The storm had passed, leaving behind a heavy, salt-tinged mist that clung to the deck of the *Avalanche*. The crew gathered around the remains of the mutated octopus—what little they had managed to haul aboard before the rest sank into the abyss. Its severed tentacle lay sprawled across the deck, still twitching occasionally, its bioluminescent veins flickering like a dying neon sign.
Yona knelt beside it, her gloved hands carefully slicing into the rubbery flesh. "The cellular structure is... wrong," she muttered, holding up a sample to the light. The tissue glistened with an unnatural sheen, strands of DNA visibly coiled in ways they shouldn't. "It's like radiation and something else rewrote its biology."
Patrick poked at a barbed sucker with the tip of his knife. "You think this thing was always here? Or did the contamination *make* it?"
"Both," Yona said grimly. "Octopuses are already intelligent, adaptable. Whatever's in the water now just... accelerated it."
