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by Matthew Siege

"I don't think that's the end of it," I muttered, glancing at Map. "I hope you're up for a hike."

  He didn't answer, though when we began he didn't lag behind, either. The ground was as smooth as glass, just like the sides that arced up from it to form the ceiling. After twenty minutes or so, I was pretty sure that we'd reached as far as I'd seen from the opening. I took out one of the XAR claws and tried to mar the wall, just in case.

  Not a scratch. Even if it had worked, was I really planning on digging my way free? I had thirteen days, not thirteen centuries...

  The tunnel went on and on and so did we, always slightly bending to the left.

  I stopped for a second when I needed to piss. My time in the hospital had stripped me of any pretense of privacy. Once the cold hands of a bored, pretty nurse yanking out your catheter wake you up, you stop worrying about who sees your dick.

  "No time like the present," I muttered as I stepped up to the wall, aiming at a yellow crystal just for the hell of it. It was oddly reassuring to do something as mundane as urinate, and the act made me philosophical. I lost myself in the flow, allowing myself a moment to close my eyes and breathe deeply.

  I needed to take stock of my situation and plan. The tunnel wasn't safe. If it continued like this, it would never be. I needed to push through it if I wanted to level up. That, or retreat and wait out the storm. The Glade might be secure, and even though the route back was a dangerous one, at least at the end of it was a place I may be able to—

  "Fuck!" I felt the unmistakable sensation of liquid passing from left to right beneath my boot and my eyes snapped open. Sure enough, there was a tendril of urine creeping along the wall. I finished up and watched it flow in the direction from which we'd just come.

  Evidently, the tunnel was built on an almost imperceptible incline. Between that and the eternal curve to the left, I was on an impossibly long ramp that slowly spiraled upward. Even though the ascent was incredibly slow, there was no denying now that it was happening.

  Of course. It was a tower, and I had to go up to get to the next floor.

  That made me feel like we were making progress, and I put my dick away and hurried on ahead as Map caught up with me. Unfortunately, there were still no shafts that led to the right or left. We were vulnerable, and if something headed toward us from either direction we'd be in real trouble.

  The very thought made me claustrophobic, and more than once over the next hour I had to physically restrain myself from sprinting. Burning through my energy reserves might get me to the end a little faster, but it might also force me to stop before I reached it.

  Time began to matter less and less. Hours slid past, though I wasn't sure how many. Three? Four? I was hungry. Thirsty. Tired. I spent so long in the tunnel that the shiver and pulse of the yellow crystals and their abundant glow was beginning to feel like a veiled threat.

  I finally stumbled to a stop and took a seat against the wall. One of the crystals was near my face, and boredom drove me to peer inside. There was something moving within, a shivering, organic filament that vibrated as it created light. Maybe, once we were almost clear of these tunnels, I'd try and snap off one of them to use as a source of illumination on the road ahead. Doing it now didn't feel right, though. Besides, tampering with it might trigger some sort of countermeasure.

  Frustrated, I tried to level up again.

  Find a safe place and your rewards will be granted.

  Damn it. I grit my teeth. I was pretty sure that the rules weren't being broken, but I didn't know enough about them to be able to make the system work in my favor.

  I knew someone who did, though...

  "Toot? Toot, come help me out, okay? They let you warp in and advise me before. Ask your boss if you can do it again, because I feel like I'm stuck."

  I wasn't surprised when he didn't show up, though I decided to blame the Evvex I'd mouthed off to. He was probably poring through the rules, looking for a way to screw me. Hell, I'd probably made humans go from a race of barely noticed, brand new Citadel arrivals to persona non grata in one fell swoop.

  I didn't bother trying to coax Toot out again, choosing instead to take the system message at its word. If it claimed this wasn't a safe place, then it wasn't a safe place.

  Map was standing a few feet away, motionless. His eyes were open, but they looked glazed over. Was he asleep on his feet?

  "Can you hear me?" I asked him.

  Map blinked at me, slowly at first and then faster. I'd either woken him or snapped him out of a daydream. "Mmmmmrm."

  I scooted over in his direction and held out my hand. "Can I get some of the green petals? Better yet, do you know how to make a Verdant Epidermal Strip?"

  Evidently the answer was yes, because the next thing I knew he'd spat a chunky line of reconstituted, regurgitated green petals into my palm. It smelled about as good as I'd expected, but once I'd rolled up my sleeve and slapped it against my forearm it instantly adhered, carrying away the fatigue that had been threatening to slow me down.

  Once more refreshed, I was determined to get the hell out of this tunnel once and for all. It had to lead somewhere. If it didn't, we'd be stuck backtracking four hours, only to have to traverse the lofty bridges and narrow platforms as we made our way to yet another anonymous tunnel entrance.

  That wasn't something I was looking forward to. If I could make this work, I would.

  "Onward and upward, buddy." I had a bounce to my step, and I figured it was at least another hour before I lost it. When I did, it was only because I saw Map freeze in his tracks out of the corner of my eye.

  I trusted his instincts, and stopped moving too.

  Something had changed. There was a shift in pressure, and a vibration ran through the tunnel. I strained my senses, trying to work out what was wrong as a little puff of wind pushed past us from up ahead.

  That sent my heart into a full-on drum solo. The air in the tunnel had been as still as death from the very beginning. Even back at the entrance it had kept the storm out, despite the fact that the gale had raged only a few feet beyond.

  Now though, the air was definitely moving toward us, growing steadier by the second.

  The yellow crystals let me see as far as they always had, maybe a mile down the corridor until the bend took away my line of sight. I stared hard at the termination of my vision, and right before my eyes the farthest of the lights blinked out.

  And another. And more. They were turning off, causing a cascading wave of utter blackness to roll toward us. All at once a surge of sound and vibration crashed over me, shaking the ground and battering my eardrums on its way down to the parts of the tunnel we'd already climbed.

  All I could do was stare. A quarter of the distance I'd been able to see was now blacked out.

  A third.

  Half.

  Terror finally struck me full force when I realized what was happening. The lights weren't turning off. Something huge was rampaging toward us, filling the tunnel completely and blotting out the light. As it got closer I could make out the blunt face of a vast, blind worm with a million teeth shining in the yellow light as it became aware of Map and I. The mouth opened, the yawning maw almost as wide as the tunnel itself.

  There would be no fighting this thing, and no chance of escape.

  If I hadn't just emptied my bladder, I'd have been pissing down my leg. Panicked, I looked to Map for guidance but he didn't know what to do either. He crowded against me, and I glanced around in desperation for some place to hide.

  We had perhaps four seconds before the thing was upon us. After that we'd be snatched up by the backward-facing teeth and our bodies would be meat for the beast. I was out of tricks and out of ideas, surrounded by smooth walls and yellow lights as the monster shot towards us.

  Instinct took over as the logical part of my brain checked out and I found myself running to the wall of the tunnel, my back pressed against it and my feet shoving my spine against the smooth surface, struggling to make myself flat enough to evade this
thing. My right hand was a fist, pounding on the stone behind me out of sheer desperation.

  My left hand tried to do the same, but it managed to find air where there should have been wall. When I whipped my head around to try and work out what was happening, I saw that I was elbow-deep in the rock.

  It's an illusion!

  My eyes got even wider as I watched a burly arm flash out and grab me by the collar. I reached for Map, who threw himself after me just as the worm thing roared past with the speed of a runaway train.

  We were in a different part of the tunnel. Blue crystals lit the place in narrow seams, and everywhere was rough-hewn. Someone had taken a lot of time to hack this out of the Citadel.

  Whoever had saved me had clamped a meaty hand over my mouth, and gave Map a quick kick to ensure his silence as well.

  They didn't have to ask twice. I was grateful for the help, especially when I struggled to look up at my captor. His face was streaked with sweat and traces of minerals, but he was definitely human. He wasn't concentrating on me, choosing instead to focus on the false wall we'd just fallen through.

  The thing out there was still loudly rushing by. It took almost a full thirty seconds to pass. Once it had, I shook the hand free and said, "You've got to get me to a safe place."

  The guy turned his head and spat. "There's no such thing, so get that shit out of your head."

  "Huh?"

  He let me go. "Can you walk?"

  I hurt, but it was nothing more than cuts and scrapes earned in the process of getting rescued. "I think so."

  "Let's find out," he said, turning around and grabbing a pickax and a bucket from the ground.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  If the first tunnel had been a testament to elegance and architectural ingenuity, the angular passageway I was in right now was a bleak endorsement of sheer effort. The glow from the blue seams of crystalline ore provided more than enough light to show me just how much work had gone into hacking this place out of the rock. I could even see the impacts and gouges made by the tools that had been used to create it.

  My rescuer was one of the biggest guys I'd ever laid eyes on. He slung the massive pickax from a loop on his belt, and when he navigated the terrain it was like he was built for it.

  Or the other way around. It was more like he built it. The passage was the perfect size for him, never more than a foot taller or wider than he was.

  He strode across the uneven floor with ease. I tried to catch up to him, but ended up tripping on an outcropping I hadn't noticed in my haste. I managed to reach out and grab the wall myself before I fell, accidentally plunging my hand wrist-deep into a puddle of blue light streaking along it.

  I yanked my hand away as quickly as I could. I didn't know if the stuff was dangerous. It didn't hurt, though my palm was coated in an azure glow that pulsed and rippled as I flexed my hand.

  Having just spent so much time in a place where light was a privilege, I didn't want to waste my chance to gather a little. I tried to scoop some of the glimmer out of the crevice. Even if I didn't have anywhere to put it, wiping it off on my pants would be better than leaving a possibly vital tool behind.

  The dude that had saved me may have been big, but that didn't stop him from being fast, too. As quick as a snake's strike, he grabbed my forearm with one meaty paw. I could feel the bones in there creak closer together. "Don't bother," he growled, cranking my arm up until my hand was right in front of my face.

  The blue light had already started to fade. It dimmed dramatically over the next few seconds before dying off completely. "Damn it," I said with a sigh. "I was hoping that'd be useful."

  Skill: Organic Scrutiny

  The ability to investigate and identify the effects of an organic item.

  New score - Twenty-Nine

  Organic Scrutiny only applies once all of an item's core components have been investigated.

  It looked like I wasn’t always going to get the old score. Okay, that might speed things up.

  The guy made a face at me. "Nothing down here is ever as easy as that. The light is delicate. Don't you think I'd already have a lantern full of that stuff, if I could?" He let go of me and set the bucket aside, stretching out his other hand and laying a blunt index finger along another bright vein that ran along the wall. "It lives wherever the thricen ore does. Near as we can tell, it eats it. Mining the ore kills the glow. So does sticking your hand in it..."

  I realized that I'd just insinuated he was too stupid to use the basic resources around him. Not wanting to remain on his bad side, it was time to turn on the charm. I gave him a smile and said, "I'm Adam."

  "Good for you."

  "I'm a human, too," I told him. I suppose there was a chance that there were other races in the Citadel that looked like us. "Not sure if that's obvious, or not."

  "Congratulations."

  I grit my teeth. He was trying to make this as difficult as he could, and he was doing a damn good job of it.

  "I'm supposed to be on your damn team," I blurted out. The echo bounced my voice around, the pleading tone growing worse with every repetition.

  He snorted. "Don't think so. My team hid from the Burrower when we could, and accepted our inevitable deaths when we couldn't. My team faced the XAR, the Garmra, the Ulamon and the Blind Hrathi whenever the Vi-Darra forced them down the tunnel network to taste for the warmth of intruders."

  "But—"

  "You didn't go through any of that with me."

  I shrugged. What did he want me to do, build a fucking time machine? "That's hardly fair. I didn't have the chance to. I would have done all those things."

  "I doubt that."

  This guy was starting to get on my nerves. "Would it kill you to be just a little bit nicer? At least give me a chance to piss you off properly before you treat me like dogshit."

  He grunted. "It's nothing personal, Adam. I just know your type."

  "Do you, now?"

  "Absolutely. And I'm thanking my lucky stars that you weren't around when I had to carve this passage out in the first place. You'd have bitched and moaned and given up."

  That got my temper really flaring. "I'm no quitter..."

  He cocked an eyebrow at me when my words trailed off. "If you say so."

  My anger simmered, but the underlying truth of the accusation held it in check. I couldn't help but remember all the chemo sessions I refused, or the worried phone calls I'd never bothered to return, or the stack of unopened bills on the kitchen table.

  He sighed. "You already know you're a quitter. I can see it in your eyes, so save your bravado. Maybe you can fool Neve with it, but not me."

  I tried again, trying to shift the direction of the conversation away from my faults and toward common ground. "Come on man, work with me. You can at least tell me your name."

  "I'm Zane."

  "Cool. Hi. I mean, hello."

  He nodded.

  "Okay..." I thought for a second. ""Look, I'm just going to ask, and forgive me if it's rude or if I don't know the right way to say it."

  He grinned, but there was no humor in it. "This sounds good already. Ask away."

  "What level are you?"

  The big guy shook his head sadly and turned around, headed down the new tunnel. "You don't get it, do you?"

  "What's there to get?"

  He glanced over his shoulder. "Let's go, and bring your animal. Don't make me regret not letting you two become Burrower shit."

  I sighed. "I guess I haven't really thanked you for that, huh? Sorry. Map and I—"

  "Map?" Zane was facing down the tunnel now, and the echo made his words repeat. "You named him?"

  "Sure. He's my friend, as useful and loyal as anyone I've met down here."

  I'd meant it as a subtle, underhanded dig, but the big guy got it. At least he laughed. "Present company included, I assume. Okay, we'll see how helpful he is. Personally, I wonder how he tastes once we cut him into steaks."

  Map shivered beside me and let out a rollin
g moan, but I gave him a reassuring pat. "That's not something you're ever going to find out."

  Zane rubbed his stomach. "No, you're probably right. It'd just be a waste, no matter how good a full belly might feel. Besides, I know Neve. She'll take one look at his big doe eyes and our feast will be canceled before it’s even begun."

  "Neve?" That was the second time he'd used the name. "She's your leader?"

  "Near enough. She's the one that sent me to find you."

  "How many of you are there?" I asked, picking my way along behind him. I had a feeling he was going slow for my benefit, but I still could barely keep up.

  "Six, including me and her."

  "That's not bad at all," I said, my spirits buoyed by the number. The Evvex had told me there'd be thirteen humans in the Citadel, once we all arrived. I'd been worried that I'd have to spend most of my time getting everybody together, so finding half of them all at once was a godsend.

  "I'm glad you think so. It hasn't done us much good."

  I shrugged and said, "But I'm here now," more to myself than to him. That didn't stop Zane from hearing me, though. I suppose part of me wanted him to, but when he whirled around I was still surprised by the look of anger on his face.

  "What was that?"

  I shrugged. "I just meant that I can help. You said it yourself, your team broke their backs to get this far. But here I am on day one, not all that much worse for wear. I may have gotten lucky, but it's looking more and more like the Citadel and I are going to get along just fine."

  He looked stunned. "I just saved you from the Burrower..."

  "So? You guys probably all started in the Glade, same as me. Which means that you had enough time to get up the tunnel and hack away at the rock for at least a little while before the worm ate you and you had to start again. That tells me that avoiding it is just a matter of timing. Either the Burrower goes back and forth at regular intervals or it takes it a while to realize you've returned. Either way, I'd have worked it out."

  "Yeah?"

  I nodded. "Between you and me, it turns out that I've been training for this place for most of my life. Unknowingly, of course. Don't be surprised if I'm the one leading you, before too long."