The gale howled on, and the Activity density kept climbing — in the barren zone it had now hit triple Oasis concentration.

Meanwhile, far out at sea, at some unknown latitude and longitude, colossal waves were slamming a hundred-plus meters high. Amid the spray, an enormous aircraft carrier pitched and staggered, its battered silhouette every bit as ragged as the Liaoning's had been.

Below decks, a crowd of foreigners scrambled in a panic, shouts crackling over the radios.

"Jack! Jack! Get down and check the number three engine room, now!"

"Oh no — the waves are too big, we're losing stability!"

"Fuck!"

"God preserve us, Holy Mary preserve us, the Bush will ride this out… Dammit — Bruce! Bruce, do you copy?! Get your ass over here, you drunk, and patch that crack on the port side!"

"Captain — it's bad. An even bigger tsunami is forming!"

"God almighty — everybody, LOOK. Am I seeing this? A flying whale. Hah — it's flying!"

A mountainous wave had scooped up a whale over a hundred meters long and hurled it skyward like a fleck of spume. The great whale twisted through the air and came down full-weight across the deck of the carrier Bush — a cataclysmic CLANG, and the entire flight deck of the 332-meter Bush snapped through.

The howling over the radios never stopped.

But it did nothing to slow the enormous catastrophe unfolding across the ocean.

Countless marine jin beasts, riding the churning tsunami swells, were being given their chance to fly. The whole sea rolled and boiled like a pot at full heat. Barely three minutes after the whale hit her, the Bush was flipped clean over by one sky-swallowing wave.

Then she broke. She tumbled on through the mountains of water, breaking again — until, at last, she had snapped into three pieces.

They sank slowly to the seafloor, leaving only scattered debris to roar and dance with the rolling waves.

Had any satellite still hung beyond the atmosphere, it would have seen the entire Pacific — from the southern hemisphere to the northern — rolling…