Chapter 6

Surrounded by Stone Walls

Jim watched the clouds of fog from his rebreather curl up and dissipate amongst the lightly falling snow. Thanks to the holograms that seemed to ornament every street corner, the drifting brown specks were tinged with a blue reflection, like a very dirty sheet of rippling sequins was suspended in the air around him. He shouldered his way through a huddled group of faceless strangers, clogging up the narrow pathway as they tried to stay warm. Ordinarily, as he walked, his mind would inevitably be drawn back to the markets at home as he compared the dismal hum of these shadowy streets to the cheerful and hopeful buzz of the colony .. but not today. Today, his mind was mulling over darker matters.

After the young man's announcement at the monument several weeks ago, hundreds of people had flocked to the new "fracture" location he had specified and attempted desperately to go through. Most of the crowd had never returned home that day, having lost their lives off the edge of the cliff, whether by falling to their deaths or drowning in the water below. Their leader had clearly been insane, but the people were desperate enough to believe anything from anyone, as long as the message was the one that they longed to hear. Jim stepped out into the open square and away from the oppressive atmosphere of the backstreets, glancing around quickly. Having spent days on end out here searching, he knew the area like the back of his hand. Discounting a few close calls with malicious groups, he hadn't been recognized yet. Presumably the clunky rebreather and thick coat were doing their job and helping to conceal his identity from curious eyes. He was just another identical face among the masked crowd.

He paused now, standing near the edge of the group, braving the open cold to listen to a news broadcast above the square. Following their gaze upward, Jim waited, his eyes resting on the familiar screen. He had caught part of the program a few minutes earlier on another corner. The same guest - a sincere Asian woman - was still being raked over the coals, trying to respond tactfully to the harsh sarcastic remarks of the interviewer. In another life, Jim would have felt sorry for the poor woman, but these people did make their own decisions after all. She obviously believed deeply enough in her cause to volunteer to be publicly disgraced for it, he reasoned lifelessly, but she should have known better by now. It was always the same old story.

"Please!" She was pleading, turning away from the caustic smirk of the other woman to stare into the camera. "Don't give up! You mustn't give up! There is still hope-"

"Bah!" The interviewer interrupted her rudely once again, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, tapping her desk sharply with the tips of her fingers. "Hope? What decade are you from? 'Hope' these days is a dirty word, a fairytale. Go back to your art shows and high-society parties, Miss Nakayami. This world is finished."

"No!" The other woman was barely concealing her own growing temper. "There are still good people in power. The government is trying-"

"The government!" The interviewer unexpectedly sat bolt upright, cackling with laughter. "The government doesn't care about us! No one believes that! Just look at the graffiti around town, the riots at the embassy, talk to anyone on the street. The government is finished."

"You're wrong." The dark eyes of the guest flashed warningly.

"Careful .."

Jim glanced at the man beside him, but the stranger was still focused on the screen and didn't seem to have realized he'd said anything. He turned back to the interview.

".. it's time for you and everyone around you to stop living in the past. Yesterday's government doesn't exist anymore. In fact .." The interviewer leaned across the desk, inching toward the camera conspiratorially. ".. I heard a rumor that the government is planning to abandon ship entirely. Get out while there's still somewhere left to go."

A look of confusion flickered across the Asian woman's face and the interviewer smiled in satisfaction, pressing her advantage.

"So you see .. they don't care about us! They're planning an escape from this world. They're going to leave us here to rot."

The other woman had recovered by now and responded calmly, her voice quiet and level, though the flames still seemed to be lingering behind the thin screen of social politeness.

"That's simply not true. The only way we will get through this is if we all stick together."

"Ha!" The interviewer chuckled, shaking her head disappointedly, as though the woman had now been deemed a lost cause. "How can you say that when-"

"Enough!" The patient guest had reached the end of her tether. She slammed the desk with one elegant hand. "Is that all this network cares about these days?! Government conspiracies designed to cause conflict and chaos?!"

The interviewer stared at her, seeming to have momentarily lost possession of her tongue.

"Well-"

"People are dying in the streets! Children. People are homeless. People are starving. People are hopeless and suffocating. Your government conspiracies are the last thing they need to hear!"

Jim and the man to his left glanced at each other as a few half-hearted cheers went up from the watching crowd. The Asian woman's eyes shone with righteous anger as she stood.

"Tell them how you're going to help them. Instead of spending your money stalking government officials, spend it figuring out how to clean the atmosphere or regrow the plants so we can breathe!"

The interviewer made a subtle signal to someone off-stage as the woman stared into the camera.

"Better days are coming. I promise you. Do not give-"

The feed went black.

As his fellow viewer pulled his hood up and prepared to leave, Jim shook his head.

"Guess she's done it now."

The other man chuckled, an odd sound through the thick filters of his rebreather.

"Yep. Say hello to Golad."

Jim trotted down the slippery steps and ducked under the chain that was holding a small door shut - though admittedly, not very well. He bent almost double and stepped inside the musty darkness. It was even colder inside than it was out. He made his way down a long hallway, counting the doors as he went. 6 .. 7 .. He turned left into the 8th, passing through a warped metal doorframe. The door was nowhere to be found, though the hinges remained, swinging carelessly in the drafty entrance. Jim paused warily as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The building had been abandoned several years ago for safety reasons, as most on the block at the time had been. It was their 5th "rental" in as many weeks. At least this one didn't seem to have any other residents. Jim relaxed a little as he made out three familiar figures in the room, sitting against opposite walls and watching him silently as he entered.

"Any luck?"

The new arrival dropped down on the floor against the remaining patch of wall, half-hidden by a mass of moldy crates. He shook his head grimly, throwing his rebreather on the ground beside him and rubbing his mouth in frustration. Taylor nodded to the discarded mask, his arms balanced casually on his knees.

"Hey, easy, that's an expensive piece of equipment, young man. You better be more careful with it. If it breaks, I'm not buying you another."

Not even Mira offered a smile at his attempt. The situation was beyond humour. Jim looked up to meet the eyes of the other two searchingly, knowing what their answer would be before he asked the question, but hoping against hope for a different outcome nonetheless.

"You?"

His companions immediately disappointed him.

"No leads."

Jim leaned his head back against the wall with a thump, staring up at the uneven ceiling resentfully. He was silent for several minutes. The other two took their cue from him and said nothing, waiting. Finally, the echo of Jim's voice could be made out again, muttering softly to himself.

"You know, Elisabeth didn't cry. When I first told her. She never shed a tear." He was still addressing the ceiling as his other companions pretended not to listen. "But she became as white as a ghost and as .. expressionless, as blank as if I was trying to talk to a wax figure. That's how hard she took it. No screaming, no tears, just .. nothing. It was like something inside of her died."

Taylor's eyes flicked to the woman across from him, but Mira was staring at the floor, her expression unreadable.

"The tears came later, of course, after the shock started to wear off and the truth began to sink in, but in that moment, our world stopped spinning." Jim's brow creased in confusion, his forehead resembling the ripples in the damp paint above him. He looked as though he was miles away. "Her hands were so cold and mine were so numb, it was like even our blood had stopped working and had frozen in our veins. Nothing made sense anymore. Like all the rules we'd been living by all our lives had been turned on their head. In that moment .. we were lost. And we still are."

"Jim, for heavens sake, don't be so morbid." Taylor chuckled impatiently. "We're going to get her back. We're closer than we were."

"Are we?" Jim stared at him. "Or are we following the same track around and around in circles? How long until we just have to give up and go home?"

"Jim-"

"Cause I'm never giving up." He interrupted, answering his own question as he stood. "I can tell you that much. If I have to spend years here, searching and scraping out a food source in this forsakenplace, I will. Whatever it takes."

"Sit down and shut up." Mira stared up at him patiently. "There's something we haven't thought of yet, that's all."

Jim slumped down again. He sat on the floor in the dark, leaning against a nearby crate in thunderous silence for a few minutes until he burst out again.

"I want to wring the neck of every person I meet, just in case some useful information drips out of them. Is that normal?"

Mira and Taylor exchanged a dubious look, but said nothing.

"I mean, how many of these people are really innocent and how many know more than they're saying?" Jim continued. "I swear, if I find out any of them have known something all this time .."

"Jim .."

Jim sprang up again, the weakness betrayed by his growling stomach overruled in that moment by the rush of furious adrenaline coursing through him.

"If one of them has laid even a finger on my little girl, I'll kill them myself."

"Calm down, Shannon." Taylor pacified matter-of-factly. "If you go around threatening to kill people, we're not gonna get anywhere but arrested. And no one wants that. Mira, do you want to get arrested?"

Mira looked at him, but said nothing. Taylor turned back to Jim.

"See, that was her "No, I really don't want to get arrested." expression." So cut it out and let's think about this logically. It's a big city. Realistically, someone has to have seen something. We just have to find the right person."

"What if she's not even in the city anymore, Taylor? Have you thought about that?!" Jim flung an arm into a stack of boxes and sent them tumbling down. "They could have taken her anywhere. They could be on the other side of the country, or worse."

"We can only work with what we know for certain." Taylor responded sensibly. "We know she washere. So we start with that. If we can find a way to get into the security cameras in the area, we might find out more."

"If only we had some sort of technological genius here to help us."

"Heh."

Taylor turned back to him after a moment of silence.

"Wait a minute, what was that meant to imply exactly? That if I'd been a better father to my son, he might have decided to tag along on this little fun-filled expedition?!"

"What?! No, of course not." Jim ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "But let's be honest, I don't know anything about that sort of thing. Nor do you. Or you. I have contacts who do, but-"

He suddenly stopped, looking as though his brain was whirling a million miles a second. Mira watched him, her spirits rising slowly as she saw the old light in his eyes crackle to life again. Even the Kaprosuchus was watching him intently.

"What? What is it?"

Jim stared down at his rebreather, still lying forlornly on the ground where he'd left it.

"I think I may have a lead."

Compared to the horrible brown sludge of the future - the tiny disease-ridden globs of moisture that fell from the sky and transformed the streets into a playground of dirty, pungent muck - the snow that blanketed Terra Nova was almost unbelievably clean and white. So much so, in fact, that the children had taken to making little outdoor kitchens for themselves, begging bowls and spoons from their mothers and then using the sparkling snow crystals to make candy and "ice cream" to offer to passers by. One such establishment had set itself up and commenced business right beside the Lab, drawing tired scientists in with the eager offers of "refreshing treats". Despite the war, despite the weight of fear and anxiety that their parents constantly carried around, the children kept their chins up and shook off the burden as best they could, transforming themselves into mini merchants .. and conducting their business in a surprisingly shrewd manner indeed.

It was this particular station that Maddy paused beside now, crouching down to examine the excited children's work. They showed her product after product, beaming with smiles as she studied the wares seriously, offering a few choice words of admiration for each item. She finally settled on a misshapen piece of sweet maple on a stick, dropping a few terras into the quivering hands of what appeared to be the head chef. The child's eyes shone up at her.

"Thanks, Maddy!"

Maddy opened her mouth to respond, but paused momentarily as a faint rumble sounded, shaking the dusty cold from the trees nearby and causing the leaves to quiver. When it had stopped, she continued with a smile, noticing the air of panic that seemed to have taken hold of the children.

"Thank you. Missed breakfast again today. This is just what I needed." She licked the candy as if to demonstrate, pretending for a moment that her tongue had gotten stuck. The children laughed at her, one of them finding the whole situation so amusing that he actually fell down in the snow. Maddy shouted with laughter anew at this before turning back to the head chef's serious eyes. She reached out and ruffled the boy's hair gently.

"Keep up the good work, sir."

The child nodded gravely and folded his arms, but his eyes brightened again as she stepped away, taking another lick of her candy.

"Please come again!"

"Don't worry, I will!" Maddy waved, clamping the stick between her teeth as she entered the Lab and removed her coat. Malcolm and Carter were huddled together by the table, evidently engaged in some conspiracy together. The latter of the two glanced up quickly and pocketed something as she approached. Maddy raised an eyebrow at Malcolm, a gesture which never failed to turn his conscience into overdrive.

"What's .. going on?"

The head researcher flushed a little, but simply smiled, waving a hand airily.

"You'll see in time."

Maddy blinked, shaking her head with a laugh and calling out to Carter's already-retreating back.

"Carter. I walked past Skye on the way here. Reilly wants you."

"I know." Carter half-saluted as he disappeared out the door. Maddy turned back to her supervisor, folding her arms.

"So what's really going on?"

Malcolm bounced his eyebrows at her, but made no reply.

Carter wandered casually into the Command Centre a few minutes later to find several people already present. They all turned to look at him as he arrived, Reilly breaking off mid-sentence to address him.

"Carter. Perfect timing."

The acting commander sounded annoyed already, though for once, Carter sensed he wasn't the target. Now that Reilly's attention was distracted, Lucas and Gareth were eyeing each other warily across the top of Skye. The piggy in the middle herself looked less than impressed with the situation. Maybe the invisible lasers that her companions seemed to be firing at one other were giving her a headache.

"I'm sending these guys to the quarry to collect some ore. It's more or less mined, but it was abandoned there when the quarry was attacked." Reilly explained, appearing ignorant of the wordless exchange taking place behind her, though Carter suspected she was thoroughly aware of it anyway. The woman seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. "If it's still there, I want it brought back as soon as possible. There's no point giving the future free resources."

Carter nodded.

"Makes sense."

"Could you go with them?" Reilly asked, though to Carter's mind it sounded less like a request and more like an order. "They can come home on their own, but I want you there just in case someone is still hanging about the quarry."

"Fine. I'm going that way anyway." Carter responded, unusually compliant.

Reilly eyed him in surprise.

".. thank you."

"Can I talk to you for a minute first?"

Reilly glanced at the three waiting members of the party. It looked as though a domestic battle would break out shortly if they hung about much longer.

"Can it wait?"

Carter hesitated for a moment, shrugging.

".. yeah, it's not important."

"Good." Reilly responded with relief, turning back to the small team. "Carter will be coming with you on the way there. Be careful when you get to the quarry. My intel says it's deserted for now, but don't get careless, they could be waiting for you. Get in and get out as soon as possible."

She waited for the nods.

"Corporal Tate, you're in charge after Carter. You've been there before, right?"

A look of surprise crossed Skye's face, but she nodded in response.

"Good." Reilly almost managed to conjure up a smile, possessing the air of someone who suspected they should be happy about a given situation .. but couldn't quite convince themselves of the fact. "You should all know what you're looking for. If you don't, just follow Skye."

Gareth winced internally at this. Had it been his imagination, or had the Commander been looking straight at him when she'd said that? And why was the traitor coming anyway? He side-eyed Lucas to his right. There were no innocent civilians to be stabbed in the back out in the quarry .. though admittedly, if you were going to be stabbed in the back anywhere, the quarry seemed an appropriate place ..

"Alright, that's all then." Reilly was saying, a touch grimly. "Have each others' backs. Try to get along. Maybe you might even find you can tolerate each other."

That was too many maybes, wasn't it? She didn't sound at all hopeful of the prospect. Reilly sighed inwardly, suddenly feeling very tired. But honestly, was a little cooperation too much to ask for? They did, after all, have bigger problems at present. They could go back to bickering like infants when the battle was done. She watched Gareth's stone cold face as he stared straight ahead, a wave of hopelessness washing over her. The kid was turning out to be a tough nut to crack ..

"Dismissed."

The team turned to Carter, who turned and dawdled out the door lazily, apparently having no desire to lead the expedition. Within a few minutes, they had left the colony .. with Skye at the front and Carter taking up the rear.

At least he could keep an eye out for danger back there, Skye thought ungratefully, casting a look back at the meandering figure. Gareth had fallen in beside him, with Lucas a short distance ahead. If this was some kind of horror story and they were about to be picked off, at least Carter would go first.

Gareth caught the look and mistakenly assumed it was directed at him. He watched her as she turned back around, eyeing the smaller woman begrudgingly.

"I don't know why the Commander put her in charge." He muttered to Carter. "I have seniority. I might be younger, but I've had a lot more experience in the field."

His intended target ignored him completely, but Lucas picked up the conversation from a few steps away, glancing back over his shoulder warningly.

"Careful. She'll hear you."

"Like I care." Gareth snorted, glaring at the terrorist for interrupting. He wasn't talking to him anyway. Didn't the guy know to mind his own business? He added it to his ever-growing mental list of black marks against Lucas' record.

"Anyway, she'd understand."

"Then tell it to her face." Carter interjected, not bothering to look at him. Gareth fell silent at this suggestion, but Lucas offered his own response.

"She might not be as understanding as you think. Might get offended." He shifted the weight of his container to the other shoulder. "Might even get angry."

"Skye? Pssht." Gareth laughed a little, clamping his mouth shut a moment later as the subject of the conversation glanced around at him questioningly. Gareth pretended to admire the scenery until she lost interest, then continued in a significantly lower tone of voice. "She never gets angry. Not really."

"You'd be surprised." Lucas mused under his breath. "She can be pretty scary when she really gets mad."

"Maybe .. you're just a wimp!" Gareth smiled brightly, his heart pounding fiercely in his ears. The physicist raised an eyebrow.

"Ouch."

"Y-Yeah!" Gareth threw back, gaining in confidence. "And there's a lot more where that came from if you can take it."

Lucas grinned briefly, glancing at Carter over the boy's head.

"I'll look forward to seeing that."

"Hey Gareth?" Skye's voice came from a few metres ahead, where she was studying the treeline as she walked. "Can you come here for a sec?"

Gareth rolled his eyes.

"Duty calls." He trudged ahead to fall in beside Skye, who glanced at him, then squinted back at the forest.

"I need you to double-check something for me .. after all, two pairs of eyes are better than one."

"Sure, what is it?"

As they walked on ahead, talking quietly with one other, Carter whistled under his breath.

"Kid's got it in for you."

Lucas snorted, watching the two humorlessly.

"Yeah. I'm starting to get that impression myself."

The quarry was little more than a growing hole at the foot of a rocky mountain, with gently sloping sides leading down to a dusty pit at the centre. The walls, however, were the only gentle part of the place - jagged slabs of mixed and matched stone stuck out viciously from every angle. Threads of purplish-silver metal could be seen here and there, weaving their way through the sandy grey stone like galactic milk in a bowl of crunchy cereal. The whole quarry, in fact, must have resembled a large bowl to the Pterosaurs drifting overhead .. if the air creatures had been interested in that sort of thing. But the area was indeed abandoned. Once Carter had given the all-clear, the four explorers slid carefully into the heart of the open mine and got to work, spreading out a little to hunt for their treasure. Carter stayed with them, though whether or not he actually did anything useful in the end was a topic of some debate. There was no snow in the quarry. Instead, it seemed to suck in the sun's rays and bounce them back and forth off the gravel walls like a microwave. It was strangely hot and the work was unpleasant. As the others sweltered through the manual labor, the Sixer made a pretense of standing under a withered tree near Lucas and 'keeping watch'.

A short time later, Lucas groaned inwardly as a stormy Gareth returned, seemingly set on being offended at every minuscule inconvenience that happened to cross his path.

"Who does she think I am, one of her servants?" He grumbled darkly. "Tell you what, I've just about had enough of this."

"Then stop whining." Carter glanced at him. There was a note of impatience in his voice that Lucas had never heard before. "Do something about it."

"Careful." Lucas warned, standing up to stretch his back. "You don't want to get on her bad side now. We still have a long walk home."

Gareth turned to him in annoyance.

"Are we even talking about the same person?!"

"Don't listen to him." Carter snorted. "She's got him wrapped around her little finger. He gives her too much credit."

"So what should I do?" Gareth asked, turning back to the Sixer with interest. Carter kicked a rock down the hill before answering, appearing as though the whole conversation was of very little concern to him one way or the other.

"Show her you're just as capable as she is. Make her respect you as an equal."

Lucas cast a dubious look sideways at him, but the Sixer's face was as placid as ever. Gareth, however, was nodding, eating up every word.

"Okay .. so .. I'll go over there and ask her if she needs any help."

"Exactly." Carter muttered, as the young soldier nodded resolutely and began to step away. ".. if you want everyone to think you're a 12-year-old Boy Scout."

Gareth glared at him, flushing in humiliation as he turned on his heel.

"Then what?"

"Don't ask. Do." Carter advised, sounding bored. "If you gotta stop and ask for permission to do something, it just tells the person you don't really want to help in the first place."

"So I just .. go over there and help. Without asking her."

"I wouldn't." Lucas muttered quietly. Gareth completely ignored him, nodding once more and gritting his teeth.

"Good. Then she'll see I'm not as useless as everyone seems to think I am."

The two watched in fascination as their younger companion marched over to Skye. Lucas shook his head a little.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Oughtta be worth seeing though."

Lucas' eyes flicked sideways before returning to the scene of imminent disaster.

"What are you playing at?"

"Just watch."

Skye looked up into the sun momentarily as Gareth's boots halted beside her. Was he here to apologize for the completely unwarranted way he'd stormed off? Gareth bent down and put his hands on the half-full container she was using.

"I'll take this over for you."

"I got it. Thanks." Skye murmured, giving up on him and turning back to examine another piece of ore. The clatter echoed around the container as she dropped it in. Gareth glanced over to the two under the tree hesitantly, and Carter gestured for him to try again. Gareth took a readying breath, picked up the container, and began to walk away.

"Let me."

"Hey." Skye stood and put a hand on his shoulder, sounding irritated. "I'm not finished. Put it back."

The younger soldier dropped the container in annoyance, spilling some of the ore on the ground.

"Look, I'm only trying to help."

"I know what you're trying to do." Skye eyed him warily. "I'm telling you to back off."

"You think you can order me around?!" Gareth blurted out, his own temper flaring. "I should've been in charge of this operation, not you! You've been here five minutes, what do you know about it?!"

"It wasn't my decision! I don't have to defend myself to anyone!" Skye's fingers curled around the ore in her hand more tightly, as though she was about to hurl the shard at his head. "Especially a teenage kid with an inferiority complex."

As Gareth gasped, his face growing redder, Lucas threw another sideways glance at Carter. The Sixer was still watching with interest.

"See what you've started?"

"Yep." They met Skye's gaze as she glanced over and Carter waved briefly. As she turned back to Gareth, he folded his arms.

"Not good for people to boil silently. The kid needed to get it off his chest."

Lucas snorted.

"Something tells me he's getting more than he bargained for."

Skye was talking more gently now, meeting the boy's sullen gaze seriously. What on earth would Reilly do in this situation?

"Look .. I know those guys had something to do with this. Let's just call it even, alright?"

".. fine."

"Fine." Skye nodded, then hesitated again. "And for what it's worth, there are better people you could ask for advice."

"I know that." Gareth responded testily, turning and marching back to where the others were watching, their discarded containers beside them.

"Well?" Lucas prodded. "How did it go?"

"Just shut up." Gareth shoved past him and returned to his own patch of gravel. Lucas grinned at Carter, who raised an eyebrow and resumed his previous occupation.

"Mira used to use the same technique for sending messages. If you get the right frequency, you can basically send them wherever you want."

Lucas stared at him with interest.

"And Malcolm's been helping with this?"

Carter nodded, catching a glimpse of someone approaching out of the corner of his eye. He shouldered his canteen.

"I'll go check on the kid."

Gareth was sitting on a rock slab eating a little ways off. Skye halted beside Lucas and pulled out her own pouch, the two watching in silence as Carter dropped down near Gareth and began a somewhat one-sided conversation. They were too far away to catch what he was saying, but judging by the boy soldier's response, he wasn't making much headway.

"You shouldn't mess with him so much."

"Who?" Lucas asked innocently. Skye eyed him.

"You know who. He's just a kid."

"Yes, I suppose to a person of your advanced years, he would seem that way."

"Don't push it." Skye retorted dryly. "I hear I can be pretty scary when I really get mad."

Lucas grimaced a little.

"Oh, you heard that."

"I heard that."

Despite all appearances of failure, whatever Carter had said had evidently done the trick. Gareth followed him back, saying nothing, but appearing much subdued.

"You know, it's strange." Skye mused, changing the subject and directing the attention away from the awkward boy. She moved the piece of purple stone she was holding, watching the jagged edges sparkle in the sun. "Why just abandon it?"

"I have to admit, I was wondering that myself." Lucas muttered, squinting as the light reflected right into his eyes. "They plow through everything on earth to get their hands on that stuff, and then just leave it sitting out in the open when they have a chance to grab it."

"Exactly." Skye frowned. "I mean, they attacked this place, drove off our men, and then didn't even take the ore .. something doesn't make sense."

"Maybe they were attacked after that and had to run away themselves?" Gareth offered uncertainly. "Slashers? Carno?"

Skye nodded slowly, glancing at him.

"Maybe .. it's a good point." as Gareth flushed a little and tried not to look too pleased ".. but then why not come back for it?"

Lucas hid his own smile as he took possession of the piece of metal and held it up to the light again, rolling it over in his hand.

"Maybe it wasn't up to standard? Maybe there's something wrong with it."

"But they use it for all sorts of things." Skye argued reasonably. "Medicine, weapons .. surely they'd take it anyway."

"Hm." Lucas dropped his arm and shrugged, handing it back to her as they steadied themselves against another rattling blast from nearby. The shocks seemed twice as strong out here.

"Maybe they've found a bigger vein underground?"

"But still, why leave it here?" Skye insisted, when the shaking finally stopped. "Why are they going to all the trouble of blasting out the rock underneath the earth when the ore's just sitting here for them to take with a lot less effort?"

"Maybe there's more underground?"

"Or maybe it's not what they're looking for." Carter murmured, finally taking that opportunity to contribute to the conversation. He had picked his moment well. The others immediately turned to him and waited for him to continue. He watched the three eager faces for a minute before folding his arms.

"I mean, think about it. If you want ore, you take the quarry. If they're digging elsewhere, they want something that can't be found here."

"Something worth expending a monumental amount of money and manpower for." Lucas added.

"But if not ore, then .. what .. ?" Gareth glanced at Skye, who met his gaze uneasily, running a thumb over the rough edge of the quartz-like stone.

"That's what I want to know."

As though the earth had heard them and was angry at the insinuations, the ground began to shudder again, this time accompanied by a thunderous boom that threw a geyser of dirt into the air some distance away. The small group stared at the falling debris with wide eyes, but only had a brief window to admire the spectacle. Shortly after the first wave, the earth began to tremble with another kind of vibration. The trees parted violently some distance away as a large animal burst out, followed by another, and another, and another. The breath caught in the throats of the onlookers as the herd of assorted dinosaurs barreled straight for the quarry, throwing up clouds of dust and skittering rocks everywhere in their haste to flee the invisible terror. Carter the Lookout actually chose this opportunity to do his job, shoving Gareth sideways and elbowing Skye roughly in the ribs as the spraying waves of gravel soared closer.

"What are you doing standing there?! Take cover!" He stumbled back, wincing as the first beast's chest barreled into his shoulder. The creature barely gave him a backwards glance, pushed on madly by fear as the stampede overtook the approaching mob, flooding into the quarry like a frenzied torrent of scales and claws. Carter dove for refuge behind a large upright slab, huddling low and covering his head with his arms.

"Everybody, get down! GET DOWN!"