Dr. Anders Halvorsen had spent his life chasing knowledge, but since escaping the Isle of Teeth, he had found little comfort in it. Nights were restless, haunted by dreams of towering shapes moving between trees and the echo of bone-snapping jaws. His battered field journal, water-stained and fraying, sat always within reach. He had considered burning it more than once. Yet each time he opened it, the sketches and hurried notes reminded him that the world had changed.It was no surprise, then, when the summons came.
Two men dressed in dark suits arrived at his modest townhouse in Ottawa, flashing identification too quickly to be credible. They spoke little during the flight east, save to insist his presence was “a matter of international importance.” By the time they landed at an airstrip near the coast, Halvorsen felt as though he were being swallowed back into a nightmare.
The facility was hidden behind rusted fences and salt-stained hangars. Inside, however, the air hummed with modernity—banks of monitors, sonar maps, satellite feeds. On a long table lay photographs: wrecked ships, half-submerged oil rigs, stretches of coastline torn open as though by titanic claws.
One officer tapped a grainy satellite image. A dark smear trailed across the Atlantic, stretching hundreds of kilometres. “We’ve tracked this for weeks,” the man said. “It moves against currents. It dives into trenches. Every time it surfaces, we get dead fishermen.”
Halvorsen adjusted his glasses, leaning closer. The shape was indistinct, but the wake it carved into the sea was massive. His stomach turned.
“What you’re seeing,” the officer continued, “matches reports you gave after your… ordeal. The government wants your expertise. To confirm. To advise. To contain.”
Halvorsen’s mouth was dry. “Contain? You don’t contain forces of nature. You survive them.”
The officer’s jaw tightened. “Nevertheless, you’ll join our expedition. A vessel is being prepared. The mission is deniable. No flags. No oversight. Only results.”
Halvorsen bristled. “I won’t walk into this blind. Not again.”
A second man slid a folder across the table. Inside were dossiers: crew rosters, supply manifests, coordinates. One name froze Halvorsen’s breath—Elena Ramirez. She had agreed already, or been coerced. Either way, the decision was made.
He closed the folder, pressing his hand against the table to steady it. The suits didn’t need to threaten him. The weight of that single name bound him to the mission more surely than chains.
Later, alone in a sterile guest room, Halvorsen opened his journal. Pages crinkled under his fingers, ink faded but legible: diagrams of teeth, musculature, half-mad ramblings written in terror. He stared at a sketch of a colossal jawline and whispered to himself, “You never left the island, did you?”
Somewhere out in the Atlantic, something had awakened. Something that did not belong in this century—or perhaps in any.
When dawn came, he boarded the waiting helicopter.
The nightmare had summoned him back.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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