“What if they control the mantics?” Tate asked. “What if they’ve used them to herd us and now they’re taking us to some ritual cavern to lay us on a slab and carve out our hearts like ancient Mayans or something?”
Aston laughed. “Well, I guess that’s much the same in the long run as being decapitated by mantics, but we wouldn’t go down without a fight. I reckon we can take these three little guys, don’t you?”
“Sure. But not if they’re leading us to a cave full of mantics. Or something worse.”
“However you look at it, we’re no worse off than running for our lives, being chased by mantics. Especially given we have close to no ammo left. What do you have there?”
Tate lifted the pistol in her hand, looking at it with distaste. “One full clip, but it’s my last. After this, we’re back to the stone age.”
Aston still had his bloodstone dagger. The three Annaki leading them each carried a bloodstone spear. Stone age indeed. “Well, I guess you treat that last clip like gold and save it as long as you can.”
“I might save it for myself,” Tate said bitterly. “If we get surrounded by those monsters again, I’m not getting eaten.”
“I don’t even have a club,” Jen said quietly. “Even if I had the strength to use one.”
“Here,” Tate said, and handed Jen a bloodstone knife.
Jen smiled. “Thanks. That actually makes me feel a little better.”
“Always better to be armed with something.”
“Where did you get that?” Aston asked.
Tate grinned. “I lifted it from the Annaki city back there.” She opened her jacket to reveal another tucked into her waistband. “I got two in fact, but you’re not getting your hands on this one. That’s for when my pistol becomes useless.”
“That’s okay,” Aston said. “I still have one of my own. So at least we all have a knife.”
Tate laughed, shook her head. “Jesus fucking Christ. We’re bringing knives to a bug fight. We’re no better off than them!” She nodded towards the three Annaki ahead of them.
“Well, they’ve survived this long,” Aston said, though he didn’t fill himself with much hope by the observation. Not knowing how they had survived so gave him a menacing sense of dread.
Up ahead he saw a greenish glow, softly pulsing against the tunnel walls. The Annaki began to chirrup and chatter again, obviously getting more nervous by the step.
“Here we go,” Aston said. “Be ready.”
“For what?” Jen asked.
“I have no idea,” Aston admitted. He wondered if they had managed to finally come around full circle and were back at the green cavern. He hoped they were, as he was tempted to immediately club the three Annaki and make a bolt for freedom once he knew where he was again. But then thoughts of Slater came back to his mind and he knew he couldn’t leave without trying to find her. He had to believe she was still alive. “Just be ready for anything, Sam,” he whispered to himself.
As they moved closer to the brightness, he saw something strange happening to the bloodstone tips of the spears the Annaki carried. He pulled out his own dagger and the phenomenon was repeated there. The strange stone seemed to emanate a dark aura, like shadow growing out from it in a thin shroud, as if the bloodstone deflected the green light like oil pushed aside by water. It was simultaneously beautiful and deeply disturbing. He glanced over at Jen and Tate and they had noticed too, their brows cinched in frowns of concern.
They pushed on, rounded a slight curve in the tunnel, and saw the mouth of rock open out. Whatever Aston had thought they ought to make ready for, the sight that greeted them stopped him dead. He was most certainly not ready for this. They emerged onto a wide ledge of rock in an inconceivably large space. They had to be out in the open, but that was impossible, because Aston knew they were hundreds of feet under the Antarctic. A storm whipped the air, bright green flashes in swirling clouds above an impossible glittering green sea.
“What the actual fuck?” Tate shouted, dropping into a defensive crouch, though what she planned to fight was a mystery.
The three Annaki seemed equally surprised, the two subordinates making furious motions toward the water, shouting and screeching at their leader. Annaki-Akan looked left and right, then up into the writhing sky. His eyes were wider than ever, fear evident on his pale face. Aston thought that perhaps they had anticipated the giant sea, but not the furious conditions. The other two barked seemingly final words at Akan and then turned to flee. As they tried to push back past Aston, Jen, and Tate, Aston realized they might need all the weaponry they could get. He slammed a palm into the chest of one and wrested the bloodstone spear free of its grasp. The other looked left and right, then dropped its own spear at Tate’s feet and they both bolted back down the tunnel. Akan shrilled something high and panicked, but Aston, clutching the stolen spear, paid him no further attention. He had been distracted by figures moving in the distance, down near the shore.
He pointed. “There’s Slater and Syed!” They were under guard, three armed men and, if he wasn’t mistaken, one of them was Anders Larsen. He had never trusted that muscular so-called geologist.
Annaki-Akan forgotten, he took off at a sprint, Tate running along beside him, and Jen dragging on what reserves of energy she had left to follow them.
38
Slater tried to process what she saw, the impossible sea stretching seemingly forever, but she retained enough self-awareness to keep an eye on Larsen and the others too. Larsen himself apparently verged on panic, eyes darting in every direction as he stepped randomly from foot to foot like a child in desperate need of a bathroom. Olsen and Jensen stood stoic, faces creased in frowns, waiting for something to happen, or someone to issue an order. It seemed their military mindset had locked them into a mental holding pattern. She didn’t think the inertia would last long.
Larsen turned suddenly to her and closed the distance between them in two fast strides. “Show us the way back to the green cavern! Now!”
Slater shook her head, tried to work some saliva into her dry mouth. “I can’t. I… I think I must have made a wrong turn. I got lost. Sorry, I have no idea where we are.” Her mind worked quickly, appalled with herself that she was admitting to this truth, but the sight before them had stripped her of the ability for artifice. Would he kill them now, out of fear if nothing else? She had no idea how to process any of this and every new revelation added to the insanity instead of helping to explain it.
Mist over the ocean thickened, began to creep forward as if grasping for them. Cloudy tentacles wound across the rock, growing stronger, darker, almost as if they had a physical form beyond simple vapor. Slater noticed Olsen had seen them, too. He stared in consternation then half-heartedly swung one booted foot through one questing tendril. He seemed slightly unsatisfied when it broke apart and swirled away like smoke. It seemed to behave differently to how he’d expected. And how Slater herself had expected, for that matter.
“Where are we?” Larsen shouted at her. “What the hell is happening here?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned away from her, raised questioning hands at Olsen and Jensen.
“You think I know?” Olsen said. “There is nothing natural about any of this and the sooner we get out the better.”
“I don’t know the way!” Larsen’s voice was cracked, his mind close to snapping right behind it.
Olsen gestured towards Slater. “So get back to convincing her. She’s the only one who knows. Or claims to know, at least.”