SEKTOP 5
“We’re here!” Abrams said through the radio. He took a beating as a group of rats pummeled him, but his armor held up as he reached the farm’s gate.
The entrance to Sector Five faced another avenue that stretched directly to the central tower. A flood of creatures came down this street now like rush hour New York, but they curved in front of Abrams to join the clockwise gyre of predators circling the city. Once more, Abrams freed his throwing arm and fished out an incendiary grenade. He lofted this one forty yards up the avenue, targeting a giant spiger coming down the middle of the road. The grenade ignited as it tumbled like a star through the air. Amazingly, the giant spiger leaped up like a tight end, opening its vertical jaws, and swallowed the blazing grenade, which lit up its head like a jack-o’-lantern as it exploded.
The headless behemoth crashed on the road, sliding forward as its back legs still kicked under its second brain’s control.
“Nice catch!” Abrams muttered.
The ensuing feeding frenzy over the giant drew back the flow of creatures for the moment, and all of the predators attacking Abrams departed, sucked into the slaughter. Abrams used his dog whistle to drive Talon-1 after them now, firing its machine gun into the crowd. “Come on, guys!” he shouted as the bullets added to the beasts’ buffet.
01:46:03
“Open the door, Sasha.”
“I’m trying, Geoffrey! OK?”
“That’s good, honey. Just keep trying.”
“I am! Jeesh!”
01:45:51
Abrams reached the gate and then called Talon-1 back. “There’s a keypad lock! What’s the code, damn it!”
Galia yelled, “Punch in 00009999!”
Abrams focused one clumsy, armored finger on punching the keypad next to the gate. But even as he realized he had missed a button halfway through the code, the gate started sliding open, and he and Dima slipped through the crack. Abrams pulled Talon-1 through the door and pressed the button on the controls inside to close it. The controls responded readily and he stopped the lead-lined gate an inch from sealing. “Holler and we’ll let you in!” Abrams said, peering through the crack and glancing at Dima. He noticed a giant antique light switch next to the modern door controls.
Nell could hear the herky-jerky buzz of the Big Dog’s motors as it rounded the corner behind them. The mechanical mule was now a writhing mass of wasps and drill-worms as it kicked down the road like a colt. A spiger rounded the corner, skidding sideways as it stretched its head forward and swallowed the mule whole in its giant snapping jaws.
After a moment, the gigantic spiger spewed the machine onto the street, where it kept kicking on its side. Then, swiveling its head like a tank turret, the spiger searched for a new target, and its frill pulsed with waving light as it fixed its gaze on Bear.
Hender saw it pull forward with its four front legs and shove off its massive rear legs and tail. As it soared through the air, raising its spiked forearms high, Hender shouted, “Bear, turn left!” and leaped over Nastia and Nell. “Keep moving!” he yelled down at them as he landed on the soaring spiger’s back.
The spiger struck the street to the right of Bear, who had just scrambled far enough to the side to avoid being crushed, and Hender stabbed two of its three rear eyes in the same moment that he jumped into the air and then plunged another knife into one of its two front eyes. His legs burned as the spiger’s nants engaged in battle with his own and he leaped off the creature’s back, hooking his tail on the lamppost overhanging the spiger. “Run, Bear!” he shouted like a steam whistle as he spun round the lamppost in a tightening spiral.
The big man raced toward the left side of the street as Abrams opened the gate for him and shouted, “Hurry!”
Bear jumped through and Abrams closed the gate, leaving only a crack for radio signals.
Hender launched off the lamppost and landed on the back of the half-blinded spiger.
The beast honked and bucked in front of the gate to the farm, trying to scratch him off with slashing legs. Hender gripped its neon-striped back as he reached out two arms to pierce both its remaining eyes, planted a final knife in the center of its posterior brain with the expertise of a matador. Before Hender sprang off the disabled giant, some of its symbiants had already sensed its demise and changed allegiance, leaping into Hender’s fur.
Nell sprinted beside Nastia as they made their final run against the western wall. “Another spiger’s behind us,” Nell said calmly, masking her fear.
Nastia looked back and hyperventilated. “Oh, God.” The red spiger came around the corner behind them, even larger than the one it had been hunting. It seemed to spot the wounded giant beside them and lock on. As the hulking invertebrate prepared to spring, rats and swarms gathered around it, ready to share in its spoils.
“It’s coming!” Nastia screamed, seeing it on her visor.
“I don’t think it sees us yet,” Nell said. “It’s going after the spiger!”
They were only thirty-five yards from the gate. “Change directions when I say! OK?” Nell said.
“OK,” said Nastia.
“Two heads are better than one,” Nell said. “Tell me when it’s coming!”
Nastia saw the spiger in the rearview window of her visor. “Just go straight,” she said as she saw the giant flying toward them. “OK, go right!”
They cut right toward the other sidewalk as the predator landed where they had just been.
“Keep going!” Nell yelled, running at full speed as she crossed in front of the beast that was gathering itself for another leap.
Nell pulled an incendiary grenade Abrams had given her from a pouch on her jersey and found the firing pin by touch as she ran. The spiger leaped diagonally up the street toward them.
“Here it comes!” Nastia screamed.
“Go left!” Nell yelled.
They felt the creature’s shadow fall over them as they headed across the intersection toward the gate.
One of the spiger’s six-foot-long spiked arms whipped past Nell so hard, she felt the breeze in its wake as it impaled the street like a pile driver. She almost lost her footing and she triggered the grenade, rolling it under the spiger’s body behind her. At the same moment, the spiger stretched its neck down to the left with open jaws.
Nastia screamed as she saw the jaws engulf Nell.
01:45:48
Sasha spotted the two figures running toward the camera that was mounted over the gate to the farm. Geoffrey pointed, gasping. “That’s Nell and somebody else!”
Sasha screamed as she saw the spiger leaping behind them.
“Zoom in, Sasha!” Geoffrey said, gripping her arm.
Sasha did so reluctantly, as they saw the dragon swallow Nell.
Sasha covered her eyes, crouching down as Ivan barked. “I hate you!” she cried.
01:45:47
Nell felt the forest of pincers inside the spiger’s mouth stab into her back as acidlike digestive enzymes showered the Dragon Skin. The nants on her body burned in battle as the grenade under the spiger’s chest ignited, causing the beast to blow ten feet straight up as its jaws opened in shock, spilling Nell onto the road. The creature landed behind her and snapped its jaws involuntarily near her as she jumped to her feet and ran with Nastia.
“How’d you do that?” Nastia breathed.
“Let’s go!” Nell said.
01:45:39
“Oh, my God … oh, my God!” Geoffrey felt dizzy as he held his head. “She made it.”
“She did?” Sasha looked out from between her fingers. “You liar! She did! I love you, Geoffrey!”
01:45:39
Nell and Nastia bolted toward the left side of the street, directly toward the gate of the farm now. In the cross street opposite the gate, the stream converged on the spiger Hender had downed and now attacked the spiger Nell had felled, as well. Hender appeared briefly against the wall near the gate. “Here!” he hissed.
As they reached him, Hender wrapped his arms around them to camouflage them against the wall as they moved in front of the door, which Hender pounded with two fists to signal the others.
“Let us in, Abrams!” Nastia shouted.
Abrams opened the door. “Quick!”
A hundred Henders bugs rushed in before he closed the heavy door behind them with a rolling boom.
The farm was completely dark, and they were momentarily blinded as they turned toward Abrams.
01:45:37
“Switch to a camera inside the farm, Sasha!”
“Let me find one.…”
“Hurry!”
“I am, Geoffrey. I’m hurrying! I’m ALWAYS hurrying!”
01:45:39
As their eyes adjusted, Nell and Nastia staggered back in horror to see the glowing shapes moving over the floor, walls, and ceiling, and rising and falling in the air.
A rock fall had opened a gaping hole in the cavern’s ceiling above in the northwest corner. Filling the cavern with psychedelic phantoms, the creatures of Pandemonium had invaded the farm.
Glowing green, the Henders bugs that had gotten through the door flew up amidst the jellyfish-like animals suspended in the air, instantly clashing in battle as the molluscan balloons showered them with stinging cells.
Hender shrieked in fear, grabbing Nell’s shoulders as he cringed at the glowing shapes that filled this alien world, chirping and clicking around them.
“Follow me, fast!” Abrams yelled. “The others are in the bus!”
He dashed ahead in the squealing XOS, and they followed as glowing gammies spotted them through the rows of growing benches to either side of the road.
In a circular clearing ahead sat the RV-sized vehicle that had been converted into a field lab for the farm. As the creatures converged behind them, they chased them over the last thirty yards past bullet-riddled bodies of gammies that were already being devoured by other gammies.
Bear opened the door as they arrived and let them in.
Nastia turned and sat down on the steps, holding the door shut with her feet. “No, no, no!” she shrieked, sobbing.
Dima reached out and squeezed her shoulders. “It’s OK. You’re tough enough for Spetsnaz,” he said in Russian.
“No, I’m not! Who’s going to keep this door shut?”
“It’s locked now. Right, Bear?”
“Yes. Nothing can get in! Relax.”
Nastia pulled away from the door, and Dima pulled her to her feet. She turned and sobbed against him for a moment as Dima patted her back, and the others peered grimly through the windows of the bus. Nell saw the giant hole that had opened up in the roof of the chamber to the northwest.
Nastia quickly recovered and pushed away from Dima. She looked out the far windows of the bus and noticed the pile of jagged breakdown that reached fifty feet up the far wall of the cavern. “There was a cave-in?” she said.
“Yes,” Nell said.
“I thought you said we’d be safe in here,” Bear said to Galia.
“We would have been,” Galia said.
“This must have happened in the last few days,” Nell said, incredulous.
“Jeezus Christ,” Abrams said.
“What the hell is this, Nell?” Nastia asked.
Nell sighed. “This is Pandemonium.”
01:47:03
As Sasha found a camera view, they saw Nell and Nastia climbing into the bus, chased by a column of gammies.
“What?” Geoffrey exclaimed, moving his throbbing foot higher.
“Uh-oh,” Sasha said.
01:48:29
Abrams shook his head, climbing out of the XOS suit. “OK, what now?”
Nastia pulled out her phone with shaking hands to photograph the multicolored creatures swirling around them in the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Bear asked.
“This is an entirely new ecosystem,” she said.
Bear laughed. “We’ll probably never make it out of here, and you’re taking pictures?”
“That’s enough!” Dima said, glaring at Bear.
“The rumors were true,” Nastia said. “There are monsters here. They did run into Hell while digging this city.” The terror that had possessed her the moment before was momentarily replaced with scholarly satisfaction. “I have studied caves all my life,” she said. “There has never been a system of troglobites such as this. How big is the cave system they came from?”
“It stretches a hundred kilometers,” Galia said.
“Wonderful!” Nastia whispered.
“You should see the underwater window in the palace,” Nell said.
“You mean there are stygobites as well as troglobites?” Nastia laughed nervously.
“Hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic species,” Nell said. “Like nothing you’ve ever imagined.”
“OK,” Abrams said. “Is everyone all right? I think my fibula’s broken. I don’t know how that thing did it through this armor, but my calf’s f*cked up.”
“Spigers have a trebuchet-like strike, like the mantis shrimp,” Nell said. “A big one could probably shatter that suit like an egg.”
“Glad I didn’t know that till now,” Abrams said.
“Hey, your back’s smoking, Nell!” Dima said.
“Better take that off,” Nastia said. “She was inside the spiger’s mouth! You should have seen it.”
Nell’s tunic seemed to be steaming as she pulled it over her head and discarded it. “Wow—must be digestive juices,” she noted. “Thanks.”
“You were inside its mouth?” Abrams asked, chuckling. “OK, Rambo. You win.”
“That’s pretty awesome.” Bear nodded.
Dima reached out to shake her hand.
Hender grabbed Dima’s wrist firmly with one of his hands. “No! Nell can’t control the nants. Don’t touch her. OK?”
“Oh, yes.” Dima nodded. “Spasiba.”
Nastia noticed the purple sheen on Nell’s face and arms, taking a step back.
“How do you feel, Nell?” asked Nastia.
“Like I’m wearing a wetsuit.”
Bear pulled his glove off. “That rat bastard cut my finger off right inside my glove.”
Nastia’s eyes widened as she saw his hand missing his middle finger as Bear pulled his hand out of the bloody glove. She looked at the big man, horrified.
“It’s OK. I’ve got four more.” He grinned, laughing.
“Tape that up, Nastia,” Abrams said, pulling a bag off the XOS suit and fishing out a first aid kit.
“How?” she protested.
“Spray this on his finger.” Abrams handed her a bottle of an antibiotic disinfectant coagulant.
Dima took the bottle from him. “You think she is automatically nurse?” he said.
“I think anybody not doing anything is automatically nurse,” Abrams said. “Whatever. You take care of it, Romeo.”
Dima sprayed the bloody stump of Bear’s finger as the big man gritted his teeth.
Nell noticed Hender’s lower legs and hands were stained blue. “Hender, you’re bleeding.”
“That’s blood?” Abrams asked.
“Yes,” Nell said. “It’s copper-based.”
“You OK, Hender?” Nastia asked.
Hender’s fur was nearly translucent now, faintly projecting what was behind him as it mimicked invisibility. “Yes.” He nodded, bowing his head in exhaustion. The blue bloodstains seemed to fade on Hender’s silvery fur as nants scoured each filament clean.
Outside the bus, rows of stacked shelves holding glass jars and flats of soil stretched north and south from the circular clearing. Nell looked through the skylight at the glowing clouds of hovering shapes drifting through the air. Beams of faint light crisscrossed the cavern’s roof.
“So this is a farm?” Dima asked.
“Yes,” Galia said.
“What do they grow here, mushrooms?” Bear asked.
The sound of scrabbling legs scraped the bus on all sides as dog-sized gammies crawled over the vehicle now.
“Nell!” Nastia pointed at one of the gammarids, which sat in the driver’s chair.
“That one’s dead,” Bear laughed. “We had to kill a few that got in.”
Nastia smirked.
“We should move.” Abrams squirmed as the mass of gammies crowded around the bus. “I don’t like being in the counter of a delicatessen.”
“He’s right,” Bear said. “We better get where we’re going, fast.”
“Nell and Galia—what’s the next move?” Abrams asked. “How the hell are we going to deal with these fricking things now? There’re millions of them out there.”
“There must be a powerful lighting system above us,” Nell said.
“There is,” Galia said. “With the power on, it should light the whole farm.”
She frowned in thought. “Most of these creatures are tuned to very low light.”
“There’s a light switch next to the entrance,” Abrams said. “A huge switch like something out of Frankenstein’s lab.”
Galia nodded. “Yes. I believe that switch does turn on the farm’s lights.”
“So, if we turn it on…” Dima looked at Nell. “What?”
“We will blind many of the species,” Nell said. “At least temporarily.” She looked at the dead gammy sitting in the driver’s seat. Its bullet-riddled body was pale under the cabin lights, its back covered with jutting spikes. Its head was smooth, however, with small, sharp mandibles. “But gammies don’t have eyes.”
“Wow. You’re right,” Bear said.
“I thought they were herbivores,” Nell said, examining the mouthparts. “But apparently they’re omnivores.”
“Hmm.” Abrams looked at the giant bug. “How do they get around without eyes?”
“They’re a lot like army ants, which are also blind,” Nell said. “They must follow scent trails.”
“OK,” Abrams said. “Since light won’t affect them, what can we do?”
“I think I know,” Nell said. “We have one ROV left, don’t we?”
“Yeah, Talon-1 is still with us.” Abrams nodded.
“Good. Bring the dead gammies over here and give me a field knife,” Nell said.
“Why?” Dima asked.
“Some ants use glands to lay down a scent trail—one pheromone acts as a primer and another completes the trail-following scent.” Nell sliced open the gammarid’s abdomen and pulled open the exoskeleton, probing with the knife. Two long sacs of fluid led to a nozzlelike orifice at the point of the abdomen. “Here! These must be the scent glands.” Nell blew away a strand of her hair from her face as she cut around the sacs. “I need a rag, or some cotton. Any in the first aid kit?”
“Yeah.” Abrams gave her a wad of cotton from the kit on board.
“We need to rig something on Talon-1 so it can drag a swab behind it.”
“OK. But I don’t see how we can draw enough of them away to make a difference.”
“Cut that other gammy open, Dima, just like I did,” Nell said, pointing to another of the creatures lying on the floor. “Can I borrow your gloves?” she asked Nastia. “I’m afraid I’ll have to throw them away afterwards, unless you want those things chasing you out there.” Nell winked.
“Here,” said Nastia. “They’re yours.”
01:30:07
“What happened?” Geoffrey asked.
“It caved in, Geoffrey,” Sasha said. “Yesterday.”
“What?” Geoffrey said.
“I had to take Ivan for a walk in the ballroom, instead, yesterday. I didn’t tell you ’cause I didn’t want you and Nell to be scared.”
Geoffrey shook his head.
“Sorry, Geoffrey!”
“It’s OK, Sasha.” He bowed his head, covering his face with both hands.
01:29:57
Inside the dormitory, Kuzu found the humans and Hender on Maxim’s laptop through a security camera: They were inside a large vehicle in a wide clearing. Hender had gotten them somewhere else, somehow. If they made it to the palace, they could reach the train tunnel again through the tunnel Nell had taken and possibly set off the charges. But Kuzu saw that they were trapped now by a multitude of weird animals inside the giant cavern of the farm. He turned to Maxim. “Where?” his voice crashed like thunder. “Tell!”
Deep inside, Maxim had reconstituted a small piece of himself as he began to calculate a way to beat this devil.
01:28:50
“OK, Talon-1 can run backwards. It can lower the swab attached to the barrel by aiming the gun down,” Abrams said. “You wanna drive, Nell? Just look in this screen—it’s just like a video game.”
“Yeah, I’d be happy to,” Nell said. “Let’s open the door and send it out.”
Abrams and Dima guarded the door as Bear opened it. Nell toggled the ROV forward from the lowest step onto the ground. They closed the door as a few small gammarids got in, but the men squashed them under their boots.
Slowly, in fits and starts at first, Nell drove the ROV around the bus. “How do I lower the swab?”
“Here,” Abrams said. “Now?”
“Yes.”
He pointed the gun down, and the yardstick taped to the barrel lowered the saturated wad of cotton to the ground.
They watched as Nell drove the Talon to the other side of the bus and then began steering it in a wide circle around the clearing. The fast-moving amphipods began flowing behind the bot as they picked up the scent of the sternal glands.
When Nell had almost completed the circle, she turned the bot into a gradual spiral, ultimately toward the center of the clearing. The gammies emptied off the bus and came from between the rows on either side to follow the powerful scent the bot was dragging. Each time she came around in a clockwise motion, the gammarids filled in an ever-tightening spiral.
“What are you doing?” Nastia asked.
“They’re taking the bait, all right,” Abrams observed. “That’s the damnedest thing I ever saw! Nice driving, by the way.”
“Thanks,” said Nell, sticking her tongue out as she operated the joystick with her thumb.
Hender was nearly invisible with terror as he stood next to the others in front of the window.
Nell finally reached the center of the clearing with the Talon and shut it down, exhaling a long sigh as her shoulders slumped.
“Awesome job,” Abrams said.
Gammarids north and south continued to emerge from the rows of the farm to join the circle, climbing on top of one another into the vortex and piling into a higher and higher mountain as they reached the dead end at the center the spiral.
“OK! That should keep them occupied,” Nastia said.
“For how long?” Bear asked, incredulous.
“If they’re anything like ants, as long as they live.” Nell said. “When army ants get locked into death circles, they keep on going until they starve.”
“No shit,” Abrams said, laughing as the widening mass of amphipods rotated in front of them, like a glowing galaxy.
“Now what?” Bear asked.
“We turn on the lights and then run to the northwest corner. There’s a secret entrance there, not far from the palace,” said Nell.
“There is?” asked Galia, surprised.
“Sasha showed it to me,” Nell said.
“Right on,” Abrams said, climbing into the XOS suit. “Then what?”
“There may be more ghost octopuses in the tunnel,” Nell said.
“I hate them.” Hender shuddered.
“OK. We’ll take care of them when we get there. We should be able to blast our way through. It’s not far to the palace.”
“Great plan, Nell. Dima, Bear, and I will turn the lights on and be right back,” Abrams said. “When we come back this way, you get out and follow us north between those benches. Got it? Suit up. I’ll go first,” Abrams said.
“No, no,” Dima protested. “Bear and I should go first and fire at whatever we see. You can hold our ammo bag.”
“That’s more like it,” Bear said, unloading the eighty-pound bag from his back.
“All right,” Abrams said, taking the duffel bag of ammo easily on one robotic forearm. “But let’s save some for any ghosts that might be in the tunnel.”
Abrams set the arms to steady-carry the load in front of him and freed his own arms to carry an AK-47. “OK, everyone out of the way, I’m coming through.” Abrams power-walked toward the bus door, his XOS suit dangling bags and equipment and cradling the ammo packs. Bear and Dima pulled the door open and he jumped out ahead of them.
01:26:12
Kuzu watched the humans inside the bus on Maxim’s laptop. He showed the city’s map on the screen of his phone to Maxim. “Where?”
As the creature used a common phone, Maxim realized he was not some hallucination or mythological creature. He realized it must be one of the famous hendropods. How or why it was here was a mystery to him. Maxim shivered and felt the nants that coated his flesh rippling as they shifted. His skin felt pleasantly numb, thick, and somehow impervious. Then his captor touched his chest and in an instant turned his shield into a layer of acid that burned his flesh. Maxim quickly indicated Sector 5 on the map.
“Where they go?”
Maxim pointed to Sector One. “The palace,” he groaned, too readily.
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” Maxim sighed in agony, reaching under the mattress of his bed and grasping the loaded Beretta he had hidden there.
Kuzu looked at him quizzically, then extended a hand, exuding the ameliorating pheromone that prevented the nants from devouring the human’s flesh. The sel decided that the human was not deceiving him. Kuzu looked back at the screen as three of the humans burst out of the vehicle, running toward the camera.
01:25:59
Bear, Dima, and Abrams ran the fifty-yard dash to the gate.
Down the road behind them rushed gammies like Pac-Mans coming out from between the rows of benches and funneling into the road. But they were not nearly so abundant as they had been before.
As Dima reached the switch beside the gate, a horse-sized soldier gammarid charged at him from the right. Abrams fired at the animal. Dima, oblivious, jumped the last two yards as smaller gammarids raced down the wall and crawled over his feet. He grabbed the switch with both hands, pulled it down through squealing corrosion, and slammed it against the wall.
Even the humans were blinded by the sudden swell of light that filled the cavern as the lattice glowed white hot above.
Dima kicked the amphipods off his legs as he bolted behind the others. The creatures that had been following them scattered, trampling one another as they sought shelter from the blazing sunlike heat generated by the lights.
01:24:27
Kuzu saw the humans running toward the bus and noticed Hender and the others bursting out of its door to meet them. They all turned north.
01:23:10
They ran in single file up one of the rows. Each row of growing benches was a pyramid of shelves rising eight feet, many of them holding two-hundred-gallon glass flasks designed for growing algae. Nell looked above at the floating carnival of creatures that were crashing blindly into one another in the blazing light. Some of the buoy-sized man-of-wars rose too close to the crisscrossing beams on the ceiling and burst as they were fried by the heat. Thankfully, at least, the avenue they raced down was clear of gammies at the moment. Nastia looked up, awestruck, as a flock of globular orange butterflies drifted above them, making clicking noises. “What are these things in the air?” she wondered aloud.
“Mollusks, mostly,” Nell said.
“Then why are they flying?” she asked.
“They do that here,” Nell said.
“I don’t like mollusks,” Hender grumbled, running ahead of Nell, Nastia, and Galia. Abrams, Bear, and Dima charged in front.
Nastia noticed something coming up behind them in the visor of her helmet. “Nell!”
Nell looked back and saw an aggregator, rippling like a thirty-foot centipede as it chased them. She noticed that every segment of the beast had an eye on each side.
Nastia screamed.
“Shush!” Nell said, realizing all creatures down here must have acute hearing.
“It’s moving faster than us!” Nastia yelled. Suddenly, she dived under the row of shelves to the right.
“Nastia!” Nell hissed. She dived under after her, rolling to the other side as six segments broke off the aggregator and followed them.
Hender leaped over the shelves.
Alone behind Abrams and Dima now, Galia saw the many-legged animal behind him. “Something’s coming!”
“Shoot it,” Abrams said, ahead of them.
Nastia raced down the next row in a panic, and Nell had a hard time catching up to her. Hender landed ahead of Nell, nearly invisible now as fear triggered his camouflage.
Galia turned and emptied the Glock they had given him into the head of the creature. It fell, revealing the next head, which ate the first. The rest of the aggregator kept charging toward Galia over the other segments, and he threw the empty gun at it and ran.
Nell noticed the pieces of the aggregator reassemble as it chased them, rowing legs like a galley’s oars. She held the machine gun low to pierce as many of its segments as possible and fired. The three segments in the back broke away and scampered under the shelves on each side. “Keep running!”she said, turning and charging after Hender and Nastia.
Suddenly, Galia screamed from the next row as the lead segment of the aggregator detached and grabbed his pant leg in a bear trap of teeth, slashing his calf through the Dragon Skin armor. He stomped his other foot down on the pale white creature, crushing its outer shell as another leaped forward. Dima fired at it, and it fragmented like a pumpkin as Galia limped forward, his right knee surging with agony with each step.
Dima brought up the rear then. “Keep going, old man,” he said. “I can’t carry you if you fall.” He looked behind them and saw with horror the growing train of the aggregator as more segments joined it. Above, a flock of firebombers, colorless now in the light, drifted over them, their pale tentacles glistening in the artificial sun.
In the next row, behind Nell and Nastia, another long aggregator was forming. And the bulbs of drifting firebombers swooped down, seeming to follow the running people.
Nell fired her gun at the glass flasks lining the shelves behind them. As they exploded, showers of shrapnel spread over the path and blasted into the air.
Seeing what she was doing, Dima followed suit, firing at the giant jars behind them and filling the air with flying blades that pierced the flock of firebombers while covering the ground with slicing shards that stopped the rushing aggregators and gammarids in their tracks.
They reached the northern wall of the farm. “Go left!” Nell shouted, and they all turned west toward the hidden door. Galia’s left leg was covered with blood, but the older man hustled to keep up.
They continued laying down a wall of flying glass beside them as they ran, but as they reached the northwest corner, they saw that they could go no farther. A slope of thousands of tons of fallen rock had buried the door.
“We’re screwed,” Bear said.
“What now?” Abrams said.
A squadron of pale spheres trailing pink tentacles drifted through the breach of Pandemonium above, sinking straight for them.
“More firebombers. Take cover,” Nell said. “They drop stinging cells that can paralyze on contact.”
“Where the hell can we go?” Nastia yelled.
“Over here!” cried a voice.
“Nell!” squealed another voice, behind them.
They turned and saw a large open door in the north wall. Geoffrey and Sasha frantically waved at them in the door.
“Oh, awesome!” Abrams said, running in the limping exoskeleton behind Bear. “Come on!”
As they all turned back, Nastia, Nell, and Hender reached the door first. Geoffrey reached out to hug Nell as Hender pushed him away. “No, Geoffrey!”
Sasha ran out the door with Ivan at her side, waving the others in. “Come on!” she yelled.
“Sasha,” cried Galia as he came behind the others, stumbling. “Dear girl! I’m so happy to see you.” As he hobbled toward her, a large firebomber dipped down above him, streaming its tentacles with their payloads of nematocysts. “I told you I would come back,” he cried.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Galia pulled off his helmet, and an uncharacteristic smile broke over his grim face. “I’m Galia, dear!”
“I hate you!” Sasha shouted.
“OK.” Galia smiled. “I love you, little girl.”
Red sparks showered from the tentacles of the sphere, sprinkling over them. Galia saw the firefall and leaped forward, tackling Sasha, and it felt like molten lava was pouring over his neck and head.
“Get off me!” she screamed underneath him.
“You’re safe, Sashinka,” Galia whispered. He had landed on his knees and elbows, but now he collapsed with his full weight on top of her. She convulsed under him and screamed even as Abrams reached down with his robot arm and pulled him off, rolling his limp body aside. His eyes were frozen open. “Let’s go, honey!” Abrams barked.
She sprang up, crying, and ran through the door.
Dima ran to Galia, shooting down a number of spheres, the bullets breaking stalactites off the high ceiling in the distance. Galloping down the slope of broken rock from the cave-in above was a giant soldier gammarid mounted by a fantastic ghost octopus with a dazzling coat of orange thorns that elaborated on the gammy’s design. It raced toward him and sprayed two streamers of goo at them.
“Old man!” Dima shouted, trying to rouse Galia, but then he realized that Galia was dead.
Bear leaped through the door, and Dima jumped after him as a rope of goo caught his ankle. Before they could close the door, Dima was pulled backwards and they saw Galia’s body being reeled in by the other rope. They yanked Dima through and the door cut the goo-rope, preventing Dima from Galia’s fate.
“What happened to him?” Sasha bawled. “What happened to Uncle Galia?”
“He’s gone, sweetie,” Abrams said.
“No!” she screamed.
“Sasha,” Geoffrey said. “We’ve got to go now.”
Hender was amazed to see the human child. He had never actually met one this close. The golden hair and blue eyes of the miniature human beguiled him, and he reached out and touched her head as his own fur blazed golden, with bubbling rings of blue and pink.
Sasha looked up and her face wiped clean with awe. “Hender?” she asked. All children on Earth had seen his image.
“Yes, Sasha. Let’s go, OK?” Hender said.
“OK.” Sasha rose from beside Ivan. “Follow me, Hender!”
The others rushed behind Sasha and Ivan as they headed west. They turned north through a tall, arched corridor. At the end, Sasha opened a door into the hallway between the underwater window and the palace foyer.
Turning left, they emerged in the room with the window on their right, its red velvet curtains open and revealing the aquatic half of Pandemonium.
“That’s the hatch to the secret passage,” Nell said, pointing to the left. “Those stairs lead to the gondola.” She pointed to the spiral stairway in the far right corner.
Hender and Nastia stopped before the dark window in awe. Glowing colors and forms surged in schools and waves before them like abstractions in the dark.
“Most are mollusks and arthropods,” Geoffrey said, leaning on his cane. “All are new species. I’m Geoffrey Binswanger, Nell’s husband.” He reached out and clasped Nastia’s hand.
Nastia took his hand without taking her eyes off the window. “Nell’s husband.” She smiled. “You are a lucky man.”
“I know.” Geoffrey turned on the battery of lights with the switch beside the window, illuminating the lake. “It’s saltwater. We think it must be hundreds of millions of years old.”