Chapter 3

I twisted the faucet shut, and the freezing water from the showerhead stopped instantly. I yanked a bath towel off the rack, wrapped it around Harry's soaked body, and lifted him out of the tub.

The bathroom door flew open, and Xena rushed inside. She was still clutching the fishbone needle in a death grip.

When she saw the seaweed that had been pulled out of the floor drain and tossed aside, she shuddered violently, as if someone had just lashed her with a whip.

She dropped the needle and lunged forward, shoving me out of the way. Roughly tearing the towel off Harry, she began stripping away his wet pajamas.

The icy sensation jolted Harry awake, and he burst into terrified sobs. Xena ignored him completely. Her hands frantically searched his freezing skin. She turned him over and stared intently at his back and neck.

There were no blisters. No strange growths had appeared on his skin.

Xena collapsed onto the waterlogged tiles, gasping for breath.

Then, as if possessed, she scrambled to her feet and rushed into the kitchen. She returned with the half-empty bag of sea salt.

She scattered handful after handful of coarse salt into every corner of the bathroom. The crystals mixed with the water, dissolving into murky white puddles across the floor.

I could not take it anymore. I strode over, snatched the bag from her hands, and shoved her away. Xena crashed against the edge of the sink.

I pulled Harry behind me and shielded him with my body. "Have you lost your mind?"

Xena did not argue. She simply stared at the floor drain, repeating the same words over and over in a nervous, almost frantic voice.

"Don't move the seaweed. The seawater will come in."

…

The next morning, the atmosphere in the house was suffocating.

Harry sat at the dining table, too frightened to even drink his milk. He glanced at Xena, who sat across from him, and asked in a timid voice, "Mom, is it true that Leviathan can offer people its shield?"

The spoon slipped from Xena's hand and clattered onto the table. She stared at her son in horror. "I never said that! Who told you he could offer shield?"

She jumped to her feet and retreated into the master bedroom.

…

Later that morning, while Xena was asleep, I went into the spare bedroom to pack Harry's schoolbag.

As I gathered his colored pencils, I pulled a sheet of paper from beneath the desk mat. Its background had been completely covered in blue crayon.

In the center of the drawing stood a family of three, surrounded by an ocean that seemed to stretch down into endless darkness.

The little figure representing Mom stood at the front. Behind her, a gigantic black shadow had been heavily scribbled in with black crayon. The figure representing me had been drawn in the bottom corner.

A white needle was stuck into my neck, and a stream of bubbles floated out of my mouth.

I was drowning.

As I stared at the picture, a chill crept through my hands and feet. I folded the drawing, slipped it into my pocket, and headed into the study.

I booted up my computer and connected through a backdoor I had left behind from my days doing network maintenance at the naval base.

I hacked into a deeper, top-secret archive at the research institute and entered the names of the seven submersible crew members who had gone insane.

One after another, their case reports appeared on the screen. I opened the death records of their partners.

All seven had died in exactly the same way. Each death had occurred on the night of the seventh day after the crew member returned from the deep-sea mission.

Every single death had coincided precisely with the full moon.

The cause of death was drowning.

All the bodies had been found inside bedrooms with their doors and windows tightly shut. There were no large containers of water anywhere in the rooms, yet the victims' lungs had been filled with highly concentrated seawater.

What chilled me most was the physical evidence collected at each scene. Every victim had a tiny puncture wound on the neck.

Forensic investigators had recovered a sharpened fishbone needle from every scene.

I thought of the bone needle in Xena's hand, its tip glowing with an eerie green light, and finally understood what I was facing.

I was the next sacrifice.

I scrolled to the bottom of the archive. In the signature field of the final report, I saw a familiar name.

Former director of the Marine Research Institute, Prof. Arthur Turner.