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  “What’s that?” Ivan asked.

  “Up there.” He pointed. “Look at that mirror array. It’s all coming from up there.”

  Ivan leaned forward, straining to see the dark vault overhead.

  “The motion detector? Looks like it’s shielded pretty good,” he said. He glanced at Sinjira and said, “You getting all this, Chippie?”

  “Every second,” she said with a totally neutral voice.

  She’s like Jordan. Ice water in her veins when she’s doing what she likes best.

  Ivan realized that the motion detector had to be shielded from every corner of the room so it wouldn’t get blasted. There was a narrow opening directly beneath it.

  Must use a prism there to scatter the light and mirrors amplify the blasts.

  Ivan slowly raised his arm, aiming his pistol at the ceiling, hoping he didn’t break one of the now-invisible laser beams as he moved. Taking careful aim, dead center, he squeezed the trigger.

  The gun hissed, and the pulse hit something.

  But not the aiming or the firing mechanisms above them.

  A bright beam of light and a dense puff of smoke spilled down.

  “Hold on. Stop!” Jordan said.

  Moving as slowly as Ivan had, Jordan took off his backpack and unzipped a side pouch. He reached inside and took out a small, metal tube. An emergency flare.

  “Packed for every occasion, huh?” Ivan said with a chuckle. He already realized what Jordan was planning to do.

  “Always,” Jordan said without emotion.

  Ivan watched as Jordan twisted the small metal cover.

  A brief scratching sound, and then the flare started spewing out bright red light and a dense billow of white smoke.

  Kneeling down, Jordan rolled the burning flare into the center of the room. Everyone waited and watched, fascinated, as the smoke expanded to fill the room. It stung their eyes, but the straight red lines of laser lights— the trip wires—became clearly visible.

  “Everyone okay?” Ivan called out. “All right then.”

  How long will our luck hold up?

  “Don’t break any of the beams,” Jordan said. “You should be okay.”

  He pointed up, indicating the apex of the chamber. The web of red laser lines all emanated from it.

  Easier said than done.

  “Everyone,” Jordan said, “stay where you are.”

  Before anyone—even Ivan—could react, Jordan darted forward. He ran in a low crouch, nimbly dodging and jumping over the red beams until he was about three meters from the exact center of the room.

  There, the web of laser light became too dense for anyone to avoid.

  But he didn’t stop moving.

  He dropped down to the floor and then rolled once ... twice ... three times, until he was on his back, directly under the apex.

  He raised his pistol and shot.

  Once.

  A loud crackling sound filled the room, as if someone had dropped a container of glasses. A bolt of blue light shot straight down at him, searing the floor inches from his head, but he moved fast enough to avoid it.

  But even as the dust was settling, Jordan flipped over onto his stomach and jackknifed to his feet.

  Ivan was grinning at him.

  “Impressive.”

  The red laser beams and their numerous reflections—not to mention the pulses of deadly light—had vanished in an instant.

  Jordan was panting.

  Drops of sweat carved streaks in the dirt on his face as he walked back to them.

  He and Ivan locked eyes for a moment. Then: “You spend your downtime practicing those moves?” Ivan said.

  Jordan smiled and said, “I didn’t want you to get all the glory.”

  Ivan laughed and slapped him on the back.

  “Great work, Jordan. Really. Took balls.”

  Jordan didn’t even nod. Then he said: “Lead on.”

  Ivan turned, ready to take them as far into this alien cave as they would have to go.

  ~ * ~

  37

  NOISE

  “Got a question for you, Annie said as she and Ivan walked side by side down the wide cave passageway. The air was dusty and dry. Ruth walked on his other side, brushing up against him every now and then ... accidentally or on purpose, he wasn’t sure.

  “What’s that?” Ivan said.

  “So you didn’t know about any of this?”

  “The lasers and mirrors?”

  Annie nodded.

  “Never got this far in. The cave mouth was blocked up.” He took a breath. “All new to me.”

  “What is it, then?” Ruth said. “Who do you think made it—that mirror room and those lasers?”

  Annie watched Ivan turn to Ruth, then back to her.

  “Good question,” Annie said.

  Like Ivan, she had her gun at the ready and kept looking around. Their voices echoed oddly in the tunnel.

  “Not the miners. Not the Runners. No way they made this. Way too sophisticated, even for Kyros,” Ivan said.

  “And there may be more,” Annie said.

  “Bound to be,” Ivan said.

  The passageway narrowed and widened and then narrowed again until they entered another wide room.

  “No mirrors here, at least,” Ivan said.

  He held up his hand to get everyone to halt.

  He had a feeling.

  Something ... was ahead.

  ~ * ~

  “This is weirding me out,” Sinjira said, unable to mask her anxiety.

  She had been recording all along, and she knew she had some killer content. But now something wasn’t right.

  “That...”

  She pointed to one side, and everyone looked at a far corner of the room. The light was weaker there, but she could make out a splotch on the ragged rock wall about ten meters to their left.

  Darker than the stone, and not moving.

  Not anymore, anyway.

  The others followed a few paces behind her as she entered the darkened area and approached whatever it was.

  Everyone except Jordan.

  “We got no time for this. We have to keep going,” he said.

  Sinjira noticed how different his voice sounded in the cavern. Not muffled, really, and it didn’t echo. But it sounded altered.

  Dead.

  Stopping less than a meter from the thing on the wall, Sinjira fixed it in the beam of her flashlight. Cocking her head from side to side, she looked at it... studied it... but, most important, listened ... and recorded.

  Something definitely isn’t right here.

  The others, milling around behind her, shuffled their feet impatiently, getting frustrated at the delay.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “Sinjira. We don’t really have time for any sightseeing,” Jordan called out.

  But she didn’t move. She wanted to—she had to—figure out what was going on here.

  “This ... I think it’s alive,” she finally said. “At least it used to be.”

  It wasn’t any kind of creature, though, no cave bat or other life form that nested in the recesses of the cave.

  But she was positive it had once been alive.

  And there were more.

  “God,” she whispered as she shifted her light beam into the deeper recesses and saw more splotches. Ten ... twenty ... easily more than thirty. And all of them irregular, some crusted with dried blood of various hues.

  “What the hell—” Ivan said, moving behind her.

  Now that she looked around, Sinjira saw evidence everywhere of something that had died and was now part of the wall.

  “Okay. Let’s have a look,” Rodriguez said, coming up next to her. He took a small instrument from the breast pocket of his jacket and held it up to the splotch.

  Lights flashed and the tiny machine made a faint clicking sound. Then there was a shor
t beep.

  Rodriguez looked at the instrument, then at Sinjira.

  “Hang on,” he said. “This is similar to protoplasm but it’s not human or any other known species tissue. It’s not a living organism.”

  “Maybe just a piece of it?” Sinjira said as she directed her flashlight beam upward at the ceiling as if expecting to see some hideous nightmare creature lurking up there ... preparing to pounce.

  Without warning, the lens of her flashlight shattered. The light flared and then went out. Shards of broken glass made faint tinkling sounds as they fell to the floor at her feet.

  “What just happened?” Ivan asked, but Sinjira could only shake her head, confused.

  “Can you hear that?” she asked.

  The sound was faint at first, a high-frequency whistling that grew steadily louder when she listened carefully.

  She looked around at the blank stares of the people around her. They didn’t understand. They didn’t hear. Her voice was halting as she spoke.

  “Look! My chip is picking up some kind of noise.”

  “What do you mean, noise?” Ivan looked around. “I don’t hear a—”

  As if in answer, the lens of his flashlight suddenly exploded and went out, too, in a shower of glass.

  The corner of the cavern was darker now with two less lights. Sinjira’s feeling of uneasiness was quickly shifting into genuine fear.

  What the hell is going on here?

  She jumped and let out a piercing squeal when Rodriguez’s flashlight lens exploded.

  And then Ruth’s ... and finally Jordan’s.

  Sinjira felt panicked as she tried to understand whatever this was that her chip was picking up, and that could shatter their flashlights.

  “Wait a second,” Ivan said. “I think I can—”

  He cupped his hands to his ears and turned his head back and forth as though trying to locate the origin of whatever the sound was.

  “You hear it, too?” Sinjira asked.

  Ivan waited, then nodded slowly.

  “I think so. Just barely ...”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Rodriguez said. “You’re probably just...”

  His voice trailed off, and he scrunched up his face as he, too, listened.

  Sinjira kept wheeling her head left and right, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.

  Right now it seemed to surround her.

  Rising higher.

  Turning even more shrill.

  She licked her lips, aware of the dry, crusty texture. When she wiped the flat of her hand across her face, she felt something sticky.

  She let out a faint groan when she saw the streak of blood on her palm.

  No!

  The sound was inside her head now. If it didn’t stop soon, it would drive her crazy.

  “We have to ... get out of here!” she shouted, surprised by the strength of her voice. “There’s some kind of—”

  “The sound’s painful,” Ivan said, shaking his head as if he had water in his ears. “Anyone else hear it?”

  Sinjira watched as each of them looked hurt... crippled by the noise.

  Suddenly, Ruth doubled over and grabbed her head with both hands. Blood was streaming from both of her nostrils. It glistened darkly in the dim light.

  Sinjira looked down at her chip. Still recording, but the levels were all wrong.

  “This is going off the scale, way past any UHF. The noise isn’t even close to normal frequencies.”

  First Ruth, then Rodriguez fell to their knees, clutching their heads. Ivan came up to Ruth, covering his ears.

  “It’s a trap,” he said. “The sound ...”

  Like the mirrors with light, only now it was sound.

  “We have to get away from it,” Ruth said. Blood ran freely from her nose to the edge of her chin.

  By now, everyone was blocking their ears with their hands, but Sinjira could feel the sound still swelling, building up pressure inside her brain.

  Covering their ears would do nothing.

  This sound could penetrate their skulls.

  She looked at the trickle of blood leaking between Jordan’s fingers as he covered his ears.

  Ivan walked over and yanked Ruth and Rodriguez to their feet. He started dragging them away, back to the main room, forcing them to run.

  Sinjira, with Jordan following, ran after them.

  Their footsteps made harsh, hissing sounds in the dust as they ran, sprinting as fast as they could to put as much distance as possible between them and the origin of that high-frequency sound.

  How far will we have to get away from it before it won’t affect us?

  ~ * ~

  Ivan ran as fast as he could, dragging Ruth and Rodriguez. Like them, he was nearly immobilized by the sound but kept pushing.

  Behind them was Annie, Sinjira, and—finally—Jordan, perhaps bleeding the most, his ears shiny with red blood.

  “Ingenious,” Rodriguez said, gasping.

  “What’s that?” Ivan said, still pulling him along.

  “A hypersonic defense system,” Rodriguez went on. “If we had stayed there much longer, the sound—basically inaudible, like an old-fashioned dog whistle—would have ruptured our blood vessels, maybe even cracked our skulls, made our heads explode.”

  “Like what was on the wall,” Sinjira said.

  “Yeah. Fucking brilliant,” Annie said, panting as she ran, her fists clenched and pumping like pistons.

  “Can you still read it on your chip?” Ivan asked Sinjira.

  She nodded and said, “It’s fainter... but still there.”

  Ivan thought: What if there was another trap up ahead?

  It could be that the UHF noise hadn’t been designed to kill... only to annoy them and make them run faster, herding them like animals, straight into another trap.

  Gotta watch it... be ready.

  He was still holding Ruth’s hand, even though they had passed the danger.

  As they ran along, he was surprised how good this felt.

  Her hand in mine.

  As they navigated the twists and turns of the cavern, he checked on Jordan and Annie, his backup.

  Both appeared to have recovered, a little anyway, although Jordan’s neck was streaked with blood.

  Have to be ready for whatever’s ahead.

  Then ... he tensed when, up ahead, he saw that the cavern looked like it had come to an end.

  A dead end... or worse?

  He slowed his pace, and Ruth, breathing heavily behind him, slowed down as well. Even when they stopped, Ivan noticed how neither of them let go of the other’s hand.

  The cavern narrowed down, and there was a wall of blackness ahead.

  “Hold up!” he shouted, and now—finally—he reluctantly let go of Ruth’s hand.

  Sinjira and the rest of them came to a halt.

  “What is it?” Annie asked.

  “Dead end. Maybe,” Ivan said.

  Up ahead, he saw a dark entryway, blocked by three huge stones, stacked one on top of the other ... like stairs.

  At the top, a platform.

  Ivan approached the opening, staring into the darkness beyond. Jordan came up beside him and lit a flare.

  “Looks like it drops off on the other side,” Ivan said. “I wish we still had a flashlight that worked.”

  Ivan climbed the three large stone steps to the top of the platform. Once he was at the top, he looked down.

  And saw nothing but darkness.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?” Jordan asked, striding up the stairs behind him. They both peered down into what might as well have been a bottomless pit.

  “Too dark even for the goggles.”

  “Totally black.”

  “Got another flare?” Ivan asked.