1-Llandudno

Damian watched as the sun dropped low over the Atlantic, painting the sky in shades of rust and copper. Llandudno Beach stretched along Cape Town’s coast.

He sat on a flat rock poking out of the beach, feet half into the sand, burger in one hand and a Sprite in the other. His attention split between his food and the three people beside him.

Marcus was mid-story, about two beers deep, gesturing wildly with his free hand. “—and it’s moving right at us, yeah? Like, full sprint and Chen stands there like he’s waiting for it.”

“Chen’s an idiot,” Yuki said flatly. She sat cross-legged on the sand, her dark hair tied back, a burger balanced on a napkin in her lap. She liked Chen’s stupid moves, even if she’d never admit it.

“I think Chen’s brave,” the third one, Hassan, corrected in his distinctly Arabian accent. He was lying back on the sand, propped on his elbows, boots off. “Stupid and brave aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Damian laughed, cutting through the beach noise. “Not in Chen’s case. He might just be stupid.”

The ocean rolled in ahead of them. The base sat maybe two hundred meters back, a low compound of structures carved into the rocky cliff face.

Then a soldier, Fatima, came sprinting down the beach path.

“Movement,” she called out, not bothering to slow down. “Same one from three days ago.”

Damian drained the last of his Sprite in one pull, set the bottle down on the sand, then jumped. Marcus was already up, crumpling his napkin. Yuki rolled to her feet and Hassan pushed himself upright, brushing sand off his back.

Their gear room was dimly lit with sleek air conditioning. Their nautical gear hung in a neat line on the wall.

Damian grabbed his suit first. It was a two-piece tactical fit, dark gray with thermal threading visible along the seams. A carbon augment meshed into his left rib cage glowed faintly as he put the suit on. He pulled the top on, the material sealing around him.

He then moved to the weapons locker. He grabbed a compact harpoon, and a secondary blade with a serrated edge. He checked the charge on the harpoon and locked it into place on his thigh.

Hassan was beside him, grabbing his traditional heavier triple burst rifle. He slung it across his back.

Marcus went for a standard rifle, alongside a neutralizer canister with yellow marking on the side.

Yuki grabbed her favorite compact handgun and a pack of water nets, designed to expand and contract on command.

Damian asked across the room. “Where was the movement?”

“Same place we set our marker.” Fatima showed them her tablet readings.

They moved down a corridor that led directly down to the beach access point.

“Anything else?” Yuki asked as the exit door opened.

“Not much, we just got the ping.” Fatima said watching them head to the beach. “Sending full details to your HUD.”

The sun was descending, the sky a bright orange at the horizon. The water looked dark.

Damian’s HUD flickered to life, courtesy of his nautical helmet. Sonar data, coordinates, depth readings and a pulsing red signature.

They hit the water headfirst.

Fortunately, the thermal suit kept the cold at bay. The Atlantic waters would’ve been brutal without it.

Damian pushed hard and dove straight in.

The others followed. Their suits kicked in immediately, the built-in propulsion systems igniting with a soft whine.

“Sonar states…” Marcus confirmed “Movement bearing northeast, approximately 300 meters. Descending.”

The surface disappeared above them. The sonar’s red signature overlaid his vision of the rocks, kelp formations and the irregular topology of the seafloor.

Sixty meters ahead. Then fifty. Then forty. It was there on the sonar, a solid stationary red blip,

Then it disappeared from the display entirely.

Damian’s HUD glitched once, searching for the signal. The kelp forests stretched upward from the seafloor like green skeletal hands. Fish scattered in small schools, helmet lights shining on them as they passed.

Hassan readied his triple burst rifle, his eyes scanning through the moody waters.

Yuki had her nets deployed, held loosely in one hand.

Marcus was drifting slightly, his hands fidgeting. A small fish brushed against his shoulder and he flinched, a nervous movement that sent him spinning half a rotation. “Shit. Something just—there’s something right—“

“What compelled you to drink while we’re on call is beyond me.” Hassan said looking at him panic over little sardines.

The comms crackled with a South African accent.

“What’s going on out there?”

“Nothing yet, it’s pretty deep,” Yuki answered their sergeant, squinting through the murk. “And visibility is not great.”

Damian scanned the swaying plant life, with an occasional fish darting between fronds. His HUD was still searching for that sonar signature, coming up empty.

He kicked forward, heading toward the seafloor. He moved through the kelp, pushing fronds aside, searching for the marker they had set earlier in the week.

“Damian, anything down there?” the sergeant asked.

Damian kept searching through the kelp, his eyes tracking the seaweed.

Then he saw it.

A tiny flash of silver, caught on one of the thicker kelp strands. The marker was a small cylindrical beacon, metallic, hooked securely to the thallus of the seaweed.

But it was covered in a thicker gooey substance.

He moved closer, studying the gooey fluid latching onto it.

“Little weird right?” Damian said, his voice slow, thinking carefully as he spoke. “It coming back to a place it nearly died?”

“Yeah, was about to say…” Fatima slowly agreed.

Yuki and Hassan moved up beside him.

The water had gone very, very quiet.

Higher up, Marcus was drifting in open water, above the kelp forest. He’d been swatting at the little sardines for the last minute.

“Bloody things,” he muttered, waving his hand at another school. “Never liked my mum’s sardine fry. Never liked them alive either.”

He swayed them away irritably.

Then every single one scattered.

Marcus, happy they’d finally scattered, felt it then.

A gooey structure on his shoulder. A muscular arm-like appendage. Its texture was slimy, pulsing slightly with its own movement. The finger-like projections at the end sticking to his suit fabric.

A massive orange eye.

Locked on him with an expression that was unmistakably cunning. The creature’s mouth curved upward in what looked disturbingly like a smile.

It was an octopus. The massive one they’ve been hunting for the past week.

Beige and brown patterning across its enormous body, its segmented tentacles thick as tree trunks.

“Guys,” Marcus breathed through the comms.

Down in the kelp forest, Damian’s head snapped up.

“What is it?” Hassan asked, hand tightening on his rifle.

“Guys” Marcus’s voice came again, higher now. Panicked. “Something’s—“

“It’s just sardines,” Yuki snapped. “you’ll be fine—“

A yell.

All three of them moved at once.

They fired their suit propulsion systems to full, abandoning the kelp forest as they accelerated.

The creature was there.

Its vertical span reached 15 meters. One of its thick tentacles was coiled around Marcus’s entire body, completely immobilizing him.

He was suspended in the water like a doll in a little girl’s hand.

The creature’s head turned toward them and held a tentacle up, waving them hello.

“Marcus has been caught!” Yuki said urgently. “The creature has him. We’re moving.”

“Marcus, can you move?” The sergeant asked.

“Can I—?” Marcus thrashed uselessly against the grip. “I am being held like a DOG’S CHEW TOY by a creature I have actively despised since this assignment started. So no, sir. I cannot move.”

“Extract him fast,” the sergeant said, clipped and direct. “I can’t take another hour of his complaints.”

“Yes sir, we know. None of us can.” Hassan confirmed.

Yuki was turning her neck back, “Damian, read—“

But Damian wasn’t listening.

He was looking up at the octopus above him as it held his teammate.

And Damian felt that thrill, that electric sensation that ran down from his spine. The creature he’d been tasked to capture. The creature that had nearly gotten away three days ago.

__This was what he lived for__

He shot through the water like a bolt.

He closed the distance between him and the octopus in seconds. The gap between his teammates collapsed as he pushed through.

Hassan’s head snapped around. An eye roll.

“Dammit, don’t get ahead of yourself!” Yuki snapped through comms.

Damian’s lips curved upward. “Obviously.”

Ten meters from the creature.

The octopus’ tentacles tightened their grip, then lowered itself slightly. A gesture of invitation.

“Can you STOP the face-off and GET ME OFF IT ALREADY?!” Marcus screamed.

“Relax.” Damian didn’t look away from the creature. “When have I ever let you down?”

“You botched the Foosball tournament last week!”

“That… that has nothing to do with this we ALL know that.” Damian said, finally checking his harpoon charge, “Point being, you’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Yuki swept left, propulsion jets firing, taking position on the creature’s flank. Hassan mirrored her, sweeping right, his triple burst rifle raised and ready.

The creature’s attention split to track all three of them at once.

Hassan fired.

The bullet streaked toward the creature’s nearest eye. An almost perfect shot.

The octopus twisted, in turn twisting Marcus violently as the creature flung him around like a shield.

“THAT’S NOT HELPFUL!” Marcus shrieked.

“Duck!” Yuki yelled, drawing her compact pistol. “I’m aiming for the tentacle holding you.”

Marcus listened, fingers scrabbling against the slimy surface. The tentacle’s grip loosened slightly, enough for his hands to slip partially out.

He pulled the secondary blade from his thigh holster His movement was weak, constrained by the tentacle still wrapped around his body, but the blade found contact.

He stabbed the creature’s flesh, like hitting its elbow on a pointy surface, the octopus’s body jittered.

Yuki fired three quick bursts. The bullets streaked through the water in a perfect line, straight for the creature’s head. The octopus twisted away, which meant releasing some of its grip on Marcus to reposition.

Hassan propelled forward with his rifle slung back, hands reaching for the tentacle now loosening around Marcus’s torso. His fingers found gaps on the creature’s flesh, prying the appendage away.

Marcus swam out frantically, throwing off the goo latched onto him.

“Marcus is alright,” Hassan repeated back to HQ, with the two of them swimming away.

Marcus’s voice crackled back, shaky. “Never working for you guys again.”

“File that complaint when you’re back at base,” Fatima retorted. “Right now, hold ground and wait for the backup.”

“Guys! Go down.” Damian didn’t listen.

He propelled to Marcus, grabbing him by the oxygen tank and yanking him downward into the dense kelp forest. He pressed his harpoon into Marcus’s hands

Yuki and Hassan were on their tail, sweeping into the kelp forest behind them.

The octopus followed the four of them into the heart of the kelp forest.

“Circle it,” Damian called out. “Keep it guessing.”

Damian and Yuki swept left, Hassan and Marcus on the right,

The octopus snapped its head left, then right, then back again, trying to follow the dim white light from their helmets hidden in the kelp.

Yuki and Hassan fired, some missing entirely, some on target.

The octopus was infuriated.

It lashed out, tentacles whipping through the kelp forest, tearing through vegetation, creating clouds of sediment.

Then a harpoon shot at the creature’s left eye.

But the octopus’s survival instinct was sharp. It learnt its lesson from its last encounter.

Damian simultaneously launched from the octopus’s right side the moment Marcus fired the harpoon. He propelled forward, his secondary blade in his palm.

Another tentacle snapped out and caught the harpoon mid-flight, slightly cutting itself. The impact made the creature’s head snap left, toward the direction the harpoon had come from.

Damian drove the blade through its eyes in one straight line, spewing out a cloud of dark blue blood.

The octopus shrieked, vibrating the surrounding water. Its remaining intact tentacles spasmed wildly, flailing in agony.

The sergeant laughed. “Good work Damian!”

“Alright,” Hassan said sharply. “Cover its appendages. Now.”

Hassan moved forward, looking to grab one thick tentacle, Damian mirrored him on the opposite side. But the octopus’ tentacle threw them both off course

Yuki activated her net bomb “Get out!”

Hassan grabbed Damian by the arm and yanked him backward. The net bomb exploded in a burst of adhesive fibers, wrapping around the creature.

All of them descended into the blood-clouded water. Marcus and Hassan grabbed the creature’s beige colored head from either side, using their combined weight to force it downward, pinning it against the seafloor.

Marcus reached for the yellow container at his belt. He tossed it to Damian.

He caught it, popped the cap, and drove the needle into the creature’s head.

Five seconds.

Four.

Three.

The octopus’s movements slowed.

Silence.

Then Hassan exhaled hard through comms. “We’ve got it.”

Marcus punched the water above him in relief-soaked laughter. “Easier than I thought.”

“You got captured first though?” Hassan threw back at him.

Damian looked down at the creature, unconscious and immobilized on the seafloor, and felt that thrill finally begin to ease. “Well done guys!”

The sergeant’s voice crackled through comms “Visual confirmation?”

Hassan sent the feed through. The footage showed the creature, sedated and helpless on the seafloor.

The sergeant didn’t respond for a long moment. Then his voice came through again with an approving laugh.

“Excellent work team! Dinner’s on me tonight!”

Damian turned to Hassan first, a quick high five. Hassan grabbed his shoulder and laughed, shaking his head. Yuki swam up and bumped chests with both of them.

He pointed down at the sedated creature. “Tonight, we’re having the finest octopus in town!”

“Absolutely not!” Marcus said immediately. “I have had enough of octopus today. I am done. Finished.”

Yuki grinned. “Fresh Sardines then. We can get them right now too.”

Marcus groaned. “You’re all terrible.”

Fatima added on through comms. “I’ll get the local chef working on it.”

“I will absolutely NOT love it,” Marcus said, but he was laughing despite himself. “I really need to file that complaint.”

The backup crew arrived moments later, four handlers hauling the industrial containment vessel, a large reinforced bag designed to hold the creature without damaging it.

The lead handler, a woman with green eyes and a scarred jaw, looked down at the sedated octopus on the seafloor and nodded.

“That’s the one,” she said clapping her hands together. “Thorne, good work out here. Impressive as always.”

She swam down beside Damian and punched his chest soft enough to send him back a half-meter.

The crew moved into position, securing the containment vessel around the creature with its mechanical locks.

The lead handler looked back at Damian’s squad. “We’re done, let’s take her home.”

The beach was noisy.

An industrial sized crane had been set up on the sand, its arm reeling the containment vessel over the water.

Fatima came running down the beach path, two colleagues behind her, her eyes locked on the rising bag.

She grabbed Damian first, pulling him into a tight hug the moment his feet touched sand. Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “YEAH!”

Then she turned and hugged Hassan, Yuki, and Marcus in quick succession, practically vibrating with excitement.

“Good one guys!” she was staring at the containment vessel as it swung gently toward the sand. “Record time too! Managed to discover AND catch it in one week—“

She paused, her nose wrinkling slightly as she turned back to the squad.

“God Marcus, you reek,” she said holding her nose. “What did that thing do to you?”

Hassan said, stripping off his helmet. “We’re all overdue a shower, honestly.”

“Good point.” Fatima said, waving her hand dismissively, already turning back to watch the crane lower the vessel onto a reinforced platform. “Now about the naming…”

Damian caught Hassan’s eye. Hassan caught Yuki’s. They all looked at Marcus.

Fatima was geeking out, “Probably need to follow the naming code, Or—oh, what if we named it after mythology? Something powerful, something that captures what it is—“

They slowly, carefully started backing away.

Step by step, casually.

Fatima was still talking, gesturing wildly at the containment vessel, completely oblivious. She trailed off, lost in the possibilities.

Yuki’s eyes suddenly locked on the crane operators beginning to open the first seal on the vessel.

“Oh, look,” Yuki said, pointing. “They’re probably opening it now.”

Fatima immediately ran toward the crane, already shouting instructions at the operators.

Damian, Hassan, Yuki and Marcus stood there for a moment, watching her go.

Hassan exhaled slowly. “Good save.”

“We’ll hear all her ideas when we’re at dinner,” Yuki said, already walking toward the base.

Damian pulled his helmet off, breathing in the salt air. Around him, the others did the same—Hassan, Yuki, Marcus all removing their gear.

Damian reached for the seals on his thermal suit and peeled the leather top away, exposing his torso to the air. His augment was there—the carbon fibre grafted onto his left rib cage.

He checked it quickly, running his fingers across the surface and tapping its carbon layer. Everything was intact.

Marcus had also stripped his top, skin glistening with salt water. He shook his head, muttering something about never wanting to see another octopus in his life.

Damian fell into step beside him as they started walking back toward the base, leaving the crane and Fatima’s excited planning behind.

“That harpoon thing,” Marcus brought up. “The misdirection play. That was smart.”

“Really?” Damian said, his voice rough from the operation.

Marcus spoke with exaggerated wisdom, waving his hand dramatically. “I’d have come up with something better obviously, but you’re learning, young one. Well done.”

Damian laughed and stretched his neck.