The air was settled, the sun had gone down. For hours the fisherman watched the strange light beneath the surface grow brighter, draw closer; the great mass that approached gave no hint at its nature, though the fisherman knew that, regardless of its intentions, there was nothing he could do about it.
Silence, so heavy upon the shoulders of the fisherman's soul. He did not fear the rising creature that might well consume him in a single bite. He did not fear the darkness of death, he welcomed its cold embrace.
The monster was close, now, to the surface; the yellow light was almost blinding, painful to look at.
The fisherman sat back from the side of the boat and held on.
He smiled.
* * *
"What happened?" shouted a graying man in a white lab coat as he rushed to the bed side. Alarms were going off, the monitor beside the bed flashed with warning lights. The test subject lying in the bed had begun to spasm violently. The doctor searched his airways for blockages.
"I don't know, he just crashed! His heart just stopped!" Archer replied, just as confused as her colleague.
A crash cart was rushed into the room by another younger doctor who immediately began to lubricate the paddles. The senior doctor stepped back.
“Clear!”
The paddles touched flesh.
* * *
The fisherman lurched in pain, his arms wrapped around his chest. He fell onto his side, his mouth opened to cry out but no words escaped; it felt like he’d been smashed in the chest with a hammer on his right side, the left was something else entirely. The creature would break the surface of the water any second, he had to hang on just a little longer.
He pulled himself up to a seated position. His balance was gone and the boat rocked violently. At any moment he could fall into the water and risk drowning. But not now. Not when everything he had been waiting for was coming to a head, when he was about to discover why he was here… but how could he know that? Why did he know that this would answer all of his questions? It could be a whale. With lights?
Maybe not.
The pain in the left-hand side of his chest became stronger, causing the fisherman to writhe in brutal agony that sapped his strength and turned his legs into matchsticks that could only snap under his weight. He dragged himself to the side of the boat and looked down. The creature was still there, still coming.
He could not miss this.
* * *
“Nothing. Again!”
Dr Archer watched as Dr Bennett ordered another jolt from the defibrillator. The young doctor placed the paddles on the subject’s chest and called for them to step back. The shock from the defibrillator wrenched the comatose man’s body into life for a moment, but his heart didn’t start.
Dr Bennett shook his head. “Again!”
* * *
The pain was blinding. The fisherman tasted blood; he coughed up spat a mouthful of the crimson fluid into the boat and tried to stay conscious. The night sky seemed to be getting darker, but that could’ve been his mind shutting down. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood and the fisherman clumsily lifted the shirt over his head, dropping it into a wet pile beside him. Gingerly, the fisherman fingered the hole in the left side of his chest and tasted the blood on his hand.
Images ran through his mind; a blade cutting into his chest, shredding skin and muscle, nicking bone and piercing his lungs. At the thought his mouth suddenly filled with blood and burst out from behind closed lips. His vision blurred, continued to darken.
A great crashing sound made him look up from the pool of blood he’d coughed into the boat.
The sea had erupted.
* * *
The high-pitched whine of the defibrillator charging up was the only sound that mattered in the room, the heart rate alarm went ignored as Archer and Bennett watched in silence as the man with the paddles stepped back and looked at the monitor. Still nothing. He turned to Dr Bennett, who motioned for him to try again.
* * *
Another shock to the heart made the fisherman twist violently in the water, a red cloud forming in the water around him. For a few moments he heard nothing, save for the water in his ears, as he and his boat were launched into the air by the creature bursting from beneath the waves; he felt that he had been thrown quite a distance and now fought to reach the surface, to try and breathe again despite the hot fluid filling his lungs. The water around him was hot, almost scalding. Beneath him he could still see nothing, the only way was up. With each movement there was a stabbing pain in his chest, the will to live was gradually drained from his soul.
Regardless of what happened to the fisherman, he had to know.
He had to.
He broke the surface of the great sea. The sky had turned black, thick with clouds and rain. With rapidly failing vision he managed to spot his boat and headed towards it, the sound of water crashing down all around him. After a short but agonizing swim, the fisherman reached his overturned vessel and managed to roll it on its side to keep himself afloat.
Without hesitation, the fisherman turned and looked over his shoulder at the behemoth that towered above him. Covered in armour plates, the thing looked like some kind of worm... but made of metal? The giant machine looked hundreds of feet tall, like a claw reaching for the clouds. The head pointed downwards towards the fisherman; several multi-faceted yellow 'eyes' turned to him, lights shone down on him as the thing drew closer, seemingly examining the dying man as he clung to the damaged boat.
Tendrils dropped out from under the electronic eyes that studied the fisherman, reaching out for him. There were spikes on the ends of the tendrils, he saw. The Kraken of legend? It didn't seem to matter anymore. The probing arms came closer; one recoiled slightly then lashed out, impaling the fisherman through the thigh, then another through his shoulder. He cried out in pain but it came out as a forced gargle, the blood in his mouth bubbling out into the water; the great machine lifted him into the air and held him aloft.
Through the pain the fisherman heard faint voices. He struggled to understand but the creaking and groaning of the metal leviathan leaning down to look at him closer drowned out the speech.
What IS this thing?
He spat more blood, his world becoming darker still. A gentle voice whispered in his ear:
"Rest, Crusader."
The fisherman limply shook his head. He looked up to the electronic eyes and spat "Never."
* * *
Dr Bennett switched off the heart rate monitor, the dead tone of the flatline silenced with the cut in power. The other two doctors exchanged glances and shrugged. Bennett marched out of the sterile room, the metal door swinging on its hinges behind him as he stormed along the corridor.
He had reports to make. Another failed experiment. Administrator Calvert would not be pleased, especially after the strings they had to pull in order to get their hands on their most recent test subject. Political strings. And they had to pull hard, the Chinese weren't especially sympathetic to the Americans' cause. Still, there hadn't been too much damage done. Some slander on the internet from the subject's followers and some rantings from the nut-job conspiracy theorists hunting for answers to questions that never even existed.
Well, now their theories were wrong.
Draeden Darksky is dead.
* * *
Jennifer Archer was disappointed. More so, admittedly, that the test subject had yielded no useful results than the fact that he had died, but still. A death is a death. Just a pity that this one had to be meaningless.
And they were so close to finding something. So close.
She spared the dead man the last of her concern in a glance as she headed out of the room. Pete, the doctor on the defibrillator, had left a few minutes ago with his parting words "we did the best we could."
The best they could have done was not pump the man -the subject- full of drugs to keep him in a coma for brain monitoring and dangerous surgeries. Archer hoped that the subject remained blissfully ignorant of all that was going on so that his last few weeks on Earth would not be filled with pain and sadness.
She left the room.
