Starfish

Revolted, she smashes at it with one clenched fist. It reacts immediately, sheds squirming pieces of itself that flare and burn like fat fireflies. The central column goes instantly dark, pulling into itself. It pulses, descends in spurts, slinking away under cover of its own discarded flesh. Clarke ignores the sacrificial tidbits and pursues the main body. She hits it again. Again. The water fills with pulsing dismembered decoys. She ignores them all, keeps tearing at the central column. She doesn't stop until there's nothing left but swirling fragments.

Joel. Joel Kita. She realizes that she liked him. She barely knew him, but she liked him just the same.

And they just killed him.

They killed all of us, she thinks. Deliberately. They meant to. They didn't even tell us why.

It's all their fault. All of it.

Something ignites in Lenie Clarke. Everyone who's ever hit her, or raped her, or patted her on the head and said don't worry, everything will be fine comes to her in that moment. Everyone who ever pretended to be her friend. Everyone who pretended to be her lover. Everyone who ever used her, and stood on her back, and told each other they were so much better than she was. Everyone, feeding off her every time they so much as turned on the fucking lights.

They're all waiting, back on shore. They're just asking for it.

It was a little bit like this back when she beat the shit out of Jeanette Ballard. But that was nothing, that was just a taste of coming attractions. This time it's going to count. She's adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, three hundred kilometers from land. She's alone. She has nothing to eat. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. She's alive; that alone gives her the upper hand.

Karl Acton's fear has come to pass. Lenie Clarke has been activated.

She doesn't know why the GA is so terrified of her. She only knows that they've stopped at nothing to keep her from getting back to the mainland. With any luck, they think they've succeeded. With any luck, they're not worried any more.

That'll change. Lenie Clarke swims down and east, towards her own resurrection.

References

Actually, you might be surprised at how much of this stuff I didn't make up. If you're interested in finding out about background details, the following references will get you started. Starfish deliberately twists some of the facts, and I've probably made a hundred other errors through sheer ignorance, but that's something else this list is good for: it gives you the chance to check up on me.

I'm betting most of you don't care that much.

Deepwater biology

The deep-sea creatures I described pretty much as they exist; if you don't believe me read "Light in the Ocean's Midwaters", by B. H. Robison, in the July 1995 Scientific American. Or Deep-Sea Biology by J.D. Gage & P.A. Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Or Abyss by C.P. Idyll (Crowell Co., 1971); it's old, but it's the book that hooked me back in Grade 9. Although the fish we drag up from great depths are generally pretty small in real life, gigantism is not unheard of among some species of deepwater fish. Back in the 1930s, for example, the deepwater pioneer William Beebe claimed to have spotted a seven-foot viperfish from a bathysphere.

I found lots of interesting stuff in The Sea — Ideas and Observations on Progress in the Study of the Seas. Vol. 7: Deep-Sea Biology (G. T. Rowe, ed., 1983 from John Wiley and Sons). In particular, the chapter on biochemical and physiological adaptations of deep-sea animals (by Somero et al.) — as well as Biochemical Adaptation, a 1983 book from Princeton University Press (Hochachka and Somero, Eds.) — got me started on deep-sea physiology, the effects of high pressure on neuronal firing thresholds, and the adaptation of enzymes to high pressure/temperature regimes.

Spreading-zone tectonics/geology

A good layperson's introduction to the coastal geology of the Pacific northwest, including a discussion of midocean ridges such as Juan de Fuca, can be found in Cycles of Rock and Water by K. A. Brown (1993, HarperCollins West). "The Quantum Event of Oceanic Crustal Accretion: Impacts of Diking at Mid-Ocean Ridges" (J.R. Delaney et al., Science 281, pp222-230, 1998) nicely conveys the nastiness and frequency of earthquakes and eruptions along the Juan de Fuca Rift, although it's a bit heavy on the technobabble.