- A team of scientists discover a new highly intelligent species that may endanger more than their research.
- Something picks off the members of an Antarctic scientific research team one by one, and something ominous lurks in the waters below the ice cap. The remaining scientists fight for their lives, and soon realize that they've unleashed a destructive force on humanity.—Gislef
- At the Nyby Scientific Base in the Antarctic, Dr. Orson Rudd is the lead scientist and recording a log about the completion of the team's ice shelf and new species investigation. Rudd reports that the ice shelf marginal ice is thinning, allowing sunlight to penetrate ocean sublevels, and increasing the population of shallow water sea life. Rudd stops recording and figures that what he's doing will save millions of lives.
The other team member--Channing, Ling, Larry, and Frisch--are bored from the isolation. Larry smokes marijuana, Channing and Rudd text back and forth. Ling is busy working, and Channing tells her that two of the team, Kasper and Doug, haven't returned from their dive. Frisch grooms his beard. Rudd asks when the two divers are due back.
At a nearby diving hut with a hole cut in the ice, Kasper tries to pull himself out but something pulls him back in. The scientist watching, Amy, can only run to the hole and tries to help Kasper out. Blood splatters into Amy's face as something attacks Kasper's legs. Kasper pulls Amy, and both of them sink beneath the bloody waters. Something emerges from the hole, leaving a trail of slime, and enters a nearby cooler.
Later, Rudd goes to the hut and sees the blood and slime. He calls everyone else there, and when the other four scientists arrive and Rudd tells them that there's no sign of Amy, Kasper, or Doug. Frisch is ready to go down, but Rudd warns against it and says that he can't go into the water until they know what happened to the divers. The closed cooler rattles, and Rudd opens the lid. Inside is a large octopus, and Larry suggests that they dump it back into the ocean. Ling says that they should take it to the lab, and Channing agrees.
Frisch insists on making the dive and rescuing the others if they're in trouble, and Larry takes the cooler to the lab and puts the octopus in a water-filled tank. Entering the hole, Frisch swims beneath the ice while Rudd tells Channing that they have to examine the octopus. He points out that Ling is just an observer from the Chinese delegation but was protective of the octopus. Rudd figures that Ling knows about them.
Ling looks at the octopus as Larry secures the tank.
Channing tells Rudd that she hates what they're doing there, and Rudd tells her not to say anything to anyone. She says that she won't, and Frisch swims up to the water in the hole with Kasper's body. They pull the body out, and Kasper's face is covered with circular marks.
Back at the lab, Frisch does an autopsy on Kasper and confirms that both of his shoulders are dislocated and his lungs are filled with water. His respirator was ripped off, and Frisch only found him because he saw his headlamp. Frisch says that he saw no sign of Doug, and if Amy fell into the water without a suit, she would have died within ten minutes. Larry suggests the octopus was smart enough to kill their three teammates and then hid in the cooler. Rudd says that when the overhead satellite is in range, they'll call the McMurdo base for help and to search for the two missing scientists.
Ling says that the octopus is another new species, and says that it's likely it has never encountered a human. Frisch grabs a knife and prepares to kill it, and water squirts out of the tank and short the overhead lights. Larry figures the octopus knew what was going on, and Rudd has them put Kasper's body in the hut and turn off the heater to preserve it. That leaves Larry in the room with the octopus, and he doesn't want to be left alone with it. Ling tells them that octopi and humans were flatworms millions of years ago, and evolution took them in different directions. Rudd tells Larry to stay from the octopus' beak and tentacles and it can't do anything to him.
While the others go on their assignments, Frisch takes Kasper's body to the hut on a gurney. Meanwhile, Rudd and Channing go to the control room. Rudd says that it's the octopus they've been looking for, and figures the chemicals they extract from it can revolutionize pain management. Ling overhears them on Channing's phone, including Rudd wanting to send a message once the satellite is in range. The phone battery goes dead and Ling is unable to hear the rest of their conversation.
Frisch arrives at the hut
Channing sends an email that they've captured the specimen and asks for their next orders. Ling comes in and Channing removes the email from the screen before Ling can see it. Ling walks by them, apparently unsuspecting, and Channing discovers the satellite won't be in range to send the email for another five hours. Meanwhile, Ling goes to her cabin and plugs in the phone. She then listens to Rudd and Channing discussing whether they should put the octopus back in the ocean. Channing wants to, and Rudd says that won't.
Larry plays music as he works with a soldering iron. He hears something moving behind him but looks around, and sees that the octopus is still in its tank.
Channing suggests that they let Larry and Frisch kill the octopus, and claim there was nothing they could do. Ling listens in, then looks out her cabin port and sees something moving in the water.
The octopus breaks a tube leading into the tank loose, and extends its tentacles out of the tube port.
Frisch examines the slime.
The octopus emerges through the port and moves across the floor toward Larry.
Frisch grabs a knife and leaves the hut.
Rudd and Channing sit and wait for the satellite to move into position.
Frisch returns to the lab.
Rudd tells Channing that it's time to go to work.
Frisch finds Larry sitting at his workbench, and sees the empty tube port. He goes over to Larry and finds the octopus sitting on Larry's shoulder, extending tentacles up his nose and into his brain. It grabs Frisch's throat with one tentacle. Frisch cuts the tentacle free of the octopus with the knife he's holding, but the tentacles constricts on his own, choking him. The octopus slaps one tentacle on Frisch's face, and he pulls the suckers off, along with one of his eyes. The man collapse to the floor and the octopus crawls away.
When the satellite moves into position, Ling sends a message and a photo of the octopus to her superiors. Meanwhile, Channing realizes that she needs to send an authentication code and the app is on her phone. She goes to get her phone from the lab, and Ling hears them and hides the phone. Meanwhile, Channing goes to the lab and finds Larry and Frisch's corpses. She steps on the severed tentacles, panics, and runs out the door and back to the control room.
Ling joins Rudd and Channing in the control room, and Rudd and Ling to the lab to see what happened. Meanwhile, the octopus climbs through a ventilator duct and emerges in Ling's quarters. Channing realizes where her phone is, goes to Ling's cabin, finds her phone, and sees the open duct. She goes to the lab and tells Rudd that her phone was in Ling's cabin. Rudd is ready to kill the octopus over Ling's objections, and Channing tells Rudd that Ling overhead everything that they were saying.
They hear the octopus moving in the overhead pipes, and Ling's email comes up on a protector. Channing realizes that the octopus has tapped into the computers and broken into Ling's research. Rudd and Channing demand to know what Ling knows about the octopus, and Rudd figures that Ling works for the Chinese military. The projector shows the data from Ling's computer, including DNA samples, and Rudd realizes that Ling was investigating the physical mechanisms of the octopus for artificial skin and invisibility cloaking.
Ling says that Rudd and Channing are thinking too small, and they've both been searching for the octopus. The lights go out and Rudd accuses Ling and her people of exploiting the octopus species' neurological properties, giving humans the best properties of octopi. Rudd says that they should put the octopus back in the ocean and they go home.
Channing follows the octopus' noise, and it grabs her arms and throat. It throws her against a port and strangles her, and Rudd pulls the tentacles loose. The octopus drops Channing's phone that it took from Ling's cabin, it still displaying the DNA information that she took. It escapes outside and swims off, while the projector shows that someone is modifying the octopus' DNA sequence. Rudd realizes that the octopus used the phone to change the sequence in the computer, and determined how to change its own DNA to give it human intelligence. Sea life can rise out of the ocean and stop life on land, putting an end to the human species.
In the ocean water, the octopus grows and mutates.
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