James Wilson closed the door of his temporary quarters with a soft, definitive click. The room was standard-issue military austerity: a cot, a steel desk, a wall-mounted lamp casting a sterile white pool of light. The silence was a palpable thing, a vacuum after the day's visceral chaos. He needed to order the noise, to pin facts to the board like specimens.
On the whiteboard, he wrote two names in clean, block capitals:
CAPTAIN STERLING
ELEANOR THOMPSON
Sterling was the nexus to the fallen man, a conduit to the human story—grief, loyalty, secrets shared between soldiers. Thompson was the nexus to the corpse itself, a curator of cold, hard truths etched in DNA and mineral fragments. He needed to know what Sterling knew about her comrade's final days, and he needed to know what Thompson had pulled from his final remains. The gap between those two datasets was where the killer would be.
He was about to head out to find Sterling when his gaze fell on the secure tablet provided by the base. Local incident reports, civilian complaints, and anomaly logs from the past six months were now in his purview. He sat, the cot groaning under his weight, and began to dig.
The first files were mundane: reports of stolen equipment, a lost hiker found disoriented but safe, a territorial dispute with a local farmer. Then, the pattern shifted. The language grew vague, tinged with unease. A park ranger's report, three months old, described a "disturbance" along the Blackwater River—a section of bank scoured as if by a powerful, dragging force, but no footprints, no vehicle tracks. The ranger noted an "unusual silence" in the area, an absence of birds and insects.
Then, the photos.
A folder marked "CIVILIAN SUBMISSIONS – UNCONFIRMED" contained a series of blurry, grainy images. Hikers with cheap phones, trying to capture the impossible. James leaned in, his pulse a low drum in his ears.
The first was a shot of the river, sun-dappled and peaceful, but in the lower third, just beneath the surface, a long, dark, sleek shape blurred by motion. It wasn't a log; it had a sinuous, coiling taper. The next was worse: taken from a higher vantage, it showed a stretch of whitewater. Arcing through the froth was something smooth and grey, like polished basalt, for a split second before it submerged. The shape was wrong—too fluid, too jointless for any known animal.
The final image made his blood run cold. It was a close-up, turbulent and out of focus, but at its centre, where the water churned around a rock, something broke the surface. Not a snout, not a head. It was a limb, or an appendage, terminating in a cluster of long, fine, whip-like filaments that fanned out in the water, each tipped with a tiny, glowing node. They looked like the sensory tendrils of a deep-sea creature, but they pulsed with a faint, bioluminescent blue. The photographer had captioned it, with terrified simplicity: "River monster? Some kind of eel? It moved… wrong."
A mythological water leaper. A liperous from local lore, a thing that jumped from water to drag the unwary under. His pack's oldest tales spoke of such spirits in the sacred caves, water-haunts that were guardians or judges. But this wasn't a spirit. This was physical, captured on a pixelated sensor. And the soil from under the victim's nails matched the sacred caves, which were threaded with underground rivers connecting to the Blackwater.
The pieces didn't fit a frame-job anymore. This was something else. Something that lived in the dark water, that might have come up through the caves. Had the soldier seen it? Had he been chosen?
He stood abruptly, the tablet falling to the cot. Sterling could wait. He needed Thompson's analysis on these images, and he needed to know everything she'd extracted from the body.
---
Eleanor Thompson was encased in the humming, chilled sanctum of her mobile lab, a white Ford Transit van packed with more forensic intelligence than most state hospitals. The corpse of the soldier lay on the stainless-steel slide table in the connected refrigerated Sprinter, a silent, pale secret in the dark. Here, in the brain of the operation, she was conducting a silent symphony of analysis.
The ANDE rapid DNA system had finished its run. The profile it spat back was fragmented, sections redacted by layers of classification, but the conclusion was clear: non-human markers interwoven with the human baseline in a way that spoke of profound, ancient manipulation. It wasn't a hybrid; it was a tapestry, and someone had deliberately frayed its edges. She archived the data behind multiple encryptions.
Her focus now was on the particulate evidence. Under the MISTRAL microscope, the soil from beneath the victim's fingernails was a Martian landscape. Amongst the common clay and silt were minute, perfect hexagonal crystals that glimmered under polarized light. A spectral comparison matched them to the unique geological fingerprint of the local sacred caves with 99.8% certainty. He had been there, or had fought with someone or something that had.
She was cross-referencing the crystal structure with a classified mineral database when the knock came—a firm, measured rap on the van's side door. She didn't startle. She finished typing a command, saved the file, and glided to the door.
The door creaked open, not on Eleanor, but on a slender, androgynous man in a grey tech-smock. He gave James a neutral nod. "Dr. Thompson is occupied. Can I assist?" His voice was soft, devoid of inflection.
"I need to see her. Now," James said, his voice leaving no room for protocol.
The tech hesitated, then retreated into the gloom. A moment later, Eleanor appeared at the door, her gloved hand on the frame. Behind her, the van glowed with the cool light of monitors.
James stood at the open door, the interior light painting his face in stark relief—the hard planes of his cheekbones, the shadowed sockets of his eyes. Inside, Eleanor was a silhouette against the lambent blue of the ANDE's touchscreen.
"Any hits on the DNA?" he asked, his breath fogging slightly in the van's climate-controlled, sterile air.
"Partial," she said, not turning from her workstation. Her attention was on a spectral graph. "Enough to confirm the non-human integration is deliberate and advanced. The full profile is archived. Classified beyond either of our clearances." Her gloved hand moved to the MISTRAL, fine-tuning a focus knob. "The soil from under the victim's nails, however, is definitive. The crystalline structure matches your pack's sacred caves perfectly. Not just the region, James. The specific cavern stratum known as the 'Mirror Pool' annex."
James's jaw tightened. The Mirror Pool was a still, subterranean lake, said to be bottomless. "So it's a frame. Or a declaration of war."
"It's data," Eleanor corrected, her voice as cool as the air whispering from the Sprinter parked behind them—the van that held the soldier's remains in its silent, refrigerated dark. "Your job is the motive. Mine is the method. And the method," she finally glanced at him, her eyes reflecting the digital readouts, "is pointing to someone, or something, with access to very advanced, very cold technology, and a deep understanding of both human and… other… biology. The cellular degradation around the wound edges suggests a cryogenic agent far beyond standard military issue. This wasn't a blade that cut him. It was a beam of absolute zero."
James absorbed this. A weapon that froze as it severed. He held up the tablet, displaying the blurry photo of the tendril-filaments in the river. "Does your method account for this?"
Eleanor's professional detachment fractured for a single, fleeting second. She took the tablet, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly. She zoomed in on the glowing nodes. "Where did you get this?"
"Civilian reports. Over the last few months. There's a pattern."
She turned, placing the tablet next to her microscope. With quick, efficient movements, she called up a new screen—a magnified image of the victim's torn uniform at the shoulder, where something had gripped and ripped. "I found microscopic aquatic bio-matter embedded in the fabric. Algae, diatoms. Freshwater. I assumed it was from the riverbank where he was found." She pointed to a faint, peculiar pattern in the tear. "But look at the abrasion pattern. It's not from a rock or branch. It's a series of fine, parallel lacerations. Consistent with…" she gestured back to the tablet, "…with being dragged by multiple, whip-like appendages."
She looked from the photo to James, the coolness in her voice now edged with a scientist's fierce curiosity. "You believe these are connected? A creature?"
"I believe the soil connects the victim to the caves. The caves connect to the underground river. And that," he jabbed a finger at the glowing tendrils, "was in the main river. Our lore has stories about such things. Guardians. Or predators."
Eleanor nodded slowly. "A biological entity, then. Possibly weaponized, or controlled. The cryogenic weapon could be a way to subdue it, or… harvest it." She crossed her arms. "Captain Sterling's comrade wasn't just killed. He was collected. Parts of him were removed with surgical, cryogenic precision. Not trophies. Samples."
The two of them stood in silence, the implications coiling in the cold air between them. The military base, the cover-up, the stonewalling—it wasn't just about a dead soldier. It was about a breach. Something had been pulled from the dark water, or something had escaped into it, and the soldier had crossed its path.
"I need to see the body again," James said. "Not as evidence. As a map."
Eleanor studied him for a long moment, then gave a curt nod. She grabbed a heavy coat and a forensic flashlight. "Follow me."
They stepped out into the night, the chill a physical shock after the van. The white Sprinter loomed, a silent mausoleum on wheels. Eleanor unlocked the rear doors, which swung open with a sigh of chilled air. Inside, the only light came from dim, red safety LEDs, casting the space in a hellish twilight.
The body lay on a gurney, covered in a grey sheet. Eleanor pulled the sheet back to the waist. In the red glow, the terrible wound was a black, crystalline void on his chest. But Eleanor directed James's attention elsewhere—to the less obvious marks.
"Look here," she whispered, using the flashlight to highlight the man's forearms. "Defensive wounds. But not from a blade." The cuts were shallow, seared shut by the cold, in crisscrossing patterns. "Like he was fending off multiple, thin, slicing lines." She moved the light to his ankles. "Abrasions and cryo-burns. Consistent with being bound by something extremely cold and flexible."
James stared, the civilian's blurry photo superimposing itself in his mind's eye over the corpse. The whip-like tendrils. The glowing nodes. Binding the ankles, slicing at the forearms. A struggle at the water's edge, or in the shallows of the Mirror Pool itself.
"He wasn't just attacked," James murmured, the horror dawning with crystalline clarity. "He was being taken. These are restraint marks. The killing blow…" he looked at the frozen cavern in the soldier's chest, "…that came later. When he fought back. Or when the extraction was complete."
Eleanor's breath fogged in the frigid air. "The samples removed… they were taken while his heart was still beating. The cryogenics prevented bleeding, allowed for clean, live-tissue extraction." Her voice was clinical, but it trembled on the last word. This wasn't murder. It was vivisection.
James covered the soldier's face again with the sheet, a gesture of respect. The two vans outside—one a brain of humming analysis, the other a heart of chilling storage—were no longer just a fortress of truth. They had become a lighthouse, illuminating a terrifying new coastline. The lies of the forest were deeper than he'd thought; they weren't just hiding a crime, they were hiding an ecology, a predation. And the stonewalling of the base wasn't just about scandal; it was about the illicit study, or weaponization, of something that had slipped its leash.
He had his pattern now. Not just of death, but of capture. He looked at Eleanor in the red dark. "I need everything you have on those bio-materials. And I need to know if Captain Sterling's team was running patrols near the caves, or the river junctions, in the last month."
Eleanor nodded, her face grim. "I'll prepare a full dossier. Cross-referenced and encrypted." She looked at the sheet-covered form. "His name was Corporal David Hale. He deserves more than to be a data point in a black project."
"He will be," James promised, the words heavy as stone. He stepped out of the refrigerated dark, the night air feeling suddenly alive, charged with invisible currents. The water in the river whispered over stones. Somewhere, in the deep places where caves met currents, something sleek and coiling waited. And James Wilson now knew he wasn't just hunting a killer. He was hunting a fisherman.
The night bled into a morning that felt less like a dawn and more like a slow, grey surrender. James had not slept. The digital ghosts of glowing tendrils and cryogenic wounds flickered behind his eyelids whenever he closed them. By 0500 hours, he gave up, dressed, and stepped out into the base.
The world was a study in monochrome and muffled sound. A thick, wet fog had rolled in from the river, swallowing the edges of buildings, softening the harsh lines of fences and gun barrels into vague suggestions. The sodium lights of the parade ground burned with a sickly, orange halation, their light dying mere yards above the asphalt, defeated by the swirling vapour. It was a clinging, cold mist that beaded on the nylon of jackets and tasted of damp concrete and pine.
From the heart of the fog came the sounds of the morning's first practice. Not the crisp, unified shouts of a full drill, but the fragmented, grinding repetitions of small units. The thud-thud-thud of boots hitting wet tarmac in imperfect unison. The guttural, exhausted call of a drill instructor, his voice frayed and disembodied: "Again! From the left! Your left, Private!" The metallic clack-clack of rifle bolts being worked, a sound both precise and brutal in the muffled air. Shapes moved in the gloom—dark, blocky silhouettes reforming into lines, dissolving into calisthenics, their breath puffing in short, frantic clouds that merged instantly with the greater fog. It was a spectral ballet of discipline, performed for an audience of none.
James turned his back on the field and entered the barracks building. The transition was abrupt. The damp, open chill was replaced by a dry, enclosed warmth that smelled of industrial cleaner, stale sweat, and the faint, sweet-metallic tang of gun oil.
The hallway was a long, fluorescent-lit tube of grim functionality. The flooring was speckled linoleum, buffed to a dull shine but scarred by decades of boot nails. The walls were painted a glossy, unforgiving shade of beige—"eggshell," they called it, though it was the colour of a forgotten biscuit—from the floor up to a chair rail, and a dull, dead green above. Every few feet, a heavy, fireproof door of dark-stained wood, each identical save for a small, stencilled number: 214, 216, 218.
The air here was alive with a different energy. Behind the doors, the dorm rooms were stirring. He could hear the creak of institutional bedsprings, the rasp of a zipper, the low mutter of a radio tuned to a static-laced news station. A door opened ahead, and a young soldier, his hair damp from the shower, stepped out, tucking his tan t-shirt into olive-green trousers. He nodded once, a silent, automatic gesture of shared habitat, and moved down the hall with a sleep-soft tread, his boots whispering on the linoleum.
James paused outside a door marked 208. Captain Sterling's room, according to the night-duty roster. The hallway felt like a throat, swallowing men into its uniform rhythm. The fog outside had been a blanket, smothering and obscure. But here, in this lit, straight-lined space, the oppression was of a different kind: the pressure of routine, of order, of a thousand identical days designed to grind down individual thought until only the machine of the unit remained. It was in the cracks of this machine, he knew, that the truth had seeped out—through a soldier who saw something in the river, who carried the crystals of a sacred cave under his nails, and who had died not in training or combat, but in the cold, silent grip of something the machine could not, or would not, explain.
He raised his hand and knocked, the sound sharp and final in the hushed, waking hallway.
The hum of her laptop's fan was the only sound in the temporary office. Sloane Hayes, forensic anthropologist seconded to the Department of Homeland Security's Advanced Threat Assessment division, was mapping isotopic ratios from the soil samples Eleanor had provided. The data was telling a story of deep, ancient geology, but the narrative felt frustratingly incomplete.
A soft ping broke her concentration. A text from Ben, their team's digital forensics analyst, flashed on her secondary screen.
Ben: Slack channel's dead. Got a data-dump from the local sheriff's server via 'friendly' request. Zipped folder in your secure cloud. Looks like animal control reports, but the timestamps are sus. Thought you should see.
Sloane minimized her graphs and navigated to the encrypted drive. The folder contained a dozen scanned documents, PDFs of handwritten police forms and typed dispatcher logs. She opened them, her eyes scanning with practiced speed. Her initial assumption of mundane livestock issues evaporated within three reports.
Incident: 14 Oct. Farmer J. Henderson, Blackwater Ridge. Reports loss of two ewes. "Tracks like a big snake, but with… feet? Claws? Drag marks to the riverbank. No blood."
Incident: 22 Oct. Same area. A calf reported missing. Deputy notes: "Landowner insists he saw a 'gator-lizard' thing, grey, low to the ground, moving fast into the reeds. No gators in this region."
Incident: 29 Oct. Poultry farm. Thirty chickens taken in a single night. Coop door "sliced open, not broken. Cuts are clean, like with a very sharp tool." Owner heard a "weird chirping-hiss" from the creek.
Sloane felt a cold prickle at the base of her neck. This wasn't hysteria. This was a pattern of predation, escalating in boldness, moving from sheep to cattle to concentrated poultry, and the descriptions… Snake, but with legs. Gator-lizard. Clean cuts. They dovetailed horribly with the blurry river-tendril photo and the strange, parallel lacerations on Corporal Hale's forearms.
She needed hard copies. She needed to show James. The sterile, digital truth on her screen demanded the tactile weight of paper in this place of fog and stone. She sent the files to the decrepit laser printer in the corner. It whined and spat out the pages, the warm paper smelling of ozone and toner. She collected them, tapped them into a neat stack, and slid them into a plain manila folder. The label read: BLACKWATER – LOCAL PD / ANIMAL INCIDENTS. It felt woefully inadequate.
Sloane pulled on a thick, rose-pink sweatshirt and matching sweatpants over her base layer, laced up her pristine white sneakers. In the world of academia or the DHS lab, her attire was unremarkable. Here, it was a declaration of otherness. She was a civilian flower in a garden of thorns.
Stepping into the barracks hallway was like entering a different ecosystem. The damp from the fog outside had seeped in, giving the linoleum a faint sheen and mingling with the smells of boot polish and male exertion. It was the hour of shift change, the hallway pulsing with a subdued, weary energy. Soldiers, some freshly showered with damp hair, others still in their full camouflage, moved with the purpose of men between obligations.
Every glance fell on her. It wasn't hostile, but it was total.