It took Elias twenty minutes to maneuver the object onto the deck. The boat listed heavily to the side as the massive shell hit the floorboards with a dull, metallic thud.
That was the first red flag.
Shells didn’t thud like that. They cracked or clattered. This sounded like an anvil dropping.
Elias walked around it, wary. The thing was clamped shut tight. The seam where the two halves met was almost invisible under the sea growth.
He reached out and touched the surface. It was cold and slimy, but underneath the muck, it was too smooth. Too uniform.
He grabbed a scraping tool from his tackle box and ran it hard across the “shell.” A strip of green algae peeled away.
Underneath, it wasn’t calcium or bone. It was gray. It was steel.
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