by Steve Alten
Leaving Raul, I stepped toward the big man and unleashed a right roundhouse punch that shattered Jorge’s jaw and separated his mandible from his skull—the man’s mangled screams renting the night air.
I turned to confront the third assailant and winced at a bee sting as a bullet grazed my left shoulder. In a haze, I remember tearing the gun from the shooter’s hand—only to realize later that I had torn the gun and his hand from his wrist.
Regaining his bearings, Raul attempted to crawl away, only I saw him, grabbed him by the ankle, and jerked him face-first into my knee, which rose to meet his nose and front teeth.
For a long moment there was just the ocean breeze blowing over the dunes, Mark and Shaina comforting each other, and the sound of three crippled men moaning in the darkness. Then the cops arrived and what happened next . . . I could only piece together later.
See, there was blood . . . lots of blood. It was on my knee and in my hand, and in my nostrils . . . and in my brain. I didn’t know that I had bitten the Cuban until I read about it in the paper, but I guess I did, because the man screamed and flashlights flashed and a swarm of bees stung me across the back and suddenly I was running . . . racing across the beach and into the ocean.
30
Ducking beneath an incoming wave, I expelled a lung-flattening gasp from my lungs, sending streams of bubbles fluttering out the sides of my neck. Sinking to the shallow’s muddy bottom, I pulled myself into deeper water, burping out the remains of my air. I cringed as my sinus cavity sucked my nose flat against my skull and cheekbones and as a deformity of cartilage curled out the back of my heels.
Thirty feet below a moonlit surface, I rested on my knees on the seafloor and took inventory of my wounds. To my surprise, there was a 9mm slug lodged in my left deltoid muscle. The gun had been fired at point-blank range and the bullet should have blown off most of my shoulder, only my dermal denticles had acted like an organic suit of armor, sealing off my underlying muscle. Gripping the hunk of lead between my thumb and index finger, I twisted until the slug popped free, its removal releasing a trail of blood.
I inhaled the dispersing plasma into my nostrils and down my throat, my innards trembling from weakness.
Immersed in survival mode, I needed to eat—something I could digest.
Pushing away from the bottom, I leveled out and began slow, sweeping movements of my hips and legs, my feet propelling me through the sea. With my denticle skin channeling water, it took almost no effort to generate speed. As I watched, the shallows plunged beneath me and I entered deeper water.
At some point the hundreds of sensory pores along my scalp opened, and suddenly the olive-green void came alive.
The effect was indescribable. As a human, my five senses worked independently of one another; as a gilled man (or whatever I was becoming), my sensory system was multilayered. I could hear in surround sound, smell every taste, and pinpoint the precise location of every living creature over a half-mile radius simply by isolating the telltale electrical impulses of its beating heart. More than that, I could feel the animal’s girth by the amount of water it displaced when it moved and measure its distress levels by its residual odors.
Turning my head, my right nostril inhaled something tantalizing . . . blood.
My pulse raced, my belly ached. Using my nose as a GPS, I headed off in the direction of the scent.
My prey was somewhere ahead, its movements erratic. A line of dermal denticles from my armpits down to my ankles were buzzing with vibrations. Even though I was still a football field away from my intended meal, I could register its blood being stirred in the water by the wounded fish’s tail.
Homing in on the creature, my movements suddenly became more rigid, my acceleration so rapid that particles shot past my eyes like stars at warp speed. I was moving through the scent trail—and then I felt something else . . . another shark! It was clearly a challenger, and it was advancing on my meal from the opposite direction. From its voluminous water displacement I could sense it was bigger and faster than me.
I didn’t care; I needed to eat. And then I saw my competition, and the rules of the food chain quelled my hunger pangs.
The great hammerhead was three times my size and outweighed me by at least seven hundred pounds. It was so big that I was closer in size to the three-foot tuna we were both pursuing. The albacore was zigzagging thirty feet below the surface, fighting from being reeled backward through the sea, its lacerated mouth bleeding from the fisherman’s hook.
The recognition of a human presence in this life-and-death arena snapped me out of “predator mode.” Altering my course, I cruised along the bottom, circling eighty-five feet below the fishing boat, my senses keeping vigil on the hammerhead who was also circling, waiting for the right moment to snag the wounded albacore.
The lull allowed my human side to overrule the predatory stalking response, and once more I was governed by rational thought.
I needed to feed, but my targeted meal had been hooked by a fisherman and was being circled by a monster I had no interest in challenging. The charter boat, however, offered its own menu of delicacies.
Rising away from the bottom, I ascended toward the forty-eight-foot hull, giving a wide berth to my competition. From the location of the struggling albacore, I knew the fisherman would be positioned along the portside rail. Targeting the starboard engine, I poked my head above the waterline, keeping my mouth and gills underwater.
A mouse-gray dawn identified the eastern horizon, separating the night from the Atlantic. The fishing charter bobbed before me in five-foot seas. I could hear voices on board—two men encouraging a third.
“. . . there ye go, Anthony, there ye go!”
“I see ’em. He’s a big boy. Another albacore.”
“Good thing I went with the twenty pound test. Skipper, get ready with the gaff.”
Quietly, I reached for the gunwale, pulling myself out of the water. All of the action was along the portside deck where three men and a woman had lines in the water, and an authoritative dude, most likely the charter’s captain—was standing by the rail with an eight-foot-long gaff.
Focusing on the aft deck, I saw what I was after—a horizontal storage locker filled with ice . . . and fish.
Holding the water in my mouth, clenching my gills shut, I climbed on board, took one step onto the fiberglass deck with my elongated bare feet . . . and slipped, landing hard on my back. The blow knocked the seawater from my mouth and released my gills, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe!
“What was that?” The captain, a burly man, headed for the stern, the eight-foot pole in his hand ending in a six-inch hook.
Move!
On all fours, I scrambled across the deck to the open storage bin—only to have the lid slammed shut.
“What in the holy hell are you?” The captain’s mate loomed over me, a beer in one hand, and a machete in the other.
My vision suddenly blurred. The protective membrane was still in place—my eyes no doubt appearing bulbous, reflecting alien-green in the darkness. My skin tingled as the thirty-inch blade whistled in the night air, the plunging steel intended for my brain . . .
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
The captain never saw his first mate until the screaming man’s airborne body struck him chest high and both men tumbled over the rail into the Atlantic.
Searching the ice chest, I grabbed a dead albacore by the base of its tail and jumped feetfirst into the water, gasping a life-giving mouthful of ocean. A few deep inhales and the burning sensation subsided, my gills pumping again.
Hovering beneath the keel, I sensed the erratic movements of the two men flailing along the surface. The hammerhead sensed them, too, the eighteen-foot shark rising to attack!
Releasing my fish, I torpedoed beneath the hull into the path of the ascending monster. Grabbing the beast by its mallet-shaped head the way
a rodeo clown intercepts a charging bull, I straddled the hammerhead’s back, twisting its eye sockets backward as I wrapped my legs around its muscular torso.
The two of us breached the surface.
For a surreal moment, I found myself staring into the startled face of a middle-aged redheaded woman, and then my mount and I plunged sideways into the sea, the hammerhead’s girth writhing violently on top of me as it tried to shake me loose.
Instead of releasing the muscular behemoth, I held on, rolling it onto its back as I had seen Joe Botchin do with Taurus. Within seconds, the animal became docile.
I remained pinned upside down to the shark’s back until I no longer registered the two men’s racing heartbeats. Uncurling my legs, I rolled the hammerhead dorsal-side up, watching the shaken predator dart into the depths.
I inhaled the sea into my nostrils, searching the vicinity for my hard-won meal, only to realize the dead tuna was gone—claimed by a swarm of smaller sharks. Diving toward the feeding frenzy, I located a fist-size chunk of meat and quickly shoved it into my mouth. I chewed it into tiny bites, the action purging the seawater from my gullet—allowing me to gulp the mangled hunk of tuna down my esophagus. The protective membrane opened and closed behind it . . . my first meal underwater.
Satiated, I dove deep, hitching a ride on a northeasterly twist of current. The river of rushing water carried me effortlessly along the bottom. The shoreline thundered softly in the distance, my troubles a million miles away . . .
31
Annie, it’s Kwan.”
“Kwan? Where the hell have you been? Oprah’s people have been blowing up my cell phone for three days. Why did you cancel the interview? You hired me to represent you and—”
“I didn’t cancel. Someone else made that decision without asking me.”
“Who? I’ll rip their throat out.”
“A guy who works for my father. It’s a long story, and I’m telling it all to Oprah tomorrow as scheduled, only it has to be a live interview.”
“Live? You can’t do it live. The interview isn’t scheduled to be aired until next week. They’ve been promoting the hell out of it.”
“Annie, we either do it live tomorrow or the powers that be will shut it down. Once it airs they can always show it again, but this is the way it has to be. Make the arrangements; I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Kwan, wait—”
I hung up the cell phone and handed it back to Ryan Davis. Pulling the hood of the Florida State University sweatshirt low over my head, I followed the hotel manager through an Italian Renaissance courtyard past tropical landscaping to the waterfront.
The sun had just set, casting a golden-orange glow over the pool deck and a stretch of private beach to the azure ocean that dominated the postcard view.
Five-star accommodations, spas and pools, bikini-clad women . . . this was the lifestyle I yearned for.
The Breakers Resort occupied one hundred and forty acres of oceanfront property in the heart of the barrier island of Palm Beach. I had staggered onshore three hours earlier, having spent the better part of the last day under water, traveling close to one hundred nautical miles.
My plan was simple—I’d tell the truth on live TV to Oprah. Everything from my relationship with my father, to the texting that had caused the car wreck that killed my mother and caused me to be paralyzed, to my internship at ANGEL—even the side effects. By exposing everything, I’d force my father to call off his dogs and help Dr. Becker raise the funding to support her research. Most of all, by exposing what had happened, I’d be able to force the lab to treat me with the beta-blockers without Jeff Elrod or some other CIA black ops assassin messing with my cure.
Mr. Davis led me past another pool and over a small bridge to a private oasis where the resort’s twenty-five bungalows were located. He keyed into Bungalow Seven and handed me the magnetic card. “You can stay here until noon, Kwan; then we need to clean it for a three p.m. check-in.”
“Noon’s great. Thanks again, Mr. Davis. And remember—”
“I know, I know. Not a word to anyone.”
I entered the bungalow, which was more of a plush cottage, featuring a living area, kitchen, master suite, and bath. I slipped off my sweatshirt and matching sweat pants, and climbed into the king-size bed, exhausted.
It was not the journey from South Miami Beach to the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach that had worn me down; it had been the willpower to become human again.
Back in tenth grade health class, I had spent a semester being lectured about the dangers of addiction. The sensation of pleasure, whether from sex, drugs, rock and roll, or a mouth-watering cheeseburger is caused by the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The area of the midbrain that releases dopamine is known as the reward pathway in that it rewards a desired behavior. Evolution utilized the reward pathway so that we humans would feel good when we engaged in behaviors that were necessary to our survival—stuff like eating and making babies. Whether natural or artificially stimulated, the release of dopamine is what gives us the sensation of pleasure.
Substances like alcohol and nicotine, as well as drugs like pot and heroin, also cause the brain to release dopamine, only in powerful surges. A drug’s level of addiction is directly related to the speed, intensity, and reliability of that release.
In much the same way, the act of using my new underwater senses caused my rewired brain to release high levels of dopamine—the more predatory my action, the greater the jolt.
Consuming the hunk of tuna had not only staved off starvation, it had excited my pleasure center, telling me I needed more food. Revisiting the charter boat was out of the question, which meant I had to hunt and kill live prey for myself.
The manta rays were scattered along the bottom, camouflaged by sand. My first six attempts to capture one of these three-foot bat-like creatures must have resembled Rocky Balboa attempting to catch a chicken. Swapping speed for stealth, I was finally able to snag one of the elusive creatures . . . and promptly bit its head off à la Ozzy Osbourne.
Manta ray was tough eating; turtle meat was a delicacy. I had homed in on the green turtle at first light, attracted by its deep, hypnotic pulse and a scent that no doubt rendered it a desirable feast for bull sharks. Unable to bite and crush the shell with my weak human jaws, I grabbed the back end of the lower casing with both hands, then wedged my feet against the upper shell and pried the entire tank-like armor off of the stunned wounded reptile. Then I ravaged the calipee—the fat attached to the lower shell—the main ingredient in green turtle soup.
If these acts sound gruesome, well, I suppose they would be to a human . . . even a gilled human. But I had changed. Swimming in a tank was one thing, inhabiting the ocean something quite different. The ocean is a liquid jungle; you’re either hunting prey to survive or you are prey trying to survive.
At first I was the latter. Endowed with four awkward human limbs, I moved far slower in the water than most of the fish I was trying to catch or avoid being eaten by. Hunting alone also left me quite vulnerable, and while possessing sharper-than-human teeth may have allowed me to chew through raw fish, my jaws were far too weak to be considered a threat to another creature.
It wasn’t until I had to defend the turtle meat from a barracuda that I realized the shark stem cells had endowed me with two lethal weapons.
A shark’s dermal denticles are actually miniature skin teeth that are ribbed with longitudinal grooves. As I discovered back in the tank, these grooves channeled water and propelled me through my liquid environment. When I flexed a certain body part, say my knee or elbow, the denticle teeth became more pronounced.
Nowhere was this more prominent than when I made a fist. The flexed knuckles along the back of my hand formed three-inch spikes that were as tough as nails and as sharp as blades, and suddenly I was a very dangerous creature.
It was abo
ut that time that I began thinking like a dangerous creature.
Consuming living flesh was far different than eating the cooked meat of a dead animal. Living flesh was warmed by blood. Blood had a pulse and a rhythm when I bit into it that made it . . . well, addictive. With each successful kill and succulent bite of living flesh, I found myself losing more of my human consciousness, until I no longer knew my own name.
Ironically, it was a shark that forced me to confront my own predatory addiction and save my soul.
Bull sharks are solitary hunters. Extremely territorial, they prefer to hunt in the shallows, a fact that makes them the species most dangerous to human bathers. It was a bull shark that ventured up a freshwater river in New Jersey in 1916 and went on a killing spree, and it was a bull shark that intercepted me as I approached the barrier island in Palm Beach.
The predator was a female, about nine feet and a thousand pounds. She had been trailing me since late in the afternoon when I had ventured into the sun-drenched shallows, lured in by the hypnotic break of the waves. Moving to within a mile of shore, I found myself suddenly aware of not only the bull shark but of something far more familiar . . . the presence of humans.
I could smell their suntan oil; taste their telltale urine. I could feel their plodding movements and discern their trepidation by their fluctuating pulses.
The female bull shark could sense them, too. Moving parallel to shore in only ten feet of water, she targeted an adult and a child.
I felt the predator’s movements quicken. She was in attack mode, her aggressiveness fueled by the presence of a competitor in her territory . . . me!
Lost in the fog of darkness, my consciousness lit a candle and I remembered who and what I was.
Shortening my own kicks, I soared inland like a bronze torpedo, hell-bent on intercepting the bull shark before she slaughtered the unsuspecting bathers. Ten feet from her intended target, the female detected my bold challenge and circled out to meet me, her senses assuring her that I was smaller and slower—an easy kill.
