by Anne Renwick
The octopus released its stranglehold.
Alec sagged against the cabin wall, exhausted and—if he were being honest with himself—unreasonably distracted by Isa’s naked form as she bent over Jona, examining the bullet wound.
A straightforward, easy affair with an attractive, young widow who wanted him in her bed, not on bended knee, wasn’t progressing at all as he’d planned. Isa was different somehow. And not in a Finn-Selkie kind of way.
He struggled to shape unfamiliar feelings into a coherent thought. While the cruel machinations of mad men threw obstacles in their paths, his attraction to her had deepened. Lust had become… not love, but something more.
Not that he was about to consult with a jeweler.
But Alec had a feeling that “quick” and “tumble” wasn’t going to be enough to slake his thirst. Whatever currents flowed between them were too deep. He was caught in her net, but was she equally ensnared?
“A clean exit,” she announced, yanking him out of his thoughts. “But he’s bleeding far more than normal.”
“Hirudin.” What he wouldn’t give for a few quiet hours alone with her, without some fresh disaster pressing down upon them. “Remember the blood I analyzed.” Only a week had passed, though it felt longer. “There were traces of an anticoagulant produced by leeches.”
“I’d forgotten.” She grimaced, packing and binding Jona’s shoulder. “Disgusting, yet along with a ceramic blood filter, it’s an effective way to ensure a smooth circulation between Finn and octopus.” Straightening, she unhooked a simple woolen gown from the wall and dressed, forgoing the usual undergarments in her haste. “The nearest harbor is twenty minutes north. I’ll get us there.”
She turned to go, but he caught her by the waist. “You’re an amazing woman.” He traced a finger down the side of her face. “Don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.”
He thought of how she’d held on to the megalodon, riding it to the very cliff’s edge, determined to save one family member and stop another. Dragging a wounded, sick man from an underwater cave under threat of gunfire. The quicksilver in her eyes flashed and swirled as he stared in awe. Aether, he was falling for this woman.
Curving her hand around the back of his neck, Isa pulled him down until her face was mere inches from his own. “You’re the first to think so,” she murmured, pressing her warm lips to his.
The taste of her flooded his system with adrenaline, waking every nerve ending. He yanked her against his chest, delighting in the press of her soft breasts against him as he spread his fingers wide over her arse. A mere layer of soft wool kept her skin from his palms. A dangerous thought.
He pushed her away with a groan. “Go. Find us a safe harbor. We need to rid Jona of that creature.”
With a sly smile, she departed. A moment later, the boat—much like his heart—lurched back into motion.
~~~
Isa took a deep breath of the cool, salty air that whipped her hair about her face. Such admiration had shone in Alec’s eyes that she’d been unable to stop herself from reaching for him, reaching for everything in her life that was solid and dependable. Then the rough scrape of his beard had sent flames licking across her skin, nearly emptying her mind of all thoughts. Another moment, stolen in the midst of disaster.
What would it be like to have a man like this to call her own? Foolishness, such thoughts. A man fueled by adrenaline would never fall for the likes of her, a woman who—until recently—had lived a dull, staid life, content to follow her calling in medicine.
She needed to focus on the immediate task before her. Only once, at her brother’s insistence, had she practiced running this boat aground. She steered toward the harbor ahead of her, plotting a ninety-degree approach.
Jona would live. She’d see to that.
Much as she wanted to pry the parasite from his back and dash it upon the rocky beach, extricating his circulatory system from that of the octopus’s would be a delicate process. For that, they needed stable ground. The smallest of waves could cause a fatal slip of the knife.
Flipping a switch, she activated the landing gear—four wheels built into the bottom of the boat. A technological feature her brother had insisted upon installing for an emergency in which the boat needed to be removed from the water. No doubt he’d been imagining gale-force winds and ten-foot waves, but Jona’s deteriorating condition certainly counted as a crisis.
The dark shoreline rushed at her. She gripped the handles of the wheel tightly, aiming for a narrow stretch of rocky beach. As the front tires bounced onto rocks, rushing through the surf zone, Alec yelled below. Perhaps she should have warned him.
The back tires hit, and Isa pushed the throttle forward. The tide was on its way out, and she wanted to make certain they were firmly lodged on the beach when it returned.
She hurried back into the cabin.
~~~
“You might have warned me you were going to run us aground.” Alec grumbled, but in truth he was grateful the wild rocking had stopped. Every large wave had sloshed water from the bucket housing the octopus, and he’d had to rush to the side of the boat to fetch more.
“My apologies,” she said. “Someone distracted me as I left the cabin.”
“Flattery accepted.” He held out a canvas apron that she dutifully tied on. “We need to begin. I’m not certain the octopus is managing to oxygenate Jona’s blood very well while confined to this bucket. He’s barely stirred. Once we begin, however, we’ll need to work quickly. I’ve no idea how a cephalopod will react to anesthesia, standard or otherwise.”
“A quick, but complete external exam before we begin,” Isa agreed. “Have you been able to examine the creature?”
“Some. It appears the octopus is using one tentacle to extract blood from Jona’s venous system—from the femoral vein. The blood is oxygenated via its gills, then returns the blood to his arterial circulation. Possibly into his axillary artery.”
With the faintest of cringes, Isa wrapped a hand gently about the tentacle impaled in Jona’s leg. “No pulse.” Then tested the tentacle that plunged into Jona’s shoulder. “Faint, but I can sense an odd kind of pulse.”
Together, they crouched while Alec pointed a decilamp to illuminate the creature inhabiting the bucket.
“Eyeballing the size of this octopus,” he said, “I’d estimate that—at any given moment—the biomech octopus draws about one-third of Jona’s total blood volume.”
They could not simply tourniquet both tentacles; the blood within the beast belonged to Jona and needed to be returned to him. He had lost quite a bit of blood volume to the gunshot wound and was in shock. His skin was cool and unnaturally pale, his pulse elevated and his breaths irregular.
Isa moved her hands over Jona, checking his pulse, his respiratory rate, and the temperature of his skin, which judging from the pallid color, was dropping at an alarming rate.
Beneath its reddish-orange and semi-translucent skin, dark—unoxygenated—blood flowed into the creature’s body, flushed a brighter red, then surged forth, out the other tentacle into Jona’s shoulder with every contraction of its body—the muscular mantle. That very same movement also drew water in and out of its siphon, a long, rubber-like tube at the side of its head. That water would pass over its gills, oxygenating blood before returning it to Jona’s circulation.
“The ceramic filter?” Isa asked.
“Must lay within its head,” he answered. “Hirudin to reduce the chance of blood clots forming combined with a simple mechanical device to prevent any blood clots that do form from re-entering circulation.”
But in a living creature, could such a filter be changed? Or did a clock begin to tick the moment a biomech octopus attached to a Finn?
Bulging eyes rolled in their direction. Strange horizontal and rectangular pupils narrowed in the bright light. The creature closed its eyes until he pointed the beam elsewhere, whereupon
an unattached tentacle listlessly draped over the edge of the bucket lifted, reaching toward the decilamp, curling the suckered end of its leg about the small cylinder.
Alec released his hold, watching in amazement as it pointed the light back at him, as if the creature conducted its own examination.
Isa gasped. “Just how alive is it?”
He met her eyes. “An excellent question.”
Could it possibly be sentient? Without a human attachment, would it survive? “Not that it matters. We need to sever its connection to Jona.”
Alec nodded.
“Anesthesia,” Isa ticked off the steps on her fingers. “An application of two tourniquets, one after the other allowing blood to return to his system. Then we sever the tentacles.”
“We’ll also need to pry the beak free from his neck. Some cephalopods have poisonous saliva, making that gland the logical place to bioengineer a continuous source of hirudin.”
“The anticoagulant.” She cringed. “I suppose we need to take a closer look before we begin.”
He nodded. “If you can lift his shoulder slightly…”
While Isa held Jona, Alec used a long-handled, wooden spoon to gently shift the circular buccal mass—fleshy tissue—that surrounded the creature’s mouth. A chitinous beak was indeed partially embedded into the neck muscles.
The octopus tightened its grip about Jona’s throat, rolled its eyes toward Alec and bit down. Isa squeaked in distress as a thin, watery rivulet of blood trickled down Jona’s back and dripped into the bucket.
Alec swore. “It knows we’re up to something.” He dropped the spoon and stood. Any hope of coaxing the creature to voluntarily release its victim evaporated. “There’ll be no removing the octopus while it’s awake. Time to prep for surgery.”
Lucifer lamps were fed, shaken and—using ropes and pulleys—positioned over each of the tentacle attachments. Surgical instruments were laid out upon a tray. Curved suture needles were threaded with sharksilk. Bandages were stacked an arm’s reach away, and bottles of anesthetic agents were placed upon the table.
At last she lifted a leather and rubber anesthesia mask from its case, and he paused. All patients needed to be carefully monitored during surgery as anesthetic drugs suppressed a number of autonomic functions. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing to name the basics. Any or all might be affected.
“The presence of factor Q in a Finn’s blood complicates the procedure,” she reminded him. “No need to test his blood levels. As noted by my uncle, Jona is full-blooded—and therefore extremely sensitive to the volatile gasses. The mixture I prepare rarely triggers a dive reflex, but we’ll need to closely monitor his gas levels, body temperature and heart rate.”
He leaned close to examine the embedded brass gauges upon the mask’s surface. He tapped the two attached dials. “It monitors levels of oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output?”
“It does that and more. See the markings on the dials?”
He nodded. Two lines of different colors were inscribed.
“At optimum levels, the indicator needles ought to point to red for standard humans, blue for Finn. In-between if their family lineage is intertwined with that of the Scots. But, no matter who the mask is used on, I’ve designed it to ensure an even delivery of anesthesia without compromising normal blood gas levels.”
Beyond impressive. “It’s a work of pure genius.”
Flushing with pride, Isa tucked a ball of cotton wool into a chamber of the mask. She plucked a vial of ether from the collection of bottles and uncapped it. A faint, sweet smell wafted through the air. After carefully measuring and mixing together a variety of volatile liquids, she used a glass eyedropper to drip the combined anesthetic onto the cotton, then held the mask over Jona’s face. “Ready?”
While they’d been making preparations, the biomech octopus had kept a close eye on their activities in an unsettling and worrisome manner. Its bulbous eyes now stared at him as if pleading for mercy, while tentacles that had relaxed into the seawater-filled bucket began to writhe and twist. The one holding the decilamp uncurled, dropping the device on the floor in favor of threading upward to wrap about Jona’s neck.
“Expect resistance,” Alec warned, keeping a wary eye on the creature. “Take Jona under slowly. The octopus knows we’re up to something, and I’ve no idea how a cephalopod reacts to anesthetic agents.” He clenched and unclenched his hands, hoping he wouldn’t need to reach for his knife.
She lowered the mask onto Jona’s face. Nothing happened. He glanced at the dials. Oxygen and carbon dioxide exhalation levels were low—for human or Finn. But perhaps that was to be expected, what with the octopus in the bucket responsible for oxygenating a full third of the man’s blood.
“It knows!” Isa yelled, dancing sideways to avoid the reach of an undulating tentacle.
A tentacle whipped out, curling about Alec’s wrist and squeezing with vicious force. Suckers latched onto his skin, and the muscular arm twisted, yanking him to the floor. Alec brought his fist down upon the creature’s tense flesh, striking again and again until it loosened its grip. He leapt to his feet, backing away to grab a scalpel from the instrument tray.
She slid her dive knife from its sheath. Dodging thrashing tentacles, they tried to advance while two tentacles rippled as they wrapped tighter about Jona’s neck, squeezing. His back arched, his arms and legs tensed. The octopus bit down with its beak, hard. Blood poured from Jona’s neck and his eyes flew open, bulging from their sockets. His lips pulled back, exposing teeth in a silent, screaming rictus of pain.
Praying pain wouldn’t further enrage the octopus, Alec positioned his scalpel above the first tentacle—ready to slice it free—when Jona suddenly slumped upon the wooden planks, silent and limp. Tentacles loosened and fell slack, sliding from his neck and flopping with a soft plop onto the wooden floor.
Mouth open, hand still fisted about her knife, Isa stared at him.
Swearing, Alec threw the scalpel onto the tray with a clatter. “Enough. Tie off the venous tentacle. I’ll pry off the beak.” He snatched up a self-retaining Weitlaner retractor. Shaped like blunt-tipped scissors, they had a uni-directional ratchet mechanism that—when locked in place—allowed movement in one direction only: open.
He crouched beside Jona, shoved aside the mass of buccal tissue and inserted the tool into the octopus’s beak, forcing the sharp halves apart. Limp, the bulk of the octopus fell and sank to the bottom of the bucket. Without a constant flow of hirudin, the blood soaking Jona’s bandages should taper and stop.
“Alec,” Isa said.
He looked up to see her holding the raw, severed end of a tentacle, tightly tied off with cording. A few inches of tentacle—also securely tied—protruded from Jona’s leg.
“I need your assistance. If you’ll lift the octopus above his shoulder, that should drain most of the blood back into his system.”
A few minutes later, the second tentacle had been severed. Isa checked Jona’s vitals in preparation for vascular surgery, and Alec dropped the octopus in the bucket. He rubbed the edge of his jawline as he studied the creature. It lay there, its body still pulsing, but with a gentler, softer rhythm.
“Cephalopods can regenerate a lost limb,” he mused aloud. “Most cephalopods have copper-based blood—hemocyanin. It’s why I used the Ichor machine to test for copper in the first victim’s wounds, but I found no traces of elevated copper. If the octopus possesses its own, separate circulatory system, unconnected to the one it shared with Jona, there’s no reason to think it won’t live.”
Isa wiped her hands on a towel, giving him a long, unamused look. “You want to save it. As evidence.”
“My brother wanted me to find proof.” He waved a hand. “Here it is.” He imagined dropping this bucket at Logan’s feet and smiled. Payback for all the years of bugs and lizards he’d found beneath his pillow. “We need say nothing of Finn.”
“When,” he answered. “They’ll come. And as you’ve admitted, Aron Moray is Finn. He’ll have an opinion on how this ought to be handled.” He moved toward the basin of soapy water to scrub his own hands before joining her at their makeshift surgical table. “Have you performed vascular surgery before?”
“I’ve assisted,” she said, handing him his surgical glasses, the very ones she’d won from him the day they met. “The tentacle appears to pass between two muscles, the sartorius and the adductor longus, on its way to the femoral vein. From what I could see, octopus-human vessel fusion isn’t quite complete. Separating the two tissues ought not be too difficult.”
He bent over Jona’s thigh. The retractor Isa had inserted gently opened the wound, allowing him to trace the path of the tentacle using a blunt probe. “Agreed.” A glint of light caught on the braided wire. “Can you spread the tissue more?” The barbed tip was not at all where he’d predicted. He traced its path to the tip. “Shit,” he muttered.
This explained the drilling pain Jona described. Another diabolical feature of the engineered tentacle. The Finn who’d been attacked by the biomech octopus hadn’t had a chance of removing the tentacle once it attached to them. Not without surgical intervention.
Someone willing to risk death by severe and sudden blood loss might attempt to break free by yanking on the tentacle. Attempt. There was little chance that they would be able to overcome this.
“What is it?” Isa asked.
“The braided wire, remember the barb?”
“Of course.”
“More than a simple fish hook function. It’s lodged not in muscle or connective tissue, but has actively drilled into bone.”