start over. She bent the line around and started a half-hitch. Behind her the Oystercatcher was buzzing with activity. The hundred- and forty-two-foot vessel had left Darwin two weeks ago with over fifty scientists, specialists, and crew. They’d done several dives near the Java Trench, each time moving closer to the hydrothermal vents they hoped would yield undiscovered lifeforms.

  Yesterday while collecting sediment with the ROV’s multicore, they discovered a spot where methane bubbled up. It was the type of vent that could be home to a wide variety of marine life. Now they were going back, and she wagered nearly half of what they found would be completely new species. She snapped the rope taut. A half-hitch. This one would be harder to undo.

  “Doctor Kates.”

  The voice came from a tall, slender girl, her gold skin radiating in the sun. Maura took off her faded Red Sox cap and dabbed the sheen from her forehead.

  The girl’s name was Jessie, all of twenty-two. Most of the crew were in their twenties. It took a certain youthful tolerance for life at sea. Personal space was a scarce commodity. Scientists shared bunks and bathrooms, like it was a college dormitory. You had to get used to the rocking of the ship, taking one-handed showers while you steadied yourself. Many had to forgo coffee or otherwise spend hours heaving over the side of the ship. And after a long twelve-hour shift, there was no cold beer waiting. The ship was dry, though Maura kept a fifth of whiskey secretly stashed away in her closet.

  She stuffed her cap back on as Jessie spoke.

  “The positional beacon says we’re on bottom.”

  Maura looked at her watch. The eight hours were officially up. She flashed a smile and headed for the control room.

  “Dr. Kates? What would you like me to do now?”

  Kids these days always needed to be told what to do. Maura handed her the coil of rope, now in a half-hitch.

  “See if you can get that undone.”

  *  *  *  *  *

  The control room was packed. Beyond the usual technicians and specialists, there were crew members of every stripe. They hugged the walls or uncomfortably squatted on state-of-the-art equipment. Even the cook was there. Maura’s first instinct was to kick them all out, but she had learned a shred of diplomacy over the years. Enough to know that this was why they were all here, and it would be bad form to send them packing. It was their mission after all, even the guy serving penne a la vodka.

  She stood beside the ROV operator, Gus, jet black beard and hair in a top knot, as he manipulated a joystick. He was surrounded by screens, each one displaying a different view of the ROV’s trajectory. There were maps with bathymetry data, tracing the topography of the ocean floor. Small dots already marked their previous dives, each a little deeper than the last. Measurements ran along the sides — temperature, salinity, pressure. But no one was paying attention to that. They were all focused on the four LED lights of the Scylla as it illuminated patches of sediment along the sea floor.

  “Did anyone else catch that?”

  It was Amy Portanova, the ship’s lead biologist.

  She was nearing thirty-five, her fine facial features masking a hard-edge. Her hair cascaded down one half of her face, while the other side was shorn nearly to her scalp.

  “Can you zoom out?”

  “We haven’t reached the vent yet.”

  Whenever you asked Gus for anything, he seemed put out. You could ask for a sip of his Diet Coke and he’d look at you like you were after his unborn child. He checked in with Maura.

  “We can spare Amy a few minutes, can’t we Gus?”

  “Yeah, Gus. Spare me a few.”

  Amy leaned into Gus’s space, her finger practically pressed against the monitor.

  Gus jerked the joystick, taking them off course. Their lights fell on something crawling across a brittle mound of rock. Maura found herself talking out loud,

  “Is that a Rock Lobster?”

  Amy shook her head.

  “Look at its eyes. Rock Lobsters don’t have eye stalks like that.”

  Maura leaned closer. The eyestalks were especially well-developed. They stretched to get a better look at the intruder with its four blinding bright eyes.

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  “I bet it’s an entirely new genus.”

  Amy looked especially pleased with herself.

  “Bag it.”

  Gus gave Maura a look, then sighed.

  He moved the ROV closer to the crustacean, extending a long hydraulic arm with a grabber. The lobster started to move back, parrying with its enormous bulbous claw. But the arm was faster, squeezing its shell tight. It dragged the flailing creature over to a bio box and dropped it inside. Decades undisturbed in the farthest reaches of the sea, its fate was now a careful dissection followed by an eternal bath in isopropyl alcohol.

  Maura looked over at Amy, still beaming.

  “Jesus, you’re like a kid in a candy store.”

  “More like a Thanksgiving buffet.”

  Maura smiled slightly.

  “Never heard it quite put like that before.”

  “Expecting to find some kind of rare aquatic turkey down here?”

  Amy looked at Gus drolly, then continued, “We know about whale falls. And we know that when a whale dies, it sinks, and its body is consumed by all kinds of different marine life. But as the body is broken down, it starts forming its own closed ecosystem. Creatures can keep feeding, sometimes for fifty or sixty years. We think hydrothermal vents might be the same. So, yeah, a Thanksgiving buffet seems about right.”

  Maura nodded. She knew vents formed their own ecosystems. She was less familiar with whale falls, but she was aware they were often studied in place of the fissures themselves. Sink a whale carcass and you knew where to find it. Finding a vent could be significantly harder. Something that was proving true even now as the ROV continued to zip along the ocean floor.

  “How are we doing, Gus?”

  “Should be almost there.”

  The dull-gray expanse flew by at five knots, the maximum speed the Scylla could glide. There was technically no limit to the amount of time they could spend underwater, but the longer they were submerged, the greater the risk of a mishap. As the rest of the room waited for a glimpse of the vent, Maura was already calculating how much leash she was willing to give. The cable connecting their ROV to the ship would top out at around six thousand meters, and she had to be ready to rein things in if they went too off course. No matter how excited they got, Maura was here to suppress their childlike wonder in the name of their corporate and scientific sponsors, the all-important fiscal overlords of their entire operation.

  “Look at that.”

  She didn’t know who said it. Maybe someone from the back. A hagfish slithered by.

  “Let’s stay on course.”

  Gus nudged the joystick and the Scylla was back up to speed. Bacterial growths began to appear. Thick translucent mats, stuck to the sea floor. They were the telltale signs of methane seeps. The microbial clusters that grew here would provide the hydrogen sulfide that drew other creatures in. The patches began to intersect with each other becoming overlapping colonies of bright red, orange and green. Maura could feel the room take a collective breath. It was a stunning display.

  “Let’s slow it down.”

  Gus pulled back on the joystick and the Scylla came to a crawl. Tiny eels slinked between the fuzzy overgrowths of coral and algae. Giant tube worms rippled by. A purple phosphorescent octopus darted into the ROV’s headlamps, then back out again, intrigued by the light.

  “Okay, Amy. Where do we start?”

  “I don’t know. How about one of everything?”

  The room rang with nervous laughter.

  “How about a sample of the sea floor first? Gus?”

  He maneuvered the Scylla down and deployed the multicore. It twisted itself into the dirt, producing a greenish cloud and they waited.

  The specimens they collected would be used at the University of Sydney and New South Wales. Their sponsors included the National Endowment of Science, The United States Navy and NASA. A litany of other nonprofits and universities hoped to use their findings to continue their own work. And there was the German pharmaceutical company which paid for the bulk of their expedition. The conglomerate was counting on the microbes they gathered to further their own drug studies. The stakeholders were, in effect, only the top echelon of the scientific community.

  Maura felt the sweat starting to collect on her chin again. She wiped it away before anyone noticed.

  “What is that?”

  She didn’t know who said it. Maura leaned forward. Something white streaked across the screen, too fast to register.

  “Rotate the cameras.”

  The LEDs peered into the darkness.

  “There. There it is again.”

  Flashes of white flitted into the lights then back out.

  “What the hell?”

  The crowd closed in, stifling the air.

  “Where is it?”

  “Can we track it?”

  Maura’s tact quickly deserted her.

  “All right. All non-essential crew need to get out. I’m sorry, we’ll do a playback for everyone later. That means now. Thank you.”

  Gus ran the lights around again as the room emptied.

  Amy’s finger drifted to the upper corner of the screen.

  “There…”

  Whatever it was swam around the edges of the lights. Maura put her hand on Gus’s shoulder.

  “Are we getting anything? Screenshots?”

  “Nothing definitive. I think we’re losing it.” Gus trained the lights around again, catching a wispy tail.

  “Should we try to follow it?” Amy locked eyes with Maura.

  “What do you think, Gus?”

  “I can try.”

  “Let’s just see if we can find it again.”

  Gus jammed the joystick forward and rotated the lights.

  “Amy, any idea?”

  “Jellyfish?”

  “Jellyfish don’t move like that.”

  “A tube worm?”

  “It would be the largest tube worm in recorded history.”

  “Got it.”

  Once again, a ripple of white danced just outside the beams of the Scylla. As soon as Gus tilted the joystick, the mysterious organism flitted back into the darkness.

  “Goddamn. Is this thing playing coy or what?”

  “It’s scared of the light. Gus, go dark.”

  Gus gave Maura a look, then flipped a switch and the screen went dark.

  “How long are we giving it?”

  “Just a few more seconds. Hopefully enough for it to get curious.”

  Maura realized she was already ascribing an intelligence to whatever it was they’d encountered. Octopuses display signs of inquisitiveness, though she doubted this species belonged to the Octopodidae family.

  Amy tucked a strand of hair between her teeth.

  “Okay… Now.”

  Gus flipped the lights back on. They all recoiled from the screen. A sheet of milky-white tissue released itself from the camera with a sudden spasm, leaving behind what appeared to be a kind of mucus.

  “What the hell was that?” Amy asked as she collected herself.

  Maura stabbed her finger at the screen.

  “Gus, don’t let it get away.”

  Gus jabbed the joystick forward and they went after it. The ocean floor zipped by in colorful bands of fauna.

  “Are we on it?”

  Gus jerked the joystick to the left, “Hard to say. I think so.”

  A flicker of white spurred them onward.

  Their screen had been completely covered in a thick, gelatinous, membrane. If Maura didn’t know better, she’d say it was the mesoglea of a massive jellyfish, but “jellies,” as they called them, couldn’t propel themselves at five knots per hour. The Box Jellyfish was the most capable swimmer on Earth and even they couldn’t approach the kind of speeds they were traveling. Most jellyfish were content to simply drift with the current, with little preference over where it eventually took them.

  “Maura, do you think maybe we should ease off a little?”

  Amy looked over at her. Gus was sweating almost as much as Maura now, jerking the joystick this way and that, trying to catch the organism in their headlamps.

  “I want to get a skin sample.”

  Gus almost took his eyes off the screen to glare at Maura.

  “Seriously?”

  “If we can get a DNA sample, then we can determine what genus it belongs to.”

  Amy squeezed out a breath and squinted into the darkness.

  “This is insane.”

  Gus, half in frustration, slammed the joystick forward. The seabed was starting to rise up in rocky formations. Gus was at top speed, flying over them and dipping back down, scaling peaks and valleys.

  Maura knew they were onto something big. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute had just discovered a new species of crown jelly, they christened Atolla Reynoldsi. It was the kind of scientific breakthrough that minted careers and led to a cascade of future research dollars. With all the cutbacks in federal funding, they sorely needed a win. This was not just a new kind of jelly or octopus, but perhaps an entirely new genus. She could put away her beggar’s cap and never again have to go calling on the likes of Novartis or any of the other big pharma companies.

  “Over there.”

  Maura pointed at the screen, toward a vent pouring out black smoke.

  “Maura…” Amy’s voice cautioned.

  “Extend the DNA collector.”

  Gus pressed a button and an arm emerged with a brush on the end of it. Rudimentary, but all that was needed to collect a few cells. The organism dashed away from the black smoker as the Scylla flew into it. They came out of the cloud on its tail, banking one way, then another.

  “We’re approaching the Hadal zone,” Amy warned.

  Maura didn’t hear her. She wasn’t hearing anything. The brush was inches away.

  The creature slid up. The four LEDs couldn’t illuminate the ridge fast enough. Gus pulled back on the joystick, but the bottom of the ROV caught the edge. Maura could almost hear the gravelly crunch. She let out an audible gasp as the video feed went dark.