by David Wood
Sol crouched by the woman, tucked back into the deepest of the tall alcoves in the rock wall. She was short, with dark hair, and large brown eyes that blinked slowly in the greenish light. She took quick, shallow breaths. Her skin was pale, tight over her cheekbones, her lips dry and cracked.
Slater frowned. How long had the poor woman been down here? When asked her name, the woman had simply blinked, confused, and whispered, “The biologist,” in a weak, cracked voice. Now Sol had mixed a cup of water with protein powder and glucose, and held the back of the woman’s head as she sipped at it. She winced every time she swallowed.
“Take it slow,” Sol said. “Tiny sips, just two or three. You can have some more after a few minutes.”
He took the cup away and the woman managed a weak smile of thanks. “I can’t believe someone came,” she said, her voice slightly less rasping than before. She was Latina, but her accent was American.
“What’s your name?” Slater asked.
“Genesis Galicia, but everyone calls me Jen.”
“And what are you doing down here?” Slater ignored Sol’s annoyed glance.
“I’m a biologist, part of the SynGreene team.”
Confused looks flicked back and forth among the team members.
“What are you talking about?” Slater said, though she thought she knew full well. “We’re the SynGreene team.”
Aston made a noise of disgust. “Obviously, we aren’t the first.”
Sol stayed crouched beside Jen, refusing to look up again, to meet anyone else’s eye. Slater had a lot of questions for the expedition physician.
“Tell us what happened,” Sol said.
He gave her more to drink, which she took gratefully. After more painful-looking swallows, she took a long shuddering breath. “I was part of a research team, hired by SynGreene. We were to investigate a possible new energy source found down here decades ago. Honestly, we all thought it was a joke, but the money was good.” She looked around at the faces above her, nodded softly. “I guess you guys thought the same, eh?”
Slater laughed. “Yeah, you’ve got our numbers.”
“So you know, we started to find things that made no sense. Impossible things. Then we were...” She stopped, swallowed, tears standing suddenly in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” Sol said. “Take your time.”
“We were attacked.”
“By who?” Terry Reid said, his voice hard.
Jen shook her head. “Not who. What. Some kind of creatures.”
“What sort of creatures? Aston asked.
Slater glanced at him and he caught her eye, silent communication quickly passing between them. She knew he was thinking about the missing guard, the fidget spinner, the blood on the walls. That idiot cameraman, Jeff. And the desecrated body in the next alcove. But she saw a faint glimmer of excitement in his eyes too, and realized he was probably considering the possibility of a new species. Though it pained her, the biologist was programmed into him, so she supposed he couldn’t help it.
Jen shook her head slowly. “It was dark, everything happened so fast. Three of us escaped the attack and managed to hide in here. But we were too weak and exhausted to carry on, we just stayed put, hoping a rescue would come. We didn’t know what to do.”
Slater saw Sol Griffin and Terry Reid exchange a knowing look and knew immediately that they expected this, but they’d hid it from the team. She turned to Aston and saw he had noticed the same thing. He met her eyes and nodded, clearly reading her thoughts.
“Tell me everything about what attacked you,” Reid demanded. “Every detail you can, however small.”
Jen shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. They move fast. Sometimes they drop down from above, so I guess they can climb the tunnel walls or they’re dropping from holes in the ceiling.” She stopped, tears on her lashes again as she relived the horrible memories.
“You said only three of the team made it back here,” Reid said. “Did the creatures kill the rest?”
Jen nodded. “I think so. We stayed here, hiding in the shadows, for hours. Finally Thomson crept out, heading towards the tunnel over there.” She pointed towards the tunnel Slater and her crew had entered by. “I didn’t watch, I couldn’t move, but I heard them attack him. His screams were...” She finally broke down in dry sobs, face buried in her hands. “They ripped him apart and just left him. Except...”
“Except his head?” Slater asked.
Jen nodded into her hands.
“You dragged him into the shadows over there?” Slater pointed toward the violated body she had shown Aston.
“No. I didn’t dare to move. But eventually Spedding said she was going to drink. We had some rations, but not much. We waited for help to come, but no one did. We stayed hiding for what felt like days, and our rations of food and water quickly ran out. Then more days, starving, so thirsty. Eventually, Spedding slipped from cover here, and I heard her dragging the body out of sight. That’s when she told me they’d taken his head, and she couldn’t bear to look at him.”
“Is Spedding the woman who died over there?” Slater asked, pointing back towards the first body they’d found.
“Yes. She went to the lake there and drank the water, said she couldn’t stand the thirst any longer. We were so weak, but no way in hell was I going to drink that water. There is nothing safe or natural anywhere down here. But then, I don’t think it was the water that killed her. She came back, tried to get me to drink, but I refused. Then Spedding started talking about hunger. She said she saw a brightly glowing plant in the pool, that it looked like a sea anemone or something, only much bigger.”
“It’s growing all over the sides of the pool,” Aston said. “But I don’t know that it’s edible.”
“That’s what I told her,” Jen said. “And I told her to wait, surely someone would come. She said no way, that we had to find our own way out, but we were too weak. She said we had to eat, get the energy to save ourselves. I was afraid to even touch the stuff, let alone eat it. But she did.”
“You think it poisoned her?” Sol asked.
“Oh, it did. She got so sick. But not her body.” Jen absently rubbed her abdomen. “She was sick in the head. Within maybe an hour or so of eating the stuff, she started raving, saying there was somewhere she had to go, that she was being called to.”
“Did she say where she was being called?” Slater asked.
“It was nonsense. Madness. She said she was being called ‘down, down to the Jade Sea.’ She kept repeating that over and over again. I tried to talk to her, to ask her to explain, but her eyes were wild. Her mind was gone. And she was too weak to go anywhere anyway. Eventually she started convulsing, moaning and still talking that horrible, senseless madness. I crawled away, around here to be away from her and she eventually became quieter and quieter and then stopped. I assumed she had died. And by then I was too weak, too scared, too depressed, to do anything. I lay down here and decided I would rather starve to death than go nuts or be torn apart by those monsters. And then you came after all.” She looked up suddenly, her eyes haunted. “Why did you take so long?”
“We need to talk more about the creatures,” Reid said. “Can they be killed?”
Jen took another shuddering breath, sipped more of the drink Sol had made. A little color returned to her cheeks. “I can’t say for sure. We only had one member of the crew who was armed. After the first attack, he hung back and tried to hold them in hopes that we could escape. We heard lots of gunfire, and finally screaming. Then nothing.”
“Did you get even a glimpse of these things?” Aston asked.
“Just a few flickers of movement in the flashes of our lights. It was mayhem. They were dark, shiny, no fur or feathers. What I saw looked almost like armor.”
Aston nodded, brow creased in thought.
Sol gestured for the team to move back. “We need to let her rest, regain her strength.”
“I’ll secure this area for now,” Reid said, and
hurried away, barking orders to Tate and Gates, who had returned from checking the other tunnel.
As the others moved, Aston grabbed Sol’s sleeve and dragged him to one side. Slater went with them as Aston said, “How about you tell us exactly what the fuck is going on here?”
Sol’s face darkened. “You need to calm down, Aston.”
“Oh, I haven’t even started to get angry yet, mate. Why the hell weren’t we told about a previous team? A team that went missing!”
“We thought they’d simply got lost. We hoped to find them. We didn’t know anyone was attacked or killed.”
“That’s bullshit!” Aston pushed Sol back against the wall of the cavern. Slater was impressed with his fury, especially as Sol was close to double Sam’s size. “You must have known there were exotic creatures here, else you wouldn’t have included me on the team.”
“Not true! We didn’t know anything for sure. Including you was a matter of covering all possible bases.”
“SynGreene had an obligation to tell us about the previous team,” Slater said, enjoying the fact that Aston was putting Griffin on the spot. “They should have warned us of the potential danger.”
Sol shrugged. “Maybe that’s true. But it makes no difference to our current situation.”
“That’s not good enough!” Aston yelled.
Sol sneered, grabbed him by the front of his sweater. Aston’s face twisted in outrage. He reacted immediately, turning and ducking his body to hip toss the large man, planting Sol heavily on his back on the hard ground. Sol barked a noise of surprise as much as pain as the air rushed from his lungs. Aston leaned down, one fist balled up ready to slam into Sol’s face, but Reid was suddenly there. He grabbed Aston and dragged him away before he could pummel Griffin.
“I get that you’re pissed off,” the big security guard said. “But this isn’t going to help.”
“Really?” Aston spat. “It’s helping me feel a lot better!”
Reid grinned in spite of himself. “I don’t doubt it. But save it for later.”
Sol sat up against the cave wall, dragging air back into his lungs. He looked like he wanted to kill Aston. Slater couldn’t entirely blame the man. She felt like planting a boot in Aston’s face herself. After a moment, Sol’s expression smoothed, and he let out a deep breath.
“Listen,” Sol said, voice tight with pain. “I understand this is a tense situation. It is for all of us. But we’re a team. We’re all going to have to work together if we want to get out of here safely. Let Reid and his team stand watch until Jen is strong enough to move, then we all get back topside together, okay? We’ve found the crystals, we know better what’s happening. We’ll come back better prepared, with an army if necessary.”
“We could leave you here with Jen and get out now,” Aston said.
“You could, but I think it’s best if we all travel together and with an armed escort, no?”
Aston ground his teeth, but Slater saw the sense in what Sol suggested. “He’s right, Sam,” she said. “We need to stay together. Let’s wait until Jen can travel.”
“And how long might that be?” Dig asked. The archeologist’s face was pale, his eyes a little wild.
Sol shook his head, standing up again, albeit a little shakily. “Let’s all eat, get some proper food into Ms. Galicia. We’ll rest up here for a few hours. I hate the delay but we’ve been at work all day. Maybe after some food and a little sleep, we’ll be in a better position to get back. We’ve come a long way, we’ll need our strength and our focus to get back safely.”
“What if Jen is still too weak to walk?” Syed asked.
“We’ll carry her if we have to,” Sol said resignedly. “Regardless, eat, rest. Try to sleep. Okay?”
“Hey, where’s Larsens?” Dig said, looking around the cavern.
Silence fell as everyone stopped, looking about themselves. Slater’s nerves wound another notch tighter. First Jeff, and now Larsen. How did these people vanish without anyone noticing?
“Dammit,” Sol barked. “We need his confirmation that these crystals are what we’re looking for down here.”
Aston rounded on Griffin and Slater was certain he was about to lay into the man again. “You’re really concerned about that right now?” Aston said. “Everything that’s happening here, and you’re still thinking of the damned crystals?”
“We’ve lost two men now,” Sol spat back. “I don’t want it all to be for nothing!”
“You need to straighten up your damned priorities, mate!”
Reid stepped in again. “All right, everyone calm down. Maybe he ran when we found more bodies. He could be back at base camp already.”
“Hardly,” Aston said. “It’s a bloody long way back.”
“Maybe. But we can’t afford to split up and look for him. We need to stay together.” Reid shook his head at Sol in disgust. “If we find him on the way back, you can ask him about your precious crystals then.”
“I talked to him,” Syed said. “He said the crystals here were bursting with energy. I think he was pretty certain this stuff is the greenium.”
Sol sighed. “Well, at least we have that. When we get out of here, we tell SynGreene we’ve found what they wanted. This won’t have all been in vain.”
“For what it’s worth,” Aston said, almost reluctantly, “there’s a hell of a lot else besides the greenium that’s worth investigating down here. But we should concentrate on getting out alive and worry about all that later.”
Sol lifted his hands in silent agreement, conceding the point.
Slater fumed. She saw the light of satisfaction in the man’s eyes. She couldn’t help thinking he would sacrifice all of them if necessary. She wondered how he thought he might survive without them. Was there even more he knew that he wasn’t letting on?
“Maybe whatever got Jen’s team got Larsen too,” Dig said. His voice trembled with ill-concealed fear. He turned to Slater. “And maybe your cameraman as well.”
Sol stepped forward, catching Dig’s attention. “Do me a favor. Collect some samples of the crystals from here, okay? In case we don’t find Larsen.”
Dig’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”
“Sure. Make yourself useful, then eat and rest. Okay?”
Dig shrugged and turned away, rummaging in one of the bags for sample jars.
Reid, Gates, and Tate took up positions guarding the three passageways leading out of the cavern, the one they had entered by and the two on the far side of the pool they had yet to investigate. Slater would be happy to never know what lay down them.
Aston stood still for several moments, his fists clenched at his sides. Slater couldn’t blame him for his anger. She shared it. Eventually he stalked off to one shadowed corner, sat down and pulled a small book from his jacket. He flicked on his headlight and started to read. Slater frowned. What the hell could he be reading down here? Why did he even bring a book? She smiled at Marla, still keeping to herself, away from the others. “Get something to eat and have a rest.”
The young woman nodded, her face hard. Slater respected her bravery in the face of all this. She had a survivor’s streak, was clearly someone to be relied upon. She went over, put a hand on Marla’s arms as the woman began to turn away. “Screw all the rest. We’ll look out for each other, okay?”
Marla grinned. “You got that right.”
Slater watched her go to find food, then went to Aston. He looked up, nodded once. She put her back against the wall and slid down to sit beside him. “What are you reading?”
“That first body we found? When everyone was distracted I found this journal.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Because for some reason I didn’t quite trust anyone.”
“How prescient of you.”
“Right?”
She smiled. It was good to be talking like friends again. Her rage at him, she realized, had softened in the face of very real, new threats. An
d she had missed him so much. “So what is it?”
He showed her the front page, a neat script of fountain pen inscribing it as belonging to Dr. Murray Lee. “Seems Lee was an American professor of geology. I’ve been skimming this first part of the journal. Typical fare. He talks about general life events, research findings, day-to-day highlights of his lab experiments and so on. Then it gets interesting.”
“How so?”
Aston tapped the page he had reached. “Turns out Lee joined an expedition in 1928, led by one Admiral Adam Greer. They were searching for the Arctic Pyramids when their party was set upon by armed men speaking Russian.”
19
Aston was pleased Slater was talking to him like a friend again, but he didn’t want to jeopardize it by bringing attention to it. He would simply enjoy it for however long it lasted.
“Does it say why the Russians attacked?” Slater asked. She leaned in close, a loose strand of hair brushing his arm and sending a shiver through him.
“No.” Aston turned the page, eyes scanning. “But Professor Murray Lee got separated from his group and became lost. Seems he found his way down here.”
“To hide?”
“I’ll read it to you.”
Aston glanced quickly around the cavern to check no one was listening. He couldn’t articulate why, but he wanted to keep this knowledge between himself and Slater now. She was the only one here he trusted. Most of the others sat quietly, eating and drinking or resting. Dig had already curled up, head on his bag, eyes closed in sleep. Sol sat with Jen, helping her to eat small bites of rations. They talked in low voices. Reid, Gates, and Tate each stood at the entrance to one of the three tunnels leading from the cave, relaxed but alert. Aston couldn’t help feeling like they were sitting in the calm before the storm. He began to read.
“Once separated from my colleagues, lost in the swirling blizzard, and frightened I might run into the Russians once more, I decided the best course of action was inaction. At least until the weather cleared and, hopefully, the Russians moved on. I found a cave at the base of one of the strangely regular mountains (could these be the very pyramids we sought?) and I tucked myself into its safe depths. But the wind still whistled in and here’s where I made a mistake. Rather than winding up my dynamo lamp and checking carefully, I simply pushed deeper into the darkness, seeking shelter. The floor dipped suddenly downward and I had no purchase on the icy rock. I slipped and fell, hurtling down a steep incline, then dropping through open space. For an awful moment I thought I would surely be dashed to a premature death on sharp rocks below, but I hit a second incline that broke my fall, slid further, then crashed into a cavern floor. A jarring pain shot up my left leg (I believe I’ve torn ligaments in my knee there) but I was otherwise unharmed but for scrapes and bruises. Lucky, or so I thought, other than the obvious misfortune of falling through some natural fissure in the rocks. But there was no way I could scale the slopes that had led me in, so I needed to find another way out.