Please see Prologue for general info and disclaimers.
*~*
Forty minutes earlier…
Dixon alternated between surveying his surroundings with watchful eyes and glancing down at the screen of the device in his right hand. The device was one of Marshall's inventions – something he'd created years ago when the technology had still been new and unexplored – and it had quickly become an essential SD-6 field tool. Besides acting as a global positioning system, it also provided a visual read-out of heat emissions within a twenty-five mile radius, thereby providing an advanced warning of possible incoming 'intruders.' That was how it had proved itself to be a vital asset on all operations. Shooting a quick peek at the water well that stood behind him, Dixon asked, "How's it going, Syd?"
Sydney slammed her right palm against the smooth wall of the well in order to prevent her body from crashing into it. She'd anticipated communication between herself and Dixon as she rappelled down the well, but she hadn't expected his voice to come booming into her ear, which was why she'd momentarily forgotten to keep her legs perpendicular to the wall. Once she'd managed to calm the swaying of the rope, she adjusted her ear piece (perhaps she'd gotten hers mixed-up with Dixon's?) and whispered, "Hey, Dix." She hoped he'd take her cue and spend the rest of the mission speaking in hushed tones. She lowered herself a few more inches down the well and felt as if she was entering an unending black hole. "You know how I've always said I'm not claustrophobic?"
Dixon turned around and faced the well with a look of trepidation on his face. "Yeah?" he prompted cautiously.
"Well, I'm rethinking that position right now."
"You going to be okay? We could switch."
The obvious concern in his voice gave her pause as Sydney suddenly found herself blinking back an unexpected onslaught of tears. "No, don't worry about it," she asserted a second later with an upbeat lilt. "I'll be fine. I wouldn't dream of inflicting this on anyone else, especially you. How are things going up there?"
"Everything looks good. Our perimeter's secure and there aren't any signs of anything out of the ordinary."
"Besides us, right?"
"Right," Dixon chuckled as he returned to his guard duties, intent on ignoring the sense of foreboding he felt pressing down upon his chest. Feeling uneasy during a mission was something he was familiar with since Sydney was the fearless one in their twosome, while he was always the fretful one who sweated the details. But there was something different about his anxiousness this time, something he couldn't quite put his finger on but made him that much more eager to complete the mission as quickly as possible. "You at the bottom yet, Syd?"
"Uh, not yet, but if Marshall's 'it's 100 feet down' is accurate, then I should be there—" Just as those words left her mouth, she felt her right foot, which she'd lowered slightly in order to feel for the floor, brush up against some loose pebbles. "Okay, I've hit the bottom. Give me a sec to get my bearings straight." Knowing that time was of the utmost importance to her at that point, Sydney dropped to her feet, swiftly unwrapped the rope from around her body, eased her pack off her back, and deftly located the mini flashlight she stored in one of its zippered hip pockets. The illumination that the flashlight provided was compact but bright enough to reveal that the diameter of the well was wider than she'd thought it to be. This, however, did not provide her with much comfort for all she could see were rows of neatly stacked and cemented together stones that seemed to climb heavenward. Rotating 360 degrees, she did a quick scan of her new environment to ensure that she hadn't just lowered herself into one or more booby-traps. Everything appeared copacetic and, upon completing her pirouette, she almost immediately located the one stone she and Dixon had embarked on this journey to find.
Standing 100 feet above her, Dixon paced around the well impatiently. He was now so agitated that he felt like he was ready to crawl out of his own skin. After several more seconds passed in which the only sound he heard through his ear piece was that of feet shuffling, he peered into the well's opening and asked, "Have you found the loose stone Marshall told us about?"
"Not yet," she lied without missing a beat. Reaching once more for her backpack, she pulled a cell phone out of the same hip pocket that had housed the flashlight. As she depressed a button to turn it on, she took a deep breath and muttered in annoyance, "Dammit, all the stones look the same! I could be here forever."
"Okay, calm down. You're doing great. We're not in any rush."
Down at the bottom of the hole, Sydney's eyes grew large when she saw how long it was taking her phone to get a signal. Her heartbeat tripled in pace and she was on the verge of hyperventilating when the phone's display screen lit up, thereby indicating its readiness to be used. "Yeah, except for how I want the two of us to be long gone before anyone from K-Directorate gets here," she declared in response to Dixon's comments. She punched in a familiar series of numbers and waited for the requisite three tones before pressing '3' and then '#' on the keypad.
"Let me worry about that," Dixon lightly, but also firmly, ordered. He was a little surprised by how quickly she'd become frustrated, but assumed it probably had to do with being stuck in a small space 100 feet underground.
"Sorry, but it's a reflex I can't turn off. Let's just chock it up to how much I dislike the sight of you bleeding," she gravely informed him as she pulled a thin silver tool out of her backpack and used it to try to ease a particular rock out of the well's circular wall. It refused to budge at first, but a little more persistence on her part resulted in its removal a second later. With more room to work with, it didn't take her very long to detach several more rocks from the wall. "Once was more than enough in my opinion and— Hey, I think I found the stone. Yeah, this is definitely the one. I've got a good grip on it…it's coming out…it's— Oh, God."
"What? What's going on?" He rushed once more to the side of the well, wrapped his fingers around its lip, and looked down its opening to see nothing but darkness. In his ear, he heard what sounded like a flurry of activities as well as a faint beeping noise, but he didn't know what to make of it all.
"It's— I think the stone's booby-trapped or something. There's this beeping but I can't tell if there're any wires." Her voice was frantic.
Dixon shrugged his own pack off his back and almost tore it open in his haste to pull out a shoebox-sized metal contraption from its main compartment. He set the box down on the ground beside his feet and flipped a switch that was located along its top. As he unwound a long length of wire and began snaking it down the well, he shouted, "Get out of there, Sydney!"
"No, wait, I see the wires attached to the stone. I think I can diffuse it."
"Sydney, I'm serious, get out! Clip on the extraction wire! I'm pulling you up!"
"Are you kidding me? There's no way I'm leaving this well without this artifact!"
"I'm not debating this with you, Syd! Clip on the wire!"
"No! Sloane said we need this artifact if we want to lure Khasinau to us, so don't think I'm going to bail that easily."
"Sydney!"
"Wait! I think I almost have it. I'm gonna cut the blue wire. I'm pretty sure that's the right one, but move away from the well, Dixon, because I don't want you to be hurt if I'm wrong!"
"What?! Do NOT cut that blue wire!"
"Will you just—"
"PUT ON THE DAMN EXTRACTION WIRE, SYDNEY!"
"GET AWAY, DIXON!"
"SYD—"
"MOVE!"
Perhaps it was all the shouting or maybe just his common sense taking over, but before truly grasping what he was doing, Dixon backed away from the well to safety. But once he realized where he was and what he'd done, he shook his head with disgust and began rushing forward. "SYDNEY, GET YOUR—"
He was unable to complete his sentence, though, because a thunderous roar that shook the ground eclipsed the sound of his voice as a fireball burst upwards from the depths of the well.