The iron door creaked as something pushed from the other side. “Okay,” said Peri. “I guess it’s finished eating me, and it’s looking for dessert, so I vote we take care of business. I want a flash-bang in that door to distract it, Troy. Stand by with another one, just in case. Gus – you’ve got the controller for the collar, right? Get ready to shape something small and helpless.”
“But how…” began Amanda.
Peri smiled an enigmatic smile, and replied, “How is unimportant. Stand by the door, we go on a three count, right?”
Peri closed her eyes, and synchronised herself with her own heartbeat. She reached out, feeling with her mind for the faint ribbon of time streaming by. Ah! There it was. She gently closed her mind around it, like a fist, letting it slip through her fingers.
“Three,” she said.
She tightened her mind’s grip on the ribbon, slowing it just a little, becoming accustomed to the force it exerted, before squeezing a little harder, slowing time a little more relative to her pulse.
“Two.”
She picked up the dog collar. From the way Gus’s eyes tried to follow her movement – slowly – she realised her motion had been a blur to him. She grabbed time’s ribbon and clamped down with her mind, hard.
“One.”
It seemed to take a very long time for the iron door to start moving, and Troy’s flash-bang to float slowly through the gap. She closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears, and waited for the detonation. When she felt the rumble, she launched herself in through the door, and opened her eyes.
Peri realised that she could see in the dark this time. A large shape was retreating into the depths of the cave, and she threw herself into the middle of the mass of tentacles with the dog collar in one hand. The creature was moving absurdly slowly, or rather, she corrected herself, it was moving quickly but she was moving unbelievably fast. She saw movement in her peripheral vision, and ducked under one swinging tentacle and hurdled over another. She seized a third in one hand, and deftly slipped the collar over its end and tried to push it along its length. The collar snagged on the first spine it came to, and as Peri tried to force it over, something – yet another tentacle – crashed into her back and sent her flying across the cave and into the rusty iron wall. She cried out with pain as spines punctured her back and then was silenced as all the air whooshed out of her with the impact against the cave wall. She distinctly heard several ribs break. She sagged, gasping for breath, and felt blood running across her skin from multiple lacerations. Another dark shape was flying towards her face – another tentacle. She tucked her limbs in, wincing with the pain, and rolled across the cave floor out of the way. She felt the spines whip through her hair and scratch the top of her head as she scrambled past the creature’s groping tentacles. She looked up, in time to see something catch the light as it flew towards the back of the cave – the collar had flown off.
“Fuck this,” she muttered aloud. “It’s got too many bloody tentacles. How the hell do I dodge them all?”
The answer came to her and she slapped the cave floor in fury. “Fucking stupid bitch! Idiot!” she snarled at herself. She forced herself to calm down, and reached out with her mind to take a firm grip on the ribbon of time. A pair of tentacles were closing in from the sides, and were about to slap together and crush her. She yanked on time, as hard as she could, dragging it to a halt, and visualised tying off the ribbon so it could not move. She glanced around herself to see if it had worked.
Dust motes hung in the air, unmoving. The creature was still. The tentacles were close, but coming no closer. She could see the thing’s huge eye, focused on her, and its gaping circular maw ringed with pointed teeth. Carefully she stepped through the tentacles and past the beast’s head. As she bent to pick up the dog collar, her vision swam and it dawned on her that her body’s energy was all but drained by the effort of controlling time. She needed to get a move on.
Peri picked up the collar and unsnapped it. She wrapped it around a tentacle near its junction with the hideous head, and fastened it. Immediately, the collar tightened and clung to the beast.
Her heart pounding and her pulse racing, Peri moved to the cave entrance and stepped through into the outer chamber. It should not have surprised her, but nevertheless there was a moment of shock as she caught sight of her companions, stock still, with various expressions of horror or disbelief on their faces. She moved close to Gus, her limbs burning with the effort, and knew she could hold on to time no longer. Her vision went dark around the edges and time tore free from her mental grasp, as she collapsed onto the floor. Abruptly, her surroundings picked up speed and noises crashed back into her ears.
She called out, “Now, Gus! Now! Trap the fucker!”
Gus’ eyes went wide and he looked down in disbelief at Peri, lying in a bloody heap at his feet. But he obediently squeezed and turned the ring on his finger. There was a hissing sound and a flare of white light from the inner cave.
“Did it work?” demanded Peri. “Let me see!”
Troy looked round the door and laughed. He and Gus dragged the door wide, as Amanda helped Peri to stand. Amanda looked up at the cave, and she, too, started to laugh. Peri finally got her eyes to focus, and they narrowed as her sight landed on a small, surprised-looking sheep, wearing a dog collar.
“Right,” said Peri. “Now get me a flame-thrower, and a big fucking bucket of mint sauce. Stat!”
Gus quickly laid a hand on her arm. “Peri,” he said urgently. “I fear the containment of the collar would be destroyed…”
She laughed. “Relax, Gus. I just felt the circumstances called for a memorably badass line. I don’t really intend to barbecue it.”
“If that’s all your blood…” Troy started to say, before Amanda cut in.
“She’s healing already. Peri, you were cut up very badly, and you’re covered in bruises, but the wounds aren’t bleeding, in fact they have mostly closed up. What on earth happened… It killed you, but you came back!”
“Let’s just say I’m tougher than I look and leave it at that,” Peri said firmly.
Steve reappeared. “Okay, is it secure…?” he started to ask. But then he stopped dead, and stared at the improbable scene in the Mithraeum. The open doors, the sheep, the naked bloody woman. “What the hell? I only stepped out for five minutes! What happened? Why is there a sheep in there? And why is Peri covered in blood?”
“She’s also stark naked,” said Amanda, unbuttoning her top and stripping it off. “Take this. It’s opaque at least, even if it is a bit short. Gentlemen? Can any of you contribute towards preserving Peri’s modesty?”
They all needed to get out of that cave.
As soon as she reached ground level once more, Peri had to borrow a mobile phone. Her personal phone and her Sectera phone had both been in the pockets of her cargo pants, and goodness only knew where they were now. She called Tommy in London to provide an update – in guarded terms given the unencrypted channel – and to make sure the military had stopped whatever planning they had started for a big bang on Anifail. She was insistent on the latter point, telling Tommy in no uncertain terms that if she was accidentally nuked, she’d hold him personally responsible and make him suffer, even if it meant coming back to London as a zombie to eat his brains. He took the opportunity to let her know that she should be wary of Victoria Bandra, because his team thought it was likely to be a false name. To this, Peri’s response had been typically terse: “No shit.”
Steve had used his personal role radio to report in to Captain Mike on the mainland, stressing that the threat had been contained, but – at Peri’s insistence – providing no details by radio. Mike had sent more troops over to comb the island for chain snakes, and the scientific teams were following them to pick up any interesting samples they might come across. Commando Engineers were also on their way to repair the iron defences of the cave system.