Chapter Thirty-Three

16,000 feet below the surface

9:15 a.m.

So hot.

Not all over. Warm all over, yes, but hot only on her hands and arms. Sunburn hot.

Bertha heard voices, understood what everyone was saying, although she couldn’t really put things together, wasn’t really sure what was going on.

“We have to go after him!”

Patrick. Screaming, so loud his throat had to hurt. Why was he yelling like that?

“Silverbugs! They’re all over the place!”

That was Veronica. Selfish bitch. Bertha didn’t like her.

“The old kind,” Patrick said. “Still scrambled when they get close. Ignore them.”

“Up in the waterfall! Around the statue!”

That was Sanji. Bertha didn’t know what to think of him. Seemed like an okay guy, although the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — if his daughter was a bitch, that meant he wasn’t much of anything. Right?

Around the statue … what was he talking about? Oh, right, the two-hundred-foot-tall rocktopi. Kind of amazing, really. Colossus of Rome or whatever. The stop-motion Sinbad movies she watched with her dad. Or that big statue from the Game of Thrones show, the one that straddled the harbor so all the people on all the boats had to look up at his cock when they passed beneath.

She opened her eyes. Seemed too bright. Her face burned, but in a different way from her hands and arms.

The rocktopi statue … was it glowing? No, it couldn’t, it was stone. So what were those colors? She blinked, squinted up. Something moving up at the top, in cracks in the walls around the statue. Angry colors, lighting up the waterfall mist. Glowing little clouds. Like flashing angels. Hundreds of flashing angels.

Would they come down?

“Empty the backpacks! Put the dead silverbugs inside of them!”

That was Kirkland. Such a dick. All of this was his fault. Patrick, barking words more than speaking. He sounded like her old drill sergeant.

“Everyone, get that rope around you! We can’t lose anyone in the rapids. Move your asses, they look like they’re coming soon!”

Someone moving her, jostling her, looping something around her chest. Rope, they said rope. Tie everyone together.

She looked away from the waterfall angels. It was Patrick, so close to her.

That nasty cut on his face. The stitches. She wanted to kiss those stitches, take away his pain. Maybe he thought he was ugly, but he wasn’t. He was a beautiful man. A killer, but was that his fault? They’d told him lies. She knew. They’d told her the same lies. For country. For your mates. All bullshit. She could help him. She could make all his days — from this one to his last — so much better.

“I love you,” she said.

He stopped moving. Their faces, so close, separated by a couple of inches, separated by the thin faceplates. A killer’s eyes: analytical, remorseless. But something else in there, too. A good man who wanted to claw his way out. A man who wanted to live in peace.

“I love you, too,” he said. “You’re hurt. I will get you out of here. Can I take your knife?”

How ridiculous he was even asking her. She nodded.

He worked it free of her webbing, put it in his own. He leaned closer, touched his forehead to hers. Then, he went back to tying her up.

Bertha closed her eyes.

So hot.

9:18 a.m.

He washed up on a beach made of platinum dust.

Angus hurt. The blow from hitting the river bottom, then a couple of good smacks while going through the rapids. Lucky he hadn’t drowned. Had probably come close.

River must have changed course here. Gravel and gleaming sand, reflecting the light that filtered through from the break in the ship far above. Rooms and hallways all around, reaching up hundreds of feet. Wreckage from when this area had collapsed.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

Some twisted metal, but not much. He could see into bubble rooms, see the Swiss-cheese composition of the ship, but most of the edges that faced the river looked defined, cut. More like planned viewing decks, like designers had sliced away this part of the ship to let the river flow beneath. Not accidental … engineered.

A few feet up the beach, he saw worn limestone blocks. An old wall that the river had mostly eaten away before the water changed course. Glittering platinum dust, long since dried in place, showed where the waterline had once been.

At some point, the rocktopi had wanted the river to flow through their ship. Maybe it had been some kind of acceptance they were here forever, that they were never going to leave. The Dense Mass Cavern’s carved walls were obviously meant to be permanent. Perhaps the ancient shipwrecked crew had wanted to make the most of what they had. Make their home … nice, for lack of a better word.

Angus glanced up, to the canyon far above, where two curves of hull almost met. Light filtering down. Where was he, exactly? About halfway through the ship? Couldn’t be that far to the Linus Highway.

He was almost out.

Click-click … click-click …

The sound came from his right, from one of the bubble rooms. Silverbugs. Burnished and scratched, not new. Staring right at him, evaluating him. If they were the old ones, why weren’t they scrambled?

He pulled his walkie-talkie from his webbing. Water dripped from the cracked plastic shell.

Ruined.

Well, shit.

One of the silverbugs crept closer.

Angus pushed himself back into the river. He didn’t take his eyes off the silverbug, even as the water rose to his hips, his chest.

The current carried him downstream again.

9:20 a.m.

The waterfall roared on, the sound almost background noise now.

Connell shoved the second silverbug into the empty nylon backpack. He tied the top tight. Not waterproof, but it would work for a little while. The first silverbug — the one that would go to Lybrand — was dented, but there weren’t any breaks visible in the round shell. It would float just fine. Probably. This one — the one O’Doyle had smashed against a rock over and over again, screaming and snarling the whole time — had several gouges in the shell. Water would leak through the backpack, then fill the sphere. Eventually, it would sink. For the short-term, however, it would help keep someone afloat.

“Kirkland!” O’Doyle, bellowing. “Stop fucking around with that thing and tie off!”

Connell set the backpack down, picked up the rope, looked at it. He had no idea how to tie a knot.

Whether it was the rest, Lybrand’s injuries, seeing Angus run away or a combination of all three, O’Doyle was in charge once again. He had some of his strength back. Some, not all. He limped along, occasionally stumbling a bit. Fresh spots of orange spread across his thigh. Connell knew the man didn’t have long before he collapsed again — hopefully, they would be back to the surface before that happened.

Fucking rope … what was he supposed to do, tie it like he’d tie his shoes?

Small hands took the rope away from him. Veronica. She moved fast, looping it under his armpits.

“O’Doyle,” she called over her shoulder even as she started tying it tight. “What if we get tangled up in this?”

“A chance we’ll have to take,” he said. He was busy tying the silverbug-stuffed backpack to Lybrand. “We don’t know how rough the water will be when we exit the ship. If the current takes someone away, we can’t go after them.”

Translation: once through the ship, O’Doyle wasn’t waiting for anyone. He was getting Lybrand to the surface. If Connell, Veronica or Sanji was swept away? Well, that was just too bad.

Connell didn’t dig the idea of being tied to others while in the rapids. Veronica clearly didn’t dig it, either, but — like him — they were obeying O’Doyle’s orders.

The sound of a hundred simultaneous screeches tore at the air, the battle cry of a demon army. Connell looked to the ancient rocktopi statue. At the top, all around it, cracks in detailed wall carvings, places where the ever-changing river had once flowed. Those old channels left tunnels, tunnels the rocktopi now filled. Their murderous oranges and psychotic reds lit up the spraying waterfall, set the river mist ablaze. Stoplights in the fog.

Too many to count.

Far too many to fight.

Whatever their hesitation to enter the Dense Mass Cavern, they were working up the courage to get past it.

O’Doyle, pressing something into his chest.

“The scrambler,” he said. “Keep it out of the water, keep it safe. It’s our lifeline, Kirkland, understand?”

Connell looked down at the walkie-talkie. He took it, looked up.

“If we’re going to die, can’t you call me by my first name?”

O’Doyle stared, then his new scar twisted with a slight smile.

“We’re not going to die. Trust me, Connell, I’ve been through worse and lived to tell the tale.”

Connell stared back, and then, of all things, he laughed. It sounded ridiculous, and maybe more than a bit insane.

“You’ve been through worse than being trapped three miles underground, chased by robots and fighting hand-to-hand with alien cavemen that want to slice you to pieces?”

O’Doyle shrugged. “Maybe you’ve never been to Colombia.”

A screech, then a sound like a hundred pounds of bread dough dropped from ten stories up.

On one of the big rocks at the waterfall pool’s edge, a rocktopi lay mostly flat, its body conforming to the stone below it. Yellow goo leaked from ragged tears in its thick skin. The creature flashed — blue, then green, then a pale red — then its light flickered out.

“They’re coming,” Sanji screamed, still fumbling with his own rope. “Time’s up! Everyone in the water!”

Connell looked to the top of the rocktopi sculpture. The beasties were moving faster, making more noise. It wasn’t until one jumped through the mist and plummeted down to splash heavily into the pool below that Connell understood what was happening — the first one had tried the same thing and missed the water.

He remembered the scrambler in his hands. If it was on when it got wet, would that ruin it? He didn’t know. He switched it off.

A tug on the rope tied around his chest.

They were tied in a chain, about fifty feet of slack between each of them. Veronica to Connell, Connell to Lybrand, Lybrand to O’Doyle and O’Doyle to Sanji. Veronica stepped down to a lower terrace, the former bottom of the old river, then down another terrace and stood at the river’s edge. She hopped off and slid feetfirst into the water.

O’Doyle and Sanji helped Lybrand down the first terrace.

Connell glanced back to see if that diving rocktopi was coming. It floated in the middle of the waterfall pool, bobbing slightly. No light. Dead. Either from the fall or from drowning. Maybe they wouldn’t give chase after all.

An army of silverbugs scrambled up the soaring wall, up the statue itself, oblivious to the water crashing down on and around them. Free of the scrambler’s effects, they coalesced into lines that led from the broken floor up to the mist-shrouded rocktopi high up on the wall.

Something hit hard near Connell’s feet, sent chips of rock against his leg. His eye followed the movement: a bouncing wet rock. He looked back to the top of the sculpture, saw a long, orange and red arm snap like a whip — a rock sailed through the air.

Cracks and thonks: a rain of stone began.

“Connell!” Veronica, screaming at him. “Come on!”

He hefted the backpack turned flotation device and ran to the river. Down a terrace, then another, then he leapt into the water near Veronica. He sank to his chin before his feet hit bottom — it was shallower than he’d thought.

Splashes all around him as the rocktopi assault continued.

O’Doyle winced as he slid over the edge, into the water, then reached up for Lybrand. Sanji helped ease her in.

Veronica let out a grunt, like she wanted to scream but had choked on it. She pointed, found her voice.

“They’re climbing down!”

In the waterfall’s mist, long arms drooped down like glowing cake batter, formed around cracks or rocks below, then the rest of the rocktopi body flowed after it — real tentacles clinging to the statue’s broken versions. Flashing amoebas reaching and flowing, reaching and flowing. One slipped, a colorful blob rolling free, instantly flashing a pure, deep cobalt, then it slammed into the floor, guts splashing everywhere.

Screeches and squeals. The waterfall’s endless bellow. Rock missiles smashing down on floor and water alike.

Another tug on the rope, harder this time — Veronica, out in the water, being pulled at by the strong current. Connell felt that same current pulling at him, at his floating backpack, saw Lybrand start to come downstream toward him.

O’Doyle pushed out into the river.

Sanji sat his butt down on the ledge, feet in the water. He turned to put his hands on the stone so he could slide in — a softball-sized rock bounced off his head, cracking his helmet in two. He slumped sideways, onto his shoulder.

If he had rolled toward the river, he would have fallen in, floated away.

He didn’t.

Disoriented, hurt, he rolled away, onto his back on the terrace’s flat stone.

Connell heard Veronica screaming, but her words didn’t register, if she was even saying words at all. His mind could only process two things: Sanji, rolling slightly, head gushing blood, and the wave of angry rocktopi descending the wall, reaching the floor and flowing forward, platinum knives reflecting the artificial sun.

O’Doyle tried to move toward Sanji. The river pulled at Veronica, and Connell, and Lybrand, the weight of three bodies dragging O’Doyle away. The rope between him and Sanji snapped taut. O’Doyle grabbed it, tried yanking hard, but couldn’t get any leverage in the neck-deep river. He started to pull himself — and everyone behind him — arm over arm toward Sanji, who lay there like an overweight yellow anchor.

It was over. Dozens of rocktopi rushed toward Sanji. They’d kill him, then reel everyone in like fish on a line.

Connell saw O’Doyle reach underwater. When his hand came up, it held the big knife.

“Noooo!” Veronica, screaming, pleading, and Connell understood that single word just fine. He heard it even as his heart surged with both hope and shame.

Cut it, cut that fucking rope, Sanji’s a dead man anyway, CUT IT.

O’Doyle did.

A slice up, a slice down, a slice up—

And through.

Connell shot backward, ripped along by the current, every sense sparkling and poking, his body electrified, filled with a savage need to survive and a matching need to stop, go back, to help.

He treaded water, not caring what might come up behind, unable to look away.

At the river’s edge, the rocktopi swarmed in.

Sanji rolled to his hands and knees. Blood poured from his head, a dripping tap of crimson water. He looked up, saw the others rocketing downstream, away from him.

Connell was still close enough to see the expression on Sanji’s face when the man realized both what had happened and what was about to happen.

The rocktopi crashed over him. Furious yellows, raging oranges, the mass of bodies glowing brighter than ever before. Boneless limbs went up and down and up and down, until arcing red join the collage of colors.

The light above seemed to blink out. Connell fell backward, the river pulling him down into the rapids.

9:22 a.m.

Angus slid into shadow. Not pitch-black, but as his eyes adjusted he could see nothing at all. The current carried him on.

Not much farther now. Couldn’t be.

He saw light up ahead, stronger than before. The river carried him out of the shadows. Blinking against the brightness, he saw a wall of limestone blocks ahead. The water started carrying him to the right — a course change clearly caused by those blocks — he kicked hard, reaching for the wall’s edge.

He reached up, grabbed it. Holding on by one hand, body against the wall, he looked around.

These blocks … they weren’t eroded. Some of them even looked new. Finely fitted together. Were the rocktopi maintaining this wall or something?

The river bent off to his right. A few hundred feet on, it bent back to the left. The bend seemed to bleed the current, slowing the river down to a calmer pace.

His eyes finally adjusted. He saw the same Swiss-cheese rooms arcing to his right, the same curving ship sides above, almost meeting at the top.

To his left, the source of the new light.

It burned bright from the top of a dome-shaped, cathedral-like structure. The limestone wall wrapped around in front of that dome, protecting it from the water that had eroded so much of the ship.

Angus pulled himself up with both hands. A level stone floor reached away from the top of the wall, into the dome.

In the dome’s center, fifty feet from the breakwater, dangling like a low-hanging chandelier, hung a large, polished orb, about ten feet in diameter. Between it and him, something that looked like a waist-high altar. The orb hovered over a metal-rimmed hole in the stone floor. Angus remembered his map, remembered the strange line Kirkland had pointed out that plunged deep into the earth.

What was that orb? Maybe some kind of bathysphere, so rocktopi could descend past the point where geothermal heat would cook them to a crisp?

Movement caught his eye. Up on the curving dome, near the light. A silverbug, crawling across the inside of the dome wall … the bumpy dome wall.

His breath froze. Silverbugs, thousands of them, still as stone, coating the dome’s interior. Metallic termites packed in tight. He sat very still, studied them. A wash of relief when he realized they were all burnished, a little beat-up. No shiny new ones here.

The one he’d first seen kept moving, crawling over its fellow machines, reached the cable that supported the sphere and scurried down. It walked across the sphere’s curved surface. The wedge-shaped head pressed into a small hole: a circular panel popped open. Angus watched the silverbug crawl half inside that hole, saw its rear legs jiggling. It crawled back out. A split foot shut the panel; Angus heard it click home.

That panel … the diameter just a bit larger than the diameter of the silverbug.

A perfect fit. An engineered fit.

“Well, fuck me,” he said. “Maintenance. That’s what these things were originally made for … maintenance.”

Goddamn repair robots.

Maybe the rocktopi — their long-dead ancestors, anyway — had made those machines. As the rocktopi got dumber, maybe the machines took over more and more responsibilities. If their programming was to serve the rocktopi, keep that race alive, maybe the machines had to become smarter in order to fulfill that mission.

Click … click-click …

Coming from his right.

He slowly pushed back into the water. As the current took him, he looked to his right: two silverbugs on top of the wall.

Angus swam to the middle of the river, where the flow was the strongest. The current carried him around the next bend, leaving behind the cathedral with its dangling orb.

Up ahead, Angus saw the dimness of the canyon-like breach give way to the full, blinding light of the cavern’s artificial suns. He was almost out of the ship.

He kicked hard, swimming for the shore. Just before he broke free of the ship’s shadow, he waded into the shallows, exhausted, drained, but smiling with success. An almost proper beach, sparkling platinum dust so thick it was like mud. His feet sank in up to his ankles as he finally left the water behind.

Plenty of partial bubble rooms here, just like everywhere else in this ship. He moved to the one closest to the edge. Platinum silt covered the floor.

He listened. He heard nothing.

Finally, Angus peeked around the corner.

The Dense Mass Cavern was the same here as it was on the other side of the massive wreck: a huge wall stretching for miles in either direction, covered in chipped colors and cracked designs; the ship’s platinum hull curving up on his right; an ancient tile floor battered by falling rock.

And fifty meters ahead of him, across that shattered field of tile, an arched entrance to a tunnel.

The Linus Highway.

He had made it.

Newfound energy filled him. He ran for the entrance, aches and pains forgotten. Screw Randy, screw O’Doyle, screw Kirkland — he was getting out.

Through the entrance. The incline started immediately. Angus attacked it. Nothing could stop him now. Up and up and up he went, one foot after another. No silverbugs. No rocktopi. Rough walls, a tunnel that looked natural even though he knew better.

Just keep going, keep going … only a little bit more and you’re free.

9:27 a.m.

Not much farther now. Maybe two hundred yards to the Dense Mass Cavern. Downhill was easy — Kayla knew that coming back up this constant slope would be a grade A bitch.

The Marco/Polo unit beeped softly, startling her. Making her body spike with excitement. She stopped, pulled the device from her webbing. As soon as she looked at it, the beep vanished. A fluke signal, maybe, already gone, but she’d seen the name:

ANGUS KOOL

In these stone tunnels, a signal could bounce a long way, bounce a certain way that instantly changed and that signal would be lost. But to get any signal at all, he had to be close.

Got you now, you little fuck.

Kayla kept moving downhill.

9:28 a.m.

“You motherfucker! You let him die!”

Veronica’s anguish raged forth, slapped off the rushing water, bounced off the ship that arced above them.

Patrick heard her words, felt them deep in his soul. Yes, he had let Sanji die. Patrick wanted to live, desperately wanted it, of course he did, but he hadn’t sliced that rope for himself — he’d done it so Bertha might live.

No man left behind.

An admirable phrase, but this wasn’t the military. Hell, this wasn’t even sanity.

So tired. Tired to the bone, to the marrow. Tired in his heart. His soul. His leg, on fire. Muscles, weak, like old cloth, saggy and useless. His body was trying to shut down. It was all he could do to stay conscious.

How much more could he take?

Sanji had been a good man. Through it all, he hadn’t complained. He hadn’t been selfish. A good man. That vision of flashing death sweeping over Sanji … that would stay with Patrick for a long, long time.

One would think a man’s memory could fill up with horrors, fill to overflowing so that no new hauntings could lodge in the nooks and crannies, jam their way in there so deep they wouldn’t leave until the brain itself decomposed. One might think that; one might be wrong.

Just another piece of playback to make Patrick afraid to close his eyes at night.

Sanji was gone. Patrick had to make sure that sacrifice was worth it. He had to get Lybrand out. Hopefully, Connell and Veronica as well. Hopefully.

He swam, clumsily pulled on the rope at the same time. He pulled closer to Bertha. She was floating, the silverbug backpack clutched to her chest. Water splashed against her face, slid inside her mask, dripped down red.

Still bleeding.

He held her, letting the backpack keep them both afloat.

“The rapids,” he said. “You hit anything?”

Heavy eyelids blinked. A slow shake of the head.

The river carried them along. Splashing sounds, someone swimming toward them: Connell, his broken nose streaming blood.

“O’Doyle, you okay?”

His words sounded pinched, like they were forced through a filter of intense pain.

“No,” Patrick said. “Need a rest. You get hurt in the rapids?”

Connell started to answer, winced, took in a hissing breath.

“Back,” he said. “Hit it on something.”

Quiet again. Just the sound of the river: flowing water, echoing plinks and pops. The ship sailed passed on either side.

More splashing noises — Veronica, this time, coming closer.

“You cocksucker!”

Her mouth a twisted snarl, her hands claws reaching for his face.

Connell grabbed her arms, held them.

“Stop it,” he said, firm but not angry. “Sanji’s gone, this won’t help.”

“Because he is a fucking coward.” She pointed a finger at Patrick. “A goddamn coward.”

Of all the horrible things Patrick had done in his life, he’d never been accused of that. Maybe if you live long enough, you’ll commit every sin there is.

“He had to do it,” Connell said. “If he didn’t, we’d all be dead.”

Veronica fell quiet. Her anger shifted to pain, and she started to sob.

Patrick closed his eyes. So weak. Could he sleep the rest of the way through this ship?

“A beach,” Connell said.

A beach … a chance to rest?

“Have to stop,” Patrick said. “Gotta rest.”

Connell said nothing.

Patrick opened his eyes. Yes, a beach, on the right, gravel and sand all gleaming with platinum. Eroded limestone blocks. Dark spherical rooms beyond.

And all over that beach, silverbugs.

“Hold on a little longer,” Connell said. “Let’s see if there’s a better spot, okay?”

Sure, there’s a better spot — six feet under, which is where Patrick knew he was heading.

He closed his eyes again.

One arm holding the backpack, another holding Lybrand, he floated on.

9:30 a.m.

One foot after another. Up the slope. Legs burning, but that didn’t stop him.

Just keep going, keep going … only a little bit more and you’re free.

The echo of a long beep made him stop cold.

Up ahead … a small light … moving.

“Doctor Kool, are you there?”

A woman’s voice. A rescue party.

“I’m here!”

Another burst of energy. He attacked the slope as if it were downhill rather than up, each step effortless and easy.

Seconds later the light of her headlamp filled the tunnel. She strode into view, holding a nasty-looking machine gun.

Web gear covered a yellow silt-smeared EarthCore KoolSuit. Dirty blond hair spilled out from beneath an EarthCore mining helmet. A pair of thick night-vision goggles hung around her neck.

“Doctor Kool, are you all right?”

He didn’t recognize her, and that didn’t matter.

“I’m fine. Holy shitballs am I glad you’re here! Who are you?”

“Barb Yakely sent me,” she said. “We’re here to get you all out. Where are the others?”

Angus suddenly found himself out of breath. The climb, catching up with him. He bent, put his hands on his knees.

“Rocktopi killed them,” he said. “I’m the only one left. Get me out of here.”

He didn’t care if his lie was soon discovered, as long as he made it to the surface before O’Doyle came hopping up the Linus Highway.

“Rock, toe, pie?” the woman said, sounding it out. “You mean those glowing monsters?”

Angus stood, nodded impatiently. “More of them back there, so get me out. Right now.”

He started up the slope again, brushing past her — she grabbed his arm, yanked him to a stop.

“I’m here to get everyone out,” she said. “Where’s Kirkland and the others?”

What was this stupid bitch’s problem? Angus pointed to his ear.

“Are you fucking deaf? I told you, they’re all dead. You obviously know who I am, so you know how important I am to EarthCore and Yakely. I’m ordering you to take me to the surface right now!”

The woman cocked her head to one side. Through the paper-thin mask, Angus watched her eyes narrow, her upper lip twitch slightly.

A chill washed through him — something about her reminded him of O’Doyle.

Angus saw the woman whip the rifle butt up, didn’t even have time to flinch before the wood cracked into his cheek.

He sagged, started to fall. Someone caught him. Everything spinning … a knife in his cheek, or maybe a metal spike. Coppery taste in his mouth. Blood?

His tongue poked at the inside of his teeth. One missing. Incisor. Left. Still in his mouth. He started to spit, swallowed instead, felt it scrape his throat.

On his stomach. The smell of the cave silt: earthy, like wet stone. Someone moving him. The woman. She had his wrists. Jerking motions. Pain there, too, but nothing compared to the fire coursing through his face.

Fingers on his cheeks, digging into his jaw, the agony so screamingly intense it killed all thought, all movement.

Something else in his mouth now, filling it … he couldn’t bite down. Mouth open so wide his jaw felt like it was being ripped off. The pain in his cheek … his head throbbed … it hurt to blink.

Facedown. The parts of him that didn’t scream felt completely numb. Except his hands. No, not his hands, his wrists, stinging … behind his back … he couldn’t move his hands.

He was tied up.

“Mphmh,” he said. Couldn’t form words. What was in his mouth? Tasted like rubber. His lips flapped wetly against it when he breathed.

“Hush, darling.”

The woman. Her voice, cold, drawling like in those old Mae West movies.

“I don’t have as much time to spend with you as I’d like,” she said. “So it’s important to establish my credibility right out of the gate.”

She squatted in front of him. Smiling, knees wide. Something in her left hand. She held it out toward him. A rust-speckled pair of pliers.

He hurt so bad be could barely see. He looked at the pliers, the evil smile on her face, the pliers again. Chipped red fingernail polish gleamed in her headlamp beam. She pushed the pliers together, pulled them apart — they made a noise like that of hungry baby bird.

Angus lurched to get up … and went nowhere. Hands bound behind his back. Ankles, too — when he tried to kick, it pulled his wrists.

He was hog-tied.

An explosion of agony in his face, burning and piercing in his cheek, the numb weight of his brain throbbing.

“Oh, stop,” she said. “I’m a professional, little man. You’re not going anywhere.”

She stood, leaving him staring at her boots.

“I have some questions to ask you, Doctor Little Prick.”

She stepped over him. Couldn’t see her boots. He couldn’t see her at all.

“You’re going to answer them.”

That baby bird sound again.

Weight on his ass … was she sitting on him?

“You might not believe that I’m good at what I do,” she said. “I don’t blame you, sugar plum — you’re a scientist. Such a smart scientist, too, aren’t you? And you know what you scientists just love?”

Strong hands on his, gripping a finger. He tried to clench his fists, but she pried his right pointer finger free.

“You love data, buddy boy.”

Her voice, growing angrier.

Those pliers, what was she going to do with those pliers?

Angus lurched, twisted, tried to rise up on his left knee, shake her off. She seemed to match his every move. She weighed too much …

“You wanted to keep me out of the NSA,” the woman said.

She was crazy what did she want with him he didn’t even know this woman he’d never seen her in his life she—

“You wanted to make me look like an idiot. You need some data to properly understand who you’re dealing with. You’re just like him, you little prick, you fucking little prick, you think I’m stupid and worthless, do you? Just like Dad thought?”

Angus started to scream, tried to shout no I don’t! but couldn’t get the words out past the ball jammed in his mouth. Yes, a ball, that’s what it was, some kind of rubber ball …

He felt hard steel close around the last knuckle of his finger, felt the metal teeth digging in.

“Mpphh! Mmmhph!”

“Shhhh, honey. Be a good boy.”

The pliers crunched down.

9:36 a.m.

Veronica reached the wall first.

The river bent off to the right, but no one was looking at that. They all stared at the gleaming orb, and the strange altar in front of it.

“My God,” Connell said. “It’s still here.”

She floated there, one hand on the wall, the other on the silverbug-stuffed backpack Connell had given her. Thing was already half sinking. It wouldn’t be of use much longer. She didn’t care.

Her father was dead.

Hacked to pieces, butchered, like an animal. Murdered by things that should have died off thousands of years ago.

She’d seen his hand come off.

She’d seen his blood spraying.

Just before she slid backward down into the rapids, she was almost sure she’d seen them cut off his head.

O’Doyle’s fault.

No, she already knew that wasn’t true. There was no helping her father. Not really. She wanted someone to lash out at. She needed a target, but not someone … something.

The rocktopi.

Connell swam up next to her, steadied himself with his hand on the limestone blocks. O’Doyle weakly pulled Lybrand to the wall, Connell pulled them in.

The four survivors stared into the open dome, stared at the orb. A giant Christmas ornament dangling over a shaft that ran straight to the depths of hell. Hell. That was where she’d send the rocktopi and their vicious little machines. Straight to hell.

“Silverbugs all over,” O’Doyle said. His voice sounded thin, drained, like that of a dying old man. “Connell, you better get the scrambler out.”

Connell shook his head, winced when he did. “Screw that. We have to be close, we have to keep going.”

“I need a rest,” O’Doyle said.

Veronica tore her eyes away from the orb and looked at the man. One thick arm held Lybrand’s head, making sure her face stayed above the surface. She hung limply; the float tied to her chest the only thing keeping her from sinking.

“Yeah, Connell,” Veronica said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the river’s metallic, plinking echo. “I need a rest, too.”

Connell closed his eyes. He floated there a moment, taking deep breaths. He nodded. He reached up one long arm, grabbed the top of the wall. Grimacing, he pulled himself out of the water, the toes of his boots pressing into the limestone. He turned, sat on top, dangling legs dripping water down to the river.

From all sides, silverbugs converged toward him. The entire dome seemed to shift, to move — what Veronica had thought was a solid wall was anything but. The machines scrambled across the stone floor, skittered along the top of the limestone wall. An angry chorus of clicks and whirs filled the air.

Connell stayed calm. He carefully pulled the scrambler from his webbing. He shook it hard, twisted his wrist as if to force out any water.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, then he turned it on.

Almost instantly, the silverbugs’ coordinated movement collapsed into a jumble of wandering confusion.

Veronica reached, gripped the top of the wall. She hauled herself up. She and Connell helped pull Lybrand up onto the wall, then helped O’Doyle. Veronica looked at her companions: all exhausted, all wounded, all doomed. She knew none of them would make it out alive. Too many rocktopi, too many injuries, too far to travel.

They were all going to die.

Just like Sanji.

Just like Randy.

Just like Mack.

Just like that miner, just like those guards.

Veronica wouldn’t let those deaths be for nothing. She walked along the wall, then onto the chamber’s stone floor toward the altar, stepping over drunken silverbugs, her hands working at the knots she’d tied in the rope around her chest.

She was almost to the altar when a hand gripped her arm, stopping her.

“Stay close to the river,” Connell said. “If those new silverbugs show up, we may have to move fast.”

Veronica shrugged his hand away.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She was close enough to see the altar. Made of platinum, smooth and curved, waist high, flat top covered with colored ceramic dots and shapes — a control panel.

“It doesn’t matter,” Connell said, echoing her words. “Why doesn’t it matter, Veronica?”

He must have been just as tired as O’Doyle. Connell spoke slowly, softly, like he was talking to a child.

“It doesn’t matter because I’m staying here,” she said. “I’ve got to destroy them.” She waved her hand, gesturing to the chamber, the ship. “Destroy all of this. It doesn’t belong here. They’re not a part of this reality.”

If Connell couldn’t see that, it wasn’t her problem.

“You’re upset,” he said, even quieter than before. “Understandably so. But Sanji’s gone, and you can’t sacrifice yourself. It won’t bring him back. Besides—” he pointed to the altar top “—how could you figure all of this out?”

He wasn’t going to talk her out of it. She tapped her temple.

“Because I’m smart, remember? Cover of National Geographic and all that. Little ol’ thing like a ten-thousand-year-old alien bomb shouldn’t faze me a bit.”

He grabbed her again, by the shoulders this time, spun her around to face him, leaned in close.

“You can play crazy some other time,” he said. The voice a growl now, no longer quiet and understanding. “I’ve had enough people die in this godforsaken place. You’re coming with us.”

His fingers dug painfully into her muscles. She knew he meant it. If he had to, he would drag her back to the river. He was injured but still much stronger than her.

Was he right? Was she being crazy?

To want to kill an alien race, for revenge … yes, she was being crazy.

Veronica nodded.

“Okay. You’re right. I don’t know what I was saying.”

Connell gripped her right arm, pulled her to the river’s edge.

“O’Doyle, your rest is over,” he said. “We go now.”

The big man lifted his hung head, gazed out with eyes that looked like they wanted to close forever. He glanced at Veronica, then back to Connell. He nodded.

“Yes sir,” he said.

He tried to rouse Lybrand. She didn’t respond. O’Doyle gently rolled her off the wall. She splashed into the river. He slid in himself, held her, kept her head above water.

Would either of them make it? Were they already as good as dead?

Connell held Veronica at the river’s edge, just a three-foot drop into the water below. He let her go, turned off the scrambler, carefully stuffed it into his webbing.

The silverbugs suffered a collective shiver, then returned to their coordinated activity.

Connell stared hard at her, pointed down to the water’s surface.

“After you,” he said.

She nodded, stepped off, plunged in feetfirst. He followed her in.

O’Doyle guided Lybrand to the middle of the river, where the current pulled at them. In seconds, her rope pulled taut on Connell. He, in turn, pulled at Veronica until she swam for herself. She had been the first in the rope line, now she was the last.

Veronica chanced a look back over her shoulder. The silverbugs wandered across the orb’s polished surface, keeping it perpetually prepared to fulfill its role. Over ten thousand years they’d been down here, under this mountain, older than any human civilization, older than any human religion. How long would the rocktopi continue to exist? A poisoned, dying race, barely hanging on to intelligence, barely above the level of animals, kept alive only by their caring machines.

It was all just too much.

The current pulled at her exhausted body.

“Connell,” she said softly, then closed her eyes and stopped fighting.

Veronica Reeves slipped below the surface.

9:40 a.m.

Connell watched O’Doyle and Lybrand, wondering if either of them would make it. They were fifty feet ahead, the rope between Connell and Lybrand already tight enough to be a mostly straight line some fifty feet long. O’Doyle’s rally back at the rocktopi statue had faded away to nothing. The man had all the drive of a limp piece of bacon.

If those two were going to live, it was up to Connell to make sure it happened. Well, good fucking luck with that. His back felt like there was a screwdriver jammed in his spine. He couldn’t move his arm that well anymore, thanks to the shoulder wound that was now more numb than painful. How much blood had he lost? The lack of sleep, the endless fight-or-flight.

A cloud in his head.

Hard to focus on anything.

But he could do it. He had to do it. He would make sure O’Doyle and Lybrand got out.

Them, and Veronica. She just wasn’t all there. Use that bomb to kill the rocktopi? Connell knew the pain of losing someone you loved — knew it better than most — but he wasn’t going to let Veronica’s grief get her killed.

Up ahead, the river banked to the left.

Connell twisted in the water, looking back for Veronica — but she wasn’t there.

“Veronica?”

He looked to the limestone block wall passing by on his right, then to the orb-dome room already fading away in the distance.

“Veronica!”

He twisted in place, looking down as if he might see her yellow suit close by, just under the surface.

The rope that tied him to her … his eyes followed it … there — a few feet back upstream, a blob of yellow below the surface … fading … sinking.

Connell threw himself toward her. Searing agony replaced the numbness in his shoulder. The stabbing pain in his back made his movements jerky, twitchy. He fought on, gritting his teeth, forcing his body to ignore those things. American crawl — he’d learned it in summer camp as a little boy. Left, right, turn to the side to breathe in, face down in the water and breathe out, keep kicking.

He reached her in seconds. He gulped in a big breath, held it, dove. Disorienting, the feeling of being pulled backward and swimming down at the same. Kick, kick, kick. Already exhausted body quickly starving for oxygen. Can’t see … water inside his mask, hot water, can’t open his eyes what if they cook they—

—his hands found her limp body. He pulled her in, wrapped one arm around her waist. Lungs screaming, he kicked for the surface.

She suddenly thrashed, came alive all at once, pushing and pulling. Air, he needed air. He let go of her, clawed for the surface … hands grabbed his leg, yanked him down deeper.

Connell’s thoughts fled, any semblance of intelligence vanished — the fight to reach the surface, only that and nothing else, not the hands pulling at his waist, tugging at him.

He punched unseeing, trying to hit her, to kill her, whatever it took to be free, but the water slowed his fist — it glanced off something.

The hands let go. He was free.

Lungs screaming, had to breathe, kick and swim and kick, couldn’t hold it anymore couldn’t—

—he broke the surface, breathing in so loud the gasp echoed through the ship canyon. Water slipping into his mouth, his throat. Coughing.

A tug on the rope around his chest, from behind … Lybrand and O’Doyle’s weight, pulling him downstream. The rope … again, the rope … he grabbed at the rope tied to Veronica, started reeling it in …

No resistance.

Hand over hand he pulled, reeled it all in, knew what he would find … the end of the rope.

She had untied it.

Connell felt the current start to take him around the bend.

Far upstream, she broke the surface, gasping just as he had. She swam for the limestone wall. Strong strokes, but something in her right hand made her movements awkward.

He started toward her again — American crawl, children, the basic stroke of swimming — but his arms wouldn’t obey. They kept treading water, those small, automatic motions were all he could manage.

He had nothing left with which to fight.

The current pulled at him, both the water surrounding his body and the rope around his chest.

Veronica reached the wall.

She looked back at him as the current took him around the bend. Before she vanished from sight, she raised one hand and waved good-bye.

9:44 a.m.

“Please,” he said, the word a huffing breath of near madness. “Please … I told you everything. Don’t hurt me any more.”

Kayla nodded. He had told her everything. As bat-shit crazy as it all sounded, she’d seen enough with her own eyes to know it was the truth.

She still straddled him, still felt that lovely buzz down below.

His left hand clutched spasmodically. She’d left that one alone. The right, however, was a mangled mess. Broken lumps within the yellow fabric. Twelve swollen lumps, to be precise.

She’d gone through the six knuckles of his pointer and middle finger before even taking out the ballgag, before asking him a single question. After that, the little prick had been only too happy to babble away, answering whatever she asked.

His ring finger and pinkie? She’d broken those knuckles as well. One at a time. Just to be thorough.

Five people left alive: Connell, O’Doyle, Lybrand, Veronica Reeves, Sanji Haak. At least they were alive when Angus had left them, run away like the coward that he was. He’d let his best friend die. Now why wasn’t she surprised at that?

Just five people left. No weapons except for a couple of knives. And Kayla was only a few minutes’ walk from the Dense Mass Cavern and the alien ship. Angus had told her the survivors would wind up there. All good intel.

But the rest of what the little prick said … so staggering. An alien ship. A goddamn alien ship, with goddamn aliens. This went way beyond mere reinstatement. If she pulled this off, she might get far more than Vogel’s approval — she might very well wind up with his job.

She had yet to break the knuckles of his right thumb. She looked at it, caressed it, wondered if she should make it an even fourteen, get all the knuckles on that hand. It would be fun. But, no … no need to be greedy. She’d taught the little prick an important lesson. Time to move on.

“Plea-eee-eease,” he said, his sobs chopping the word into bits.

Maybe if she came back this way, she could have a little more of him.

“All right, honey,” she said. “It’s all right.”

Kayla picked up the ballgag from the tunnel floor. She didn’t bother to clean off the silt clinging to the spit-covered rubber, just jammed the whole thing into his mouth. He mmpfed and hmmpfed as she fastened the straps. She put her palm on his head, fingertips at his eyebrows. She pulled back as she leaned over him, forcing him to look up at her. Face and mask smeared with snot. Eyes red and puffy from crying.

She stood, adjusted her gear. Angus had a real Marco/Polo device, with a bigger screen. Not cobbled together like the one she’d made.

“You do good work,” she said. “Maybe you can tell mama all about it when I come back for you.”

She bent, kissed his hood-covered forehead, heard him whimper when she did.

Kayla left him there.

She headed down the tunnel.

9:47 a.m.

Connell crawled through the shallows, hands and knees sinking into platinum muck. He reached O’Doyle and Lybrand, collapsed next to them, cheek slapping into mud worth millions.

The three of them. All that was left.

They had traveled miles. There were miles yet to go.

“O’Doyle,” Connell said without looking up, “you guys still alive?”

“Yeah,” came the answer. Every word a heavy breath. “But don’t know for how long.”

Connell grunted. Lybrand’s slashed suit wouldn’t have much coolant left. Was she already cooking? Time to go, but it was so nice to just lie there. A rest, a short one … what could that hurt?

“We have to go up,” O’Doyle said, although he sounded like he wanted to do anything but move. “Right now, Connell. I’m sorry, but if you’re going after Veronica, you’re on your own.”

Veronica. She was back there, in the belly of this incomprehensible ship, this ancient relic of a dead race.

Connell gazed upstream, back into the ship’s deep, misty, jungle-esque shadows. Was he going back for her? She was grieving, crazy … she needed help. But how long would it take him to reach her? He couldn’t swim upstream. Could he walk along the river? He wasn’t sure he had the energy for even that, let alone bringing her back here and then the final hike up the Linus Highway to the surface.

More important than his fatigue, though, was the reason she’d stayed behind. She wanted to use that orb, blow this entire place to kingdom come. Had she already started that process? How long would it take? Was the clock already ticking? How long before the silverbugs led the rocktopi to her?

He remembered her grabbing him, yanking him deeper into the water, pulling at his leg, his waist …

His hand shot to his webbing — the scrambler was gone.

She had faked drowning to steal it from him so she could work on the orb, uninterrupted by silverbugs.

Connell shook his head. If that orb was still a functioning weapon, he had to assume she could make it work.

His soul dragged, fractured, hurt even more than his body. He knew she wouldn’t make it out alive, and if he chased her, he’d die as well.

“She made her choice,” Connell said. “I’m not going back. The three of us are getting out of here.”

He forced himself up. His muscles didn’t want to function. He made them. He pleaded with them, cut deals with them: just do this for me for a little bit longer and I swear we’ll all sit on a couch and watch cartoons for the rest of our existence together.

He and O’Doyle and Lybrand had washed up in a bubble-shaped room, one of thousands spread through the ship. Maybe forty feet in diameter. The river had eaten away some of one side, exposing the dark interior. Beyond the room’s left edge, the open space of the Dense Mass Cavern. Blue-white light beat down from above.

They had made it.

“Linus Highway has to be close,” Connell said. “Stay here while I look.”

He had to step over O’Doyle and Lybrand. They lay on the platinum mud, legs still in the shallow water. Only their chests moved.

Footprints. Already mostly gone. Filled in by the thin, lapping ripples of the river’s edge, but clearly, footprints. Angus. He’d made it this far.

With each step, Connell’s feet slid before sinking in. Had to be careful here. So close to the way out, wouldn’t do to add a pulled hammy to his list of injuries. He walked the last few feet along the slick shore, reached out and gripped the room’s edge to steady himself.

Beeeeep.

He froze. The sound had come from outside the ship.

Connell glanced back at O’Doyle — head up, now, exhausted but alert.

Someone was out there. Was it Angus? Maybe Randy, if Angus had lied? Was that a sound from a silverbug?

Or, could it be something they hadn’t seen yet … something even worse than the rocktopi.

O’Doyle quietly stood. Half-hidden by the bubble room’s shadows, he drew his knife.

Connell leaned close to the ship’s edge. Slowly, so slowly, he leaned out, peeking past with just one eye.

The muck gave way to the same tile floors they’d seen on the other side of the ship. A few hundred feet away, the arched entrance of a tunnel.

And in the middle of that arch, a Marco/Polo unit in her hands, stood a woman wearing a KoolSuit, a machine gun slung over her shoulder.

Kayla Meyers.

9:51 a.m.

Three signals, flickering on and off.

CONNELL KIRKLAND

PATRICK O’DOYLE

BERTHA LYBRAND

Kayla looked at the ship, and just as quickly, she looked away. Nothing could be that big. How many stories high? And off to her left, the end of it, she had to crane her neck to see the top of that. Higher than a skyscraper. So big, too big. This whole place … a miles-long room, under a mountain … a fucking alien spacecraft all beat-up and shot to shit, with a river flowing through it … none of this was right.

This place, she didn’t know how to handle it … it made her afraid.

She wanted out of here. But no, not yet.

The signals didn’t lock on. Interference from all the platinum? Angus had given a clear signal because he’d been in the tunnel. Connell and the others, they were close, but they could be anywhere.

Maybe she could account for the interference, just enough to give her a clear direction as to the source of those signals.

Kayla started to adjust the controls.

9:52 a.m.

The scrambler worked.

Thank God.

She held the walkie-talkie tightly, clutched it to her chest as if it were a crucifix that could ward off vampires.

Water still dripped from her as she walked toward the platinum altar. Silverbugs occasionally dropped from the domed ceiling, bouncing off the stone floor with a clank. Sometimes their little legs bent or even snapped off. The few of them that had been on the orb’s polished shell slipped away, one by one, dropping noiselessly into the shaft below.

Her muscles twitched. Her entire body tingled, as did her face, her brain, a feeling she remembered from pulling all-nighters back in college. So tired. Her muscles, just sludge oozing between skin and bones.

This room … it was spotless. No dirt on the stone floor, not even a speck of platinum dust. The orb, the altar, the dome itself, all perfect, as if this room hadn’t seen a day of the eleven thousand years it sat waiting for the rocktopi’s genocidal enemy, waiting for doomsday.

That enemy was nowhere to be seen, but she was ready to usher doomsday in with a warm welcome.

She would kill them, just like they’d killed her father.

His hand, flying …

His blood, spraying …

His loss hurt, physically. She tried to breathe, felt the tears welling up. She hadn’t thought of him for the past few minutes, and now that she did it was like an avalanche coming down to crush her. He’d been her everything.

And now he was gone.

Because of them.

The rocktopi had truly died out in a planetary holocaust countless millennia ago, unknown light-years away. This group, this Wah Wah tribe, had escaped, but to what end? Look at what they had become. The entire race should have gone extinct long ago.

The time had come for the Wah Wah tribe to join their ancestors.

More clonks of falling silverbugs. Almost raining now, shells smashing every few seconds. She kept an arm over her head in case one came down on top of her. Silverbugs wandered down the walls, walked aimlessly across the stone floor.

Veronica stood in front of the altar. She recognized it from the alcove carvings. Doubt welled up — had she made a mistake? She didn’t understand the controls. She’d spent years trying to crack the Chaltélian language and had failed. What made her think she could understand this?

She closed her eyes. She felt her father’s hands on her shoulders.

Think, Ronni. You can’t give up. You have to think it through.

She couldn’t talk back to him, but she could do what he asked. She could think. She could honor his memory, finish the fucking job and obliterate these abominations before they took more human lives, broke more hearts, shattered more families.

Veronica again looked at the altar’s flat top. Think things through. Something jumped out at her — no pictoglyphs here. In the Picture Cavern, nothing but pictures. And the walls as well, just carved images. Not glyphs at all. At Cerro Chaltén, those had been true glyphs, images that were words as opposed to a literal representation of an animal, plant or place.

A key difference between the Wah Wah tribe and the Chaltélians. The Wah Wah rocktopi … they were dumber.

Maybe when they landed, they had been a fully functional culture. Maybe the original crew had taught their children language, math, science, even the arts. Generation after generation that could have continued — until the explosion that tore a huge hole in the ship. Until the radiation that followed. Until the plague.

Five thousand years ago, give or take, maybe the Old Rocktopi had been advanced enough to see their gene pool degenerating. Could they have known their species would soon decline? Could they have planned for that, or at least tried to?

A silverbug smashed into the altar, bounced off. Just missed her. Not many remained on the dome walls. The drugged-out machines covered the floor now. She glanced over them, looking for a gleam, a shine … Nothing. They were all old. None of the new ones that had attacked Lybrand. A few stumbled to the river’s edge, fell in, were swept away.

The rocktopi could have programmed the silverbugs to handle everything. Farming, tunnel construction and maintenance, maybe taking care of the ship until the radiation faded away. To make sure customs were passed down, laws and religious beliefs were carved into the stone, in case things got so bad their written language faded from memory.

For ten thousand years, this race had lived in these caves. Had stories of spaceflight become the quaint tales of old fools? Then something only taught in history classes? Without technology or computers to show images, maybe those stories faded to legend, then myth, then faded out altogether. Ten thousand years. America was only two and a half centuries old, yet much of the nation’s history was already gone forever. Even in the age of technology, with movies and unassailable historical records, some people believed that the Holocaust had never happened, that the moon landing was a hoax.

Once the makers of history die, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before history itself changes.

At one time, the silverbugs might have been no more than servant machines catering to the rocktopi’s every need. Thousands of years passed, countless generations, and gradually the silverbugs became part of the environment, as common as air or the stone walls of the rocktopi’s tiny universe. Eventually, perhaps hundreds of generations after the plague, the rocktopi’s intellect faded away. Wracked by ignorance and genetic deterioration, they regressed to little more than savages, kept alive only by the efforts of the silverbugs.

The servants became the keepers.

Veronica looked at the altar’s controls in a new light. Aside from the artificial suns, this was the only piece of working machinery that remained. Priorities. The silverbugs were programmed with priorities, instructed to keep the most important devices functioning at the expense of all else. How important was an educational computer if the artificial suns ceased functioning and no food could be grown? The suns were an obvious first priority, and by appearances, this doomsday device ran a close second. Whatever that mysterious enemy was capable of, death was far more desirable.

And if such a death was an ultimate priority for the race, then the Old Rocktopi must have provided for its use. Veronica doubted the silverbugs were programmed to destroy their masters, no matter what the situation. Most likely, the orb had to be set off by a rocktopi.

If death was preferable to the enemy and if the orb had been kept functional for this long, then the Old Rocktopi intended its eventual use — there had to be simple instructions somewhere. Simple, like the carvings in the Picture Cavern.

She ran her hands across the control panel. She circled the altar, looking at the sides, at the base.

No pictures.

An unbidden memory of driving to the EarthCore camp, telling her smiling father he needed to lose weight. A fresh wave of grief. She shook it away, forced herself to concentrate.

But it was no use. She’d spent years trying to understand the Chaltélian language, and she was going to figure this out in a matter of minutes? Ridiculous.

She had failed.

Veronica jumped as a silverbug hit the floor next to her, bounced into her leg. She scooted away, but it wasn’t trying to get her. She looked up to the ceiling to see how many of them remained.

The ceiling … all the silverbugs were gone.

For the first time, she could see the curved walls.

Her grief flowed into fury.

Veronica Reeves smiled.

9:56 a.m.

O’Doyle helped Connell drag Bertha across the platinum silt, deeper into the bubble room’s shadow.

“But she came down from the surface,” O’Doyle said, just loud enough to be heard over the river’s constant sounds. “And she’s worked for you. She’s got to be here to help us.”

Connell’s brain felt like mud. Thoughts slow, plodding. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly, but his IQ hadn’t dropped sharply since this all started — Kayla Meyers was not there to help.

“I never told her where this place was,” he said, still pulling, dragging, fighting against the agony in his back and knee. “That means she hacked our systems or she turned an EarthCore employee. If she’s here, she’s working for someone else. The Russians or the South Africans, maybe.”

“She armed?”

Connell huffed. “She’s a killer — she’s always armed.”

A killer … something Connell knew firsthand. Maybe this was some kind of karmic payback. The assassin he’d hired to murder his wife’s killer, standing in the way of escape.

Two grown men, but both were so drained it was all they could do to haul Lybrand across the silt to the room’s edge, as far away from the river as they could get without searching for a way that led further into the ancient ship.

O’Doyle fell to his ass next to Lybrand. She didn’t move. He leaned over her, gloved hands gently caressing her face through the thin mask.

Connell had probably known what his plan was the moment he laid eyes on Kayla. Now, watching O’Doyle worry over Lybrand, that plan solidified. It was what had to be done.

O’Doyle looked up.

“If she’s armed, then we have to run,” O’Doyle said. “This ship goes on forever, we can hide somewhere inside.”

Deeper into this strange ship, where rocktopi might be, where silverbugs might be. No, not when the way out was so close.

“If you run, she’ll hunt you,” Connell said. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, he just knew.

Barbara Yakely didn’t know how to contact Kayla. Kayla wore a KoolSuit and carried a Marco unit, two things that were only available in the EarthCore camp. Connell hoped he was wrong, that through some fluke of the fates Kayla had found the alternate way in and that she was there to help, but he also knew that was a naive fantasy.

She was there to kill anyone she saw, either hired to do so, or so that she could sell this location to another company.

If Kayla Meyers saw O’Doyle and Lybrand, Connell knew damn well she would kill them both.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Once upon a time, Connell had been in love. Losing that love had destroyed his life. Now he had a chance, one last chance, to save two people perhaps as in love as he’d once been with Cori. O’Doyle and Lybrand might make a future together. And what future did Connell have to look forward to? Endless work. An empty apartment. Nightmares of the evening his entire world had crumbled into nothing.

And, there was that long-ago sin to atone for.

Connell had no illusions — he had pissed his own life away.

If here, at the end, he could do something good with it, wasn’t that worth dying for?

“Turn Lybrand on her side,” he said. “I need that Polo unit on her neck.”

O’Doyle was just as tired, just as hurt, his mind probably just as muddy. It took him a second to understand. When he did, his sleepy eyes widened. He shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “There’s two of us, Connell. We can take her. Don’t do this.”

Honorable words that rang hollow. O’Doyle wanted to fight, but he knew full well he was in no shape to do so.

“You don’t know Kayla,” Connell said. “Hurry up before she comes in here. Roll Lybrand over.”

O’Doyle did.

Connell unfastened his glove, slid it off. The heat hit his skin in an instant, like he’d dipped his hand in scalding water. He felt at the back of Lybrand’s neck for the seal to her hood. He opened it slightly, reached inside, felt for the little dot of her Polo sounder. He pried the bit of plastic off like it was a scab. He put it in a pocket of his webbing, pulled the glove back on and sealed it up.

Then Connell held out his hand, palm up, to the scarred, sagging man before him.

“Your turn,” he said.

O’Doyle stared at the hand.

Connell instantly understood what O’Doyle saw — not the yellow glove, but rather the cut on the palm beneath it.

The same cut that had let their blood mix together.

“We can set a trap,” O’Doyle said. “Something. Anything.”

It hit Connell — there, of all places — just how much he’d tuned out since his wife’s death. The only relationship he had was with his boss. He’d been around O’Doyle for a few scant hours, but they had fought side by side, fought for each other, saved each other’s lives.

This man was a friend. A true friend. Connell’s best friend.

“You don’t know her, Patrick. She’s as dangerous as you are. If you want Lybrand to live, this is the only way.”

The look in O’Doyle’s eyes. Desolation. The knowledge that he couldn’t do the one thing he’d been born to do. He nodded, stripped off a glove. He bent his head, opened the seal of his hood and pried the little dot free.

He offered it up.

“I won’t forget this,” he said.

Connell took the dot. He put it in the webbing pocket with Lybrand’s, careful to make sure both bits of plastic were safely in there before he closed it.

He knelt, started scooping platinum dust on Lybrand, hurriedly covering her legs, hips and chest. O’Doyle did the same to himself, scooping armfuls on top of his suit’s yellow fabric.

Connell took a step back. In seconds, the shadows combined with millions of dollars’ worth of platinum to make the pair look like lumps of silt. If Kayla’s headlamp panned this way, she’d see them instantly, but out of the corner of her eye she probably wouldn’t notice a thing.

Especially if she was distracted.

Connell turned to walk away.

“Wait,” O’Doyle said.

The big man held out his sheathed knife.

“If you get a chance, you stick her,” he said. “In the belly. You keep sticking her until she stops moving. Got it?”

Connell nodded. He took the sheath, stuck it into the webbing belt at the small of his back.

So many dead — this was his one chance to help two people live.

At least someone might make it out.

He walked to the edge of the ship.

10:02 a.m.

On the Marco/Polo unit’s controls, three names stopped flickering, suddenly glowed steady and strong:

BERTHA LYBRAND

PATRICK O’DOYLE

CONNELL KIRKLAND

Kayla looked up and saw Connell standing at the edge of the ship canyon, where the river flowed out of it — a mere fifty yards away.

“Connell!”

It was almost over. She didn’t have to fake her smile.

Kayla stuffed the Marco unit into her belt, leaving both hands free. The Galil hung at an angle across her chest and stomach.

She walked toward him.

“Oh my God, I’m so happy to finally find you. Are you all right?”

He reached out his right hand, grabbed the edge of the ship, took a half step closer to it.

“Stop right there,” he said.

She did.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m here to rescue you. Where are the others?”

Tension in his body. His hand gripped the ship’s hull, ready to pull him behind the edge, out of her line of sight.

“And how did you know we needed rescuing? How did you know where we were?”

That look on his face … she should have known he was too smart to not know why she was there.

Oh well — as long as he died, it didn’t really matter.

Kayla snapped-grabbed for the Galil. Connell ducked behind the ship hull. Kayla fired anyway, a quick burst, but he was already gone and the bullets clanged off platinum.

She sprinted after him and entered the ship canyon’s steamy shadows.

10:03 a.m.

It would be easy.

Just follow the instructions etched into the cathedral ceiling. Even for the self-destruction of their entire race, the Old Rocktopi relied on simple pictures.

And that made sense.

She didn’t know much about rocktopi communication, but she knew that of her own species. Without some central cultural reference, such as television or radio, human languages fractured, split and mutated into countless regional dialects. In just decades, a language could change so much that people who spoke the original tongue might not understand the new form.

How much could a language change over the course of eleven thousand years?

It was funny to think that this race — a race that had once traveled among the stars and had the power to move mountains — now communicated at a level equal to that of primitive humans. She wondered if the same fate lay in store for her own race. Perhaps in the end, the very end, mankind would be left with nothing more than crude pictures.

The instructions: an engraving of the control panel, step-by-step pictures showing what buttons to press, what knobs to turn. Simplicity itself.

That same concept explained the Picture Cavern. The carvings there were instructional, filled with the one message rocktopi understood all too well: If it comes from the surface, kill it.

Like they had killed her father.

Now it was their turn to die.

Veronica took a deep breath. She double-checked the first instruction, then pressed a yellow square.

10:04 a.m.

Patrick lay still.

The woman Connell feared so much came around the corner, rifle in hand, the river on her right, the room in which Patrick and Bertha hid on her left.

Kayla Meyers. Farm Girl.

Patrick knew her from his service days. She was the real deal, would put a bullet in you as soon as look at you. He had an urge to rise up, move quietly through the shadow toward her, put her down — but he knew he’d never reach her.

Kayla crept forward, stepping carefully through wet platinum sludge. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up, craning her head left and right.

If she looked into the room …

She continued along the riverbank.

Her movements: steady, strong, graceful. Kayla moved like a big cat. But she also looked afraid, overwhelmed by the strangeness that surrounded her.

She moved past the room, out of sight.

Connell had a brief head start, but with his knee, how long until she caught him?

Patrick counted to ten. He shook Lybrand. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Baby, if you got anything left, we need it now,” he said. “We got one chance to get out of here.”

The skin of her forearms and hands almost glowed red. Swollen, covered in blisters. Her lips were cracked and dry. A crusty film caked her eyelids.

“Go without me,” she said. “Please. Survive.”

He shook his head, brushed platinum dust off them both.

“If you don’t make it, I don’t make it,” he said. “You want me to live? Then you have to help.”

Patrick pulled her to her feet. She could barely stand.

One last sprint, a three-mile hump, and he could save her. He lifted her in a fireman’s carry. Every atom of him wanted to stop, to quit, to sleep.

Just a few more miles.

He carried her out of the bubble room. He glanced left, upstream — Connell and the woman both were already lost in the mist.

Patrick gritted his teeth, stepped through ankle-deep silt and exited the ship canyon. He carried his love to the tunnel entrance.

Lungs already burning, muscles already begging, he started up the Linus Highway’s steep slope.

10:05 a.m.

The mist-filled ship rose up on either side, towering above … so many rooms, hundreds of them, all the wrong shape. Everything about this place was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Kayla caught a glimpse of Connell up ahead in the mist. Limping. Hurt, or faking? Trying to lure her in?

She raised the Galil, squeezed off a burst. As she brought the gun down, her right foot slid in the deep mud. A ripping pain in her left ankle. She hopped on her right foot, trying to slow her momentum, but she slipped — she fell to her side, splashing in the river’s shallows.

Kayla scrambled to her feet, kept moving. The left ankle, twisted. Maybe a light sprain. Not enough to stop her from chasing him.

Or, should she just leave?

Leave this fucked-up place behind forever?

No. If she did that, she was saying good-bye to her dream, right when she was so close to getting it.

Kayla kept moving down the riverbank, moving as fast as she could.

10:06 a.m.

Bullets whined off metal somewhere ahead. How close had they come to hitting him, to ripping through skin and muscle and bone?

He was going to die here, miles underground. Kayla was going to shoot him in the back.

Keep running, as long as you can, lead her away from Patrick …

Connell fought through the fire in his knee, the spear point in his back. A fast hobble more than a sprint, each step sheer agony that pierced the last of his adrenaline rush.

Up ahead, the river bent to the right.

He knew where he was: not far from the orb room … not far from Veronica.

If he went that way, Kayla would follow, he’d lead her right to Veronica.

Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!

Had to find a place to hide.

It hit him: he couldn’t hide from her, not with the Polo unit on his neck.

Dammit dammit, why hadn’t he taken that off before? He could have tossed all three little dots aside, kept running, maybe that would throw her off.

He scanned the rooms on his left. Just ahead, an oval one that looked like a corridor, leading deeper into the ship’s darkness. Get out of sight for a moment, get that Polo unit off, then maybe he could keep moving while she tracked it down, circle back somehow …

A bap-bap-bap of Kayla’s rifle: heat exploding through his right thigh.

He screamed, stumbled, hands clutching at his leg.

Connell landed hard, instantly scrambled to hands and knees. He crawled through the silt and dust toward the shadowy corridor.

10:08 a.m.

A second set of gunshots echoed through the ship canyon, fading away into the river’s roar.

This set sounded closer than the first.

Connell, Lybrand and O’Doyle didn’t have any bullets left, so who the fuck was doing the shooting?

Maybe rescuers. Maybe soldiers.

They would come down here, take control of the ship. They’d keep it a secret, keep everyone out.

And … they would keep the rocktopi alive.

Her father’s butchers. Alive.

Veronica was almost finished with the instructions. Just one last button to push, a blue one with a spot of red in the middle.

A drunken silverbug stumbled into her leg. She kicked it aside.

As near as she could tell, the orb would descend anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour. Maybe a little more. When it reached the proper depth, it would detonate, blow this place to bits.

“You don’t get to live,” she said.

She reached for the red-blue button, stopped just before pressing it.

If it only took forty-five minutes … was that enough time to reach the surface?

A chill rippled through her. In her hatred and anguish, she hadn’t thought about the most-important part of her plan — getting out alive.

A gleam of metal at the river’s edge caught her eye. There, two silverbugs, water beading up and dripping from their smooth shells.

Smooth, flawless shells.

Veronica didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. Where had they come from? Had they swum here? Had they—

She flinched at the metallic sound of spring-loaded metal: a gleaming, curved blade jutted out from each of the silverbugs.

Blades pointed right at her.

The machines stood between her and the river.

She hadn’t seen another way out of the room.

10:10 a.m.

Alone.

No light.

His nose, clogged shut. Angus had to suck in air in big, fast gulps when he sneered his lips away from the ball, then feel those lips flap when his breath shot out again. The ball forced his mouth open so far the mask wasn’t properly aligned — some breaths came in cool and normal, some so hot they seared his lungs.

His hand … his hand.

Wrist still tied behind his back. The ruined fingers, mostly numb but still enough bubbling misery to remind him over and over and over again of what she’d done to him, one knuckle at a time.

That cunt. If he got out of here, he’d kill her, slice her into pieces and make her hurt so bad for so long oh yes he would he—

A sound. Something other than his breathing.

Was it a click? Silverbugs coming for him. On his stomach, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

Wait … a light?

The rocktopi, flowing toward him, coming with those knives to slice him, to hack him …

No, the light bounced … a mining helmet.

Oh no ohnoohno, that woman, coming back for him like she’d said she would.

Angus started to scream. He couldn’t stop it. He screamed for help, prayed for a miracle, for someone other than that woman to come, anyone but her.

The light came closer, filled the tunnel.

Not the robots.

Or the monsters.

Or that evil bitch.

Lybrand over his shoulders, lungs heaving, legs wobbling, Patrick O’Doyle stopped and smiled down at Angus.

“Hello, coward. I was hoping I’d run into you again.”

10:11 a.m.

Patrick set Bertha down as gently as he could.

The man on the tunnel floor, Angus Kool … he was nothing. He was the difference between Bertha living and dying. Patrick didn’t want to kill him, but that was up to Angus.

Ballgag. Hog-tied with copper wire. Brutal work. And that hand … fingers so swollen it looked like a yellow Mickey Mouse glove.

Crying. Screaming. Eyes scrunched. Body shaking with sobs.

Patrick knelt in front of him.

“I’m taking your suit. If you fight me, I’ll kill you.”

He stepped behind Angus as the man screamed louder.

Patrick gripped Angus’s left forearm, squeezed it tight as he unwrapped the wire. Angus fought. Of course he did. Patrick let go of the wire, grabbed the man’s swollen fingers and squeezed.

More screaming, the kind that tore vocal cords, the kind that made throats bleed — but the fighting stopped.

Patrick finished unwrapping the wire, stripped off the man’s gloves. He pulled apart the seam that ran down the middle of the back, pulled one arm free, then the other, ignoring the muffled, helpless pleas. The man’s skin instantly sheened with sweat. Patrick yanked the suit off Angus’s hips, down the little man’s legs, leaving him naked save for the hood. Finally, Patrick undid the ballgag.

“It’s so hot don’t do this gimme the suit I’ll die I’ll die I invented it it’s mine IT’S MINE!”

Patrick tore off the hood. He stood, stepped back.

“The higher you go, the cooler it gets,” he said. “You want to live? Run fast. I see you again, and I kill you.”

Angus scrambled to his feet, cradled his mangled hand to his chest. Still crying, still shaking, snot dripping from his nose, spit dangling from his lip. He looked at the lime KoolSuit in Patrick’s hands.

“Please,” he said. “Please.”

Patrick shook his head. “Last chance.”

Angus drew in a big breath — it came out as a scream of rage, pain, terror.

He sprinted up the tunnel, naked ass bouncing in the helmet’s lamp.

Patrick knelt next to Bertha and started stripping off her ruined suit.

“Hold on, baby,” he said. “Hold on a few minutes longer.”

10:13 a.m.

A trail of blood: red splattered across platinum sand.

The trail led into an oval corridor steeped in shadow. Even in this sprawling canyon the ship felt claustrophobic, pressed in on her in a way that the Linus Highway had not. The corridor would make things even tighter, promised to suffocate her, drag her under.

But she had to get this done. Connell was in there. O’Doyle and Lybrand probably weren’t — Connell had led her away from them. He would know where they were.

Her Marco/Polo unit let out a new beep. She checked it, found a new name flickering on and off:

VERONICA REEVES

Somewhere around here, somewhere close. Kayla would take her out as soon as she could.

But first — Connell Kirkland.

Galil aimed before her, Kayla stepped into the corridor.

The shape, all wrong. Oval. No edges. Strange, curved bars in the ceiling, perpendicular to the corridor’s slight bends. A few meters of light that quickly took her from full illumination to complete darkness.

At the edge of that darkness, almost past a bend in the corridor, there he was.

Connell had both hands pressed hard against his right thigh. Blood covered the yellow fingers of his KoolSuit gloves, smeared across his leg. Sallow complexion, face seemed almost as yellow as the material framing it. Nose looked broken. Dots of blood — orange and red both — across his shoulder. The guy was in bad shape, but those eyes … deep with exhaustion yet burning with a fierce determination.

“You fucking shot me,” he said.

She nodded. “Can’t put one past you, can we?”

He sneered, a mixture of pain and hate.

“Fuck you, Meyers. Just put a bullet in my head and let’s get this over with.”

“In a hurry to die?” She kept a good meter of distance between them, the gun lowered at his chest, her finger firmly on the trigger. The canyon’s half-light barely filtered this deep into the huge hallway, casting the scene in a surreal twilight. “Want to wind up like your buddies up top?”

The sneer eased.

“The camp? You killed them?”

“Wasn’t me,” she said. “Those flashing creepy crawlies. Carved your coworkers into wee little chunks.”

He seemed to deflate, to sag in place.

“You have O’Doyle and Lybrand’s Polo dots on you somewhere,” she said. “Nice trick, that. Surprised I fell for it, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Where are they?”

He glared up at her, some of that fight back in his eyes. He shook his head.

“They’re hiding in the ship,” he said. “But you don’t have time to find them if you want to get out of here alive. Reeves is about to blow this whole place sky-high. You stay, you die.”

She stepped forward, snap-kicked his leg. The toe of her boot cracked into the fingers clutching the wound — she heard the light snap of a small bone.

He grunted but didn’t scream. He released his thigh, bloody left hand clutching his bloody right to his chest.

That sneer flared up again: hateful, arrogant.

“Fuck you,” he said.

She aimed the Galil, pulled the trigger.

The leather boot atop his foot burst open in a cloud of meat, bone and blood. He fell to his back, hands clutching the mangled foot. Now he screamed, oh yes he did, a delicious sound magnified by the oval corridor.

Two bullet wounds. A lot of pain. That would dilute the effect of what came next, might even make him pass out. But he wasn’t little Herbert Darker — wounded or not, Connell was a man, and men were dangerous.

She slung the Galil. She pulled the pliers out of her pouch.

“Look at me, Kirkland. Look at me.”

He did. Chin on his chest, he looked down his abused body at her, eyes filled with tears, mouth twisted into a grimace that almost looked like a grin.

She slowly opened and closed the pliers.

“Usually I start with the knuckles, but I’m in a hurry. So, I’m going to start with your balls. I’m going to crush your right nut unless you tell me where the others are.”

He groaned, sobbed a deep-throated sob.

When he drew in a shaking breath for another, she heard a new sound.

click-click … click-click click …

She whipped around, drawing her 9 millimeter in the same smooth motion. The contrast between staring into shadow and looking toward the light made her squint slightly, slowed her reaction.

On the floor, a long straight line of the long-legged, silvery probes, leading back out the corridor and to the left, upstream. In unison, they snapped down, then up, then down again.

The ship was wrong, this corridor was wrong, but that jerky motion … she felt the acidic tickle of fear spurt in her stomach, instantly spread to her chest.

“What the fuck are they doing?”

From behind her, Connell croaked out words.

“Means … monsters … are coming.”

10:15 a.m.

One chance.

Kayla had the pistol straight out in front of her, both hands holding it firmly, her feet a little more than shoulder width apart. She moved her aim from one silverbug to the next, to the next.

In that moment, she didn’t know what to do.

One chance.

He hurt so bad, so deep. His shoulder, his thigh, his broken finger, the raging firestorm in his foot. He’d never imagined something could hurt so bad.

“How much time,” she said. “How long before they come?”

Her voice, still calm, at least somewhat. For a moment, he imagined the two of them fighting side by side, against the silverbugs and the rocktopi, just like he’d done with O’Doyle and Lybrand.

Then his left hand slid behind his back, gripped the handle of O’Doyle’s knife, and he remembered what that one chance was.

He rolled to his knees, drew the knife, then lunged toward her.

The blade’s point drove into the back of her right knee. He felt it sink in, felt it jar when it hit bone, skidded, sink even deeper — he felt the crossguard slap against her KoolSuit.

Her scream made him wince, despite the agony rolling through his body. She twisted as she fell, half collapsing, half aiming. In the partial light, he saw the pistol barrel swing toward him. He let go of the knife, flailed a hand at the gun, caught her wrist. She landed hard, trying to angle it toward him.

Explosion of pain as he pushed off his ruined foot.

On top of her, straddling her. Her wrist, held tight.

Kayla, screaming, shouting, other hand grabbing at her waist — a knife, she was going for a knife, was going to stick him in the belly over and over until he didn’t move.

Connell looked into her eyes: the eyes of an animal, the eyes of a woman, the eyes of a lost little girl.

He reared his head back, threw himself forward, smashed his forehead into her face. She grunted, twitched, kept fighting but not as hard. He reared back again, smashed again, felt a dull ache in his head.

She sagged back.

He did it again, just to be sure.

10:16 a.m.

Screams echoing through the river mist. Someone was out there, but too far away to help her.

The two new silverbugs, just sitting there, thin legs spread wide, those knives curving forward.

Veronica hadn’t moved. Neither had they.

Her body began to tremble.

Maybe she could change the frequency on the scrambler. Had to try something. The walkie-talkie was sitting on the control panel’s flat top.

She grabbed it.

As one, the two new silverbugs rushed toward her, scurrying over their beat-up, burnished brethren or just knocking them out of the way.

The first silverbug sprang at the altar, hit it, launched toward her face. She brought her hands up instinctively. The machine crashed into the hot-wired walkie-talkie, smashing it to pieces. The attacker fell to the ground, but before Veronica could react the second scurried around the altar’s base, sprang, sharp claws fixing fast on her hips and ribs.

The curved blade drove deep into her stomach.

She beat at the machine, screaming. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t.

The blade slid out, drove back in again.

The pain.

Veronica’s fists rained down on the round shell. Knuckles split, smearing blood across gleaming metal.

Something on her back, sharp little claws digging in — a stabbing explosion in her back.

Veronica spun, thrown off balance by the weight.

A moment of stillness: this was it. She would be dead soon. More pain to come first, more horror, but this was it — her life, at an end. A strange calmness mixed with absolute fear. Was she wrong about death? Was it really just over, or was there a God, an afterlife?

In that instant, she hoped there was, so she could see her father again.

Her father.

Another thrust into her belly, another into her back.

The taste of blood.

She stumbled.

Her father.

His hand, flying …

Veronica fell, caught herself on the altar. Arms and legs, so weak, nothing left …

More thrusts, agony enveloped her, consumed her.

Her father.

His blood, spraying …

They had butchered him.

They were butchering her.

She started to fall, caught herself at the last moment.

Her gaze landed on the red and blue button.

She fell forward against the control panel. Vision fading. Pain. Cold.

“Die,” she said. “Just fucking die already.”

Veronica fingered the button, then pressed it home.

She sagged to the stone floor.

The silverbugs kept on stabbing.

Above her prone body, ancient but well-cared-for machinery started to move. The dome trembled as mechanisms unused for eleven thousand years finally rumbled to life. Metallic groans, grinds and squeaks. Gears turned in complaint, engines hummed to life.

The noise seemed to awaken the countless silverbugs covering the cathedral room’s stone floor. They stopped wandering or rolling about. They paused, motionless, but only for a moment — they came alive as a unified flood. Hundreds of them dove for the river and followed the current downstream, answering some unseen call. More of them, many more, crawled from room to room, using what little shore there was, moving upstream.

They had to make their masters listen.

Somewhere up in the ceiling, out of sight, ancient machinery shuddered. A massive spool started rolling out its miles-long cable. The orb lowered three feet, stopped, bobbing ever so slightly from the sudden movement.

And then, it dropped.

The spool whined as cable lowered, and the orb plunged into the earth.

10:18 a.m.

Patrick worked the water tube from the KoolSuit’s neck, put it to Lybrand’s lips, squeezed.

She swallowed weakly, then coughed, spit.

He checked the body temp readout on her wrist: 99.8.

Just like that, almost back to normal.

She blinked, looked up at him. An instant where she almost smiled, then her eyes widened, her face scrunched.

“My hands,” she said. “My arms!”

Now covered by the KoolSuit sleeves, yes, but the suit did nothing for the scorched skin, the weeping blisters.

Her arms shook. She stared at them as if they were alien to her.

“I know you’re hurting, but we have to move,” Patrick said. He wanted to carry her. He simply could not. He wasn’t even sure if he could walk himself. “I’m tapped out, you have to rally. Can you move?”

She shook her head, shook it hard.

“My arms, my arms.”

click-click, click

The noise made them both freeze, and for a second, made them both forget their pain. Patrick looked back down the tunnel: his headlamp beam lit up a single silverbug crouched motionless on the wall. Far off along the slope, he saw glimmers of other silverbugs scurrying up to join the first.

“I can move,” Bertha said.

Patrick nodded. It was that, or die.

He helped her to her feet, being careful not to touch her arms.

Leaning on each other, they headed up the Linus Highway.

10:20 a.m.

Every step: Excruciating pain. Stepping on jagged glass.

The knee, the back, the foot, the thigh, the finger, his nose.

Losing blood. So weak. When he opened his mouth to breathe in, he felt the skin stretch on his face. It was getting warmer — must be losing coolant.

Muscles felt like they were made from rusted barbed wire.

Bones, forged of chipped razors that sliced against nerves.

How was he still alive?

And why did he keep moving?

For God’s sake, he had nothing, nothing — with all this agony, why did he want to live?

Just lie down. Just rest. Just quit.

He couldn’t.

The beast inside him wanted to live more than the man he was wanted to die.

He’d led her away, expecting she would murder him. It was what he deserved. But he’d fought her … he’d beaten her. He’d cheated death, and that had rekindled a fire inside of him.

Connell carried her pistol in his left hand. With his right, he used her rifle as a cane.

He ignored the silverbugs, moved past them, thump-dragging one sliding step at a time.

He’d left Kayla alive. The silverbugs would lead the rocktopi to her, and that would be that. She might even buy him a little time. With that knee, she was even worse off than he was, and she certainly wouldn’t catch him.

Connell had even left her the knife. She wanted to kill? Let her kill a few rocktopi, if she could.

10:21 a.m.

Rocktopi swarmed out of the river, following the string of silverbugs that lined the shore, jerking spasmodically. Long limbs flowed over the limestone wall, onto the cathedral room’s stone floor, pulled the rest of the alien bodies up behind. Purples, blues, deep shades that shimmered and flowed. They stayed close together, clustering, as if afraid something might reach out and snag stragglers, drag them to an unseen doom.

There, by the altar they had seen only in carvings — one of the yellow-skinned, stiff-moving monsters that had murdered so many. Cut into pieces, red fluid in a pool beneath the ragged chunks.

A few rocktopi wandered to the control panel, a few skirted the edges of the room and a few more peered down the shaft. The orb dropped steadily downward.

As it descended, ancient lights surged to life, or at least tried to. Some flickered uselessly. Most didn’t turn on at all, their function long since claimed by the persistent fingers of time. A few managed to sputter fully awake. They cast dim reflections on the orb’s polished surface.

These rocktopi were on one side of the river. On the far shore, another group moved fast along the riverbank, following a line of silverbugs that urged them on.

10:23 a.m.

Kayla crawled past silverbugs. They scurried out of her way, circled back to rejoin the line, sometimes walking on her in their haste.

She crawled toward her knife, which Kirkland had left lying at the corridor mouth. The naked blade reflected hazy light filtering down from far above the artificial canyon.

Her face felt like he’d hit her with a sledgehammer. He’d head-butted her. Could you believe that? That skinny, stuffed-shirt desk jockey. Stabbed her in the knee, then head-butted her. Connell Fucking Kirkland had done that.

And she’d thought him weak.

The world shimmered. Kayla blinked away tears, only to have more flow into place. She’d taken one look at her knee, instantly thrown up all over herself. Kirkland had stabbed all the way through, from the back out the front. The joint was ruined forever: tendons, ligaments, muscle, cartilage, the important shit that made it work all sliced halfway to Fuckville and beyond.

She didn’t want to kill anymore, and that surprised her. She didn’t want to hurt. There was enough hurt already. All she wanted to do was get out of this place.

Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? She should have never come down here.

Kirkland had escaped. So had O’Doyle, Lybrand and probably Reeves.

All of this — the hacking, the destruction, days of cooking in the desert sun — it had all been for nothing.

Kayla crawled.

A silverbug scurried over her back.

She reached for the knife, held it.

Why had Kirkland let her live? Left her with a weapon?

Maybe he was toying with her. Maybe he was the kind of sick fuck that enjoyed the misery of others. People like that were destined to burn in hell. She could at least take minor satisfaction from that fact.

Kayla crawled.

She gripped the corridor’s smooth edge, grunted as she rose to stand on her good leg. Every motion sent shattering pain though her knee, reminded her of the long reconstruction efforts to come.

If she was lucky.

Downstream. In the river, the water would carry her weight. That was the way to go. Just had to hop though this wet platinum sludge, hop carefully, then—

—movement on her left: movement, and color.

The burst of horror hit her all at once, made her atoms tingle.

Kayla Meyers looked to her left.

A wall of glowing monsters poured down the riverbank toward her, the mist magnifying their flashing red and orange bursts like stoplights illuminating the morning fog.

So, that was why he’d left her alive.

“Clever boy,” she said.

Kayla shifted her balance, hopped slightly, and turned to face her attackers.

10:26 a.m.

Say one thing for Kayla Meyers — that woman sure could scream.

She’d saved her best for last. It echoed through the ship canyon. Defiant at first, a scream of rage, then of pain, and, finally, a guttural plea that faded to nothing. Not words, really, but sounds any human being could understand.

Connell took no joy from her death. Maybe he should have left her a gun … maybe she would have held them off longer.

He kept moving, each struggling step his own personal Spanish Inquisition. Confess! Confess! He would have, gladly, to anything, just to make this pain stop for even an instant.

And yet, he kept on.

Hard to breathe. Heart, hammering.

He saw the bubble room where he’d left O’Doyle and Lybrand. He moved past that, unable to keep himself from whimpering when he slipped, when he reactively put his ruined foot down to stop from falling.

Past the ship corner, out of the canyon.

There … the entrance to the Linus Highway.

He didn’t know if he could make it.

He also knew he had no choice but to try.

The animal inside understood one thing and one thing only: survival.

Connell Kirkland limped toward the tunnel entrance.

Three miles to go.

Three miles.

10:35 a.m.

The orb descended.

A few more faint lights flickered to life. The reflections glowed like soft pearls, first appearing on the bottom, increasing in size as they arced up the curve, then shrank again as the orb descended past.

Down and down and down.

Reflections of massive, rough-hewn pillars, each larger than the Eiffel Tower, thicker than a skyscraper, each a monument of engineering and long-dead technological prowess, glided over the polished platinum. For several minutes, the pillars’ images alone covered the orb’s sides, until a new reflection arced across the metallic surface, gradually growing larger and more defined.

That reflection? A fish-eye distortion of the shaft bottom.

10:48 a.m.

This was what madness felt like.

Bertha wanted to strip off the suit, find a rough-edged rock and scrape the skin from her arms. Scrape it right off, because even that agony would be nothing compared to what she felt now.

Second-degree burns? Third? If she’d shoved her arms into boiling water and held them there for hours … that’s what this was.

She leaned heavily on Patrick. He leaned heavily on her. A four-legged whole greater than the sum of two-legged parts.

He stumbled, started to fall.

Without thinking, Bertha grabbed him around the waist. He stayed upright, thanks to a fresh wave of scorching agony ripping up her arms.

“Can’t make it,” he grunted. “You go.”

She shook her head. She would be dead right now if not for him. Bertha vaguely remembered seeing Angus Kool. Patrick had taken the man’s suit. Patrick found a way to save her, she would do the same for him.

Bertha looked back — a line of silverbugs behind them, more flowing up the tunnel to take their place.

“Patrick, we go together,” she said. “You don’t make it, I don’t make it. Do you want me to live?”

He glared down at her, like he hated her. Maybe, in that moment, he did hate her. Maybe he still would once they got out of here, but she didn’t care — as long as he did get out.

“Move,” she said.

He gritted his teeth, winced — from which injury, she did not know — then let her help him on.

10:55 a.m.

Heat.

Pain.

Connell stumbled, fell to his knees in the cave silt.

Silverbugs all around. He couldn’t hear them. He didn’t bother to see if they were shiny or burnished — if they were the kind with knives, he’d find out soon enough.

How far had he climbed? A mile? Maybe more? Maybe less?

The animal inside clawed and bit, hissed and spat.

The man leaned his weight on the rifle, tried to rise.

The world slipped. The world spun.

His face hit the cave silt, a small rock digging into his right cheekbone.

Where was he? The car … an accident … someone T-boned the car.

Cori.

His fingers tingling. Toes, too.

That sound … metallic clicking, clinking. The engine, cooling from the winter’s cold.

Connell blinked, tried to see. Everything blurry. Was that … a rock wall?

He pushed himself up on hands and knees. No, not a car accident. He was in the tunnels.

Silverbugs.

The rocktopi were coming.

His stomach, queasy … he might throw up.

Have to move. Have to move.

Connell picked up the rifle. He put the butt firmly in the silt, tried once again to rise. His arms trembled. His legs groaned. His foot howled.

Come on, come on …

He focused, begged his muscles to just do this one more thing. Inch by inch, he started to rise.

Then, he slowly started to sink.

He didn’t even have the strength to stand.

So, he crawled.

Hand after hand, knee after knee, Connell Kirkland kept moving up the Linus Highway.

10:59 a.m.

Twenty miles below Connell’s feet, the orb’s descent slowed.

The air temperature was that of hell itself, raging at just over 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The curved, polished platinum came to rest on the shaft floor, settling into a perfectly fitted depression made of the same metal.

An internal computer processed data on air pressure, heat and distance traveled.

Finding those readings suitable, the computer triggered the detonator.