STEVE METCALF
Sea Monster Extravaganza!
JUST RELEASED
Beneath the surface of the Sargasso Sea lies a secret the ocean has kept for centuries. When Jack Madden and his crew of elite specialists are sent to investigate the state-of-the-art Jaeger 43J oil platform after a brutal storm, they expect routine maintenance and recovery. What they find instead is far from routine.
The sea feels wrong—its silence heavy, its currents alive with menace. Then they see it: a massive, scaled creature rising from the depths, an ancient predator that defies logic and turns the ocean into its hunting ground.
As the platform becomes a battleground, Madden and his team are forced to confront not just the monster in the water but the truth about humanity’s fragile place in a world still ruled by untamed forces. Survival depends on their wits, courage, and a willingness to face the unknown, but the deeper they go, the more the line between hunter and prey begins to blur.
Taut, atmospheric, and relentlessly gripping, Lair of the Water Dragon will drag you into the depths—and hold you there.
Sinkholes are a terrifying force of nature as miles of ground can disappear into nothingness with no warning, taking everything on the surface with them. When they happen in a populated area, the news and media love to show images of death and property destruction. People don’t realize that this phenomenon occurs underwater, as well.
​
When a giant sinkhole opens in the Antarctic Ocean, just off the Ross Ice Shelf, a huge research facility is transported there to run tests and map the fissure. After one of their first exploratory drone submersibles is hopelessly mangled by an unseen force, the researchers send a manned sub down for a rescue operation. The crew is troubled by oddities such as caverns cut into the sides of the sinkhole walls, an unexplained temperature change in the frigid Antarctic water, and an aggressive sea monster of unexpected size.
​
The sea monster shreds the sub and disappears back into the depths.
The leadership aboard the research station decides to send down another sub, this one equipped with offensive weapons, to figure out what’s going on and eradicate the threat hovering directly beneath them. When they reach the original kill depth in the sinkhole, though, the outcome is anything but certain.
Boss Walnuts walked from area to area in Building 5 completely oblivious to the grim fog of death that hung fatly over the entire Paradox Iron complex. He walked with his arms clasped behind his back and an unlit cigar clenched tightly between his teeth.
​
"Let them hate me," he had once told a friend, echoing a favorite expression of Julius Caesar. "As long as they fear me."
​
​
- Paradox Iron
