by C. J. Waller
“Why are you here, if you know all of this? Why come? They’ve sent us down here as some kind of experiment… Why you? You didn’t need to come.”
“Because I have no choice. They needed someone to relay back information. Unfortunately, they did not bank on giant prehistoric marine reptiles living in the water, and so I lost all my camera equipment. The only thing that survived was my microtranceiver. That’s it.”
“So, what does that mean? We’re being left down here?”
“No, Megan. It actually means the opposite. They are coming.”
“Coming? To rescue us?” As soon as the question leaves my lips, I know it is a stupid one. Of course, this isn’t a rescue mission. Why grow compassion and altruism now? Janos shakes his head, all the same.
“No, not a rescue mission. They cannot risk this getting out. Civilians are a risk. They do not have the training on keeping their mouths shut.”
Janos’ expression has changed again. This time, no amount of fury in the world is going to protect me. I take a step back, away from him.
“I see,” is all I can say before I turn tail and run.
Chapter Thirteen
I can’t believe he didn’t leap after me and snap my neck there and then. Maybe he wasn’t expecting me to just bolt off like that, without a light to guide me – or him. Or maybe he doesn’t want to be the one who silences me. Because they are coming. The company is sending in reinforcements, not to rescue us, but to kill us.
I have to get back and warn the others. That’s all I can think of now. Warn them, and keep them safe.
Because they are coming.
They might even be here.
That sends a jolt of panic through me. I’m keeping low, trying to scramble down to our makeshift camp as quietly as I can, but every footfall sounds like a gunshot, every stone I dislodge an avalanche.
I still can’t believe Janos hasn’t found me. He’s supposed to be an expert, isn’t he? So why isn’t he after me like a hound after a hare? No. No. I can’t think like this. I have to get to the others. Back to the others to warn them.
The glow from the rocks is hardly enough to navigate by, but I don't dare turn my headlamp on. I reckon I’m getting closer – the bioluminescence is getting stronger, which means I am getting closer to the water’s edge. I think I hear a clattering from behind me, which sends my heart off on a merry jaunt around my body. I freeze and hit the deck, listening.
Nothing. Nothing but the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Still, I listen.
And listen.
The darkness settles over me like a shroud. I try to calm my breathing, slow my heart, and listen. Forever listening.
The faint sound of rippling water against rock is all I can hear. Maybe it was just my imagination after all. But I know better. Every sense is screaming at me, every instinct wired.
He’s nearby.
A soft, slithering sound to my right. Someone moving stealthily, their bodysuit dragging over the top of a boulder. Is that Janos? Well, who else could it be? Apart from Yuri, of course.
The thought does not comfort me.
I hold my breath. My eyes pulse heavily in their sockets. The slithering noise stops. Seconds that feels like minutes that in turn feel like millennia inch by. My face is hot, my lungs burning, but I dare not breathe.
The slithering starts up again and disappears. Although I want to let my breath go in one explosive sigh, I ease it out, painfully, silently. The slithering does not return.
I ease myself off the floor, millimetre by millimetre, until I manage to tuck my feet under me. The sound of water came from up ahead, so I creep that way. My senses are singing now, and I realise I have never felt so alive. The irony is not lost on me.
Staying low, I pick my way carefully over a ridge of boulders. I peek over, and a small sob escapes me. Down below, just the other side of this ridge, I can see two figures sitting, their headlamps dimmed by their lack of activity.
Brendan and Marcus.
They’re still alive.
I scramble over the ridge and slide down the other side, sending a cascade of debris down with me. I don’t care if Janos hears me now. I’ve found the others. Between us, we’ll restrain him, but before that, I have to warn them.
Their heads snap around at the sound of my descent. One of them stands up and wanders over to me, looking blissfully unaware of the danger he might be in. In a way, I’m thankful for that. Shame I am the one who has to break it to them, really.
“Meg?”
It’s Marcus. I stagger to my feet and try to tell him everything I have learned, but it comes out as a jumble of heaving sobs and disjointed words. He takes my hand and helps me find my balance, asking me if I’m okay, what happened. It’s okay - but it’s not okay, it’s not okay at all. I want to scream at him to shut up, but I simply can’t find the breath for it. My head feels about eight times too big and my ribs are squeezing me like a vice, making it harder and harder for me to concentrate. Marcus catches my cheeks between his hands and demands that I breathe with him, in and out, in and out, and slowly the pressure eases. I try to speak, but he shakes his head and continues the breathing and I have no choice but to comply with his instructions. In and out. In and out. In and out.
“Jesus, Meg,” he says eventually. “You’re in a right state. What’s happened?”
Now it’s my chance. I open my mouth… and my brain shuts down. I have so much to tell him, but no idea where to begin.
“Megan?”
“It’s Janos,” I start. “He’s not what he seems to be. We’re in danger – big danger. We’re… guinea pigs, for some kind of experiment, or something. I’m not quite sure I understand it fully, but they knew that thing was there, Marcus. They knew, and they sent us to see what it would do.”
“Hey, whoa – slow down,” Marcus says. “What are you on about? What’s this about Janos? And who knew what? You’re not making sense.”
I clutch onto Marcus’s arms, staring right at him, willing him to understand me.
“We’re not supposed to survive,” I say.
By the look that crosses his face, I can tell he still doesn’t understand me, but before I can continue, someone shouts out. I jump back, heart pounding, head singing before I realise it isn’t Janos, but Brendan. He’s jumping up and down, waving his arms in the air, shouting, “We’re here!” I snap my head up, and from across the strait, I see what he saw – the bright lights of headlamps, shining in the distance.
It’s too late. They’re here.
I go to run forward, clamp my hand around Brendan’s mouth and drag him to the floor, but before I can move, there is a soft ‘thht’ noise. Brendan staggers back, and then crashes to the floor.
I don’t have to tell Marcus to get down. “Turn your light off!” I whisper, and scuttle towards Brendan. He is lying on his back, eyes staring, with what looks for all the world like the end of a crossbow bolt protruding from his forehead.
“What the fuck?” Marcus whispers.
I extend a shaking hand and press two fingers against the side of Brendan’s neck, even though it is blatantly obvious to me, he is dead.
“What the fuck?” Marcus repeats. I turn to him, shush him and then slink back to the line of boulders.
On the opposite bank, the clean up team have erected huge floodlights, which illuminate the strait in all its subterranean glory. Now I can see the majestic stalactites that hang down from the ceiling hundreds of feet above, each one a gigantic sword of Damocles over our heads. The water itself sparkles, and the rocks glisten. Voices float over the water. I don’t understand what they’re saying, but I don’t need to. It’s obvious what they’re doing.
They’re looking for us.
Brendan’s corpse is momentarily illuminated, his blood a black slick on the rocks. My breath catches in my throat. He thought we were finally saved. How wrong he was.
“Why did they shoot him?” Marcus asks. It’s a simple enough question, but o
ne with a very complicated answer, an answer I’m not sure I can give.
“Because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I reply.
“Just as both of you are,” a voice whispers behind us.
Janos.
I whip around, my knife ready. He is crouching a few feet away, his hands raised.
“Believe me, if I wanted you dead, I would have snapped both your necks by now,” he says. “As it happens, I am in as much danger as you are.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I say. ‘They’re here to get you out and clean up the rest of us.”
“That was initially the plan, yes,” Janos interrupts. “That plan has now changed. I was supposed to do the ‘cleaning up’ before they arrived. I refused. Now they’ll clean me up, too.”
“Clean you up?” Marcus asks, obviously confused. “Will someone please tell me what they hell is going on?”
Janos glances towards him, and then back to me.
“We do not have the time right now,” he says. “Megan, you’re going to have to trust me.”
“Trust you?” I spit. “Trust you? Fuck off, Janos. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, not after all this –“
“All of what?” Marcus asks plaintively.
“Mr Macho is a mole,” I say. “We were sent down here as guinea pigs, as expendables, to find out more about that thing in the tank. He knew. He’s been reporting back to whoever is really in charge of this operation all the time. Now they’re here, and they need to shut us up. Terminally.”
Marcus’s eyes widen.
“You bastard!” he hisses. “You mean… Fi… she didn’t need to die?”
“No. He had a microtranceiver all this time.”
“They knew we were stranded?”
I go to answer, but Marcus waves his hand to silence me.
“I want to hear it from him.”
Janos sighs and hangs his head. “Yes. They knew. I told them. But I need to straighten a few things out. Yes, you were all sent because you were deemed expendable – but I had no orders to kill any of you. I was told to keep my role top secret. No matter what happened, I was to tell no one. You were all to believe I was simply here as part of the team. No, Megan, that’s the truth. Please, don’t roll your eyes at me. The kill switch order came after the thing in the tank escaped. That is what they’re after, and they can’t risk a leak. But I refused. Therefore, I am now a problem too. A problem that will need cleaning up. Please. I know you have no reason to believe this, coming from me, but it is the truth.”
The floodlights sweep past us again, and we all duck reflexively, even though the boulder line covers us completely. Marcus shakes his head and swears under his breath.
“Okay. So what now?”
I feel the back of my neck prickle as my hackles raise. Is he…Is he believing him?
“Marcus? You don’t really believe any of that.”
“Meg, what choice do we have? He’s right – he’s had plenty of opportunity to kill us, and hasn’t. We stick together and we’ve got a higher chance of getting out of this.”
“Oh yeah, right, and exactly how are we going to do that?”
Janos shuffles a little closer to us, and I am forced to squash down the instinct to lash out at him.
“I have been thinking about that,” he says. “And I might have an answer. Not a good one, but it’s something. They know about the pliosaur and the other prehistoric inhabitants of this strait, so they know they have to overcome that to get to us, and their prize. They also know using ballistic weaponry and explosives down here would be suicide, which means they’re going to have to stop that thing the old fashioned way.”
The old fashioned way. Despite all the damage it has done to us, the thought of them killing that majestic creature just because it stands in between them and something they want sickens me. Sure, – so we’d have done the same if it meant we could’ve found a way home, but that was for survival’s sake. Killing because you want something that is not vital to the continuation of your life… that feels wrong to me.
“So, what? They’ll find a way over here. So, what?”
“I have been ruminating on your former idea, Megan,” Janos says. “You suggested luring the thing out to devour the pliosaur, thus allowing us to swim across in relative safety. The problem with that was how we do lure it out? Well, now we have an added complication, or maybe not. Let them deal with the pliosaur. Then lure them to the colony’s lair. They only have Alpha team’s footage of the place, and my commentary. They don’t know where the thing is.”
“Yeah, but the problem with that is neither do we,” I say. “If we go down there, what’s to say it won’t kill us first?”
“That is always a risk, but we have the edge. We know what it looks like, and more importantly, what it sounds and smells like. They don’t. Our chances of using its instincts against it are greater than theirs. They want to use it as a weapon? Then why can’t we?
“Janos… that’s insane. Sounds like you’re trying to lure us down there to finish off what you started,” Marcus says, and I have to admit, he has a very good point.
Janos runs a hand over his head and sighs.
“I cannot make you believe me, much less trust me. All I can say is I will be with you. If this was purely a chance to dispatch both of you, why would I do that?”
From the other beach, there is a click and a low hum starts up. Janos jerks his head up and frowns.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know…” he replies.
We peek over the top of the boulders. Across the water, people are preparing to launch a rubber dinghy similar to the one we had, only this one has something rectangular and black strapped to its side. I frown and glance at Janos, then Marcus. There bewildered looks answer my unspoken question – they don’t know what it is, either.
We watch, mesmerised, as they push the boat into the shallows. Four of them board. From here, I can see they carry what can only be described as state-of-the-art crossbows. It makes sense. No guns down here – too risky. The fact that they’re carrying them now kind of drives it all home, even more than Brendan’s murder.
They’re here to kill us.
Part of me wants to withdraw, get the hell out and find a place to hide, but another part wants to witness what happens next. I have no idea how they are going to overcome the problem of the pliosaur in the water, but my curiosity gets the better of me. I’m guessing it has something to do with that black box, but I could be wrong.
The boat is about halfway across the strait when the now familiar ripples on the surface of the water start up. The pliosaur is there, circling them judging by the pattern the ripples make, but not attacking. The hum kicks up a notch, and I feel my teeth rattle. I wince. Whatever that thing is, it might be keeping the pliosaur at bay, but it also risks bringing the cave down on us. Someone obviously comes to the same conclusion, because it gets turned down again.
“They’re using low frequency sounds to deter it,” Janos mutters. “Simple, but seemingly effective. Also a gamble. Unfortunately, one that seems to have paid off for now.”
The ripples back off, and a huge flipper flicks out of the water. Again, I am stunned by the sheer size of it. It dwarfs the dinghy. As if out of frustration, the pliosaur slaps it down onto the surface, sending a wake of wavelets towards the little boat, making it buck and dance. A shout rings out, but the pliosaur keeps its distance.
They’re three-quarters of the way over now.
Time, as they say, for action.
Chapter Fourteen
The way back to the tower was difficult without lights, but not impossible. The bioluminescent glow of the bacteria helped, but not as much as the floodlights. It looks like they brought at least one across, because the light available suddenly intensified, sending my heart rate skyrocketing.
They’re here. They made it across.
Luckily, the base of the tower isn’t visible from the landing point, so we d
on’t have to bother with hiding. We’re not bothering to hide our tracks, either. We want them to follow us.
We all pause at the base of the tower. I lick my lips. They’re rough and taste of salt. I don’t know why, but this gets me wondering just how much of a mess I look, which is ridiculous. I’m hanging onto my sanity by the skin of my teeth, just about to put my life on the line… and part of me is worrying I might not be looking my best.
I hear Marcus swallow audibly like they do in the cartoons. Janos lays his hands on the stone and pushes. As before, the wall melts away, leaving a hole. All three of us take an involuntary step back.
Nothing but darkness wafts from the room. Behind us, in the distance, we hear a shout. That’s enough to bolster all of our nerves. Together, we step inside. I sniff tentatively, but that faint metallic, almost briny smell is not present. We risk turning our headlamps on, because even with the aid of the distant floodlight, it's still as black as sin in here.
Everything looks just as we left it.
Well, everything apart from the coils of rope next to the hole in the ground.
We glance at one another. We all know the rope was untied, but none of us want to think about how it ended back up here. I'm reluctant to touch it, and by the way Marcus backs off, I would say he's thinking the same thing I am. In the end, Janos picks it up, ties it off and lowers it down into the hole. No one speaks. When it is done, Janos nods to us and starts to climb down. I run my hands down over my thighs, as if I can dry my palms through my gloves and for a moment, I’m not sure whether my trembling body will let me climb the rope properly. Taking in a few deep breaths doesn’t seem to help, either. I screw up my face and force my hands to flex, gripping the rope as tightly as I can. Then, before I get a chance to change my mind, I slither off the edge to hang just below the surface of the hole. Now all I can do is concentrate on the simple act of climbing down, one hand over the other, using my legs to balance me, until a pair of hands grasps me from below. I bite back a shriek. I know it’s only Janos, but my nerves are in shreds. He helps me untangle myself from the rope and find the floor. I know I have to help Marcus now, but my attention snaps to every corner of the room, looking for movement, straining my ears to catch the slightest sound. I refocus back on the rope, which is wriggling back and forth like a noose on hanging day. It seems to take Marcus an age to clamber down, even though in reality, it probably took mere seconds.