Larsen raised his hands. “I have no idea. But let’s stick to science, yeah? It’s always best to let emotion take a back seat and just study the facts.”
“Maybe that’s good advice.” She trotted away towards Slater and the rest of the team.
Larsen watched her go, relieved that Slater had done him an inadvertent favor, and then grabbed his bag and slipped quietly out of the cavern. Landvik’s men would be in place somewhere nearby, assuming everyone had played their part correctly. As soon as he could get a signal, he’d call them in. He smiled as he hurried back through the tunnels and caves, heading for the freight elevator.
18
Slater watched as Syed jogged over to her and then said, “We’ve found someone alive. Sol is taking a look, but she says she’s a biologist, so I figured you’d be interested.”
Syed gaped. “Someone is alive down here?”
Slater saw her own incredulity reflected in Syed’s eyes. And the realization as the woman quickly put together exactly what Slater herself had immediately thought: that there had been another party down here very recently. Slater thought perhaps Sol Griffin knew all about it. Her paranoid thoughts were becoming reality quicker than she liked. “Yeah,” she said. “Seems like none of us had a full story before, huh?”
Sol crouched by the woman, tucked back into the deepest of the tall alcoves in the rock wall. She was short, with dark hair, and large brown eyes that blinked slowly in the greenish light. She took quick, shallow breaths. Her skin was pale, tight over her cheekbones, her lips dry and cracked.
Slater frowned. How long had the poor woman been down here? When asked her name, the woman had simply blinked, confused, and whispered, “The biologist,” in a weak, cracked voice. Now Sol had mixed a cup of water with protein powder and glucose, and held the back of the woman’s head as she sipped at it. She winced every time she swallowed.
“Take it slow,” Sol said. “Tiny sips, just two or three. You can have some more after a few minutes.”
He took the cup away and the woman managed a weak smile of thanks. “I can’t believe someone came,” she said, her voice slightly less rasping than before. She was Latina, but her accent was American.
“What’s your name?” Slater asked.
“Genesis Galicia, but everyone calls me Jen.”
“And what are you doing down here?” Slater ignored Sol’s annoyed glance.
“I’m a biologist, part of the SynGreene team.”
Confused looks flicked back and forth among the team members.
“What are you talking about?” Slater said, though she thought she knew full well. “We’re the SynGreene team.”
Aston made a noise of disgust. “Obviously, we aren’t the first.”
Sol stayed crouched beside Jen, refusing to look up again, to meet anyone else’s eye. Slater had a lot of questions for the expedition physician.
“Tell us what happened,” Sol said.
He gave her more to drink, which she took gratefully. After more painful-looking swallows, she took a long shuddering breath. “I was part of a research team, hired by SynGreene. We were to investigate a possible new energy source found down here decades ago. Honestly, we all thought it was a joke, but the money was good.” She looked around at the faces above her, nodded softly. “I guess you guys thought the same, eh?”
Slater laughed. “Yeah, you’ve got our numbers.”
“So you know, we started to find things that made no sense. Impossible things. Then we were…” She stopped, swallowed, tears standing suddenly in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” Sol said. “Take your time.”
“We were attacked.”
“By who?” Terry Reid said, his voice hard.
Jen shook her head. “Not who. What. Some kind of creatures.”
“What sort of creatures? Aston asked.
Slater glanced at him and he caught her eye, silent communication quickly passing between them. She knew he was thinking about the missing guard, the fidget spinner, the blood on the walls. That idiot cameraman, Jeff. And the desecrated body in the next alcove. But she saw a faint glimmer of excitement in his eyes too, and realized he was probably considering the possibility of a new species. Though it pained her, the biologist was programmed into him, so she supposed he couldn’t help it.
Jen shook her head slowly. “It was dark, everything happened so fast. Three of us escaped the attack and managed to hide in here. But we were too weak and exhausted to carry on, we just stayed put, hoping a rescue would come. We didn’t know what to do.”
Slater saw Sol Griffin and Terry Reid exchange a knowing look and knew immediately that they expected this, but they’d hid it from the team. She turned to Aston and saw he had noticed the same thing. He met her eyes and nodded, clearly reading her thoughts.
“Tell me everything about what attacked you,” Reid demanded. “Every detail you can, however small.”
Jen shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. They move fast. Sometimes they drop down from above, so I guess they can climb the tunnel walls or they’re dropping from holes in the ceiling.” She stopped, tears on her lashes again as she relived the horrible memories.
“You said only three of the team made it back here,” Reid said. “Did the creatures kill the rest?”
Jen nodded. “I think so. We stayed here, hiding in the shadows, for hours. Finally Thomson crept out, heading towards the tunnel over there.” She pointed towards the tunnel Slater and her crew had entered by. “I didn’t watch, I couldn’t move, but I heard them attack him. His screams were…” She finally broke down in dry sobs, face buried in her hands. “They ripped him apart and just left him. Except…”
“Except his head?” Slater asked.
Jen nodded into her hands.
“You dragged him into the shadows over there?” Slater pointed toward the violated body she had shown Aston.
“No. I didn’t dare to move. But eventually Spedding said she was going to drink. We had some rations, but not much. We waited for help to come, but no one did. We stayed hiding for what felt like days, and our rations of food and water quickly ran out. Then more days, starving, so thirsty. Eventually, Spedding slipped from cover here, and I heard her dragging the body out of sight. That’s when she told me they’d taken his head, and she couldn’t bear to look at him.”
“Is Spedding the woman who died over there?” Slater asked, pointing back towards the first body they’d found.
“Yes. She went to the lake there and drank the water, said she couldn’t stand the thirst any longer. We were so weak, but no way in hell was I going to drink that water. There is nothing safe or natural anywhere down here. But then, I don’t think it was the water that killed her. She came back, tried to get me to drink, but I refused. Then Spedding started talking about hunger. She said she saw a brightly glowing plant in the pool, that it looked like a sea anemone or something, only much bigger.”
“It’s growing all over the sides of the pool,” Aston said. “But I don’t know that it’s edible.”
“That’s what I told her,” Jen said. “And I told her to wait, surely someone would come. She said no way, that we had to find our own way out, but we were too weak. She said we had to eat, get the energy to save ourselves. I was afraid to even touch the stuff, let alone eat it. But she did.”
“You think it poisoned her?” Sol asked.
“Oh, it did. She got so sick. But not her body.” Jen absently rubbed her abdomen. “She was sick in the head. Within maybe an hour or so of eating the stuff, she started raving, saying there was somewhere she had to go, that she was being called to.”
“Did she say where she was being called?” Slater asked.
“It was nonsense. Madness. She said she was being called ‘down, down to the Jade Sea.’ She kept repeating that over and over again. I tried to talk to her, to ask her to explain, but her eyes were wild. Her mind was gone. And she was too weak to go anywhere anyway. Eventually she started convulsing, moaning and still talking that horrible, senseless madness. I crawled away, around here to be away from her and she eventually became quieter and quieter and then stopped. I assumed she had died. And by then I was too weak, too scared, too depressed, to do anything. I lay down here and decided I would rather starve to death than go nuts or be torn apart by those monsters. And then you came after all.” She looked up suddenly, her eyes haunted. “Why did you take so long?”