Read Chapter 14: The Station

The lifeboat’s outboard coughed twice before catching, the engine note thin and desperate against the vast gray sprawl of the North Atlantic. Elias gripped the tiller, knuckles white, eyes fixed on the faint smudge of land that the station’s beacon promised was Grimsey’s research outpost. Behind them, the Remora had shrunk to a dark speck, a wounded animal waiting for scavengers. He didn’t look back.

Beside him, Petty Officer Danner worked the oars as a backup, though the sea was mercifully calm. The third man, a wiry engineer named Sutter, sat in the bow, scanning the water with the nervous intensity of a man who’d watched two colleagues vanish in the dark.

The station materialized out of the mist like a bad memory. A cluster of prefab modules on a concrete pier, rust-streaked and utilitarian, huddled against the wind. A single research vessel, the *Jökull*, was tied alongside, its hull bearing the logo of the Icelandic Marine Institute. Elias killed the engine and let the lifeboat glide in.

Danner threw a line to a dockhand in a yellow slicker who caught it with practiced ease. The man looked at them—three strangers in a beat-up lifeboat, soaked and hollow-eyed—and said nothing.

Inside the main module, the air was warm and thick with the smell of coffee and industrial solvent. Dr. Hauk was a thick-necked man in his fifties with a beard that had gone gray in patches and glasses fogged from the steam of his mug. He introduced himself without offering a hand, his eyes flicking over Elias’s salvage gear and the damp pistol at his hip.

“You’re a long way from your tow,” Hauk said, voice flat.

“Our tow’s gone,” Elias said. “We lost propulsion. Need parts. Pumps, seals, maybe a shaft coupling if you’ve got one.”

Hauk’s expression didn’t change. “You lost propulsion, so you rowed here. From a derelict research vessel you were towing. In the middle of the North Atlantic.” He said it like he was reading a weather report, not accusing a man of lying.

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And the derelict? The *Artemis*?”

Elias hesitated. “Still out there. Dead in the water.”

Hauk set his mug down with a deliberate clunk. “We don’t have shaft couplings for a ship that size. You’ve got a sat phone. Call your company. Have them arrange a tow from Reykjavik.”

“Our company’s not answering,” Sutter cut in, voice tight. “They’ve been real quiet since we stopped moving.”

Hauk’s eyes narrowed. He studied them for a long moment, then shrugged. “I’ll show you the stores. But you’re not staying. This is a research facility, not a hotel.”

He led them through a narrow corridor lined with pipes and cable trays. The station smelled of brine and ozone, the hum of generators a constant undercurrent. They passed a lab door with a simple keypad lock, and Elias caught a glimpse through the small window: a stainless steel table, a row of sealed vials, and a tank the size of a coffin, its glass dark with something that wasn’t water.

Elias slowed. “What’s that?”

Hauk’s voice came from ahead, quick. “Biopsy samples. We’re studying deep-sea invertebrates. Nothing interesting.”

The tank had a hose running to a wall-mounted pressure gauge. The glass was scratched, and Elias could see a faint, sickly glow pulsing from within, like a dying light bulb.

“Invertebrates,” Elias repeated.

“Come on. Stores are this way.”

In the storage module, Hauk showed them a rack of seals and gaskets, a box of assorted fittings. “Half of this won’t fit. Take what you need and get back to your ship.”

Elias nodded. He moved slowly, picking through the parts, letting his eyes drift to the wall where a keycard hung on a hook next to a locker marked *RESTRICTED – PERSONNEL ONLY*. The card was identical to the one he’d seen in the lab door’s lock slot—the same faded blue Meridian Deep logo on the corner.

He pocketed it while Hauk was explaining the pressure rating of a valve fitting to Sutter. Smooth, practiced, the motion of a man who’d spent years walking decks where you weren’t supposed to be.

Back on the pier, Danner loaded the spares into the lifeboat while Elias shook Hauk’s hand. The station chief’s grip was cold, his palm dry.

“If you see anything else out there,” Hauk said, “anything that isn’t natural, you radio us. We have protocols.”

Elias met his eyes. “Protocols for what?”

Hauk didn’t answer. He turned and walked back into the module, the door sealing behind him with a hydraulic hiss.

Sutter was already in the boat, checking the fuel. “We got what we came for,” he said, but it sounded like a question.

“Not yet,” Elias said.

He moved along the pier, past the *Jökull*, until he reached the far end where a row of vehicles sat under a corrugated awning. Most were skid-steers and ATVs, but at the end, under a tarp, was a black Land Cruiser with mud-caked tires and a satellite dish on the roof.

No logos. No markings. But the antenna was directional, pointed west—toward the open ocean, toward where Meridian Deep would be operating.

Elias reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device, no bigger than a thumb, wrapped in electrical tape. Aiko’s handiwork. He’d told her it was a backup locator beacon, but it was meant for this.

He knelt by the Land Cruiser’s rear wheel well and pressed the bug into a gap between the chassis and the fuel tank. It clicked once, a soft sound lost to the wind.

When he straightened, Hauk was standing at the end of the pier, watching him through the weatherglass of the station module. Elias raised a hand in a lazy wave and walked back to the lifeboat, heart hammering a steady, cold rhythm under his ribs.

Danner fired the engine. The lifeboat pulled away from the pier, the station shrinking behind them. Elias pulled out Aiko’s cracked flip phone, the one from Lena Hart’s locker. It powered on, screen flickering, and he dialed a short code—a pre-programmed number he hadn’t been able to bring himself to call before.

It rang twice.

A woman’s voice, clipped and tired. “This is Dr. Hart.”

Elias’s grip tightened. “Dr. Hart. My name is Elias Vance. I found your logbook on the *Artemis*.”

A long pause. Then, quieter: “Captain Vance. You need to turn around. You need to leave that ship and let it sink.”

“Can’t do that. She’s got cargo that’s still alive.”

Another pause. Elias could hear something in the background—a rhythmic hum, like machinery, but closer. Like a heartbeat.

“They told you I was dead,” Lena Hart said. “They told everyone I was dead. They put me on a ship called the *Tempest*. I don’t know where we are. They’re using the chronometer readings from the *Artemis* to track Subject 7. They’re not trying to kill it, Captain. They’re trying to find it.”

The phone crackled. The hum grew louder, drowning her voice.

“Do not bring that creature anywhere near—"

The line went dead.

Elias stared at the phone. The screen flickered once, then went dark.

Sutter was watching him. “Who was that?”

Elias pocketed the phone. He looked out at the water, where the fog was rolling back in, swallowing the station and the horizon together.

“That was the man who knows where we’re going,” he said. “And she just told me exactly where to find her.”