Slater was reminded of the elevator in the movie Aliens, where Ripley, flamethrower in hand, descends to save Newt while the entire complex explodes and falls down around her. While the elevator looked just like that, Slater hoped she would never be using it under anything like those circumstances.
Come on, she told herself. We’re here for a damned rock of some kind. Calm down. But memories of Lake Kaarme and how that job had gone still regularly gave her nightmares. She would wake in terror, images of deep underwater caverns and that huge maw full of teeth snapping at her, fresh in her mind. She drew a deep breath and steeled herself. This place couldn’t be more different.
The elevator was more than big enough to comfortably carry all eight team members, plus Terence Reid, the muscled security guy, and two of his subordinates. They came in last and as Reid slid the large gate closed, he said, “This is Mike Gates and Ronda Tate.” The two nodded, their faces serious, weapons at their sides. “The three of us will always go where you go, so get used to us hanging around, but feel free to ignore us.”
“I’m still not sure why you feel there’s such a need for so much… muscle,” Aston said.
Despite her annoyance with him, Slater agreed with that assessment.
“Like I said,” Sol interjected before Terry could answer. “Just company policy. Take the man at his word, just ignore them.”
Sol reached for a large control hanging from a thick cable at the front of the elevator. It only had two large buttons, one above the other. Up and down, Slater presumed. Sol pressed the lower one and the elevator jerked once, then began to smoothly descend.
The shaft was dimly lit, a black cable hanging down along one wall with small, oblong halogen lights every so often. The car rattled softly, steel cables hissed through the mechanisms above. They passed rhythmically through bright patches, then dimness, then light again for what seemed entirely too long to Slater. Just how deep were they going? Her ears popped once, then again. As she began to feel an irrational fear that they would never reach the bottom, the elevator slowed, then bumped to a stop.
“Holy cow,” Jeff said. “Journey to the center of the earth, am I right?” He looked around, grinning, but no one else shared his humor.
Slater saw the same trepidation in all the other faces, except Jeff’s, that she was certain was mirrored on her own features. Being this deep underground was uncomfortably claustrophobic despite the fact that ahead of them was a large and well lit cavern.
Reid slid the gate open and stood back to let everyone get off the elevator. As Slater stepped out, she stopped dead and gasped. The cavern wasn’t large, it was huge, arcing up above them into a dome of rock high above. Stalactites pointed down, stalagmites beneath them, some taller even than Terry Reid, the biggest of their group. Warm air tickled her face, the temperature higher than she had expected, and almost humid. Striations of the glowing green fungi covered the walls like veins, spread out mostly, but occasionally in a thick patch. Spotlights on the ground provided the light, pointing up into the dome, creating areas of light and shade.
“Stand still one moment,” Sol said, his hand resting on a control box near the elevator. “I’m going to turn out the lights. Give your eyes a moment to adjust.”
Once everyone had stopped moving, he flicked a switch and darkness fell like a lid had been closed. Almost immediately, the glowing fungi stood out, a network all over the walls. Slater’s sense of wonder increased as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark and the whole cavern took on an otherworldly glow, more and more features standing out in the soft green illumination.
“That’s some of the most bioluminescent fungi I’ve ever seen,” Jahara Syed whispered, eyes wide as she scanned left and right. “Is it a fungus?”
“That’s partly what we’re here to find out,” Sol said. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Okay, watch out, lights coming back.” The cavern burst into life again, orange and suddenly artificial. “Take a look around, everyone.”
“Jeff, get footage of everything,” Slater said. “Start with a close-up of the elevator and controls, pan around for wide shots of the cavern, then start gathering all the details you can.”
“Yes, boss.” Jeff gave a crooked grin, waited as if expecting some response, then shrugged and turned away when Slater just stared at him.
She turned to Marla. “That guy, honestly.”
Marla laughed. “He’s an idiot, but he’s harmless enough. I’m going to try to be more forgiving of him.”
“You’re a better person than I am, then! We need to pick a spot where I can do a piece to camera. Somewhere that looks good, but the sound won’t be lost.”
Marla’s eyes widened as she turned away from looking up at the vaulted ceiling high above. “Oh yeah, work. This place is amazing.”
But Slater wasn’t really listening. She watched as Aston and O’Donnell were led away from the group by Sol, over to a distant part of the cavern. Suspicious, she called Jeff back and had Marla fire up the mic and set her levels. Once they were ready, camera and audio running, she said, “Follow me.”:
Sticking to the shadows, she led them around one side to slowly creep up on the three men. Aston and O’Donnell were examining a strange-looking, smooth black door while Sol and another man, clearly a guard, watched over them. The guard wasn’t one of the two who had come down with Reid, so Slater assumed he must be stationed down here, guarding the door. She wondered if that was really necessary. He stood by, looking bored, absently balancing a metallic blue fidget spinner on one finger as it spun silently. His other hand rested on his holstered pistol.
Slater turned her attention to the door. Large blocks of gray stone, neatly carved and fitted together, made the frame, the door itself a single slab of smooth black rock. It had a kind of recurring pattern lightly carved into the surface. Immediately, cold settled into her gut. From an interesting cavern with strange fungal growth, the place suddenly had something to be scared of, front and center. She remembered the door deep under Lake Kaarme, the mystery of its presence that they had never been able to ascertain, now lost forever. What was this door doing here? It certainly wasn’t new, but how long had it been there? Did that early twentieth century expedition Sol had mentioned put it in? For what? Where did it go? And even as she thought these things, she knew it had to be far older than that.
None of the men were talking as they looked over the door, Aston running his fingertips over its surface. Eventually he said, “I can’t say for certain that it’s the same, but it looks similar.”
Similar to what? Slater thought, but deep down she knew, thinking of Lake Kaarme again.
“I’ll need to do some checking,” O’Donnell said. “But I feel like I’ve seen photos, or maybe drawings, of doors like this before. There’s a lot of conflicting stuff out there, a lot of made-up nonsense. But I’ll take photos and cross-check this.”
“You’ll be able to get online when we return to base,” Sol said. “You can do all the checking you need.”
They turned away from the door and were all clearly surprised to see Slater and her team, filming them. Sol’s face darkened with annoyance.
“Just documenting everything,” Slater said, before Sol could speak.
She strode toward them, making a beeline for Aston, forcing the others to step out of the way or be run over. She knew the action was partly irrational, but her anger at Aston seemed to override every other thought. She shouldered past the men and approached the door, catching Aston’s arm as she went to stop him from moving away. The guard quickly pocketed his fidget spinner and made a move to stop her, but Sol raised a hand to stay him. “It’s all right.”