James Axler - Distortion Offensive

Grant held up the clear plastic bag he carried. “I want you to take a look at these,” he explained, unzipping the top of the bag.

Grant held open the mouth of the bag and Clem peered inside, seeing the mollusks resting there in their glistening shells. “Would you like me to cook them?” he queried.

“No.” Grant laughed. “I want you to identify them. You’re the ocean guy, right?”

Bryant nodded before reaching for the handle of his fryer and shaking the sizzling contents. “Oh, yes, I’m the ocean guy,” he agreed. “Why don’t you find yourself a table while I finish up here, and I’ll join you outside in five minutes.”

“I’ll go snag a coffee,” Grant said and he made his way from the kitchen area with the little bag clutched in his grip.

A few minutes later, sans hairnet, Clem walked over to the plastic-covered table where Grant was blowing on a steaming cup of java.

The cafeteria was a large room filled with long, fold-down tables that stretched to seat a dozen people on each side. The tables were covered in a wipe-dry plastic coating. The walls were painted in warm colors, and a line of horizontal, slit windows ran close to the ceiling along the length of the wall farthest from the double door entrance. Because of the size of the room and the amount of available seating, it occasionally doubled for a conference area when something important needed to be announced to all staff, since it lacked the austerity of a more formal venue, which was something Lakesh preferred to avoid. Right now, however, the cafeteria was almost entirely deserted, with just a few personnel sitting finishing a late lunch or enjoying a relaxing drink while they took a well-earned break from their shift. As ever, the room had that scent of all cafeterias the world over, the indefinable musk of warm foods served at strange hours for hungry personnel.

“Well, then,” Clem began in his warm, friendly voice as he took the seat opposite Grant, “let’s take a look at what you have there, shall we?”

Grant tipped the bag upside down and carefully laid the six dead crustaceans on the table between them.

Clem reached for the largest of them, then retracted his hand, clearly thinking better of it. “Are they dead?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Grant assured him. “We couldn’t find any live ones. Believe me, we looked.”

Fascinated, Clem took the largest of the mollusks—roughly circular and about seven inches in diameter—and held it up to his eyes, turning it over and over in the light. “Where did they come from?” he asked, still gazing at the coruscating patterns on the strange creature’s oil-like shell. The light seemed to waver across its surface, as if seen through a heat haze, and Clem was already speculating that it in fact had a double shell, the dark one below the clear surface shell that created the slightly disarming optical effect.

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