Scout found Kai at the stone collection late that evening. The water specialist moved with unusual tension, fur standing slightly on end. Scout smelled like cold channels—mineral, iron, that clean note that clung to things that had been underwater too long.
"The flow patterns changed again," Scout said without preamble. "Not gradually. Suddenly. Like something massive moved through the deep channels and displaced enough water to alter the entire system."
Current appeared behind Scout, the younger water specialist practically vibrating with nervous energy. The two had become inseparable over the past weeks, Current absorbing Scout's expertise like a sponge, copying the head tilt, copying the habit of tapping the stone twice before speaking when nervous.
"We went to check the boundary between our territory and the deep system," Current added, words tumbling out fast. "There are fresh marks on the stone. Claw marks. From something that uses the walls to climb."
Kai felt cold settle in the chest. "How fresh?"
"Hours," Scout said. "Maybe less. Whatever made them is still close."
Shadow's telepathic presence swept through the den, touching everyone's consciousness with a gentle nudge that still felt like a hand on the back. Gathering in main chamber. Now. This is important.
Within minutes, the entire colony assembled. Eight World Cats of varying ages and specializations, plus the unnamed aggressive kit who kept trying to position themself near Bitey like proximity to the combat specialist would make the younger kit braver. Whisper arrived last, fur still dusted with dried black moss from earlier analysis. Dig came at a jog, muttering numbers under their breath the way some kits muttered prayers.
"Something big is in the upper channels," Kai announced. "Close to our territory. Close enough that Scout and Current found fresh marks."
"The aquatic predator," Whisper said, the language specialist's chemical analysis of Scout's fur already processing trace scents from the expedition. Whisper sniffed, slow and careful, then blinked. "I'm detecting mineral signatures consistent with deep-water chemistry. Whatever this creature is, it came from well below our normal mapping range."
Dig was already calculating, eyes drifting toward the tunnel ceiling like it helped picture stress lines. "If it's climbing walls, it can access vertical tunnels. That means it's not limited to water-filled passages. It can hunt anywhere the stone goes."
"Fantastic," Bitey muttered. "An aquatic predator that's not actually aquatic."
The aggressive young kit produced an eager thought through Shadow's relay. Can we hunt it?
"Absolutely not," Kai said firmly. "We don't know what this thing is. We don't know its capabilities. Charging in blindly gets people killed."
But we could learn by fighting it, the kit insisted. The young predator's entire posture radiated barely contained aggression, muscles twitching with the need to engage threats directly.
"You could learn by dying to it," Twitchy pointed out. "That's called a bad lesson."
"Map instead," Kai said. "Scout, give me the exact route. Current, you back Scout and do not separate. Whisper, catalog every scent and marker from the last four hours along that route. Dig, note choke points we can shape if we need to. Bitey, pick two ambush positions and rehearse evac from both."
Assignments calmed the room. Doing made fear smaller.
They broke and moved. The work went fast because fear made everyone efficient. Scout traced the path with a claw on the floor, marking turns, pauses, the way pressure had pressed against the inside of the tunnel like a thumb under the skin. Current replayed the flickers of water they'd felt, the eddies that made no sense unless something large had forced them to exist. Whisper moved along the corridor with the lazy-looking grace of someone paying attention to everything, leaving tiny markers only they could read. Dig made three different hand-gestures Kai now recognized as weak ceiling, strong anchor, move this later.
The kit hovered near Bitey until Bitey rolled an eye and said, "If you're going to hover, hover quietly."
The kit shut its mouth and did exactly that. Quiet was not natural to it yet. It tried anyway.
They worked through the last hour of light and pushed into the hour after, when the den lamps were just faint bioluminescence and memory. When they finally settled, the room held a clear picture none of them liked.
Something large had come up along the wall from the deep channels. It had paused where the water access widened. It had felt along stone with something like hands and something like paddles. It had waited there. Watching. Not moving forward. Not moving back. Waiting.
"For what?" Twitchy asked.
"Us," Scout said.
No one spoke for a few seconds. The stones on the wall looked bigger in the low light. Old warnings always grew heavier when a new one arrived.
"Set a rotating watch on that access," Kai said at last. "Two at a time. No solo positions."
"Understood," Twitchy said.
The aggressive kit shifted its feet. The want to be useful came off it like heat. That want could get it killed. Kai filed that thought in the folder labeled things I cannot fix today.
They slept in layers that night—two on watch, two at the edge of sleep, the rest under, then switch. Sleep came in bits and starts. Scout woke from a dream of water pressing like a hand over the mouth. Whisper woke from a dream of language without lungs. Bitey didn't dream, or said they didn't, which probably meant they did.
Part Three: The Hunt Chooses Them
The decision got made for them eighteen hours later when the aggressive young kit vanished during a routine patrol.
Kai noticed the absence first because the kit's thoughts had been a constant burr against the den's mental cloth for days now—always there, always itching. Suddenly the burr was gone. The silence had shape.
"The kit?" Kai asked before the question finished forming.
Bitey returned alone, tension showing in every line of the combat specialist's body like someone had strung wire under the skin. "The kit went ahead. I told it to wait. I specifically said do not advance without me. It advanced anyway."
"Where?"
"The boundary near the water access point. Where Scout found the claw marks."
Kai was moving before Bitey finished the sentence. Shadow, Scout, and Bitey followed. Twitchy stayed behind with the younger kits, establishing defensive positions in case this was a larger threat. Whisper grabbed two marked satchels from their alcove and tossed one to Scout without breaking stride. Dig called out, "Don't touch the right-hand wall near the third bend—loose!—you'll bring the ceiling down," and got a short nod in reply.
The corridors to the access point felt narrower. Sound came back slower, like the stone was thinking about whether to return it at all. The pressure sense built into a hum under Kai's teeth.
They found the aggressive kit three tunnels deep, pressed against a wall, staring at something in the water below.
The creature staring back was magnificent and terrible.
Segmented body, each section protected by overlapping plates that looked like living armor. The overlapping gave it flexibility and shield at once. Multiple limbs ending in webbed claws that could clearly function on land or in water. The claws gripped the rock in a careful spread, as if the creature understood load and friction. The face was somewhere between eel and predatory fish, but the eyes held intelligence. Genuine, calculating intelligence that didn't blink at movement the way simple eyes blinked. It saw them and chose not to flinch.
It wasn't attacking. Just watching. Studying the young kit with the same intensity a scholar might study a particularly interesting scroll. It moved its head two degrees and then stillness again, the kind of stillness that said this was a deliberate choice, not a limitation.
"Nobody move," Kai said quietly through pheromone markers so subtle the predator probably couldn't detect them.
The aggressive kit's thought came through Shadow's relay, shaking with adrenaline. It's been watching me for five minutes. I don't know what it wants.
It's deciding whether you're food or competitor, Shadow sent back. Stay very, very still.
The aquatic predator shifted position slightly. Water sluiced off its body, revealing more of its size. It was big. Not quite Scar-Mandible big, but close. Big enough that a direct fight would be catastrophic. Its chest flexed in a way that suggested some internal air exchange. Breathing? Or pressure equalization? Hard to tell.
Then it did something unexpected. It produced a chemical marker. Complex. Layered. Almost like language.
"Did that thing just try to communicate?" Whisper breathed, too fascinated to be properly afraid for a heartbeat.
The predator's eyes tracked the movement of Whisper's mandibles. It had heard. It understood that they could communicate. And now it was waiting for a response.
Kai made a split-second decision. "Whisper, try to respond. Basic acknowledgment. I see you, you see me, we're both intelligent."
The language specialist produced a careful pheromone marker. Simple. Clear. Non-threatening. Recognition. No aggression. Boundary acknowledged.
The aquatic predator considered this for a long moment. Then it submerged. Disappeared into the dark water without a splash, moving with grace that something that large had no right to possess. The surface stilled fast, like it had never been disturbed.
They stood in silence for thirty seconds. No one wanted to be the one to break it and find out the quiet was a trap.
"What just happened?" the aggressive kit finally asked, still pressed against the wall.
"First contact," Kai said. "We just had first contact with something intelligent that isn't Scar-Mandible's species."
"And it chose not to kill us," Scout added. "That's significant. That's really significant."
Bitey exhaled and only then lowered the shoulders they hadn't realized were high. "You," they said to the kit, voice flat. "We will discuss orders. Later. Far from water."
The kit nodded, and the nod was small, ashamed, and stubborn all at once.
They pulled back in a careful, measured retreat, none of them putting their backs fully to the water until three turns separated them from the access. Only then did the tension bleed enough to let anyone speak without the voice catching.
"Whisper?" Kai asked.
Whisper's eyes were distant, working the layered scent in memory. "It wasn't greeting the way ants greet. Not status. Not threat either. More like state. Self declaration. Acknowledge. Wait. Assess."
"So it wanted to see our response," Twitchy said when Shadow relayed the summary back to the den. "We didn't show teeth. Good."
"It will come again," Scout said. "It felt like a probe."
"Let it try a door we built, then," Dig muttered, already drawing a wall in the air with one claw, angles stacking on angles. "Something we can close faster than it expects."
The next lesson would arrive on the predator's terms.