Wild-Side
20 months ago
The Bus easily traveled the rocky terrain of the Badlands. With three oversized wheels on each side of the cargo compartment at the back of the sleek, van-like utility vehicle, it could crawl with nimble agility across the vastly uneven surfaces. The pair of equally large wheels at the front were suspended at the end of long struts, giving the vehicle both a tight turning radius and extra resilience over surfaces like those it currently traversed.
Kilmer Fenn sat on the bench seat in the cargo space and watched with trepidation as the stowed stacks of hard-shelled crates heaved and strained against the tie–down straps binding them to the cabin floor. The left side of the cab tipped at nearly a forty–degree slant as the vehicle traversed another of the endless fields of man-sized boulders standing shoulder to shoulder and littering the expanse.
The figure on the opposite side of the cabin had been caught off guard, causing Kilmer to laugh. Mara struggled to secure herself in the safe embrace of the shoulder restraints. It was anyone’s guess what she was thinking when she took the device off. Like him, she wore a full-body environment suit. It had a form-fitting shell made of thin, plastic-like protective armor. The material was about an inch thicker than his usual daily uniform. This offered incredible protection, considering that, with the helmet on and the internal breathing system engaged, he could survive a grade-four rock slide.
“If you remove your restraints, you better put your helmet on first. We’re a long way from anything other than automated medical care,” Kilmer warned with a grin.
Mara tried to look nonplussed but was more likely fighting not to lose her lunch. “Is it just me, or is the ride getting rougher?” she said after taking a hard swallow.
Kilmer suddenly understood her reluctance to use the helmet. They had excellent filtration, but for all their technology, no one had bothered to integrate gelatinous, half-chewed food processing into the hardware. He looked at the virtual display on the back of his wrist. “We’re two point two kilometers out, but Drew doesn’t think we’ll make it to the site. Too much debris between us and the target. Looks like we’ll have to stop and walk the rest of the way.”
Fighting back a gasp that was likely partially solid matter, Mara pressed her hands hard on the knees of her suit. She spread her feet more widely for stability. “Maybe I can walk now?”
Kilmer laughed and tapped a button on his wrist display to open a private channel to their team leader. “You better slow it down a bit, boss. Either that or we’ll have to rinse the cargo space.”
“You’re joking,” an accusatory voice sounded in reply.
Kilmer watched Mara take a deep, shuddering breath. Her head tipped back, and her eyes seemed to wobble in different directions. Just then, the floor dropped from beneath them, and the vehicle fell several feet before impacting hard. Grinding his teeth, Kilmer tapped the red emergency button on his wrist display. Nano-particulate matter shot from the collar of his suit to instantly form a helmet around his head. It was sleek and dark gray to match his suit, featuring a panoramic lens that stretched from ear to ear and ran from his hairline to the bottom of his lower lip. Like the suit, the hard shell of the helmet’s surface was perhaps only an inch thicker than his head, making it both lightweight and comfortable. And as was vital in this instance, it was waterproof and airtight.
Mara swallowed hard once more, closed her eyes, and started to do some kind of deep breathing exercise.
False alarm.
“Sir, one more bump like that, and you’ll need to rinse me off too. That was close.”
An incomprehensible grumbling came from the other end of the connection. Then, a voice said, “Stand by. We’re almost to the blockage. If Mara tells me you’re putting me on, there will be consequences. Are we clear?”
It was Kilmer’s turn to grumble. He then tapped the lens of his helmet with the knuckle of his glove. The rattle was unmistakable. “Do you hear that, sir? When I say I’m taking every precaution, I’m not joking. Mara has changed colors 3 times in the last two minutes.”
Eighteen minutes later, the Bus pulled to a stop. The team leader had pushed their luck a little too far, and one of the vehicle’s massive front tires was suspended over a jagged-edged boulder. This wouldn’t have been the end of the ride, except it occurred simultaneously with its partner tire plunging into a cleft that caused the front suspension to bottom out and rest on a particularly bulbous stone protrusion.
Kilmer had just climbed from the roof of the cargo bay and onto the bolder beneath the Bus. He’d been fortunate enough to arrive in time to see the look on Drew’s face as he completed a closer inspection of their predicament.
“Sonofabitch,” Martin Drew said as he hurled a fist-sized stone into the distance. Thanks to the enhancements of his powered suit, the stone must have traveled a good fifty yards. Kilmer barely heard its impact.
He glanced at his wrist display again. They were half a kilometer from the anomaly but had paid dearly for the extra distance. If Drew had followed the plan, they would have parked the bus farther back and hoofed it. He’d pressed his luck, and now they were stuck. None of this needed explanation, of course. Everyone on the team was undoubtedly thinking the same thing at that moment.
“Alright,” Drew said, his voice weary. “Break out the gear. We’re on foot from here.” He strolled toward the back of the Bus, dragging the fingers of his gloved hand along the sleek metal hull. He appeared to be having a silent conversation with the transport that had betrayed him.
“Ah, Kilmer? What happened to you?” a voice came from my left. It was Teretti’s deep baritone, and it stopped Kilmer in his tracks.
All eyes were on me.
“Oh, that’s what I think it is?” This was from John Pope. He didn’t waste a second. He extended his helmet and took a step back.
Glancing down at the streaking stain across the front of his suit, Kilmer shrugged. “I told you guys to stop, but you didn’t listen. Wait until you see the cargo space. It’s a complete mess.”
Drew’s face was turning red. “You told me Mara was sick. You didn’t say you were going to spew, too. Take some responsibility.”
Kilmer grinned. “Responsibility? Sounds fair. Here’s the thing, boss.” He pointed to the chunks still stuck to the front of his suit. “This here isn’t mine. Mara? That girl’s got some range. The trouble is, she’s a big eater, too. But if you want to talk about responsibility, this is on you for not stopping.”
Though he didn’t think it was possible, Drew’s face turned a deeper shade of red. His gaze shifted from one member of the team to the next. He looked at Pope, then Teretti, then back at Kilmer. After that, he seemed to calm down. “I’m calling bullshit,” he said with a grin. “It can’t be that bad.”
Drew turned the corner and climbed the bumper at the back end of the Bus. Kilmer heard the thump of boots as his boss traversed the short ladder to the cargo space.
“Oh,” Drew grumbled. Long seconds passed. Then he said, “For the love of—Woman, what did you eat?”
The team made short work of the journey to the target location. Teretti led the group, navigating with a topographic map projected in three-dimensional space half a meter in front of him at all times. Kilmer could see the display from his position on the group’s periphery since the projection was shared over the team’s channel. As long as Teretti was responsible for navigation, Kilmer could focus on other things. He was more interested in the geography. An opportunity to explore the Wastes was rare, and he wouldn’t miss the chance to capture everything there was to see. To that end, his suit’s recording system recorded everything visible to the internal sensor systems. He was also chronicling everything he saw through his personal optics. This violated three different policies, but no less than a dozen close friends would be interested in what was out here, even if the investigation turned up nothing of substance.
The Wastes had been off-limits for as long as anyone could remember, and it was only during a rare operation like today that a team was dispatched to study an anomaly. Archaeology beyond the Green Zones was outlawed, except in response to a natural event such as a storm, flood, earthquake, or tsunami. All of these events were exceedingly rare; however, historically speaking, certain areas of the Badlands saw more earthquakes than any other part of the region. To Kilmer’s knowledge, this was only the second quake investigated within the last hundred and twenty years.
They reached the coordinates of the supposed event but found nothing obvious indicating a recent seismic event. The rocky terrain was comprised mainly of washed-out stone with specks of unusual vegetation that had survived eons of weather and erosion. The gaps in the rock plunged as much as thirty meters, most with jagged and unforgiving clefts and protrusions that seemed to wait to test their armored suits.
The team spread out, conducting a more thorough search of the area using the sensor technology built into their gauntlets. Since the exploration of the Wastes had been outlawed since time in memoriam, Kilmer knew little technology had focused on the Wastes. As a result, when a seismic event occurred, pinpointing the epicenter accurately wasn’t easy. This was contradictory since, while the law stated that archaeology outside the Green Zone was illegal, a provision allowed for limited exploration of non-Green Zone locations in the wake of a natural event. Any time a natural event was suspected in a non-Green Zone, such as the Badlands or a Deadzone, it captured the attention of the local populace. Yet, with this in mind, no one was willing to dedicate resources to better monitor non-Green Zones for natural events, allowing for greater exploration.
Even as he pondered his society’s strangeness, Kilmer found himself losing interest in the greater mystery. His mind naturally focused on the puzzle before him. The more significant questions of his society moved to the corners of his mind and seemed to fizzle out of focus entirely. With this fizzling came a sense of calm and renewed clarity.
“I found something,” Pope’s voice came over the team channel. “I’m sending my coordinates now.”
“Confirmed,” Drew replied. “Form up on Pope’s position. It looks like a cavern opened due to the seismic event.”
The team gathered in a ravine that clearly showed a fresh split in the cracked and crumbling stone. Gravel smaller than Bulveanry leaves littered the ground, making footing precarious even in the self-stabilizing powered suits. The ravine was nearly ten meters wide at the mouth and narrowed at the back, where a dark gap appeared to offer underground access to the plateau overhead. The ravine’s walls extended twelve to fifteen meters from the base of the gorge, which made Kilmer reassess the geology’s stability. The region had recently experienced a seismic event. There was no telling what might occur if they entered the cavern.
Certainly, risk was involved. However, given the uniqueness of the opportunity, no team member was unwilling to risk entering the underground space. Even if the cavern was two meters deep and filled with nothing but water, it was a chance that some had waited decades to witness. No one would pass up the opportunity to explore an area that was normally off-limits.
The team gathered around Drew, who made a point of being the first to enter the cavern. Next was Teretti, then Pope, and finally Kilmer. He looked over his shoulder and remembered that Mara had been left behind to clean up her mess from the Bus’s cargo bay.
Always first. Drew really is a proctological napkin.
The team moved in single file, which Kilmer considered a good sign. Their continuous progress implied the cleft was deep and extended far into the plateau walls. He also heard the echo of footfalls—another good sign. It suggested that the narrow confines of the shoulder-wide passage might be widening. After all, there wasn’t enough space in the passage to produce an echo.
Then Pope stopped so suddenly that Kilmer bumped into him.
“Hey,” Kilmer grumbled. “A little warning! What’s going on?” No one had spoken over the shared channel, so he had been surprised by the sudden stop.
Leaning to the left, Kilmer peered past Pope. They had indeed reached a cavern. The expansive space was illuminated inconsistently by the team members’ shoulder and helmet lights. Kilmer had an obstructed view with Pope standing in front of him, but he could see that the area seemed to open up to the left and right. Glancing upward, he saw the ceiling sloping higher into a smooth, uneven dome-like surface about five meters above him.
Kilmer tapped Pope on the shoulder. The man seemed to regain his faculties and stepped further into the space. Kilmer went to step onward but stopped before placing his next boot on the floor. His eyes fell on what must have frozen Pope in his steps because Kilmer reacted the same way. A body lay face down on the floor about ten feet beyond the entrance. The figure’s arms were outstretched, and its head was turned. Kilmer squinted at the figure and got the uneasy sense that the person had died while attempting to crawl to the exit.
He looked around the room, suddenly surprised that no one was talking. The helmets of each suit were lit, and he could see each team member mouthing words excitedly. Their hands and arms were gesticulating, but he could hear none of it. Tapping the AR control on his wrist, Kilmer reactivated the team channel. He’d disabled it when Drew gave what he believed to be an inspirational speech before entering the cavern. Kilmer figured that if he had to listen to the fool drone on, Mara wouldn’t be the only one hosing out a helmet. So he’d killed the team channel until the auditory insult was over.
Except he had forgotten to reactivate coms.
Oops.
A strange and disturbing tableau occupied the center of the circular, domed cavern. Four more bodies were arranged around a small stone table at the center of the space. They sat, two on either side, seeming to face each other. Though long, long since dead, their bodies were in good condition. They wore strange clothing of material none of the team recognized. The exposed skin of their faces and hands was desiccated, dry, and parchment–like. But it was intact. It was easy to tell the figures’ facial features: two men and two women. It looked like they’d sat down on the short stone benches and simply died at the table.
Except that they hadn’t. Initial scans of the bodies showed injuries that were not visible in the dried skin of their slumped heads as they hung, suspended in stares that seemed to face the stone surface. All four figures had their throats slashed. The wounds had been deep; in three cases, the weapon in question had even nicked the spines of the victims.
This meant the darkness marring the tattered remains of the strange clothes worn by the figures was blood. The site scan results also confirmed the assumption.
The brutality of the scene shocked the group. In the history of their world, no one had ever taken another person’s life. Even the murder of livestock had been outlawed hundreds of years ago, as a core tenet of their society. What they were witnessing was simply beyond anyone’s imagination.
However, if all of this was bad, the results of their subsequent scans were even more troubling.
Scans of the bodies showed they had been dead for at least twelve hundred years. Since the Seeley race was just over two hundred and fifty years old, this simply wasn’t possible.
All imaging until that point had been conducted with Gauntlets, the sensor array technology built into the powered suits. More advanced technology was available, and fifty-five minutes after entering the cave, the team lit the perimeter with high-output illumination posts. As the name implies, they are essentially two-meter-tall poles with brightly lit arrays. The high output in the name didn’t indicate how bright they were. Despite lighting every inch of the cavern, their primary purpose was to scan the space as part of a three-dimensional site assay.
Kilmer strolled slowly around the site, capturing every aspect of the environment with his personal sensors, even though they weren’t as powerful as the equipment the team was about to activate. Much of the time had been wasted arguing amongst themselves about the nature of the find, what it meant, and what the preliminary test results would indicate to historians.
Delicately put, Drew had lost his composure. His suit had already been forced to administer sedatives, which should have been enough for Teretti to take command of the operation. However, as Kilmer had long known, Teretti lacked backbone. There was no precedent for the situation and, therefore, no documented procedure to handle it. Teretti was out of his element, which meant Drew had not been relieved of his command.
Kilmer watched Drew as he walked back and forth along the edge of the cave. It was a slow, repetitive process that felt rhythmic, mechanical, and pointless. He had mentally checked out, and a vacant stare was visible even through the lens of his helmet. Of course, this was preferable to him making decisions that put the team at risk. There was definitely something wrong with the cave. It went beyond simply being the scene of a multiple murder—four dead at the table and one dead at the entrance from as of yet unknown causes. Judging by the expression on the face of the prone body, that man had died in great pain.
“Two more Busses are inbound,” Mara said through the private com channel. “One to tow our rig off this boulder and one to collect the dead. You were right; there are a lot of people upset back at base. Drew isn’t the only one.”
Mara coordinated communication with command from her position on the Bus. She was spared from witnessing the scene because she had never entered the cave. No one who entered the cave coped with the sight constructively. None had imagined a scenario as horrible.
One of the sensors in Teretti’s suit warned of a trace contagion nearby. At first, it was disregarded as an errant reading since it had been noted by only one suit. But when another set of gear sounded an alarm, Drew pulled rank. He confined the team to the cave’s interior until the backup team could arrive with more detailed diagnostic equipment and offer guidance on the quarantine.
Since they were stuck and it would be hours before the second team arrived, Kilmer decided to take a closer look at the table where the four bodies had congregated in their last moments. An oblong rectangular frame lay flat across the floor, obscured by a thick layer of dust just beyond the far end of the table. The object’s perimeter was just visible beneath what must have been hundreds of years of collected dust and grit. A pair of short, knee-high stanchions rose from the spiderwebs and dust. They were grooved with brackets, appearing intended to support something thin and roughly shoulder-width.
Kilmer raised his Gauntlet over the mess on the floor, which he now suspected to be an artifact. After all, this was why so many were interested in the rare opportunity to access naturally surfaced excavations in the Badlands. More than a dozen times in his people’s history, examinations of naturally excavated locations had unearthed objects of unusual provenance. Little was known about the artifacts found so far other than that they were stored in a vault accessible only by the special order of Administrator Hargrave.
The scan results were displayed in Kilmer’s HUD. What he saw didn’t make sense, so he tapped a series of commands on his sleeve and transferred the display to a projection that appeared in augmented reality an arm’s length in front of him. With a swipe of his hand, he removed the dust and debris from the photo-realistic duplication, leaving what looked like a rectangular frame. It resembled an ancient photograph, though the analysis of the material suspended inside indicated it was composed of a substance that didn’t register on the periodic table. Perhaps just as impossibly, the scan concluded that the substance was 3 nanometers thick. This was so thin, if looked at from the edge, it wasn’t visible to the human eye.
“What have you got there?” The voice behind Kilmer was Martin Drew.
Kilmer tapped a command on his sleeve, making the AR image visible to Drew. He reached out, grabbed the edge of the virtual frame, and handed it to Drew while circling the perimeter of debris. “This appears to be hidden under the mess,” he said.
Drew looked at the rendering, twisted it in cyberspace, and examined it from different directions. “How is this possible?” he said. “Did you see how thick the interstitial material is? That’s incredible.”
“I double-checked the results, just to be sure. It’s accurate.”
“But did you notice? The material’s surface is smooth and flawless, even after the abuse it must have endured with all this particulate matter?”
Kilmer created his own version of the AR rendering and began manipulating it. He entered a series of commands, and the suit’s onboard software analyzed the material’s surface more thoroughly. “Wow,” was all he could say in conclusion.
He glanced at a pair of grooves set into the lower two corners at one end of the frame. As he looked across the rubble-strewn floor, something in the debris was highlighted in neon green on his helmet’s HUD.
Fifteen minutes later, Kilmer, Drew, and Teretti cleared the frame of debris and placed it upright. It slotted perfectly into the grooves of the stanchions he’d noted beyond the end of the table, though he couldn’t guess its purpose. Removing the grime from the framed artifact was trivial. The impossibly thin material had no surface tension, so it cleaned easily. It also seemed impervious to scratches and dents. Once it was standing upright, even the fine dust of the cavern couldn’t stick to the surface. They spent several minutes wiping grit from the wood grain of the frame, but that effort was wasted. No markings of consequence were found anywhere—nothing visible to the naked eye or to the suit’s Gauntlet scanners.
Kilmer looked at the chilling sight. The four corpses created a morbid image, now made more confounding by the addition of the strange vertical plane facing the end of the table. It resembled a great black doorway to nowhere. The surface of the peculiar material was unnerving, as it seemed to swallow all light that touched it. There was no reflection of any kind, no gloss, or gleam to the black finish. The frame measured three feet wide and five feet high, with exacting measurements down to a fraction of an inch. Kilmer didn’t know why it mattered, but the precision hinted at something… he just couldn’t put his finger on it… other than to say it was troubling.
Kilmer turned to see Pope on his hands and knees at the other end of the table. “What do you have there, John?”
Pope had dusted the grime away from a spot about three feet from the end of the surface. He had the finger of his glove in a small cleft and was wiggling it. “Three holes, deliberately spaced,” he said.
Kilmer understood what the man meant. Aside from the one the man was palpating with his powered glove, two more had already been cleared. They were perfectly round, at least a half-inch deep, and couldn’t have been more precise if they had been bored with a laser drill. When Pope pulled his finger free from the third hole and sat back, the computer in Kilmer’s suit made an interesting extrapolation and superimposed three green lines between the holes, indicating that they formed a triangle with three exactly equal legs.
“Did you see that?” Kilmer said.
“Yeah,” Pope nodded. “This place keeps getting weirder.” Then, he held up a glove containing three wooden rods.
The display in Kilmer’s suit instantly indicated that all three rods were exactly the same length—thirty-six inches and three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
Although he was familiar with the Non-Standard unit of measure, he did not overlook the fact that everything in this cave was measured in Non-Standard units. When converted, the rods would measure 914.4 millimeters, and the distance of the holes from the table was 91.44 centimeters. None of these numbers were intuitive for their people. Presumably, the builders of this artifact had used a different measurement system.
“I don’t understand this,” Pope said. One by one, he stuck the end of each dowel rod into a hole in the floor. Each rod stood upright and faced vaguely in the direction of the ceiling. None of them, however, did so with any degree of precision. This contradicted what they had seen so far. Everything about the frame and the holes had been exceedingly precise.
Kneeling on the floor, Kilmer grinned. “Mind if I try?” He pulled the rods from the holes and examined them briefly to ensure that none of the ends had been damaged. Seeing none, he crossed all three at one end and spread the other ends out widely. He pointed to the floor and directed them toward the holes. They pulled with a magnetic force before he could approach to guide the rods more delicately. The three tips seemed to direct themselves into the appropriate slots, locking into place at thirty-degree angles, leaving their upright ends crossed about an inch and a half from their tips.
“What just happened?” Pope stammered.
Kilmer sat back on his haunches and stared at the tripod with wide eyes. “I think it just helped me finish assembling it.”
“Ok,” Pope said slowly. “But how?”
Shrugging, a less noticeable gesture due to the suit, Kilmer said, “I don’t know. But we have technology that does things like that.”
“Yeah…but this was just three wooden rods, right?”
They would have to discuss that with the second team when it arrived with more delicate scanning equipment. There was undoubtedly more to this cave than met the eye, and Kilmer was now confident in his assessment.
Drew approached, looking ready to speak as Kilmer stood up. Drew noticed the three crossed rods sticking up from the floor. He observed how the small stand was perfectly aligned with the end of the table. Then, Drew, Pope, and Kilmer looked past the assembly, the table, and at the vertical frame facing them from beyond it.
“You found more of the device,” Drew said as he circled the small wooden stand and studied it from different angles. His words might have been a question if not for their tone.
Kilmer nodded. “Does that strike you as a crude tripod?” He looked around the room, still strewn with rubble that might obscure minor artifacts like those they had already found. “We should look for whatever is supposed to rest there.”
The comment shook Drew from the mental fog that had plagued him since the discovery of the bodies. He faced Kilmer, and his shoulders squared deliberately. Long seconds passed. During that time, Drew’s eyes blinked only briefly as he stared at Kilmer. It seemed as if he was working through some internal debate—something that was personally challenging for him.
Finally, Drew exhaled. His ramrod posture seemed to deflate with the effort. He reached a gloved hand into the pouch on his hip and retrieved a grapefruit-sized silver orb, measuring 6 inches or 15.24 centimeters in diameter. Holding it up to the light, he noticed it had a matte finish and was blemish-free, with no markings of any kind. “I found it in the rubble over there,” Drew said simply as he handed it over. “It sounds like what you’re looking for.”
All eyes were on Kilmer as he acted naturally, considering everything they had done up to that point. With everyone eager to understand the strange artifact locked away for millennia in the cavern beneath the plateau’s surface, no one intended to stop him. They should have been more aware of the bodies found alongside the apparatus because, when combined, they conveyed a type of message.
A warning.
Kilmer knelt before the wooden tripod and lowered the sphere into the crude cradle. As he did this, a glance at the floor enabled his suit to scan the surface—specifically, the area disturbed by his recent movement. A multi-phasic scan from the optical array of his helmet located an etching or rune carved in the stone floor and highlighted it in green on his HUD.
It was a simple shape—a circle with an X through it. The circle appeared deeply carved into the stone floor, while the X was less extremely etched, perhaps suggesting it was less important. Kilmer’s brows furrowed in confusion as he tried to interpret the shape and its meaning, even as his right hand placed the sphere in the cradle of the tripod. As he did, the position of the rune registered in his mind. It was directly beneath where he knelt.
The moment the silver orb settled fully into the stand, he looked up at it. Then, he gazed over it to see that it had a clear line of sight across the surface of the stone table separating the still, mostly upright, long-dead figures to the left and right. Beyond the table, facing the bodies, the sphere, and him, was the vertical surface of the strange material in the frame. It resembled a mirror that absorbed one’s reflection instead of returning it.
Members of the team shifted to take positions behind the long-dead forms at the table. Kilmer’s eyes quickly darted from each of the dead to the standing forms of his teammates behind them. A sense that this had all happened before solidified in his mind. The past was replaying itself, and his friends had become unwilling participants in some horrible past mistake.
One of the vertical light projection poles at the perimeter of the cave made a popping sound, and the device began to buzz loudly. This lasted only a few heartbeats, and then the buzz slowly faded, as did the light emanating from the cave’s perimeter.
The light source the team had been using for hours went suddenly dark.
“Switch to suit-based lighting,” Drew ordered, his voice tremulous. Kilmer instantly understood that everyone in the cave shared his sudden sense of foreboding.
Before anyone could activate their lights, the globe, an arm’s reach away from Kilmer, began to glow a pale green. The phosphorescence was initially subtle; Kilmer almost disregarded it as a trick of the eye while his body tried to adjust to the total loss of vision. Then, within three or four seconds, the glow became more distinct. It was enough to distract everyone since no one activated their lights.
Everyone watched the orb, frozen in place and waiting breathlessly for what was to come next.
After seven seconds, the orb’s inconsistent pulsing steadied. It was bright enough for Kilmer to see Drew turn directly to meet his eye. Pope and Teretti took a moment longer, but both looked his way at the same time. Then, as one, all eyes turned to the black mirror.
Seconds passed. Everyone stood frozen in place.
Kilmer’s eyes scanned the room. No one moved. “Guys?” He said.
Still no one moved.
His stomach roiled and the sense of unease escalated by the second as Kilmer considered his options. He had no idea what this device was or what it did. He only knew that the cavern had been buried for countless years, and everyone found with the device had died violently and painfully.
He needed to act.
The thought of removing the orb from the cradle had just entered his mind when the light emanating from the device began to pulse rhythmically. Kilmer felt an irrational sense of terror prickling the hair at the back of his neck as his bowels threatened to release. Sweat ran down his back. Given the suit’s climate control functions, this should not have been possible.
“Anyone?” Kilmer cried, his voice cracking.
No one moved. It was as if they had been frozen in place, either by the device or paralyzed by fear. He understood this with a sense of finality, and it was up to him.
Kilmer reached for the device just as a pinpoint of light streaked from the orb and struck the surface of the mirror. The flawless, nearly indestructible surface of the impossibly thin, rigid material rippled as if it were tissue paper caught in a gentle breeze. A breath later, it became cloudy and seemed to billow and roil, as if a storm was trapped between the confines of the frame.
When a burst of light projected from the nebulous surface of the mirror, it advanced across the surface of the stone table with impossible slowness. That might have been Kilmer’s altered perception in the final fractional seconds of his life. He saw the desiccated corpses blown backward in slow motion as the light passed over them. The pulse spanned the length of the table and reached the green orb at the exact moment his gloved fingers grasped the sphere.
At that moment, Kilmer Breslin’s life force ceased to exist.
A new consciousness used the electrical charge as a conduit to enter his body. The occupying force purged Kilmer Breslin’s brain of every memory and conscious thought. In that nanosecond, it gained a foothold on his biology, and the force began altering his genetic structure in hundreds of thousands of micro and macro ways necessary for its presence to exist in this new, altered reality.
Teretti saw the lights at the cave’s perimeter go dark, and his blood ran cold. He wouldn’t admit this to anyone on the team, of course. He retreated several paces away from the artifact, feeling a growing apprehension. Relieved, he noted that Pope had done the same. Then, a laser-like pulse lanced from the sphere and struck the mirror, leaving Teretti slack-jawed in astonishment. His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing. Kilmer had to shut the device down, and Teretti wondered why Drew hadn’t already given the order. He wanted to run, but strangely, he found he couldn’t do any of these things.
He couldn’t move. His eyes remained fixed on the artifact and its bizarre interplay of light.
The laser pulse returned from the surface of the frame moments later. It was projected with such force and ferocity that it sent the corpses toppling fully from the stone table. A sound wave struck Teretti like a hammer blow. A fraction of a second later, he saw Pope topple, and Teretti started falling. Teretti saw the light hit the sphere’s surface and Kilmer’s outstretched glove as he went over. Kilmer’s suit appeared almost transparent in the glow, allowing Teretti to see the man’s skeleton.
Then he found himself on his back, and Teretti saw only darkness. No, that wasn’t true. There was a dull green glow. He thought he could see stars, most likely thanks to the flash of light. It was strange since the suit’s visual filters should have protected his eyes from harmful wavelengths.
He blinked away the pinpoints and sat up just in time to see Kilmer climb fully to his feet. As the light pillars at the cave’s perimeter flashed and flickered, Teretti saw the unbelievable. Kilmer stretched his arms, only to have his hands split from the gloves. The sleeves of his suit popped like bombs had gone off inside them. His arms seemingly doubled in size in seconds. At the same time, the suit fractured wide at the shoulders as broad, bony protrusions replaced his uniform.
With a gasp, Teretti saw something resembling reptilian scales where flesh and bone should have been. Then Kilmer’s helmet cracked with web-like fractures before crumbling. As its remains struck the floor, a pair of round, pale yellow eyes turned to face him. They were alien, wholly inhuman, with black vertical slits where the iris should have been.
“What—what are you?” Teretti could only mumble as he scrambled backward on all fours. It was a clumsy retreat, but it was all he could manage without turning his back on the creature.
The effort may have been slow, but it allowed Teretti to live a few seconds longer. Pope, a few feet away, had seen only part of what Teretti witnessed, but it was enough. Pope jolted to his feet and sprinted for the mouth of the cave. In his panic, he was willing to forsake the quarantine.
The creature seemed emboldened by Pope’s sudden action. It reached him in a single step and trapped him with its massive reptilian arms. It held Pope aloft, one arm in each of its large, claw-like hands. Teretti watched as the creature studied Pope the way a man might regard a breed of animal it was seeing for the first time. The creature’s large, scale-covered head moved back and forth to compensate for eyes that didn’t appear to articulate independently.
Then the creature slammed Pope to the floor, flat on his back. Body armor cracked against the stone with a savage, wet slap. A large clawed foot pinned Pope. Teretti realized the last of Kilmer’s armor had crumbled away during the transformation. The taloned claws of the foot scraped and puckered the surface of Pope’s armor while the man screamed. Teretti retreated further to the cave’s perimeter, but there was nowhere to run. The creature had Pope staked to the floor and blocked the only exit.
A popping and crunching sound emanated from Pope’s armor, and the man’s screams intensified. Teretti wanted to say or do something, but what could he do? He opened his mouth to scream but stopped when it filled with his stomach’s bile. Then he heard a wet squish as Pope’s armor failed, and the full weight of the creature collapsed the torso of the body inside.
A whimper echoed from the far side of the cave, and Teretti instantly knew it was Drew. The team leader must have witnessed everything. Teretti turned to the creature, but it had vanished silently.
This was his chance, Teretti knew. He climbed to his feet on rubbery legs. But before he could take even a step, a primal, savage shriek filled the cavern. It was loud and penetrating, bringing Teretti’s ears to the verge of bleeding. He understood instantly that the sound had also caused his bladder to release. A warm sensation ran down the inside of his leg. He only hoped the creature couldn’t smell him then.
Teretti took two steps, his eyes focused on the cave exit. His heart leaped into his throat when he saw the blur of motion as something passed by the entrance. He heard a bone-breaking crunch.
Long seconds of silence passed, and then Teretti heard a dull moan of pain. It had to be Drew, and it was coming from the mouth of the cave. Teretti ran. He reached the location in a dozen long strides, just in time to trip over the toppled form of Drew. The flickering light from the residual imaging pillars illuminated the man’s crumpled form. Drew was in bad shape. One arm was twisted at an odd angle, and his helmet was split open like an overcooked egg.
“Collapse the cavern,” Drew said.
Teretti nodded. Something like this must have happened to the last group. It was why they died so violently. Still, this seemed somehow worse. The creature had savagely crushed Pope.
“I’ve tried to radio—” Teretti was cut short when something crashed into him from behind. He tumbled, and his helmet smashed into the stone wall.
Drew screamed. It was a terror-filled, pain-fueled bellow that Teretti knew would haunt him until his dying day. He rolled onto his back and activated the lights on the shoulders of his suit and the top of his helmet just in time to witness the final moments of Drew’s life.
The creature was now bigger, if such a thing was possible. It was at least half again as tall as any man and powerfully built. It resembled a genetic cross between a man and a reptile. A bipedal lizard or dragon stomped its massive taloned foot on Drew’s supine form, then grabbed his arm with one of its large paws. With a quick pull, Drew’s arm was wrenched from his torso. The pop and sickening splatter that accompanied it made Teretti’s bowels liquify. Drew didn’t seem to notice the loss of his limb. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling with glassy eyes. He blinked slowly, as if trying to remember where he was and how he had come to be there.
“Pope?” Drew mumbled. “Teretti? You there?”
“Oh,” Teretti sobbed through his bile and snot. “Oh no…”
The creature leaned over Drew and seemed to study him curiously. Slipping a claw around the back of the man’s neck, he hoisted Drew effortlessly from the floor. He held him aloft, suspended only by his neck. Teretti didn’t think this position hurt Drew since the suit’s collar was reinforced. The pressure the creature applied to his neck was mitigated by the strong carbon nanotube frame that sealed the helmet. Drew was undoubtedly in shock, and the loss of his arm might be survivable. The suit would have sealed off the joint to minimize blood loss. There would be a concussion from the head trauma, but as long as the creature stopped—
The creature made a fist, and Drew’s head popped from the end of his neck. Teretti gagged. Drew’s head struck the stone floor with a hallow thud and rolled to a stop between the creature’s feet. When Teretti looked up, the beast stared into his eyes and stepped in his direction.
Teretti screamed as every ounce of dread he had ever experienced, dreamed, or even contemplated was realized and magnified to an extent he had never believed possible.
