Chapter 342: Killer Whale: Kesuye, the Rag Doll
Everly spent several days staying at an inn in Alice Town, feeling increasingly restless.
During those days, she either wandered aimlessly through the streets or loitered around the harbor, hoping to “run into” Grant Megan again and use the opportunity to figure out where he and his people were hiding.
However, Grant was a man who had managed to evade SAI’s pursuit for more than a decade. How could Everly possibly catch him so easily? When she wasn’t looking for him, he would suddenly appear and cause her no end of trouble. But when she actively searched for him, he seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth and never appeared again.
Everly was furious.
Orff’s investigation was not going smoothly either.
He hacked into the Bahamas Customs database and filtered through the lists of foreign vessels and crew members that had registered for entry at Alice Town Harbor over the past month, but he found no record of Grant Megan’s name.
Considering that Grant might be using an alias, Orff also extracted photos of the crew members aboard those vessels, packaged up the data, and sent it all to Everly.
After receiving the compressed file, Everly spent most of the night hunched over her tablet going through it. Her eyes were practically going blurry, yet she found absolutely nothing.
Neither Grant Megan nor any of his bizarre-looking bodyguards appeared anywhere in the information Orff had sent her.
Left with no other choice, Everly asked Orff to broaden the search criteria. He copied over all the information on vessels that had obtained berthing permits at the harbor within the past three months and were still docked there as of the day she had run into Grant.
It was a massive undertaking.
What was even more infuriating was that it took Everly two whole days to go through all the information, only for her to find nothing once again.
Everly suspected that Grant had used some kind of supernatural power to conceal their whereabouts.
If she couldn’t even find the man, there was naturally no way for her to sabotage his plans.
Everly couldn’t possibly let an opponent she couldn’t even catch a glimpse of derail her own island-searching plans. That would be putting the cart before the horse.
So, when December 1 arrived—the deadline she had set for herself—Everly got up early and, as usual, made a round of the various locations on the island to check in. After failing to find anyone, she loaded up the supplies she had purchased on the island, boarded her yacht, and officially departed North Bimini Island.
Based on the various pieces of information she had found previously, Everly believed there was a high probability that the island containing the Fountain of Youth was somewhere northeast of the Bahamas. So this time, her destination was North Eleuthera Island, a popular tourist destination in the northeastern part of the country.
Given the distance between the two islands, the yacht should have taken only six hours to reach it at high speed.
However, an accident occurred along the way: at some point, a section of abandoned fishing net drifting in the sea became caught in the propeller, wrapping itself so tightly around one of the propellers that it could no longer move.
Fortunately, Everly’s yacht had two propellers. Even with one side out of commission, the other could still provide propulsion. Otherwise, Everly would have had to ask the giant whale to tow the boat.
Even so, the yacht’s speed was affected. By the time Everly reached the harbor on North Eleuthera Island, it was already evening.
After arriving at the harbor, Everly dove into the water to inspect the damage.
The fishing net wrapped around the propeller was easy enough to deal with; with a little patience, she could untangle it. However, the propeller blades had been damaged and bent during the entanglement. If she didn’t want this to affect her subsequent voyage, Everly had better take advantage of having the yacht docked and get someone to repair the propeller.
There was a boat repair shop right at the harbor. Replacing the blades wasn’t particularly troublesome; she simply had to wait in line for a day.
Everly calculated the timing and decided she had enough time. She paid a deposit at the repair shop and arranged a time to pick up the yacht.
While waiting for the repairs, she stayed on the island and took the opportunity to explore a little.
This was one of the Bahamas’ famous tourist islands, and it was far more developed and bustling than North Bimini Island had been.
The entire island was surrounded by crystal-clear turquoise waters. The beaches were white as snow, lush vegetation grew in vibrant abundance, and little coral-stone houses with red roofs and white walls peeked out from among the greenery. It seemed as though every color here had been turned up to a higher saturation, creating a unique palette filled with an enchanting exotic charm.
As long as one avoided the remote wilderness and secluded back alleys where few people ventured, the island’s security was fairly decent.
Everly thought that once the matter of the Fountain of Youth was settled, perhaps she could bring her grandfather, Misha, and the others here for a vacation. Even if they did nothing at all, simply sitting by the sea and taking in the scenery would be enough to make all their stress melt away, leaving them relaxed in both body and mind and filled with an unprecedented sense of peace and contentment.
After spending the entire day by the coast, it was finally time to pick up her yacht. Everly strolled toward the harbor, carrying a bag of souvenirs she had bought from little shops along the roadside.
She hadn’t even reached the entrance of the boat repair shop when the unusual commotion coming from the harbor caught her attention.
Seven or eight sailors were standing opposite several uniformed coast guards, waving their hands animatedly and speaking with great agitation. They seemed to have experienced something truly terrifying. Their heads were covered in sweat, the muscles in their cheeks were taut, and their bodies trembled uncontrollably as they spoke.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #1: Pay attention to the hints.
Although Everly was already abroad and the Bahamas might not necessarily be a horror-movie country, gathering a little extra information whenever possible was still better than turning a blind eye to what was happening around her.
So, as she passed through the crowd, Everly pricked up her ears and listened carefully.
“…It’s true! An entire ship was smashed to pieces, and the people aboard it were eaten by the thing! I swear to God, every word of this is true! You have to go take a look.”
“If that monster keeps prowling around nearby, we’re all going to be afraid to go out to sea…”
The sailors all talked over one another as they described what they had witnessed to the coast guards.
Unlike the terrified sailors, the coast guards merely frowned helplessly. “All right, all right… We already went to the coordinates you gave us. We even sent professional divers down to search the area. Whether it was this so-called killer whale or the ship that supposedly got smashed apart, we didn’t find a trace of either one.”
“Could you have mistaken what you saw? After all, if such a dangerous marine creature were really active around here, reports of sightings would have spread long ago. It doesn’t make sense that you’d be the only ones to see it,” another coast guard said.
“No, no, no! There’s absolutely no way we mistook it! Everyone aboard our ship can testify to that!”
The argument between the two sides continued, but Everly had no interest in listening any further.
Her attention had already been completely captured by the words ‘killer whale.’
Although Kesuye preferred to accompany the yacht in his merfolk form most of the time, every now and then, when he was having particularly much fun, he would transform back into his giant-whale form, rolling around on his back in the sea or spraying water toward the sun to make a rainbow for Everly to see.
He was a chubby-headed fish who didn’t need to go to school and couldn’t find a job, and he had already completed every course on his early-learning app. He really had far too much free time on his hands. After finally meeting Everly, naturally he had followed her all the way from Alice Town to North Eleuthera Island. At the moment, he should be swimming around in the nearby waters with the backpack containing the gun strapped to his back, waiting for Everly to finish repairing the yacht before coming to retrieve the gun from him.
Could the killer whale they were talking about be Kesuye, or was it some other dangerous marine creature?
With that thought in mind, Everly walked over to a white tourist who was watching the commotion and struck up a curious conversation, asking what everyone was talking about.
“They’re talking about a killer whale!” The female tourist had been standing there for quite a while and had heard most of what had happened. Everly’s question immediately brought out her desire to share the story, and before long, Everly had figured out the whole situation.
The sailors making all the noise were from a local fishing boat. They went out to sea every day, catching fresh fish and selling them to restaurants for a living.
At two o’clock that afternoon, the fishing boat had hauled in its nets and was carrying its catch back to the harbor. But halfway there, the people aboard witnessed a yacht being viciously attacked by a whale.
It was a medium-sized yacht, more than twenty meters long—roughly twice the length of the whale.
A ship that large should, in theory, make even a formidable creature like a whale instinctively keep its distance. Yet the orca in the sea seemed to have some deep-seated grudge against the yacht. It locked onto the vessel and kept ramming it over and over like a cannonball.
It was enormous and seemingly impervious to pain. Every time it leaped from the sea, its body traced a parabola through the air before it slammed its hard head into the yacht’s vulnerable cabin. After only a few hits, the sturdy hull was dented inward, throwing the vessel off balance and making it sway dangerously from side to side on the waves.
At first, the people aboard the yacht tried to steer away and escape, but the whale was far faster than the yacht. Even while giving chase, it had enough energy to pursue the propeller at the stern and ram it several more times.
Before long, the propeller stopped turning, leaving the yacht stranded in the middle of the sea.
Seeing this, the fishermen initially wanted to bring their boat closer and see if there was anything they could do to help. However, at that moment, they saw a group of burly men dressed in black and looking like mercenaries rush out onto the yacht, each one carrying a gun. They opened fire into the seawater in a rapid burst of gunfire.
The fishing boat’s captain was so startled by the gunshots that he immediately steered farther away.
The Bahamas was located very close to the United States, a major gun-owning country, and the illegal proliferation of firearms had long been a problem there. But no matter how widespread guns were, the captain had never seen anything like this in his life. Who knew what the people aboard that yacht were actually up to?
After several bursts of gunfire, a large patch of red suddenly spread across the seawater.
The people aboard the yacht assumed the whale had been killed. They walked over to the railing and leaned out to take a look, only for the completely unharmed whale to suddenly burst from the water with its enormous jaws wide open and bite down toward the people at the railing.
“Bang!”
A tremendous impact rang out, sending blood-red seawater splashing in every direction. When the waves finally settled, the area beside the railing was completely empty, with only a few severed limbs remaining, silently bearing witness to the carnage that had just occurred.
The whale was actually eating people!
Compared with that yacht, the fishing boat was clumsy and poorly built. One solid hit from the whale would probably be enough to tear it apart.
Afraid that their own fishing boat might become the next target, the captain no longer dared to stay and watch. He recorded the coordinates of the whale attack, pushed the boat to maximum speed, and raced back to the harbor with his terrified crew. There, he reported everything to the Royal Bahamas Defence Force stationed in the area, which also carried out some of the functions of a coast guard in the Bahamas.
The Defence Force took the fishermen’s report very seriously. They immediately dispatched a speedboat to search the waters where the incident had occurred, but found nothing at all. The fishermen, however, were adamant about what they had seen and firmly denied that they had imagined it. The two sides ended up arguing over the matter.
Everly listened from the side, and the more she heard, the more something seemed wrong.
After retrieving her yacht from the repair shop, she drove it to a berth in the harbor and waited patiently aboard. Only after night had fallen and the surroundings had grown quiet did she step out of the cabin and blow an owl whistle toward the pitch-black sea.
A moment later, ripples appeared across the surface of the water. Kesuye emerged before her, his face deathly pale and his body covered in injuries, looking as battered and miserable as a rag doll that had been thrown around and beaten.