Page 21 of Music of the Ocean

No way he should’ve survived. Yet, here he was, alive and oxygenated, if you could call what he was doing “breathing.” He kicked away from the pilot’s seat, tumbling through the flooded cockpit, grabbing at solid things to orient himself.

Beyond the cracked glass, the ocean, that impossible, endless blue, churned. Shapes darted in the distance, shadows and glints. He forced himself through the emergency exit. The water outside was colder and darker, but it didn’t bother Saxby. The ocean’s deep pressure was no longer a threat, but a familiar embrace.

Its currents moved through him as though they were his own blood. He kicked, propelling himself away from the shuttle, then just… drifted, disoriented, as the shuttle disappeared into the endless blue.

Light filtered down from the surface in rippling bands, but here, below, everything was so clear it made his eyes ache. He could see for miles, maybe more, and the water was impossibly pure.

Schools of small, darting things whipped past him, silver and neon, unafraid. A cloud of bubbles trailed from the shuttle’s stern as it dropped into the abyss. For a moment, the urge to chase the shuttle, to see if it’d fire up and take him away from here rattled in his head.

He’d flee this planet and his responsibility to the starship he was on and just… what? Hide? Wander the galaxy? In a shuttle torn to bits? And with no access to his credits. And what about his new body?

But the other urge, the one that had driven him here, the one that came with the taste and the voice and the word mine, was stronger. And it was truly the only option. He was trapped.

His attention was caught by movement in the distance, a flicker of bulk among the shifting haze of silt and sunlight. Saxby’s vision, adjusted now to the ocean’s blue-black palette, caught the motion immediately. It wasn’t anything like the darting schools that had been zipping past him moments before. It was bigger.

Much bigger.

Saxby tensed. His training screamed at him to find cover, to retreat, anything. He hung suspended in open water, exposed in every direction. Not that it’d matter. Whatever was out there, it was coming straight at him like it knew his exact location.

His training might say hide, but his instinct wasn’t to retreat. He sensed no danger. Well, no danger to him. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that whatever was moving toward him was very dangerous.

The water vibrated with its approach, a low steady thrum that ran through Saxby’s bones. He’d been in the ocean less than ten minutes and already he was prey.

No, not prey. He was something else.

He took a breath and found it easy, almost automatic now. The new gills fluttered and snapped open, feeding him with cool, oxygenated water. He reached up, touching the ridges, and found them closing over with a soft click, like the lips of a shell.

The sense of exposure lessened, just a hair.

The thing moved fast with a kind of terrifying certainty, a predatory confidence that made it impossible to mistake it for anything but a hunter. It drew closer, a big undulating mass of something that was composed of dozens of arms? Tentacles? Whatever they were, they flexed as it swam, propelling it forward.

Saxby’s heart pounded, but his body was betraying him. Instead of thrashing or fleeing, some new, terrifying adaptation of himself wanted to reach out, to touch the creature, to meet it.

The urge made no sense, but it was there, gnawing at the edges of his mind.

The tentacled mass was near enough now that Saxby could see its details in the shockingly clear water. It was a nightmare of engineering. The lower half was a mass of tentacles, each one a thick band of muscle rippling beneath a membrane that shimmered in the filtered light. The upper part, though? Fuck, the upper part was humanoid.

It was as if someone had stuck the chest and head of a male model onto the lower part of a cephalopod that was the size of a one-man shuttle. The creature moved with a dreadful grace; the human-like arms worked in a lazy spiral, its attention on Saxby.

Its scaled skin was a deep, iridescent hue somewhere between blue and violet. Indigo. Yeah, that was the color it was. It had a sensuous, human-shaped mouth, and full, soft-looking lips with a square jaw. Its irises were an eerie bluish color, and its ears were long and pointy. Overall, the face was humanoid but not.

It was terrifyingly beautiful and so very alien.

As the creature slid closer, its tentacles fanned out. The humanoid upper half was bare, broad shouldered, the chest tapered and well-defined, skin gleaming in the water.

Its short hair, which actually looked like human hair, floated around its head. Lines of bioluminescent blue marked its hairless and scaled torso, outlining the rib cage and abdominals in a way that was both beautiful and deeply alarming.

The thing cocked its head. Fuck, it was studying him as he studied it. It drew closer until the humanoid face was less than six feet away. When Saxby didn’t panic, it seemed to relax.

There was a scent in the water now. Maybe it was a chemical signature or maybe it was pheromones. Regardless, the taste was so sharp it made the inside of his mouth ache.

The urge to reach out, to make contact, flared again. Saxby clenched his hands, but the webbing made a fist feel clumsy. He tried to remember what Vance had said. Something about symbiosis, about organisms rewriting code. If this thing was the source, what did it want from him?

The tentacles flexed, a few of them reaching out in lazy arcs, not quite touching Saxby. They radiated heat, and the surrounding water buzzed with a faint electric current.

Its gaze locked onto him, and a shiver passed through Saxby’s entire body. One tentacle reached forward, slowly, as if waiting to see what Saxby would do.

The urge to touch the thing was so strong it left his fingertips aching. Saxby lifted his hand and the tentacle’s tip wrapped, gentle but inescapable, around his wrist, its suckers latching on softly.