Nathaniel Parrish

Two miles beneath the arctic permafrost, the Cripta Polar de Barrena protects the biological heritage of an endangered planet, its endless vaults kept frozen by the occult glands of pre-human leviathans. When an electrical fault disables the laser cooling system, technician Dario Melgarejo discovers the temperature is climbing. Trapped inside with a suspicious state marshal and a greedy antiquities smuggler, Dario watches in horror as the thermal-null field collapses. In the sub-zero corridors, the ice begins to thaw. Millions of seeds sprout into thorny flesh-traps, and long-dead predators pull themselves free of their specimen drawers with multi-jointed hunger. To survive, the three must plunge deeper into the freezing dark to reset the primary gland before the entire prehistoric wing wakes up.

Forty feet below the drowned boulevards of Nouar-el-Bahr, municipal saturation diver Tidjani earns his living clearing the delta city's subterranean flood-tunnels. But when a record hurricane slams the coast, Sump Turbine 4 seizes completely, threatening to back up billions of gallons of toxic sludge into the densely packed slums above. Diving blind into zero-visibility runoff, Tidjani discovers the intake isn't choked with timber and debris—it's blocked by a writhing, multi-jawed occult biomass anchoring itself to the sluice gates. Armed with a pneumatic cutter and a rapidly draining air rig, Tidjani must sever the creature from the turbine shaft while dodging the armed saboteurs who seeded the monster into the sewer system.