SMSC Pod 3, known as Wet Pod, is a vast specimen-storage room at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center. Its thousands of preserved organisms and enormous ethanol tank make it a display of scientific preservation, but the room’s relative privacy also lets Mal’akh murder Trish Dunne and take the access credentials he needs to reach Katherine Solomon’s research data.

Setting and Security

SMSC Pod 3 lies at the end of a long corridor in the Smithsonian Museum Support Center; Katherine Solomon and Peter Solomon’s laboratory is in SMSC Pod Five. Trish guides the visitor she knows as Dr. Abaddon through the facility and explains that the corridor is its central spine. Fish-eye cameras record it continuously, while access to rooms requires both a key card and a PIN. The center’s safeguards also include freezing refuse to prevent insect infestations and a sealed dead zone between double walls that surrounds the building.

The controls described in the corridor do not translate into equally comprehensive surveillance inside Wet Pod. When Mal’akh enters, he scans the room and sees only one camera, trained on the entrance. The contrast matters: a facility presented as monitored at every turn contains a dark specimen room in which its intruder can act outside the corridor’s camera coverage. The room’s security is not simply overcome by force; Mal’akh exploits the gap between the system Trish describes and the limited view he finds within the pod.

The Specimen Collection

The pod houses more than twenty thousand species, including fish, rodents, mammals, reptiles, insects, and other preserved life-forms. Trish points out a coelacanth in a large Plexiglas container, explaining that the fish had been thought extinct alongside the dinosaurs before one was caught off Africa and donated to the Smithsonian. The sheer range of remains, held in specimen jars and tanks, gives the room the scale of an archive devoted to life that is no longer living.

Its lighting intensifies that impression. Red safelights glow beneath the shelves, protecting photosensitive specimens from prolonged exposure while bathing the room in a hazy, darkroom-like light. The containers and their contents emerge through the red gloom like a submerged collection. For Mal’akh, the preserved creatures are not objects of scientific interest; he feigns fascination while looking for cameras and treating the room as a secluded place to deal with an unforeseen problem.

The largest specimen is a female Giant Squid (Architeuthis), more than forty feet long. Its tank is assembled like glass phone booths laid on their sides and joined end to end, forming a long, clear enclosure. When Trish opens the lid and switches on the lights along the tank’s base, the pale head, enormous eyes, tentacles, and suckers are illuminated. The specimen is suspended in thousands of gallons of ethanol, which makes the tank both a preservation vessel and, in the scene that follows, the instrument of violence.

Trish Dunne’s Visit and Murder

Trish brings Mal’akh into the pod after he lingers at its window, apparently captivated by the squid. She talks him through the collection and switches on the tank’s display lights, while he remains focused on the room’s security rather than her explanations. As she turns off the lights and prepares to return to Katherine’s laboratory, he grabs her from behind, takes her key card, and demands the PIN that matches it.

Trish tries to resist and scratches his cheek. The marks reveal that the dark coloration on his face is makeup concealing tattoos, exposing that the visitor’s apparent face is a disguise. She warns him that security can see them, although she knows they are beyond the cameras’ range and that nobody is watching. Mal’akh forces her over the open tank and threatens to push her into the ethanol. She gives him the PIN, 0804, identifying it as her birthday, August 4; the information does not save her. He plunges her head into the liquid, and when she involuntarily breathes, ethanol enters her mouth and lungs. She dies within seconds.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Mal’akh places Trish’s body in the squid tank, where it settles on the preserved creature, then replaces the Plexiglas lid. The collection has acquired a human victim, and its carefully maintained preservation apparatus becomes part of the concealment of her death. The room’s identity shifts from a place where dead specimens are catalogued and protected to a site where a living person is killed and made to resemble another specimen.

The stolen card and PIN are as consequential as the murder. Mal’akh had regarded Trish as a liability, but recognizes that her credentials can give him access to the data-storage area without having to persuade Katherine to unlock it. He pockets the card and, seeing his damaged makeup reflected in the window, recognizes that the disguise no longer matters: by the time Katherine understands what has happened, he expects to have acted. Wet Pod therefore becomes a practical turning point in his attempt to reach Katherine’s research, while its glass, lighting, and preserved bodies give that plot development a stark visual form.