by Elin Wyn
I had to admit that that very same thought had been weighing on my own mind, as well, during the past few weeks.
“What was he looking for with those tendrils?” she continued. “I mean, he had to be looking for something important, even while we were killing the dome, unless the tendrils were just a distraction or something.”
That was a thought I hadn’t contemplated before. What if the tendrils had simply been a distraction?
“So, yeah,” she repeated as she placed her hand on my arm. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. I want to know why and how the Puppet Master does what it does. Hell, I even want to know what its real name is, if it can tell me.”
I noticed that she had switched her pronouns back to ‘it’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘him.’ It didn’t bother me, for we didn’t know.
But did it mean she wasn't as sure as she sounded about this hypothesis? It was worth investigating, retrieving whatever information was useful for Rouhr.
And keeping her safe.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand again, heading off once more into the dark.
If she’d let me.
She didn’t seem to be even remotely affected or concerned with holding my hand. It confused me. I had observed the human ritual of handholding, and it was generally reserved for parent and child, or someone that held a significant meaning to the other. Rokul and Tella held hands often, especially when she took him for walks in the park or to one of the neighborhood markets.
I was unaccustomed to someone holding my hand, and unsure of who held hands that were not family or lovers. Daphne and I were nothing to one another, right?
The sensation was...not unpleasant. I moved my thumb slightly over the back of her hand. Her skin was like silk. It was tempting to touch more of her, see more of her.
“Duck,” she said. Grateful for her warning, I broke free from my thoughts and barely missed a clump of roots that protruded from the ceiling of the tunnel.
“So, what are you going to do when we find whatever this is?” I asked. “I mean, besides try to scan its brain,” I amended.
“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Depends on whether or not he can communicate.” She had switched pronouns again. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She looked up at me as she continued holding my hand, slightly pulling me along. “I mean, if he is sentient and able to talk, what would you ask him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I lied. I did know. I would ask why it had attacked, what it was looking for, and why it hadn’t simply come to talk to us from the very beginning.
“Liar,” she said teasingly. “You know you want to ask it why and what?”
I smirked. “Well, if you know me so well, I’ll just let you ask all the questions and I’ll just stand there and look intimidating.”
She did a double take. “You…you…you just cracked a joke!” she said, flabbergasted. “You actually cracked a joke. Oh. My. God. You’re not a stuffy bag of muscle after all.”
I shrugged. “And you’re not entirely annoying.”
“Oh,” she gasped as she suddenly came to a halt. “That…was that… really?” Her face dropped, her eyes showed pain, and she started to loosen her grip on my hand.
Skrell.
My stomach knotted, and I gently squeezed her hand. “I apologize. Sometimes,” I tried to search for the right words, kicking myself. “Sometimes I forget that the humor I show to my brother and my teammates does not go over as well with others.”
She looked at me, her expression still subdued. Suddenly, I felt terrible. I had caused her pain, and while I had originally begun not caring if her feelings were hurt, our short time together in the tunnels had shown her to be a woman of conviction and determination. I shouldn’t think badly about someone simply because they wanted to do something, especially when that something had the potential to be beneficial to us all.
Without warning, she grinned from ear to ear. “You are adorable,” she said. “You fell for it so hard.”
I was…confused. What was she talking about?
“I’m sorry,” she laughed. She got on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek, confusing me even more. She looked at my face and broke into tears as she laughed even harder. After finally catching her breath, she took a deep breath and explained. “I was messing with you. I know I can be annoying, it’s one of my more endearing qualities once I make friends with someone. I was just teasing you.”
I nodded as I licked my lips.
She had chosen to play a prank on me and I had fallen for it.
Nothing about this intriguing woman was fragile. A worthy mate --
I broke away from my thoughts as she smiled. “Come on,” she said, yet again grabbing my hand.
This time, instead of letting her pull me, I decided to walk with her. It was a refreshing change of pace.
Daphne
The tunnels were disorienting. They snaked under the surface of the earth, cutting left and right randomly, and sometimes they even circled back to the same place we had been just a few minutes before. It was a complete maze and, even though Takar and I had been walking for over an hour now, I had no idea if we were any closer to the Puppet Master’s nerve center.
“Okay.” I stopped suddenly, and Takar bumped against me. “I think we might be lost.”
“That’s not good,” he frowned. “The tunnels are a dangerous place. We can’t keep walking around aimlessly, Daphne. If we get lost for good, who knows if we’ll ever find a way out?”
“Thank you for the encouragement,” I laughed. “You’re a real optimistic, aren’t you?”
“I prefer to be called a realist.”
“Well, and I prefer to be someone who comes up with solutions,” I threw back at him, already trying to think of something that would help us.
That was when I remembered the conversation Takar had had with his team members over the comms. “You brought a ground piercing sonar with you, right?”
“We did,” he nodded, pursing his lips. “My team is probably setting it up as we speak.”
“And there you have it...a solution!” I offered him a smile, but he just shook his head again. The man wasn’t a fan of smiling, it seemed. Not that I could blame him. If someone had dragged me into such a dangerous situation against my will, I probably wouldn’t be happy, either. “Can you call your team and ask them if they’re ready? A layout of the caverns would really help.”
Checking his wristwatch before grabbing his comms, he then gave me a slight nod. “Come in, team, this is Takar,” he started, and the crackle of the comm’s static returned, the sound of it filling the whole tunnel.
“What’s up?” A voice said, and I recognized it as belonging to the person he’d spoken to before - Rokul. The familiarity between him and Takar seemed to indicate these two were close. Maybe even family. One thing was for sure: whoever was on the other side of the comm sure as hell didn’t seem to bother with proper military protocol. “Can we start drilling already or what?”
“No, no drilling,” Takar replied. “What’s the status on the ground sonar?”
“It’s pretty much set and ready to go. We were just waiting for you to give the all clear before we power it up.”
“Then let’s get it running. These tunnels aren’t easy to navigate, and the sooner we have a layout of this place the sooner we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“Copy that.”
“Alright, that’s done,” Takar said, now turning to me. Leaning against the wall, he slumped down until he was sitting down on the ground. “It might take a few minutes, so I think we should gather our strength. We don’t know how far we’ll have to go.”
“Fair enough,” I said, sitting down right beside him. He seemed slightly uncomfortable with the fact that my body was close to his, but I couldn’t tell if he was blushing. His skin was reddish-orange, after all, and I wasn’t entirely sure if Skotans even blushed. Either way, it didn’t reall
y matter. Aside from the light coming out of our flashlights, the tunnels were dark and cramped. When I wasn’t focused on my goal, and all the wonderful, interesting projects that could come out of finding the Puppet Master’s nerve center, it was a little scary.
Just a touch.
I wanted my protector close to me.
I wasn’t entirely sure if Takar would approve of me thinking of him as my protector, but that was how I saw him. And, even though we hadn’t started our relationship on the right foot, he was starting to grow on me. He wasn’t as boring and single-minded as most soldiers were, and he actually seemed curious about what I was trying to do. At first, I thought that was because of his devotion to the general, but now I was pretty sure he was just curious for some answers.
In that, we were alike.
After a few minutes of waiting, a voice finally came out of Takar’s comm.
“We’re turning it on right now,” it said. “Stand by.”
Takar and I remained sitting, waiting for the results of the sonar activity. Their equipment should be advanced enough that it wouldn’t take more than just a few minutes for us to get a layout of the caverns, so we wouldn’t have to wait long.
“What the hell…?” I muttered under my breath, feeling a slight vibration on the ground.
“I’m feeling it, too,” Takar grumbled, jumping to his feet. I followed him, and that was when the soft vibration graduated into a strong rumbling sound. The earth beneath us started trembling, and I had to press one hand against the wall for support. Some of the smaller vines that jutted out of the walls here and there started slithering back into their holes, but most just thrashed around helplessly. They were trying to recede back into the walls, but it was as if they were disoriented.
“What the hell’s going on?” I cried out, but the rumbling sound was so strong I doubted Takar could even hear me. Still, he closed in on me and draped one of his muscular arms over my shoulders, forcing me to stay beside him.
Dumbfounded, I watched as the vines went completely berserk around us. Their movements didn’t seem intelligent anymore, and now they seemed wild and feral.
“Daphne! Watch out!” Takar shouted, spinning me around as I heard something crack behind me. I let out a scream of pain as a vine whipped me across my legs, and Takar just pulled me against his body to protect me from any further attacks.
It didn’t make any sense.
Why would the vines be attacking me now?
Where was that intelligence? Why were the vines behaving as if they were...in pain?
That’s it, I thought, it has to be!
“Tell them to shut the sonar off!” I cried out, but to no use. Takar was busy trying to fight against the vines in front of him, all of them lashing out randomly, and he couldn’t hear me. “TAKAR!”
“Watch out!” he merely growled, pushing me out of the way as another vine dove straight toward us. As he did it, his comm unit fell from his belt and rolled toward me, stopping right before my boots.
Going down on one knee, I grabbed it with both hands and rolled to the side as another vine reached for me violently. I was about to speak into the comm when another vine hit me, this time straight across my back. I went down on the floor, dazed, but somehow managed to hold on to the comm. “Turn...it...off!” I managed to say, but my voice was so weak I doubted anyone heard me.
“Please repeat.”
“TURN THE GODDAMN THING OFF!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, feeling so out of it that I let the comm roll off my tired fingers. It fell on the ground and, even though I tried to reach for it again, it simply slipped away as the earth kept on trembling.
I could do nothing but hope that Takar’s team had heard me. Somehow, the sonar activity was causing pain to the vines...which meant that we needed that sonar turned off fast, or else this madness would never stop.
“It’s okay...it’s okay…” I repeated over and over again, trying to reach for the vines on the wall behind me. They kept on moving haphazardly, in a completely out of control fashion, and they just swatted my hands away as I tried to reach for them. “Please...we don’t want to hurt you…” I insisted, doing my best to sound calm. If the vines could somehow pick up my mental state, I couldn’t panic or I’d just make the situation even worse.
“Please...please…just calm down...no one means to hurt you. We’re just—”
I was cut short by a loud sound coming right from underneath my feet, and I looked down just in time to see the earth cracking. It split open as the crack started to widen, the ground giving way to a deep darkness, and I found myself losing my balance.
I slipped into the darkness awkwardly, but somehow managed to hold on to the ledge. My fingers were hurting from the effort, and I felt beads of sweat roll down my forehead as I tried to hold on. I could already feel myself slipping, though, and this time there was no calming me down.
I was in full panic mode.
“Takar!” I tried to call him. “Takar, help!” He looked back over his shoulder just in time, and his eyes widened anxiously as he saw me hanging there. Gritting his teeth, determination taking over his face, he dashed toward me and jumped, holding me by the wrist just when my fingers let go.
“I’ve got you…” he said between hard breaths. “I’ve got you.”
My wrist was slippery with sweat, though, and I could already feel myself slipping again. Two seconds later and I slipped away from Takar, my body immediately plunging into the darkness.
The last thing I saw was Takar diving after me.
Takar
Instinct took over as the ground opened up beneath Daphne. Muscles, tendons, ligaments, and electrical pulses instantly fired and worked together to launch me forward, rocketing my arm forward and forcing my hand to grab hold of Daphne’s arm. The impact of my body on the ground knocked a bit of the air from my lungs, as well as loosened more of the ground beneath me.
The floor of the tunnel cracked, breaking against my body, then suddenly the ground was gone.
Daphne slipped away from my grip.
Not happening.
We fell through the darkness, all my focus on her wide eyes. I had to reach her.
Kicking my leg out, I caught the side of the wall, force adding speed to my descent. Reaching her, I pulled her into my chest, and with another kick, spun us around, activating my scales to help protect us from whatever rocks or debris lay below us.
I hit the ground, back first, and Daphne fell on top of me, knocking the remaining air from my lungs and bouncing my head off the ground.
I could feel my eyes twitching as I fought the oncoming darkness. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move…the darkness was overwhelming everything. I felt as though I were swimming in oil, choking to death as I struggled to breathe. I felt my consciousness fading, fading away, spiraling into a blackness that would take away the pain.
No. No, I couldn’t let myself give in. I fought the oncoming darkness, the ever-present push to just close my eyes and give in. I concentrated on the pain in my back, the pain in my ribs, the pain in my shoulder. I let the pain bring me back to consciousness, back to reality.
I gently, painfully, rolled Daphne off my chest.
She was breathing, her pulse was strong, but she was still unconscious. One of the vines must have whacked her.
I took in a breath of relief, gasping in pain as I relished the sweet feeling of my lungs filling up again. My lungs weren’t punctured, my ribs weren’t broken, and I was so happy to know that I could breathe still.
I tentatively lifted myself up onto my elbows, then finally up to a seated position. My back felt as if I had been lying on it for weeks, but I knew that was simply the blood trying to work its way back through the veins and arteries, back into the muscles of my back, doing their natural healing process. Despite my scales, I was going to be bruised and sore for days.
I looked up. Make that, I was going to be bruised and sore for weeks. We must have fallen more than twenty feet. Where we lay now was
at the floor of another tunnel, a smoother tunnel than the one we had traversed above. This one looked as though something had run back and forth through it thousands of times over the course of years. Except where we sat on debris, there were no indentations, no recesses, nothing in this tunnel except smooth surfaces, as if it were sanded down.
I looked back over to Daphne, reassured by the steady rise and fall of her chest. Pushing her hair away from her face, the mark on her temple where one of the vines had hit her was clear. She must have been nearly unconscious then, because when the ground broke, she fell like a toy doll.
Just before the ground broke entirely, Daphne had grabbed my comm unit. I searched for it, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I dug up some of the broken tunnel, flinging clods of dirt and rock away so I wouldn’t waste time looking under them again thinking I missed something.
I found it in the dirt. It was bruised and damaged, battered enough that it likely would only get a signal once we got closer to the surface. It wasn’t strong enough in its damaged state to communicate through all the rock. With a sudden thought, I checked my gear.
One of the blasters was bent, useless now. Luckily, my other blaster was fine, as was my knife.
I wasn’t so lucky with my tablet or my tracking unit. The tablet screen was shattered, small pieces of it sticking up or falling out as I held it up. My tracking unit was cracked in half, utterly useless now.
What had caused the vines to go berserk like that? Could it have been the sonar scan Rokul and Sylor had conducted? Was it possible that the sonar frequency hurt the Puppet Master? That was valuable information, and something that I needed to get to the general.
But first, I had to get us out of here. Unfortunately, with no communication capabilities, and no map of the tunnel system, getting out was going to be an adventure.
I looked back at Daphne. If it hadn’t been for her and her impulsiveness, I would never have been here. I would have been back in Nyheim, walking patrol.
And maybe, just a little bit bored.