by David Wood
“Sam!” Someone was calling him from very far away, their voice muffled by distance. And another sound insisted on his hearing, a repetitive thump-thump.
He sucked in a deep breath, wincing at the pain it caused in his chest.
“Oh, Sam! You’re alive!” The voice wasn’t nearly as distant this time, much closer in fact. Somewhere right nearby. And the thumping sound was his own heart, his pulse a rapid pressure in his ears. Memories came flooding back, the giant cephalopod, the crazed attacks on shore, the dark flash of the bloodstone dagger hitting that terrible mouth, Slater’s spear shattering the idol. His mind stuttered and, though his eyes were still closed, he saw a glimpse of a body lying on the shore, two people crouched over it. The clothing was familiar. One crouching person had long dark hair, hanging in wet ropes about her face. Slater! She was alive. But his eyes weren’t open. He sensed the chittering mind of a mantic and his awareness flipped back to his own eyes as they opened and he saw Slater leaning over him, her face split in a smile. The mantic that had been watching him lying on the rock squatted nearby, lost and directionless. On his other side was Jen Galicia, also alive, though battered looking. Her eyes had dark rings around them, the skin of her face drawn tight.
Then Jen’s face was obscured as Slater leaned in and planted a hot kiss on him. Her lips against his was the best sensation he could ever remember feeling and he reached up to her cheek. She sat back and scowled. “You’re such an idiot, Sam Aston!”
He managed a laugh. “What?”
“What were you thinking, eating that stuff? Are you okay? Is the... whatever it is dead?”
Aston pulled himself up to a sitting position, his heavy wet clothes squelching around him. “I think I’m mostly fine. And no, it’s not dead, but it has retreated. The idol Digby had seems to summon it somehow.”
“How?” Jen asked.
He looked over at her, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s destroyed now,” Slater said. “So I guess the creature won’t be coming back again.”
A wave of sadness passed through Aston as he considered that again. It was possible that it would remember to come this way without being called, but seemed unlikely, given what little he had discerned about it. It could no doubt feed elsewhere, might live on in its ravenous loneliness. How far did this vast underground sea extend anyway? Maybe, if they could escape, he might be able to find out, to send a survey team. But all that depended on them getting out and that had to be his only concern now. With a start, he realized that his connection to the hive mind, amplified as it had been before, had now weakened to almost nothing. He couldn’t see nearly so many points of view. He couldn’t remember the way out.
He sensed movement and Slater scrambled to her feet, looking around for a weapon. “No more, please!” she said.
Aston staggered to his feet next to her, one last chance presenting itself. “It’s okay. I’ve got this,” he said. Though the connection was weak, he still sensed this one mantic nearby, still saw faint images of it looking back at them. If he was quick, maybe he could still trigger one last action in the creature.
The mantic moved cautiously towards them and Aston reached out for it with his mind. The link was weak, muted, but he held onto it like a lifeline. He thought of the green cavern, knowing they could easily find their way back from there. “Take us there,” he said aloud even as he thought the same words and pictured every detail of the cavern he could remember. The shape of it, the pool, their halogen lights. “Take us there,” he said again.
Slater and Jen watched closely, desperation in their eyes, not daring to interrupt.
The mantic turned and moved away along the shore, scurrying in the direction of a tunnel mouth some hundred yards away. As their connection faded even further, Aston sensed its intent. Felt its acquiescence to the request.
He let out a held breath. “He’ll lead us back,” Aston said.
“Seriously? And there won’t be more to attack us?”
“Not now. At least, not for the moment.” Aston hoped he wouldn’t have to consume more of the glowing green substance to ensure that remained true. Whatever it was, it facilitated a connection to the hive mind, but it was not good for him, that much was certain. No way could anything so potent be anything but damaging to a biological system not designed for it, or evolved for it. A biological system like Sam Aston.
Exhausted as they all were, the trek was slow going, but the mantic seemed to know a shortcut. It made confident turns, always finding a passage that seemed to slope upwards. At one point it stepped into a narrow fissure in the rock and Aston, Slater, and Jen cautiously followed, anticipating a trap. But inside were roughly carved steps, almost an uneven, undulating ladder that went up and up, and opened eventually into a small cavern. They continued on.
It took a few hours, but finally Aston saw something familiar, and before long they saw a glow up ahead. The mantic paused, moving more slowly than ever, tipping its head aside.
“It’s hurt by the brightness,” Aston said. “Give it time.”
The creature went forward a few paces and stopped again.
“We could just go on,” Jen said.
“We don’t know if that’s where we want to be though,” Aston said.
“You can’t ask it?”
“No,” he had to admit. “My connection with it has faded. I can’t be certain of its intent anymore, but I’m pretty sure it’s still doing the last thing I asked of it. Let’s be patient.”
Step by tentative step they kept moving, the mantic clearly reluctant, but doing as it was bid nonetheless. Eventually they emerged into the huge, glittering cavern where the vast majority of the greenium was deposited. The lake with the strange door at the bottom reflected the light, made patterns dance across the ceiling. Their halogens still lit, though fading. The mantic hung back in the remaining darkness of the passage.
“Well, I don’t think we’d ever have found the way here on our own,” Aston said. “But I’ve never been more pleased to see a place.”
Slater had a wide smile on her face. Even Jen seemed illuminated somehow from her previously withered state, far beyond what the light should have shown.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Slater said.
Aston turned to the mantic, gave a nod of thanks. He was about to suggest it go on about its way when a dark shadow loomed up behind it. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, one hand flying out uselessly, but Anders Larsen, from directly behind the creature, slammed a bloodstone knife down into its skull. Darkness and green blood spattered up as the mantic shrieked in agony. Aston winced, went down involuntarily to one knee as a sharp bolt of pain punched through his brain, his connection apparently not entirely worn off yet, then the mantic died and the connection was severed.
Larsen stood there, grinning, the mantic’s blood dripping from the knife. “I don’t need that thing or you lot any longer,” he said. “I can find my own way back from here.”
“You followed us all this way?”
“I woke up after being washed onto that stone ledge back there and saw you three being led away by the bug. I guessed it was my best chance to get out, but thought I’d better keep my presence to myself.”
“Just who the hell are you, mate?” Aston said. “What are you doing?”
“Right now? I’m tying up loose ends. Then I’ll head back up and be the hero.” He raised the knife in front of his face and dropped into a fighting stance.
Aston glanced back at Slater and Jen. “Go! No questions! Get out of here and I’ll follow.”
He saw doubt sweep across Slater’s face, but didn’t have time to convince her as Larsen closed the distance. The last thing he saw was Jen drag at Slater’s sleeve and he could only hope they had both run for their lives.
He sucked in a breath and tried to steady himself. He was too tired for this, too over it all. Now this big, muscular, so-called geologist wanted to stick him with a blade right as they had finally fou
nd their way out. The thought infuriated him. Well, he thought, I guess I’ll use that anger as fuel. He ducked forward and rushed Larsen, the man’s eyes widening in surprise.
Aston timed his move just right, slapped the knife aside and drove a punch up into Larsen’s jaw. The man tried to dodge, made it halfway, and the blow glanced along his cheek. The impact was satisfying nonetheless and Larsen staggered backward. Aston jumped aside as the geologist brought the dagger sweeping across the gap between them, parting the front of Aston’s jacket.
That was too close. He needed to finish this. Unarmed against a knife was never good odds. As Larsen swept the dagger back again, trying to gut him like a fish, Aston grabbed the man’s thick wrist and whipped his other elbow into the side of Larsen’s head. Larsen grunted in pain, staggered, but somehow kept his feet. The guy was one tough son of a bitch, Aston realized, and his own strength was failing. Then something else moved in the periphery of his vision and Aston instinctively ducked aside.
Slater brought a large chunk of rock swinging overhead like she was pitching a baseball, and cracked it into the top of Larsen’s skull. The man staggered and went down.
“I told you to run!” Aston said.
“Yeah, well it’s just as well I didn’t. Looks like you needed the help.”
Larsen groaned on the rocky floor of the cavern, a rivulet of blood running from his head down over one cheek and ear. Then a grin spread across his face. He pulled open his jacket to reveal a thick belt of explosives strapped around his middle.
“If I can’t have this place,” he said, his voice slurred by Slater’s blow to the head. “Then no one will.”
“Oh shit,” Aston said, and he and Slater both turned and ran.
They pounded across the cavern. He saw Jen Galicia waiting wide-eyed in the mouth of the tunnel leading out, then everything vanished in a cacophony of noise and light and he felt his feet leave the ground before everything went dark.
48
Aston came around to the sounds of someone making a lot of effort, grunting and swearing. A sharp pain shot through his shoulder. He groaned and looked up, saw Jen Galicia dragging him and Slater along, holding one arm of each and jerking them back in fits and starts. Tears rolled down Jen’s cheeks, but judging by her expression they were tears of frustration more than anything else. The woman’s strength and determination was awe-inspiring.
She saw him look up and relief washed over her. “Quickly! Help me!”
A deep, sonorous crack split the air and then a booming of rocks tumbling reverberated through the cavern.
“Hurry!” Jen shouted. “The whole place is coming down!”
Aston staggered to his feet and took Slater’s other arm. Between them, one arm each, they dragged her along as rocks pounded into the passageway right behind them. Dust and speckles of glittering green swirled in the air and then the only light was Jen’s weak headlamp striping the walls as she moved. Aston stopped, gathered Slater up in a proper carry, and they hurried along again. As they passed through the cavern where they had first seen the vines, the whole cave still lit by their spooky green glow, more deep cracks and creaks sounded through the rock. One dark line snaked alarmingly across the ceiling right above them, dust and stones raining down.
“Hurry,” Jen said again, but it was advice Aston didn’t need.
“One more cavern after this one,” he said. “Then we’ll be through that original door and back into the cave with the elevator, right?”
“I think so.”
Jen yelled out in surprise and danced aside as a huge stalactite detached from the ceiling and shattered right where she had been heading. More groans and cracks echoed as they zigzagged to avoid the deluge of falling pointed rock, the shower of smaller stones and dust. The cavern floor heaved slightly beneath their feet, a crack racing open along their left-hand side. Head down, arms burning with the weight of Slater, Aston powered on, Jen beside him. He held Slater tight against him, relieved to feel her chest rising and falling. She might be hurt, but she wasn’t dead.
As they stumbled along the last tunnel, she stirred and moaned. “Aston?”
“Nearly there,” he told her.
“Put me down, I can run.”
He didn’t need telling twice, his arms jelly, his legs like lead. As she landed on her feet, Slater staggered a little, pressing one hand to the side of her head, and Aston and Jen reached out to steady her.
“I’m okay,” she said, and the three of them pushed on, the staggering, foot-dragging run of the exhausted but determined.
“Nearly there,” Aston kept repeating like a mantra, to drive them all on. “Nearly there.”
The wall of the tunnel cracked like a gunshot and a spider web of dark lines spread across it. More rocks and debris rained down. Then they saw light ahead, and the perfectly rectangular outline of the doorway. Growling in determination, they drove themselves on as it suddenly tilted and tipped in on itself. Yelling a refusal to be caught now, they dove through and into the bright, artificial light of the placed halogens. The ground shook, the caverns moaned.
Thankfully the elevator car was at the bottom, waiting for them. They piled in and pounded on the button to go up. The car jerked and rattled and began to rise. A wide split arced up through the rock above the sharp edges of the door in the opposite wall and the neat stones of its construction tipped and fell into the bright cavern. The wall above it slumped, the rock crashing and booming as it splintered and fell. Aston hoped the engineering of the elevator and its shaft would hold as dust clouds billowed up from below and enveloped them, made them cough and cover their faces. The whole shaft trembled, all three of them crying out in fear, but the elevator kept moving.
It seemed to take an age, but the vibration through the rocks continued, growing ever more distant, and the air chilled as they reached the surface. The three of them turned to stare out, squinting against the incredible white brightness of the Antarctic day. Aston had never been more happy to see the sun, low on the horizon. They hurried from the elevator shaft and rumblings and groans echoed up from it. The caging and shed surrounding the mechanism shifted, then, with a screeching tearing of metal, the whole thing folded up on itself and disappeared into the ground as though it had been swallowed. The ground under them tipped as if to follow it and they ran, slipping and sliding on the ice, putting as much distance between them and the sinkhole as they could. Then everything fell still.
Aston collapsed to his knees, pressed his hands into the snow and brought some up to rub onto his face. He ate a handful, grateful for its icy freshness. Slater and Jen knelt next to him and the three of them fell into a group hug, laughing at the absurdity of it all, elated with the adrenaline of survival. Eventually, they rose and trudged across the snow, heavy-footed with tiredness, heading for the base. The front doors were open, a low drift of snow gathered inside the first corridor.
“Is it abandoned?” Slater asked.
Aston had a feeling it was rather more sinister than abandonment. “Something happened here. Something to do with Larsen and those mercenaries, I’m guessing.”
As they moved cautiously deeper into the base, Slater said, “Do you think Larsen was working with someone else to scoop SynGreene's discovery?”
“Seems most likely,” Aston said. “The insane greed of people messing everything up once again. People suck.”
“And you think those same people came here?” Slater asked. “Cleared everyone out?”
“Maybe. If we run into more armed goons after all this, I think I’ll lose my mind.”
Slater paused, and Aston stopped with her. She looked meaningfully at him.
“What?” He felt uncomfortable under the intensity of her gaze.
“Well, you said about losing your mind. How... how are you?”
Aston smiled despite his discomfort. “After eating the fish? You wondering if I’m going to go Digby O’Donnell mad on you?”
Slater shrugged, eyes concerned.
“Honestly, I feel fine.”
“Oh.” Jen’s voice was small, constricted, from a few yards ahead. “Oh no.”
Aston and Slater turned to see what had caught her attention and saw her looking into the main lounge of the complex, one hand covering her mouth.
They joined her and saw the cause of her shock. The room was littered with body parts, and soaked in blood. A huge hole gaped in the far wall, and several streaks of blood went through it like bodies had been dragged that way.
Aston pointed. “More uniforms and weapons. Some more of Larsen’s cohorts, I expect.”
Slater nodded. “Looks like it. Three maybe? I don’t know, I never was a fan of jigsaw puzzles.”
Aston laughed, grateful for the break in tension. “Me either. Looks like the entire base staff are in here, too. I guess the mantics came topside for a while.”
“I guess that’s proof they can tolerate any brightness with enough time,” Jen said.
“I guess so. Let’s just hope they won’t be coming back again. Hopefully, everything down there had been shut off by the caverns collapsing.”
“Let’s call for help quickly though,” Slater said. “And wait somewhere far from here.”
“How do we explain all this?” Jen asked.
Aston pursed his lips, thinking about that. “I think it’s best if we don’t try to. We got lost down there, separated from the others. We heard sounds of fighting, but couldn’t find anyone. When we finally got back to the surface, we found all this. We have no idea what happened.”
“They won’t be happy with an answer like that.”
Aston shrugged.
They found an office and a control center and got a distress call out to SynGreene. Arthur Greene himself, after the most cursory of explanations, promised to airlift them within hours. “Maybe it’s best,” he said, voice heavy with resignation, “if we abandon the entire project. At least for now. Who the bloody hell sabotaged my expedition? Don’t worry, I’ll find out and there’ll be hell to pay! Meanwhile, I’ll get you back to civilization and you’ll be paid. I’m so sorry for what’s happened. Can I rely on your... discretion?”