“I think it wants us to follow,” I say. Without waiting for Nasha’s response, I walk toward it at a slow, steady pace. After I’ve closed the distance between us to six or seven meters, the creeper turns and starts forward again.
“Okay,” Nasha says from behind me. “I guess this is happening now.”
I don’t take my eyes from the creeper, but I can hear her stowing her weapon again. A few seconds later, she’s walking beside me.
“If they decide they don’t want to talk to us,” I say, “we’re not likely to be able to shoot our way out of here. You know that, right?”
Nasha bumps against my shoulder. “You’d be surprised what I can shoot my way out of. I hear you, though. As long as they’re not actually trying to rip you apart, I promise to be good.”
I take her hand. “Thanks, Nasha. I think this is a good sign, right?”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe they just like it better when their meat carries itself to the kitchen.”
WHEREVER IT IS the creeper is taking us, it’s a hell of a long way away. We slog through the darkness for what feels like days, although my ocular tells me it’s actually more like a couple of hours. We run into other creepers here and there. Mostly they act as if we aren’t there. At one point we reach a tunnel crossing where a stream of them—hundreds at least—is flowing past, blocking our path. The one leading us scuttles up the side of the tunnel and onto the ceiling to pass over them, then drops back to the floor and continues on. I look over at Nasha.
“Sorry,” she says. “I can’t do that.”
Our guide isn’t moving any faster than before, but it isn’t waiting either.
“We’re gonna lose him.”
“Maybe,” she says. “What do you want to do about it?”
I take a step forward, to the edge of the stream.
“Mickey?” Nasha says. “What are you doing?”
“Testing a hypothesis.” I take another step, put my foot right in the path of an onrushing creeper.
It scoots around me and continues on.
“Come on,” I say. “They won’t hurt us.”
I take a second step, then a third. They’re all around me now, brushing against my boots occasionally but otherwise leaving me alone. Two more steps, and I’m clear. Our guide is barely visible in the wash of my shoulder light now, probably fifty meters ahead. I turn back. Nasha hasn’t moved.
“Nasha? Come on. It’s okay.”
She shakes her head. I hold out my hand.
“Just walk through them. They won’t touch you.”
“Not gonna happen,” she says. “I’ve seen what those things can do to a body.”
I look behind me. Our guide is out of sight now.
“Nasha, please. We have to go.”
She shakes her head again. Her voice is still level, but her eyes are big as dinner plates.
“You go, Mickey. I’ll catch up with you.”
God help me, I actually think about it for an instant.
Only an instant, though.
“No,” I say. “It’s okay. There can’t be too many more of these things.”
That turns out to be less than one hundred percent accurate. It’s another two minutes or more before the flow of creepers slows to a trickle, and then disappears. When the last one is gone, Nasha crosses over to me.
“I’m sorry, Mickey,” she says. “I just…”
Her voice cracks, and it occurs to me that this might be the first time I’ve ever seen Nasha afraid.
“It’s fine,” I say, and reach for her hand. She lets me take it, then pulls me into a hug.
“I don’t actually want to die down here,” she whispers, close to my ear.
“Good call,” I say. “Let’s not do that.”
She squeezes me tighter, then lets go and steps back. “Think our friend is waiting for us?”
I shrug. “Only one way to find out.”
She touches my hand, and we go.
HE’S NOT, AS it turns out.
After about five minutes of walking, we come to a three-way branching.
“What if that little bastard wasn’t guiding us at all?” Nasha says as she shines her light down each of the tunnels in turn. “What if it was really some random creeper doing random creeper shit, and we just followed it around for a few hours?”
“In that case, I’d guess we’re boned.”
“Truth.” She gestures toward the right-hand branching. “If I were the boss creeper, I think I’d be down this one.”
Her guess is as good as any. A hundred meters or so down that tunnel, we come to another crossing. A creeper sits there, waiting for us. We walk toward it slowly, then stop when we’re maybe three meters away.
“Is that our guy?” Nasha asks.
I look at her, then back at the creeper. “How should I know?”
She starts to answer, then shakes her head. The creeper crouches there, motionless. “Think it’s dead?”
“No idea,” I take a step forward, then two. Its mandibles are only a meter or so from my boots now. “Should I give it a nudge?”
“Please don’t,” she says. “I like you better with all of your parts attached.”
I crouch down in front of the creeper. It’s completely still.
“Huh. I think it actually might be dead,” I say. I reach out slowly toward it. It doesn’t react.
“Mickey?” Nasha says.
I touch its mandible with one finger. It rears up then and lunges toward me. I’m pulling my hand away, already falling backward, suddenly sure I’m about to die, when something zings past my ear and the creeper’s front three segments explode in a hail of shrapnel. I land hard on my backside and scramble back a meter or two, then turn my head to see Nasha standing behind me with the accelerator in her hands.
“Nice,” I begin, then have to stop to swallow back a surge of bile. “Nice shot. Holy shitstorms, Nasha. You could have killed me.”
“Could have,” she says. “Didn’t. Pretty sure it definitely would have, though. Guess I just cut their pinkie finger off, huh? Think we’re at war now?”
I get to my feet. I’m happy to see that I’ve managed not to wet myself. “Dunno. I hope not. We’re in pretty deep here. Like I said before—I don’t think shooting our way out is an option.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
My ocular pings.
<Speaker1>: Contact established.
<Speaker1>: Do not destroy any more ancillaries, please.
“Mickey?” Nasha says. “You okay?”
I hold up one hand. “Maybe? I think they’re talking to me.”
<Mickey7>: Where are you?
<Speaker1>: Continue forward, twenty <untranslatable>.
“This way,” I say. “I think, anyway.”
We step over the dead creeper and continue down the tunnel. After two hundred meters or so it takes a sharp left-hand turn and then opens up into a wider space, almost an amphitheater. In the center of it, a creeper the size of a heavy-lift shuttle is curled around itself. Nasha plays her light across it.
“Oh shit,” she says. “That’s—”
“That’s the boss creeper,” I say.
<Mickey7>: We’re here. You are Speaker1?
The giant creeper stirs, and a smaller one, maybe three meters long and standing a meter or so off the floor, crawls out from its folds.
“Not exactly,” it says aloud. Behind its double mandibles I can see complex mouth parts rather than the usual circular maw.
It speaks in Berto’s voice.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nasha says.
“Not kidding,” it says, and scuttles over until it’s squatting in front of us. “Formally this construct is Speaker to the Creatures Who Have Recently Encroached Upon Our Nest, but Speaker will do. It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mickey.”
009
“THIS MAKES SENSE,” I say. “In a nonsensical kind of way, anyway.”
“No,” Nasha says. “No, it does not. Why does this thing sound exactly like Gomez?”
“They’ve been tapping my feed. That’s the only contact they’ve had with us, and Berto is pretty much the only person I talk to over comm.”