The single passage back to the surface beckoned him. While it was true that tons of earth and rock now filled that tunnel, he could not ignore the most obvious route back to the surface. It might take days for him to dig through, weeks even, most of it spent in total darkness since the battery on his headlamp would only last a few hours at best, but time was something of which he had plenty. Such was the nature of his curse. He was a regen, virtually indestructible.
His fingers would crack and bleed from tearing and digging, but then they would heal and he would keep going. He would suffer dehydration and starvation. His body would begin breaking down fat reserves and muscle tissue, and then when there was nothing left, his organs would fail and he would die, but then he would wake up, and begin again. To say that it would be unpleasant was the worst kind of understatement, but there were worse ways to die over and over again. He had once spent four days at the bottom of a lake in Africa, drowning, then coming back to life only to drown again. That experience, in part, had prompted him to change his last name from Somers to Lazarus, after the Biblical personage who had died and spent four days in a tomb before being brought back.
He wondered how many days he would spend in this tomb?
The regen serum he had been exposed to, many years before, promoted rapid cellular growth — healing — but it was not a pain-free process. Every single test subject who received the serum had experienced total mental breakdown from the unimaginable pain associated with recovery from mortal wounds. He had flirted with that rabid madness once or twice himself in the early days. But he had returned from that dark abyss through intense mental discipline cultivated since early childhood.
Rage was something he knew how to master.
Even so, being buried alive would test his discipline, and push the limits of what he knew he could endure.
But what other choice did he have?
He wondered what the others were doing, whether they were still trying to find a way to reverse what had happened, or if they had resumed exploring the ancient city. Would they find another exit? If not, their situation might prove much more dire than his.
He decided to have another look around the chamber. Perhaps they had missed something in their initial hasty survey. Unless they had misread the signs, the earthquake had caused the ancient elevator to cycle the first time. Maybe there was another way to trigger it again, something simpler than an incantation in the Mother Tongue.
He moved around the circumference of the chamber, scrutinizing the smooth walls and brushing away pieces of rubble to see if a fulcrum release trigger or some other mechanism lay concealed beneath. When his search proved fruitless, he returned to the center and began searching the place where Fiona had stood.
Nothing.
“Looks like I’m going to have to dig,” he muttered.
Despite being barely louder than a whisper, the sound of his voice echoed back at him, disrupting the unearthly silence that he hadn’t even been aware of. Then, the floor began moving again.
Lazarus felt a surge of hope. Was that it? Was the mechanism activated by sounds — any sound, not just the Mother Tongue — emanating from the exact center of the chamber?
The question of how it operated seemed less important than the bigger question of whether he ought to go through. As the floor rumbled through its downward cycle, he wondered if he ought to remain where he was so he could open the passage for the others when the time came to leave. But if he was wrong about the trigger, this would be his only chance to rejoin them, and for better or worse, staying with the group was the best way to protect them.
The floor shuddered to a stop and he was confronted with a different problem.
Which of the passages lining the outer wall was the correct one?
He closed his eyes, trying to remember what the room had looked like earlier, and where the elevated opening back to the surface had been located relative to the passage Fiona had indicated. His memory told him one thing, but his gut wasn’t so sure.
How long did he have? Fifteen seconds?
The floor started moving again, forcing him to decide. He sprinted across the floor, angling toward the passage he hoped was the correct one. If it wasn’t…well, it had to lead somewhere.
He reached the opening with plenty of time to spare, and dove through headfirst. The landing wasn’t as graceful as he might have hoped for, a little like stepping off a high-speed treadmill, but he scrambled back to his feet and took off running.
“Pierce!”
No answer.
He kept going, sprinting down the curving passage, nagged by the fear that he was moving further away from the others. Then he heard shouting, faint but urgent, and a different set of concerns took over.
The passage opened up, giving him a glimpse of what was happening far below. He couldn’t make out all the details, but he could see that the others were in trouble, stranded on some kind of enormous statue in the middle of a subterranean lake, under attack by… He couldn’t say what the things were, but there were a lot of them.
Pierce was swinging the backpack like a club, knocking the creatures back into the pool. Gallo was back to back with him, kicking at the squirming things and covering his blind side. Another figure lay between them, not moving at all.
Fiona!
Lazarus felt a fist close around his heart. He threw himself forward, leaping off the balcony and out into open space above the pool. He had no idea how deep the water was, or how many of the creatures might be lurking beneath the surface. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Whatever happened, he would survive it, and then he would help the others.
But was it too late to help Fiona?
He hit the water feet first, throwing his arms out wide to put on the brakes. The pool’s depth, or lack thereof, wasn’t a problem. The bottom remained out of reach. The cold was a shock, but one he was ready for. Before his downward plunge was finished, he started pulling himself through the water, kicking furiously to reach the surface. After a few seconds, he began to feel the familiar burn of carbon dioxide building up in his lungs. He needed to breathe, but the surface remained out of reach.
A memory of drowning arose unbidden, blindsiding him. He doubled his efforts, frantic now to reach the surface before necessity forced him to take that lethal liquid breath. Fiona needed him. Pierce and Gallo needed him. If he drowned, his death would only be temporary, but theirs would be forever.
“No!” he raged, the shout turning into a storm of gas bubbles that swept across his face.
He was not going to die this way.
Not again.
He swam harder, reaching up and pulling the water down with frantic strokes. He kicked his legs back and forth, as fast as he could.
His right foot snagged on something. He kept kicking, trying to dislodge it, but the thing held on tight.
No, not now.
Another one of them landed on his thigh, sinking in claws that felt like thorns dipped in acid. Then they were all over him, immobilizing his arms and legs, tearing into his flesh, bearing him down once more into the depths.
EIGHT
The darkness is absolute, like the inside of a coffin buried under a hundred feet of earth. She cannot see the plants that no longer grow, or the nearby river, frozen into ice harder than diamonds. She cannot see anything.