Chapter 116

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

Once down the ramp, Connor found himself looking at a broad, high archway. Beyond that was an avenue—a street as large as any to be found in a modern city. In the lights coming from the devices attached to the crates, the walls lining the avenue took on an eerie sense of deliberate construction.

Like homes, he thought.

Mosiah stopped at the archway, head tilted back to study the symbols curving around the arch. “Not so far beyond this. Maybe another fifteen minutes.”

His voice hadn’t been raised but boomed in the vaulted height.

The clones coughed, then Tim shook his head. “Was the stench this bad when you cam here?”

“Hm? Oh.” The old man pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. This is worse.”

For Connor, the stench was so bad that he could taste it: rotten, sour.

Elise shivered. “It shouldn’t get colder like this.”

Mosiah shuffled under the archway. “That would also be something new.”

“The work here—” The archaeologist turned to the ramp, then the arch. “—isn’t primitive.”

“Oh, these people were anything but primitive.”

And with that, the old man continued on.

Apparently, the changes he’d acknowledged weren’t enough to discourage his enthusiasm. Connor could understand why—they were just fifteen minutes away from something that mattered, maybe more than life.

That was something more than a need to right a wrong.

It felt more like the fear of death.

Except…it had to be even worse than that. Mosiah was pushing himself and everyone he’d hired into danger that skirted deadly, to put it kindly.

If the creatures populating the planet were new, and the stench and cold were new, what did that say? Planets could undergo dramatic changes in short times—usually after an event of some sort.

Maybe that’s what had happened sometime after the theft.

Connor wasn’t one to believe in coincidence, and that’s what was required to accept the entire idea: thieves came to steal relics; a planetary event occurred; raging monsters spontaneously appeared; underground conditions changed.

Add to that the assertion that the monstrosities might not be indigenous, and the coincidence became even harder to accept.

As he stepped under the archway, he started his stopwatch: fifteen minutes.

Maybe this one time, things would go as expected.

Elise lingered at the base of the ramp, snapping images with her computer and taking video from a few angles.

Connor waited just beyond the archway, keeping Selen’s team in sight.

Sneakers scraped on the stone floor, and the archaeologist came up to him. She was focused on the images she’d captured. “Any thought that this was some ancient culture from this world has to be dispelled now.”

“Just now?”

“Well, if you want to be objective and follow procedure—”

“I don’t.”

The archaeologist laughed and fell into the hurried pace Connor set. “Fine. Then look at nothing more than what we’ve seen down here. The composites, the level of sophistication in drilling this place and out building everything—that’s advanced, probably beyond our technology.”

When Connor caught up to the others, he found Selen at the rear, glaring.

She turned away when he drew closer. “Is it to the point now that I have to babysit you?”

Rather than take the bait to argue, Connor pointed to where Mosiah was scratching his chin, considering an intersection with another broad avenue. “Is he lost?”

“Confused, more like. The intersection wasn’t here before. He says.”

Connor strode up to Mosiah’s side and eyed the bisecting avenue. It had the same appearance of a city street, with false building fronts. “What’s the point of an intersection?”

The old man harrumphed. “I wish I could answer that.”

A check of the stopwatch revealed six minutes had passed since passing under the arch. “We’re more than a third of the way in.”

“Yes. Darnedest thing. There should be a fork around here, not an intersection.”

Connor saw the annoyance in the twins’ eyes. They wanted this thing over, just like him. “I’ll scout out ahead.”

Mosiah’s lips twisted. “All right.”

Free of concern for anyone else, Connor jogged straight down the main avenue. It felt great to stretch his legs, to not have to watch over a team. If anything happened, he only had to worry about himself.

Ahead, the avenue split: Mosiah’s fork.

The two roads were about half as wide as the main avenue, and neither had obstacles as far as Connor could see.

He headed back, listening for any sound other than his own booted steps.

Emptiness. Hollowness. That was all he sensed.

There had to be more of the guardians, even if it was just the octopus things.

As if those weren’t terrible enough.

Mosiah was already three steps down the bisecting road, heading to his right, when Connor got back.

“There’s a fork back that way.” Connor jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

That seemed to confuse the old man, but after a moment, he shrugged and headed the way Connor had indicated.

Selen stopped next to Connor long enough to roll her eyes. “I don’t trust either one of them.”

She meant Elise, Connor realized. Mosiah made sense, but Elise?

The archaeologist was several meters back from the group, taking more image and video captures of the walls.

He nodded at the Moon brothers, then headed back to corral her.

Elise smiled at his approach. “Figure it out?”

“The fork’s straight ahead.”

“Not surprising.” She snapped another photo of a cluster of symbols.

“We need to keep up with the others.”

“I know.” She squatted and ran her fingers over the symbols. “I’m just curious what all the symbols mean. Why make this feel so…big?”

“It feels like a city street to me.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Towering ceilings, wide avenues…it’s like they wanted to make it seem like—”

“—like home.”

“—home.” She nodded, eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that strange?”

Once more, Connor set an aggressive pace to catch up with the others. “When you’re looking at alien things, isn’t it normal for them to feel alien?”

“That’s a safe assumption.”

Ahead of them, the lights mounted to the crates flickered.

Before Connor could ask if she’d noticed that, a deep, thundering rumble came up through the floor.

Then a hollow cracking sound tore through the ceiling.

Sections of the roof and walls shattered and collapsed down onto the avenue, spraying dust and pebbles their way.

Seconds later, with the air still thick and choking, the pebble clatter sounds continued.

But there was no sign of light cutting through the dust.

Connor and Elise had been cut off from the others.