The sea lion had been there, just as she knew it would, only by the time she reached it, it was already cold and lifeless. The others in there had been dead for much longer, judging by the smell and the fact that their bodies felt like jelly under their fur coats. It wasn’t until years later that she learned they’d crawled in there to die because they’d been infected by a bacterium called leptospirosis, which she’d been extraordinarily lucky not to contract. The decomposition hadn’t scarred her as much as the smell, which she swore was the same scent that now reached her from deeper in the warrens, where she knew there were things worse than dead sea lions lurking in the darkness.
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
Roche acknowledged her with a glance, but didn’t reply, which for him, she was learning, was as good as shouting the answer at the top of his lungs. There was something about him that wasn’t quite right, like he was there and yet not there at the same time, but there was also something about him that made her feel safe.
“There are footprints over here,” Evans said. “Richards must have gone this way.”
“How can we be sure they belong to him?” Kelly asked.
“They’re still fresh.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Friden said. “We should just stick to the original plan and find somewhere to lie low and wait for the helicopter.”
“What if it were you?” Jade asked. “Wouldn’t you want us to come after you?”
“You can tell he came back here of his own free will. His are the only footprints, for the love of God.”
“In blood,” Anya said. “He left footprints in blood.”
“Then he’ll be able to follow them back, right?” Friden said. “Just like Hansel and Gretel.”
“It’s Mariah’s blood,” Jade said. “The creature must have dragged her body back here.”
“And now it’s dead,” Evans said.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Friden said. “Think about it. Rayburn and Scott were both dead, but they came back. Who’s to say Mariah won’t do the same? Or Devlin or Proctor? We shouldn’t do anything or go anywhere until we find out what happened to Rubley.”
“So in the meantime we just leave Richards to fend for himself?” Kelly said.
“He made a choice when he came down here. You know as well as I do that he never made a single decision he didn’t want to make. He’d say the exact same thing I’m saying now. We should just go back—”
“No one’s stopping you,” Jade said. “All you have to do is turn around and start walking.”
“But you have the only light,” Friden said.
She smirked.
“I do, don’t I?”
Jade pressed deeper into the cavern, clouds of breath trailing her over her shoulder. It wasn’t until that moment that Kelly realized how much colder it had gotten. A frigid breeze caught her off guard when she stepped from the tunnel into a larger cavern.
Jade shined her light into the tunnel to her left, revealing ice on the ground and the walls. Kelly knew that ice needed precipitation to form, which meant that somewhere through there was an opening to the surface. Roche recognized it, too.
“How far down do you think we are from the Skyway?” Roche asked.
“Maybe fifty, seventy-five feet,” Evans said.
Roche merely nodded and followed Jade out of the breeze and into another crevice. The smell intensified tenfold, and Kelly felt the tears freezing to her cheeks. She was so scared she was crying, but the thought of stumbling blindly through the darkness was even more frightening than pushing on, despite what she feared lay ahead of them.
She thought about Friden’s theory, about the organisms being able to reanimate the dead, but that simply couldn’t be the case, not the way Rayburn had bled when they killed him. His heart had to have still been beating, which implied a measure of symbiosis or parasitism between the two species instead. That meant Paul Rayburn had still been alive when they killed him. She prayed whatever part of him remained in his physical form had felt no pain.
Jade abruptly stopped and waved for the rest of them to do the same. She kept the light directed straight ahead, but cocked her head to the side as though listening for something. It took Kelly a moment, but eventually she heard it, too.
Footsteps.
Faint, distant.
Jade led them onward, slower than before. The crevice narrowed to such an extent that they had to scoot sideways. A faint glow emanated from somewhere beyond the end of the passageway.
The intonation of the echo of Richards’s footsteps changed. Kelly was about to call out to him, but something stopped her.
There was another sound, barely audible, deep and at the lower edge of hearing. She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a gasp when she realized what it was.
The others froze. They were wedged in the tight crevice with nowhere else to go. Roche glanced back at her and she saw the same comprehension dawn in his eyes. He heard it for what it was, too.
Uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uh.
They weren’t alone.
54
RICHARDS
“I know you’re in here,” Richards said. His voice sounded old and feeble in a way he never imagined it would.
He thought he’d known what to expect, but he was still unprepared for what he found. The den Dr. Evans discovered in Egypt, the one at the bottom of the lake, and the other with the remains of the American soldiers inside the pyramid . . . they’d been nearly identical. This was different, though. These weren’t bare bones or mummified corpses on the ground in front of him. These were the savaged bodies of people he considered friends, people whose deaths already weighed heavily upon his conscience.
The bodies were heaped in the center of the cavern, their clothes ripped and their lacerated skin exposed. He saw the pained expressions immortalized on their faces and had to look away. There was so much blood on the ground that it had yet to coagulate or freeze.
His raised his light to the flowstone formation behind the remains. There were dozens of stalagmites of different height and thickness, like some hellish pipe organ, a veritable forest of spikes, from the depths of which he heard a shuffling sound.
“Come out where I can see you.”
More shuffling sounds. He thought he saw movement through a gap between stalagmites, but by the time he caught up with his light, nothing was there.
The roof of the cavern was carved with the stars of the night sky, although the design had yet to be completed. It appeared to have started with Orion and expanded outward from there.
“Please,” he whispered. “I need to see you.”
Uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uh.
The sound reverberated from deep within the mountain. There was no doubt it originated from somewhere inside the jagged formation. His beam reflected from a pair of eyes that vanished as quickly as they appeared.
“Are you afraid of me?”
The answer caused his blood to run cold.
“No.”
The voice was deep, barely audible, an almost hollow baritone at the lower limits of hearing. A vibrational sensation as much as a sound.
“You can speak?”
No response.
A silhouette passed between stalagmites. His light revealed a flash of gray skin, and then it was gone.
“I’ve spent my entire life searching for you.”
Nails clattered on stone as it shifted from behind one stalagmite to the next. He caught a glimpse of its elongated head, red eyeshine from oddly circular orbs.
“Where are you from?”
“Everywhere.”
It spoke in a strange, halting manner, as though unaccustomed to the physical mechanics of forming speech.
“Are you an alien?”
“All . . . life . . . alien.”
More clattering of nails. A shifting of shadows.
“What planet are you from?”
“Many . . . worlds.”
“How did you get here?”
/>
“Always . . . here.”
It passed between gaps, granting fleeting glimpses of a lithe, almost serpentine form.
Clack.
Clack.
“How do you know our language?”
“Host . . . knows.”
“You assimilated it from Mr. Rubley?”
The shadow moved farther to the left. The flashlight shimmered from scales like those of a trout.
Clack.
Clack.
“The pyramid. It was designed to use you as a catalyst to evolve us, wasn’t it?”
“Puzzle.”
A light materialized from the darkness behind Richards, casting his shadow across the bodies and the flowstone formation.
“What do you mean, puzzle?”
“When . . . species . . . evolved . . . enough . . . to . . . solve . . . fail-safe . . . activated.”
Richards turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. The creature seized the opportunity, and with the clatter of nails darted deeper into the maze of stalagmites. Richards could barely make out its silhouette, pacing from one gap to the next, its hands raised in front of its face in an effort to keep the light out of its eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“Species . . . no . . . longer . . . useful.”
“So the machine evolves us into something more useful?”
“No . . . evolves . . . us.”
“Into what?”
“Death.”
“Your purpose is to kill us?”
Clack.
Clack.
“Why would you want to do that?”
The light shined directly on Richards from behind as the others emerged from the stone colonnade. He waved them back without turning around and hoped for once they did as he asked.
“All . . . species . . . serve.”
“Serve what?”
“God.”
“You’re saying God is real?”
“Many.”
“So both of our species serve these gods.”
“In . . . different . . . capacities.”
“Yours is to destroy us when we evolve beyond the limits of our usefulness?”
Clack.
Clack.
“And what is ours?”
“Build.”
“Build what?”
“What . . . is . . . required.”
“Hollis,” Jade whispered from behind him.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.
The creature streaked across the cavern and vanished into the shadows. He saw just the faintest hint of its hunched silhouette before it vanished into the earthen wall.
“Please,” Richards said. “I beg of you all. Please leave me alone.”
He hurried across the cavern and shined his light into the recess where he thought it had gone, but there was nothing inside.
“The others like you failed,” Richards said. “They’re both dead.”
“Not . . . like . . . me.” The voice sounded as though it came from all around him at once. “Drones.”
“Then your drones failed.”
“We . . . make . . . more.”
“We?”
“One . . . all.”
“A hive mind.”
A scratching sound. Claws on stone.
Skritch.
Richards couldn’t pinpoint the origin of the sound.
“There are so many questions I want to ask you.”
“One . . . more . . . than . . . others.”
“How do you know?”
“Know . . . all.”
Skritch.
“Then tell me. That night. In the field behind my house. All those years ago. What I saw in the sky. Was it real?”
“Show . . . you.”
The voice came from directly above his head.
Richards looked up as it plummeted from where it clung to the ceiling. It was upon him before he could even brace for impact. It drove him to the ground with so much force that his hip broke. His head struck stone and he tasted blood. Struggled to keep his eyes open. Stared straight into those of an alien being.
There was nothing left of Rubley inside them. No hint of humanity.
His flashlight rolled across the floor. He heard shouting as though from a great distance. He opened his mouth to scream. Something dripped from the creature’s mouth into his and lanced through the back of his throat. He sputtered blood and experienced pain beyond anything he’d ever imagined possible.
An electrical sensation preceded the arrival of the voices inside his head, millions of them, all speaking at once and in the same voice.
The eyes of the creature filled with the stars in the night sky and Richards felt as though he were speeding through them.
The universe revealed itself to him and laid bare its secrets.
In that fleeting moment, not only were all of his questions answered, but he saw the true nature of the species rapidly subsuming his consciousness. The insatiable hunger. The sheer malevolence. He understood the nightmare he’d unwittingly released and the events he’d set in motion.
A sensation of numbness flooded his veins, bringing with it the memory of a scared little boy hiding in a wheat field and the triangle of lights that carried him across the sky into eternity.
55
ROCHE
“Hollis!” Anya screamed.
Roche turned and pushed her back into the maze of columns.
“Go!” he shouted.
The creature raised its head from Richards’s blood-spattered face and looked straight at him. Roche had never seen anything so terrifying in his entire life. It pushed itself up to its feet with spindly arms. Its skeletal framework showed through its gray skin. Its broad shoulders and wide pelvic girdle tented its flesh. It walked on its toes, its heels elevated, its legs flexed as though incapable of straightening its knees. Each step produced the clacking sound of nails striking the bare stone. It held its arms bent and cradled tightly to its chest, its clawed hands hanging limply.
It hunched its back, straightened its neck, and issued that horrible clicking sound as it rose to its full height.
Uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uh.
Roche pushed Kelly and Friden ahead of him and hurried to catch up before he lost sight of Jade’s light. He slalomed through the colonnade, passing the silhouettes of the others streaking through the darkness until he reached Jade at the mouth of the crevice.
“Head through that frozen tunnel,” he said. “If I’m right, it will lead you outside.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Cross your fingers that I’m not. Now go!”
She turned and sidestepped through the fissure as fast as she could. Roche helped Anya pass, then Friden and Kelly, and finally Evans, before sliding inside himself. Already the light was nearly gone, at least what little he could see through the bodies clogging the crevice ahead of him.
Clack-clack-clack.
The light abruptly faded.
A flash of eyeshine from behind him, near the ground and moving fast.
“Hurry!” he shouted, he hurled himself through the fissure until it was wide enough to sprint out into the cavern, where the others were already ducking into the tunnel, Jade’s light reflecting from the ice.
Clack-clack-clack.
He lowered his head and charged after the others. The ground was so slick his feet went right out from underneath him. He managed to brace himself against the pipes bracketed to the walls to either side of him and used them to propel himself even faster. The sounds of their heavy breathing and thunderous footsteps made it impossible to hear anything else, but he didn’t dare turn to see if it was still following them for fear of losing his balance.
The temperature dropped by the second. The cold infiltrated his body and formed barbs in his chest. He’d somehow forgotten just how cold it was outside and wondered if he’d made the right decision. He’d set them all on this course of action and it was up to him to make it work.
J
ade screamed and threw herself to the ground.
Roche was nearly upon her when he saw why. A curtain of icicles had formed over the mouth of the tunnel. There was barely enough space between them to admit the ferocious wind and a barrage of snowflakes.
She rolled onto her back and kicked at the ice with her heels.
Cracks shot through the icicles and chunks fell away, but not nearly fast enough.
Roche could positively feel the creature gaining on him and realized that if they didn’t break through right then and there, they were all dead.
“Down!” he shouted.
Evans hit the ground in front of him and shielded Kelly with his body. Roche planted his foot in the middle of the archeologist’s back and used the traction to launch himself toward the wall of ice.
Roche clipped Friden’s shoulder and narrowly avoided Jade. Covered his head and shouted. Led with his shoulder.
The ice felt like a brick wall when he hit it. For a split second he feared it wouldn’t break, until it shattered like glass and rained down upon him as he burst from the side of the mountain. He caught a glimpse of clouds through the blowing snow and felt a sensation of weightlessness—
He landed on something hard and slid straight out across the canyon. His legs swung out over the nothingness and he barely managed to grab onto a thick cable before he shot over the edge.
Fortunately for him, the two pipes running through the tunnel converged outside the frozen opening, where they were bracketed together and supported by a massive steel arch that spanned the canyon. A web of cables reminiscent of those of a suspension bridge stabilized the pipes from above.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Roche pulled his legs up and braced them underneath him. Somehow managed to stand. Swayed as he stretched his arms out to either side for balance. The wind hammered him so hard that he had to grab the cables for support. He reached back toward the opening and took Jade by the hand.
“I can’t do this!” she shouted.
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