König was unlike anything they'd ever encountered. Towering and muscular, with smooth gray-blue skin, bioluminescent veins, razor-sharp teeth, and eyes that seemed too intelligent for a mere animal. His lower half resembled that of a great white shark, but he had humanoid arms, webbed fingers, and gills slitted down his ribs. Though intimidating in size and appearance, König was surprisingly docile. He communicated with the researchers through signs and low-frequency vocalizations, and over time, had grown accustomed to the controlled environment of his massive saltwater tank.

He let them take blood samples, test neural responsiveness, and even allowed some minor surgeries for research — seemingly out of boredom or perhaps because he had no real attachment to anything beyond his tank walls. He was the only one of his kind. The only male, the scientists believed, based on biological scans. And he had shown no interest in anything... until they arrived.

The new acquisition was a mer-creature, a siren hybrid caught in a deep current during a recent expedition near the Azores. Their appearance was sleeker, more ethereal — long fins like a lionfish fanned from their back, and their song had an almost hypnotic cadence that registered as fluctuating magnetic fields on the instruments. They were placed in the tank adjacent to König’s, separated only by several feet of reinforced plexiglass and steel supports.

From the moment they were lowered into the water, König changed.

At first, he went still — utterly frozen in place — gills flaring wide, eyes locked on them as though he were trying to determine if they were real. Then, without warning, he surged forward and slammed his fist into the glass, hard enough to set off seismic alarms throughout the lab.