“Do you think we can sell these?” Kansas said suddenly as she turned to face Jolene.
“Why even give anything out? What’s the point? Hey did you hear? They’re hiring people to hunt down the Ashaug.”
“Was it sponsored by Dell’s Deep Dives?”
“They didn’t say. But if they ask me to go, I’ll gladly take aim at it. It sounds exciting.”
“What makes you think it’s trying to kill us?”
“What makes you think it isn’t?”
Kansas watched as the plastic flakes settled back to the bottom of the snow globe. For kicks she flicked the top of the globe with her index finger in hopes it would crack.
Jolene pulled out her contour map again. “If you ask me they should start here.” She pointed at the entrance to the canyons and looked up. There was a cold look in her green eyes. “If I get a bonus this quarter, I’ll gladly pony up for a sonic cannon and take the first shot. I was a champion trap shooter back when I lived in Tacoma.”
* * *
After work, Kansas strolled down Constance Street to a small hole-in-the-wall shop with an engraved wooden sign over its door. The sign read, “Dell’s Deep Dives”. As she entered the shop, she found it both crowded and eerie. On the wall to the left, a black fishing net stretched from the ceiling to the floor. Enmeshed in the net were photographs of clients outside a tour sub along with photographs of fish Dell caught over the years. A contour map of the ocean bottom and mounted fish dotted the opposite wall. The end of the hallway opened into a wood-paneled room with a desk in the middle.
Without looking up, Dell said, “Let me guess. You’re here to kill the Ashaug.”
Kansas could not tell if he was serious or joking. “I’m not here to kill anything. Do you still have any openings today?”
Dell looked over at the wall clock and then up at her. He put his hands behind his head, leaned back in his chair, and put his shoes up on his desk. “At four o’clock we could go out for a spin. So tell me, why are you really here?” His eyes never left hers.
“I don’t think it’s a monster. I think something else is happening. Last night it passed overhead again, but this time it didn’t hit anything. This thing isn’t out to kill us. It’s trying to get our attention. Here.” She pulled out her cell phone and showed him several shaky pictures of the shadow passing overhead.
“That’s impressive.”
“Do you think you can take me into the canyons?”
“I don’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too narrow in there.”
“So have you hunted it?”
“What? The Ashaug? I’m not that desperate. Not yet.”
“But you have lots of trophies on your wall. You’re telling me you never thought about it?”
Dell looked away but not before giving her a subtle smile. “So can I put you down for four o’clock?”
* * *
The interior of Dell’s tour sub was air-conditioned, full of large round viewing windows, and seated eight. The windows ran along each side of the sub and the incoming light washed everything in a mesmerizing cerulean blue. A school of sea bass swept past the starboard windows like cars on a rollercoaster.
“Over to the left we have the remnants of the wooden schooner Endurance from 1856. It endured fifteen minutes after twenty foot waves broadsided it and smashed it into Pericles Rock over here,” Dell said as he navigated the tour sub away from the airlock tunnel that led out of the city. The wooden deck of the schooner was decayed and the mast collapsed years ago. A silver-blue streak of sardines wove through the windows of the schooner like a windblown ribbon and coral covered the entire structure like a blanket of snow.
Kansas first took a picture of Pericles Rock. It was a set of giant black spires that ran from the ocean floor up to a few feet below the surface. To some, it resembled a sunken version of Monument Valley in Utah.
On the right side of the sub and now fading into the distance were the nine domes of the city. The city was laid out with one central dome surrounded by a ring of eight smaller domes. Steel and Plexiglas corridors connected each section to the central dome, and from this angle the entire complex resembled a glass octopus. She counted off the five domes designated as living quarters. The sixth dome was devoted to recreation and the last two were dedicated to agriculture. Often called “The Steps”, these last two domes contained tiered plazas of crops that reached up like temples. The Steps threw off a jade-green light and gave the sea an unearthly glow.
“So what brought you down here anyway?” Dell said in an offhand manner. “If it isn’t too intrusive of me to ask.”
She knew the question was meant in innocence but she guarded her emotions nonetheless. “I…needed to get away from the surface for a while. Make some changes in my life. We…I mean I…needed to see things from a different perspective.”
“What did you used to do for a living up there? Anything exciting?”
Kansas hesitated and took pictures of the city lights. A trail of bubbles sputtered out behind their sub and wiggled their way to the surface. Just beyond the glow of the city, a tiny black silhouette appeared on the horizon. Perhaps it was another school of fish or even a stingray. Then again, it came from the direction of the canyons. “It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say I worked with ships.”
“Really? Like on a dock? Or were you a captain?”
Outside the sub window, the black silhouette grew into a cigar-shaped object that approached them with alarming speed. The object did not appear to be manmade and her heart rate accelerated. She readied her camera.
Surrounded by a semicircle of gauges, switches, knobs, and buttons, Dell stared straight ahead out the front window. He gently turned the steering wheel until they were on a northwest heading and pressed on. “What kind of ships? Cruise ships? Navy ships? Fishing boats?”
She noticed the depth sonar showed them holding at 115 feet. She then locked in on a side-sonar image and spotted the object approaching from the northeast. “What is that on the side-sonar?”
“I’m not sure. Might be another sub, but it’s getting a little close for comfort.”
“Switch it to the triple pulse echo setting.”
“Triple pulse echo?”
She pointed toward a scope in the lower right corner of his instrument panel. “It’s the toggle switch on the right. Just to the right of the attenuation knob.”
Dell paused but eventually leaned over and flipped the switch. The resolution of the side-sonar display doubled to the point that the cigar-shaped object no longer looked like a submarine. It looked like an Ashaug in full locomotion.
“What kind of sonar system is that?” Kansas said. She checked on the silhouette outside the window which matched up to the sonar image.
“I believe it’s an EchoSee. Why?”
Kansas bit her lower lip. Jonas, shameless as ever, even swiped her proposed name. She hated herself for sharing that with him on one of their last lunch dates. Perhaps the system was his creation, but intuitively she knew at the heart of that creation the circuitry was all her design. She grabbed a hold of the armrest and squeezed it hard enough to tear it off the chair. She took a deep breath in an attempt to compose herself.
Dell glanced back and for a moment their eyes met. “You okay? Because I can take you back to port if you’re getting sick.”
“I’ll be alright.” She pointed her camera back at the window. By now the identity of the black object became clear. This particular Ashaug had black bowling-ball eyes and a reddish-brown bulbous head. Eight rust-colored tentacles propelled it like an arrow just above the ocean floor. It rose up and over the city like a rocket and glided just over the top of the central dome.
Kansas pressed her face against the window and snapped as many pictures as she could. In between shots she studied its shape, eyes, and graceful movements through the deep. It came within twenty feet of them and then took a sharp left turn. She set down her camera and star
ed into the creature’s left eye as it slid past the window.
“I…I wasn’t trained for this,” Dell said as a sense of panic filled his voice. His hands fumbled at the controls.
“Don’t…don’t make any sudden movements. Just leave it be. It’s not going to hurt us. She’s just seeing if we mean her harm.”
As swiftly as the beast came upon them, it took another left turn and propelled itself back toward the canyons. The sudden turn by the creature stirred up the water around them and caused the sub to lurch to the left. Dell grabbed the console with his hands as the sub’s engine shuddered.
“We have to get out of here,” Dell warned.
“No. She’s not coming back.” By now the silhouette of the creature merged together with the engulfing blackness of the canyons. Kansas glanced up toward the surface of the ocean to see the natural sunlight shimmering down from above. There was an unspeakable joy in seeing the shifting beams for the first time in a year. Like a cluster of stars surrounded by a nebula, the aquamarine light beckoned for her attention.
At the end of the tour when the sub descended back to the city a part of her mourned. As they approached the city airlock, she spoke up. “Promise me that when I want to go home, you’ll take me.”
“Where’s home?” Dell said.
She said nothing and instead pointed back at the fading blue aquamarine of the sun.
* * *
Back at her apartment, Kansas picked up the digital photo frame off her dresser and cradled it in her hands. She watched the photos cycle through but this time without the picture of Jonas and her brother. When she could take no more, she set it back onto her dresser but bumped the snow globe with her elbow.
The globe shot across the top of the dresser and crashed to the floor. She bent down to pick it up but it was wet to the touch. The plastic snow in the globe spun around in a frenzy as water leaked out of a crack that ran from one side of the base to the other across the top of the globe. She pitched the globe into the garbage.
Her heart raced at the thought of the way the sunlight danced off the surface of the water during the tour. She marched over to the closet, pulled out a black backpack, and began to stuff it full of her clothes. She then withdrew a large duffel bag and packed it with more clothes. She took the digital photo frame off the dresser and stuffed it into a side pocket of the backpack. In her mind she knew she would have to come back for her other belongings, but the thought of that stirred up more grief and guilt than she could bear. Jolene, Dennis, Dell, and the others would get along just fine without her. Right?
She rummaged again through her filing cabinet and took out the diagrams, notes, and schematics for the sonar system she created. She crammed the sheets into her backpack and set the backpack next to her bedroom door. She stuffed the duffel bag until its seams almost burst and dropped it by the door. If she could swim her way to the surface tonight she would in a heartbeat. Instead, she spent the rest of the night tossing, turning, and counting down the hours until dawn.
* * *
When Christmas Eve arrived, she was not in a festive mood by any means. As she sat at her desk and scanned another pile of legal documents, Dennis approached her with yet another folder full of wrinkled papers. The edges of the papers were stained as if they were dunked into a pot of coffee.
“Since I know you want to make up for lost time, I thought you could help out one of your other co-workers,” he said as he slapped the folder onto her desk. The scowl on his face spoke volumes but it changed to a smile as if there were subtle cracks appearing in his heartless armor.
She nudged the backpack and duffel bag further under her desk with her right foot. “I already have too much to do today. It’ll have to wait until Monday next week.” She turned again to feed another document through the scanner and did not look up.
The smile disappeared as Dennis put the palms of his hands flat on her desk. “If everyone here had an attitude like yours, we’d be out of business in six months. You’ll never advance around here without taking on extra work. If you put half the effort into your work that you put into those crazy pictures of yours, maybe you’d see a raise for the first time. Take a cue from Jolene over there. She’s knows the value of a hard day’s work. Don’t you Jolene?” He winked at her.
Jolene’s eyes widened and she cleared her throat.
Kansas looked past Dennis and out the office windows. On the street below, a handful of people gathered and pointed at the sky. She set the legal document in her hands back onto her desk and reached down to grab her bags. She stood up and turned her back to Dennis and left. On her way out, her backpack knocked over a toner cartridge for the company printer. The cartridge broke open and spilled black toner powder onto the carpet.
As she reached the exit door of the office, he called out to her, “And where do you think you’re going?”
“Home,” she said, not caring if he understood what she really meant. She scampered down the stairs and pushed her way out of the revolving door exit. By now more people stared at the sky. Distant explosions rumbled beneath her feet while high above an inky black cloud overspread the top of the dome.
She hustled over to Dell’s Deep Dives and burst into the doorway. “How soon can you get me out of here?”
Dell looked up from his desk. “Going somewhere?”
“Take me to surface. I want to go home.”
He stepped over to the front door and looked out at the sky. “Now? Sounds like there is a battle going on up there. Maybe that Ashaug isn’t as friendly as you think. Can’t we wait until the ink cloud clears?”
“You promised me. Besides I know something that will get us through.”
* * *
As Dell’s tour sub churned away from the city, his hands moved over the dials, controls, and instruments on the console in agitated anticipation. There was a nervous edge to his voice. “I’m not sure we’re going to make it,” he said. “We’re flying in the dark here. My spotlights are useless.”
Kansas pulled her bags tight against her chair. The Ashaug’s ink cloud polluted the water around the city and plunged it into darkness. “I know where we’re going. I’ve studied the contour maps of this area before.”
“That’s great and all, but the sonar is acting up, too.”
Kansas glanced at the sonar display at Dell’s right elbow. She gave him an icy stare. “I know you can get me to the surface. Switch on the triple pulse echo again and engage the phasing oscillator.”
He gave her an annoyed look but reached over and flipped the switch. “How is it you suddenly know so much about the instruments on here?”
“You asked me what I did on the surface. I was a naval architect. I used to design ships and some of their systems for a living.”
“Oh.” His voice faded into silence.
“The design for the sonar system you’re using was stolen from me. It looks a little different than what I envisioned, but I know the algorithms inside it. This ink cloud is the least of your worries.”
“Why would someone steal it from you?” He said. There was a warm and sincere tone to his voice. An alarm bell rang out until he turned it off. He toggled a handful of switches and a green laser overlay lit up the window before him.
“What is that? It looks like a targeting system. I thought you said this was only a tour sub,” she said.
“It is. But sometimes you have to defend yourself.”
“That’s not for defense. You’re a hunter. Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie.” At that he slapped a green button to his right. From underneath the sub a hissing sound erupted and moved from back to front. A tiny projectile tore through the water and into the darkness before them. A muffled explosion followed and rattled the hull of the sub.
Before Kansas could respond the sub rocked to the right and back to the left. It spun forty-five degrees counterclockwise as a rusty-red tentacle clamped down on a portside window. She clutched her chair but pressed her face against a
nother window for a better view.
“Hang on,” Dell yelled as he spun the steering wheel around. He toggled switches and stomped a pair of pedals with his right foot. The sub’s engines whined under the strain. He hit the green firing button again and another projectile punched into the darkness.
As the sub spun around, one of its spotlights illuminated the side of the creature. Kansas caught a glimpse of the creature’s eye and she stared at it with fierce determination. “Stop firing,” she commanded Dell.
The tentacle that was wrapped around the sub relaxed and lifted so that it drifted just above them. The other tentacles twisted about as if ready to join in the battle and finish the sub off once and for all.
Dell righted the sub and brought it back to an even horizontal level. He shook off the attack and slammed his hand again into the firing button.
The projectile misfired and clanged against the underside of the hull before spinning toward the ocean floor. It exploded in the soft sand and sent up a white plume to their right. The explosion jerked the sub and Dell’s head knocked against an instrument panel. He toppled over onto the floor seconds later.
Kansas crawled her way to the front. When she had pulled herself up into his chair, she buckled the safety belt. Up ahead she could see the Ashaug making another approach and this time it looked like it would be a head-on strike. She flipped off the targeting system and groaned at the sight of the sub’s primitive torpedo system.
She righted the sub and stopped it from spinning in three dimensions. She set a new course for Gray’s Harbor on the Washington coast and brought the sub up to a depth of fifty feet. As the Ashaug closed in she focused her gaze straight ahead with an intensity that startled her.
The creature came within fifty feet of the front of the sub and turned abruptly to the right. Kansas kept her gaze locked on the creature and smiled when their eyes met. She held her hand over the triple pulse echo switch but the creature turned away. This time it went to the northeast, as if it was headed back to the safety of the canyons.
* * *
As Kansas drove through the harbor waters, she brought the sub to the surface and motored into port. Once the sub reached the marina, she steered the craft alongside the dock and killed the engine. She climbed over Dell and picked up her bags.
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