by WW Mortensen
Sanchez watched as again, the torch flickered.
His hopes rising, he drew the flame back in the opposite direction, seeking a similar reaction from the passageway on the left. There was none.
Sanchez went right.
66
A couple of hours, Jessy thought.
This is going to be close.
She’d decided she’d be better off awaiting the chopper in more comfortable surroundings and had moved back to camp. She rested now in front of the cave with Priscilla clutched to her chest, patting her absently, deep in thought.
While overjoyed at their impending rescue, she was at the same time worried. Aronsohn had promised to help Rebecca, but he hadn’t told Jessy how.
She had to get Rebecca a message.
“I need to lie down,” Jessy called out to the two soldiers who had been tasked with guarding the camp. Declining an offer of assistance, she let Priscilla jump down and scamper ahead before making her way to the cave mouth on the crutches the medic had crafted from sturdy branches. She’d appreciated the kind gesture, welcoming the new-found freedom, however limited. Now, at least, she could get up and stretch whenever she wanted. And as the painkillers had already kicked in, she could move without discomfort.
Jessy arrived at the cave mouth and paused there in the shadows. Hidden from view, she gave the soldiers time to conclude she was in her tent as claimed. Re-emerging, she hobbled as fast and as quietly as she was able, circumnavigating the huge tree. The corpses of the two dead guards were there, having been dragged out of sight.
Though she was herself out of view, Jessy worked quickly. The bodies—each of them draped in a khaki poncho—lay side by side amongst waist-high fernery. Jessy parted the vegetation, bending awkwardly and lifting the nearest poncho with one of her crutches. Controlling her repulsion, she reached under and patted the dead man’s clothing. Just as she had hoped, the object was hidden inside one of his pockets, and she took it and slipped it into her shorts before sneaking back to her tent. She was certain she hadn’t been seen.
Jessy presumed the comm radio would be set to the right frequency. Still, she had no intention of using it just yet. Rebecca wasn’t carrying a radio herself, and so getting a message to her meant alerting Oliveira to the fact he’d lost the camp. His reaction to that, she was certain, wouldn’t be favourable. More than that, Aronsohn would be monitoring all channels as a matter of procedure. He wouldn’t be happy if she tipped off the enemy.
Which meant for now, it was better to keep her cards close. Rebecca needed time to find Ed, and time to get out. Ultimately, Aronsohn could deal with Oliveira and his men. But now, if needed, and when the moment was right, she could get a message through.
Hurry, Bec, find him. And get the hell out of there.
The radio remained in Jessy’s pocket. And she waited.
67
Deep beneath the pyramid, Rebecca glanced at the luminous hands of her watch.
“How far do you think this goes?” Oliveira whispered, as if reading her mind.
“I wish I knew,” Rebecca answered.
For the last few minutes she’d focused solely on the tunnel ahead, and the deeper they went, the deeper her unease. She checked her watch again. Had heading down here been the right decision? Maybe they should have gone to the surface and found another way in. If the tunnel didn’t get them to the central nest, they were in trouble.
With no obvious end to the passageway and no proof of where they were going, it was hard not to feel anxious. If they were lost down here in the darkness when the spiders woke…
She considered voicing this to Oliveira when in front of her, Asensi stopped dead in his tracks.
Stumbling, Rebecca pulled up sharply.
What the hell?
Then out of nowhere, she heard it, too.
• • •
De Sousa smiled.
He was sure the girl couldn’t have known she’d been watched through a pair of binoculars from the bushes some forty or fifty feet away. More than that, she couldn’t have guessed, either, that in the opposing hand of her observer, pressed to his lips, was a comm radio of his very own.
De Sousa had seen her search the bodies of his comrades.
Again, he smiled, lowering the radio and sweeping his gaze past the cave to take in the campsite. He counted nine, perhaps ten soldiers. Beside him, Cartana crouched low in the undergrowth, out of sight.
De Sousa scanned the cave’s entrance. Since acquiring the radio, the girl hadn’t re-emerged. She was probably resting. De Sousa adjusted the focus for a sharper view, but the cave was too dark.
Both he and Cartana had been returning from the north-western vantage point loaded up with the equipment Oliveira wanted brought back to camp, when the soldiers had appeared out of nowhere. De Sousa had seen his comrades gunned down and had retreated with Cartana into the bushes. He was confident the two of them hadn’t been detected. When the soldiers had later come looking, he and Cartana had withdrawn to hide amongst the vegetation. Having crept closer again, De Sousa sensed the soldiers had scaled down their search and consolidated the camp.
He pondered this latest turn. There was no getting back into the clearing—the soldiers were stationed all around it. He could likely take a few of them out, but not all of them.
He lowered the binoculars and put the radio to his lips.
He’d already switched to the other channel. This way, the woman couldn’t eavesdrop on the conversation.
Still eyeing the cave, De Sousa keyed the talk button.
• • •
Rebecca heard a low buzz.
At first, she had to strain to catch it, but then its intensity grew. Definitely a humming sound, low in pitch. As quickly as it rose, it faded and disappeared. Seconds later it returned, this time accompanied by a faint but obvious vibration underfoot.
Asensi looked at Rebecca.
“What is that?” she mouthed at him as the hum diminished and throbbed back.
Ahead, nothing but blackness.
Asensi frowned, muttering in Portuguese as Oliveira stepped up beside them. Clearly, he could hear it too, though he remained stone-faced. Another pulse, and more trembling.
The noise, whatever it was, sounded close. Felt close. Rebecca couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, it felt unnatural too. That unnerved her even more. The sound didn’t seem to be coming from a living source. Mechanical, maybe?
“What about the signal?” Oliveira said to Asensi.
From where she stood, Rebecca could read the receiver in Asensi’s hands. She peered at the screen just as the glowing blip they’d been tracking vanished. Rebecca felt a rush of panic, but almost instantly the blip reappeared. Clearly, the signal was diminishing with each pulse of the strange humming sound, reappearing between pulses. The sound was causing interference, but they could still track the transponder.
Asensi gave the thumbs-up, and with that, Oliveira waved them down the tunnel, towards the source of the noise.
Rebecca fell into step behind Asensi. Despite her recent fears the tunnel mightn’t grant them access to the nest, there was little doubt it was leading them somewhere—heart of the nest or otherwise. Obviously, there was a specific reason for the tunnel’s construction; like the pyramid itself, it had a purpose.
And now, whatever that might be, they were about to find out.
68
De Sousa keyed his radio and sneered.
Like before, a wash of static hissed loudly in his ear, and he jerked the handset away. He couldn’t understand—they shouldn’t be out of range. Something was interrupting the signal.
Snarling, he raised the binoculars to spy on the soldiers. Soon enough, another idea came to him.
De Sousa smiled. He switched off the radio and pocketed it.
“Come,” he grunted at Cartana, mindful to keep his voice low. Dragging the smaller man up by the collar—but hunching down, doubled at the waist—he nudged him in the back. “Move.”
; They slipped away soundlessly, disappearing into the undergrowth, and again, De Sousa grinned to himself.
No. They weren’t finished yet.
Not by a long shot.
• • •
Almost there.
Rebecca figured they were close to the source of the strange hum—it was now at its loudest, and the accompanying vibrations thrummed in her bones. The phenomenon played havoc with the transponder signal, causing it to drop in and out, although just now the reading had bounced back strong. The device was near.
Which meant so too was Ed.
Ahead, the silk-lined tunnel levelled out, veering left, to the east. Cautiously, Asensi led them on, his assault rifle now in one hand and the receiver in the other. In silence, the group rounded a bend to find that just beyond it, the shaft terminated. Finally, they’d reached the end of the passageway.
And when they saw it, to the last of them, their eyes went wide.
No way…
They emerged from the tunnel slowly, mouths agape, into a large, natural cavern perhaps a hundred feet in diameter.
Torn into the middle of the low-lying ceiling was a great, gaping hole, above which rose a huge, silk-lined and funnel-shaped shaft that disappeared into deep blackness. But as amazing as this was, it was nothing compared to what lay directly beneath the huge funnel, half-buried in the floor of the cavern.
Though desperate to reject the thoughts tumbling through her mind, there seemed no denying the truth; Rebecca knew precisely what she was looking at.
This place wasn’t the heart they’d been searching for, and probably had nothing to do with the nest at all. But it was clearly the reason for the tunnel’s existence. The reason, perhaps, for the entire city’s existence.
And unsurprisingly, it was nothing short of spectacular.
69
“So, you believe her?”
Wesley ‘Bull’ Harper raised his eyes from the laptop as McGinley circled the blind to stand beside him. He shrugged. “Yeah, s’pose I do.” He tossed his head in the direction of the pyramid. “What else could explain that shit?”
The ginger-haired McGinley stared where Bull had indicated, captivated by the ruined city and the huge web strung about it. He shook his head. “I guess so. But goddamn—just look at it, will you? Jesus.” He turned back to Harper. “Just what do you suppose it’s all doing out here? I mean, you got that great big structure, in the middle of nowhere and all—that seems strange enough, don’t it? But then you got that freakin’ web! What is that about? Just looking at it gives me the creeps.”
“You always were a mommy’s-boy.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
Bull chuckled, caressing the M16 beside him. “Man, there ain’t nothin’ out there old Bully-Boy can’t handle.”
“Yeah, well handle this, motherfucker.” McGinley patted his own weapon as if it were an extension of his manhood.
Harper rocked his head in laughter.
McGinley did, too, before the younger soldier turned serious again. “Why do you think the Captain sent us on this wild-goose chase, anyway? Off huntin’ some signal? You ask me, whoever set it off is already dead, man. History. If that woman is right about them things, there ain’t nobody in there alive. God only knows why you’d ditch the mission for this shit—” McGinley paused mid-sentence as he realised Aronsohn had appeared beside him. “Sorry, Captain, I—”
“Please, speak freely, Sergeant.”
McGinley cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I was just wondering, is all. Wondering why we went off mission.”
Aronsohn raised his binoculars to stare at the pyramid. “We’re still on mission. We’ve simply taken a detour. Anything else on your mind?”
“Well, yeah, sir, I guess there is.”
Without looking up from the screen of the laptop, Harper bit back a chuckle.
McGinley didn’t seem to notice. “I was also wondering, sir, what’s inside there, you know? Why those people would even think of goin’ in a place like that—you’d need some helluva reason, right?” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was lower, more serious. “And so then, it got me wonderin’ also, what we ourselves mightta just walked into.”
Aronsohn slowly spun from the pyramid, lowering the binoculars to face his young charge. “You know, Mac,” he said, nodding, “I’ve been wondering that myself.”
70
Astonishing.
Rebecca guessed the object stretched six or seven yards across. It was difficult to be certain of its exact dimensions, because not all of it was exposed above the floor of the cavern. Most of it lay buried in the ground.
As far as she could tell, the object was a solid sphere. Every few seconds, the thing would glow a brilliant, glaring orange, humming and quivering and causing the ground to vibrate before fading and plunging the cavern into complete darkness. Over and over it would do this like a huge, slow-beating heart.
Chemlight in hand, Rebecca moved deeper into the chamber, trance-like, unable to believe her eyes, unable to speak. The men, equally mute, struck flares and tossed them about.
The sphere seemed to be made of a smooth, dark alloy. Rebecca deduced this between pulses, when she could look at the orb directly. In places, clusters of opaque rods towered from its exterior in uneven formations, some several feet high and resembling random growths of crystal. Like the sphere itself, the rods blazed orange with each pulse.
The growths were peculiar, but stranger still were the bursts of energy leaping spasmodically from the orb’s surface. They looked like erupting solar flares, but were reminiscent, also, of forking lightning. Like sizzling electricity, they crackled in the air before dissipating.
No-one uttered a word.
Rebecca crossed to the opposing side of the cavern, moving closer to the sphere and climbing the raised mound of earth that had been pushed up around it. The object radiated warmth, and her skin tingled pleasantly.
She glanced up at Oliveira and the rest of his men. All of them stood staring in amazement.
Her initial shock started to ease, but her curiosity grew. The scientist in her wanted answers. Rebecca continued circling the object, and then stopped and crouched before it.
And that was when, without warning, the ground beneath her feet opened and Rebecca fell through the floor of the cavern and disappeared.
• • •
“Senhorita… are you okay?”
Rebecca lifted her head, shielding her face as a large clump of dirt rained from above. Luis peered through the hole that had just swallowed her, arms outstretched.
Rebecca got gingerly to her feet and brushed herself off. She’d fallen about ten feet, landing heavily and turning her ankle. It hurt, but the injury wasn’t serious.
“Are you okay, senhorita?” Luis repeated.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“I will lower a rope. What do you see down there?”
Rebecca slipped her NVGs over her eyes. She stood on a narrow earthen ledge, no more than two feet wide, below which was a seven-foot drop—
—to the floor of what appeared to be a large, subterranean cave.
Wow…
The natural cavern opened wide before her and disappeared beyond view. She’d fallen straight through its ceiling.
And as large as it was, it was covered entirely in silk.
Rebecca swivelled on the spot. A few feet to her right was a curtain of thick, dangling roots. Through it she could see a portion of the sphere’s underside, partially exposed to the cavern below. Somehow, and despite the continual, rhythmic shuddering, the sphere remained firmly lodged between the two levels, stuck between the chamber above and the cavern below.
Rebecca glanced from the sphere to the cavern and back again.
Something caught her eye.
Directly beneath the sphere’s exposed belly, on the cavern floor, lay several elongated rods—the same opaque crystals that protruded from the sphere in clusters—only these had been sheared clear of the object and ha
d dropped to the ground.
Unsurprisingly, they didn’t glow like the rest. They just lay there unattached, broken, lifeless.
And then, just like that, it came to her. Clear as anything.
She knew.
Knew what all this was about. Knew about the sphere, the arachnids, Intihuasi… everything. It was all connected, coming to her in a single moment of clarity, a mind-blowing revelation almost too difficult to grasp. But somehow, Rebecca knew she was right.
And it scared her witless.
Suddenly, the rope Luis had promised dropped through the hole. The end of it landed at her feet with a soft thud.
With a final, nervous glance at the cavern, Rebecca seized the rope and climbed as fast as she was able.
71
“You… felt it too, then?”
The sound of Owen’s voice made Sanchez jump, and he drew to an abrupt halt in the middle of the dark passage. “What… the breeze at the fork back there? You felt that?” He hadn’t realised Owen had regained consciousness. “You must be getting better.”
Owen coughed. “…I guess so.”
Sanchez paused, thrusting the torch ahead and behind before leaning against the tunnel wall. “Well, I am pleased to have you back, amigo.”
Owen smiled faintly. “So, how’re we doing?”
“Could be better,” Sanchez said with a shrug. “But our situation is looking up. There must be an opening at the end of this passage, something that leads outside, through which that breeze is passing. Find that, and we have our exit.” As he spoke, he caught Owen staring at the bloody punctures in his left shoulder. “One of them got a shot on me. I’ll live.”
“Good to hear,” Owen said. He grimaced and clutched at his abdomen.
Sanchez lowered the torch. Owen’s once-bright Hawaiian shirt was ripped, dirty, and drenched in an alarming amount of blood. He checked Owen’s wound. While there had been some leakage, the dressing had stemmed the flow. The bleeding was under control. He straightened.
