The forest of stalagmites thinned out gradually, the stone spears growing shorter as they neared the end of the cavern. The ceiling sloped downwards, narrowing the chamber until it was a thin tunnel stretching off into the darkness.
The brightness of the cavern behind them, JD found it harder to see in the dark and squinted uselessly as his eyes adjusted. He contemplated pulling out his flashlight, but considered it better to simply let himself adapt to the dark again.
The tunnel was barely wide enough for two of them to walk side by side, but it was less winding than some of the previous passages. Dave floated on ahead, and JD could see the shift of his spotlight and the small movements of his optics as he scanned their surroundings.
A hundred or so metres in and the tunnel opened up into another cavern, this one far less grand and opulent than the previous. The fungus was ever present, speckling the ceiling with glinting dots of blue light, but it provided the only point of interest in the space.
Without anything worth examining or noting in the cavern, the group walked through it quickly and followed the next passageway.
They had marched several hundred more metres through slick sloping stone pathways when Marcus stopped suddenly, his eyes on the ground. JD stopped too and looked down, expecting to see more footprints and tracks in the stone.
When he didn't see anything but rock, he raised an eyebrow at his father. "What is it?" He asked, seeing that Kait and Fahz had stopped further down the path to wait for them.
"You feel that?" Marcus murmured, his fingers tightening on his Lancer.
JD waiting for a moment, trying to sense whatever it was his father had detected. "Feel what?" He said finally, shrugging.
"Vibration in the rock." The old Gear's voice was quiet but clenched, and he stared up the dark tunnel, then down the way they had come.
JD held very still for a few seconds and concentrated on ground beneath him. He remembered his uncles telling him stories about Locust emergence holes and how they'd learned to feel the grubs tunnelling underground right before they burst through the surface. JD had always been curious what that would have felt like, but grateful he never had to experience it.
It took a few moments, then he could feel the very slight tremble in his heels and the balls of his feet. The vibration was so slight that he never would have noticed it if his father hadn't mentioned it. Any movement and he would lose the sensation until he held still again, and it amazed him that Marcus had been able to feel it while marching.
"Yeah, I feel it." JD gave his father a grim look, seeing the scowling wariness in the old man's eyes.
With his newly healed arm, JD reached out and placed his palm on the tunnel wall. The vibration was more apparent against the thinner skin and brand new nerve endings of his hand, and it almost felt as though the stone was pulsing beneath his touch.
"Well that's unnerving." He muttered, pulling his hand away with a grimace. "You think it's Baird's mystery seismic activity?"
"Let's hope so, otherwise we're in trouble." Marcus said, walking onwards. "Everybody stay sharp."
Fahz and Kait were waiting as JD and Marcus caught up, and Fahz had his hand on the wall like JD had. He cringed, his teeth baring in a moment genuine fear. JD didn't comment when he noticed how much the other man's fingers trembled when he pulled them off the stone. The raw fright on Fahz's face suddenly seemed a lot less funny than it had before.
Fahz appeared to sense that JD had noticed his expression and he looked down at the ground, one hand coming up to push the glasses up his nose and partially obscure his face until he regained his composure.
"Come on, let's keep moving." Kait jerked her head toward Dave. "The map said there were three big caverns, all in a row. We've passed through two of them, so we've got to be getting close."
They carried on, each of them keeping their rifles clutched to their chest plates. It was still incredibly quiet in the tunnel, which was the only reassuring factor they had going for them. No matter how sneaky, there was no way anyone could move around in total silence of the caves and not be detected.
The passage kept rolling on ahead of them, seemingly never ending. JD found it hard to judge distance inside the tunnels without any points of reference, but he guessed it was another kilometre or more before the way ahead started to widen again.
He paused briefly to reach out and touch the wall, and felt the vibrating pulse from before. It felt stronger against his palm, and he didn't have to hold perfect still to feel the tremor rise up through his boots anymore.
"We've got to be getting close." JD said as he pulled his hand away, noting that Marcus was looking at the ground again, his index finger twitching as he held it over the trigger guard on his Lancer.
The tunnel kept widening as they went on, the walls rising higher and growing farther apart. Then, seemingly suddenly, the passage yawned open into another massive cavern, this one as big as the first.
More massive stalactites shone with fungus, dangling down and dripping with water. A few had hung down so far that their tips had met those of the stalagmites rising to meet them. Together, the two spears formed long slender hourglass pillars that glowed brightly in the dark.
Instead of the echoing silence they had been engulfed in for the last several hours, the cavern was filled with a soft steady hum. It sounded like the low faint rumbling of a distant engine, purring somewhere far away.
"Am I the only one seeing that?" Fahz asked, taking a few steps to the right to peer around a stalagmite in his way.
JD followed the Gear's gaze and stared toward the far end of the cavern, where the stone wall had cracked and fallen away, exposing something smooth and glossy in the light of the fungus. He took the same few steps Fahz had, tilting his head as his brain tried to make sense of the image before him.
"Is that metal?" Marcus asked, seeing it too.
Together they walked toward the other end of the cave, the worn path taking them around the outer edge of the space rather than through the stalagmites this time.
Part of the huge cavern had collapsed and rubble had poured over the stone pillars and spears. Luminescent tips poked out of the dirt, blotchy where the fungus had rubbed or broken away when it had been battered by the falling rocks.
The cave-in look fairly recent, JD guessed. There was newly settled dust over most surfaces, and he could see where the dust had mixed with water to form rivulets of mud. He ran his fingertips over a nearby stalagmite and noted how a layer of dirt came off without any effort.
It had been the cave-in that had collapsed the the rear wall of the cave, revealing the metal surface behind it.
Dave was actively scanning the metal surface, starting at the base and floating his way upwards. He beeped excitedly, and JD saw Fahz glance at the control panel on his arm.
"This is thing we're looking for." Fahz said, dropping his arm and gripping his Lancer again. The more he looked at the ruined section of the cavern, the harder his fingers clutched the rifle, and JD suspected Fahz felt safer when he had it in his hands. Like a child and its safety blanket.
JD stared up at the pile of rubble and the exposed metal wall. "So what the hell is it?" He asked the group, knowing full well he wasn't going to get an answer.
"You've got me." Kait said. Then she climbed up over the few feet of loose boulders and rested a hand on the glossy surface. "It's definitely the source of that vibration though."
"Great. So we've found it." Fahz grunted. "Now what? It's a bit too big to take back to Baird, don't you think?"
"I think we can get inside it," Marcus pointed up the slope of rubble. "There."
There was a section of the metal wall that was punctured open, a dark jagged round aperture glimmering with moisture. To JD's eye, the opening looked like an oversized bullet hole, perhaps only a few feet wide and maybe too small for them to squeeze through in full combat armour.
Dave had spotted it too, and he made beeline for the opening. Before anyone could stop him, the bot had pulled in his arms and tucked them away, then jetted through the hole. There was a brief flash of sparks and a loud scraping noise as Dave's casing made contact with the edge of the opening, and then he was gone.
They all stood still and quiet for a moment, waiting for the little bot to return. Fahz stared down at the control panel again, and they all jumped in surprise when they heard the loud ping of Dave's pulse function.
A series of happy beeps radiated out from the whole, and Fahz shook his head in disbelief.
"Little man's found a way through. There's a passage on the other side." He said, enthusiasm completely void from his voice.
"Then in we go." JD confirmed with a nod. He slung his rifle along his side—his rucksack was strapped to his armoured back—and began climbing up the loose dirt and stones.
To avoid slipping, he rammed his steel-toed boots hard into the soil. The toes jammed in and managed to find solid grip, allowing him to essentially create his own set of stairs up the side of the cave-in. As he passed Kait, she moved to follow him, jamming her own boots into the footholds he left behind.
It took some time and lots of pauses to ensure he had he decent footing in the crumbling stone and earth, but JD made it to the small opening. Gripped the lowest edge of the jagged metal and pulled himself up the last few inches to peer inside.
It was mostly dark, but there were streaks of blue fungus surrounding the immediate few feet of the opening.
"It looks," he said, both hands clutching the edge of the opening, still craning his neck to see inside. "Like one of those stalagmites punched us a way in when all this happened." Without looking, JD made a circular motion with his hand towards the rubble and debris.
"Stalactite." His father corrected with a grunt as he hauled himself up behind Kait. "If it fell from the ceiling, then it would have been a stalactite." Marcus's voice was rough with exertion and a little annoyance.
"Right. Well, whatever." JD eased back from the hole and glanced over his shoulder at the trio waiting behind them. They were lined up, one behind the other, along the side of the cave-in, their hands on the metal wall to steady themselves while they waited on him. JD opened his mouth to speak again but stopped as his eyes drifted outward to the rest of the cavern. "We're uh…we're a long way up." He said, swallowing.
It hadn't felt like that far of a climb up the loose hillside, but now that he was sitting near the top the view was more than a little staggering. The massive chandelier of vibrant stalactites was a lot closer than it had been before, and the sea of stalagmites along the floor were much more imposing from high up. JD couldn't help but imagine how one wrong step would have him crashing down onto the bed of florescent and pointy spears. He did his best to push the thought from his mind and forced a smile that he knew came off a little strained.
"Good thing none of us are afraid of heights, huh?" He asked with a chuckle. Kait and his father gazed out over the view and while they had themselves pressed against the relative safety of the metal wall, they didn't seem too bothered by the sight. Fahz, on the other hand, was visibly sweating and one of his hands had curled to claw against the metal sheet, as though his fingers could grip the unforgiving surface.
"Nice view," Fahz said, almost casually. "Now can we get a fucking move on?"
"Well," JD said, leaning back a little to study the punctured hole. "There's a problem with that." Fahz's glare was unforgiving. "Kait might fit, but there's no way the three of us are getting in there with all this gear on."
Marcus took a step away from the wall to look up around Kait's shoulder. "Well shit." Then he looked down at the heavy armour covering his upper body. "We've come this far." He said, and jammed his Lancer, stock first, into the soil so the muzzle pointed upwards. Then he removed his rucksack and looped the straps around the rifle, using it as an anchor for his gear. With everything secure, Marcus began unbuckling his armour.
"For fuck's sake," Fahz sighed dramatically, his eyes rolling skyward, then followed Marcus's example. "The indignities never end with you lot."
JD stomped his feet a few times to pack down the dirt beneath his heels and give himself a reasonably steady spot to stand, then he unslung his Lancer and used it to make his own gear anchor. It took some fumbling, but JD managed to shuffle out of his armour, though the few moments he spent pulling it off over his head left him feeling unsteady on his feet. It caused a brief instance of panic has he remembered the fall that awaited him if he accidentally turned in the wrong direction.
The Lancer he'd rammed into the dirt also served as a makeshift armour rack, and he lowered his plates onto it. The result was something that looked like half a scarecrow, sloppily made and sitting cockeyed on the sloping ground.
When he turned back, they all had the similar half-scarecrows next to them on the hill, even Kait. JD didn't like how exposed he felt in just the sandy grey t-shirt he wore beneath his armour, but at least they didn't have to remove their boots or greaves.
"I'll take point." Kait said, stepping up beside him and looking into the hole.
"No, I should go first." JD protested immediately, and Kait stared him down with a flat look that did not invite argument.
"You go in first and you're liable to get stuck trying to squeeze into some tiny space you're way too big for." She said, and JD knew she was right. "I'm the smallest, so I'll go ahead and make sure it's big enough you three."
"Yeah, alright." He conceded, edging back so she would have the space to climb inside.
"Hey Dave!" Kait called into the opening. "You still okay in there?" There was a distant response from the bot, a series of echoing chirps and buzzes. "Alright, we're coming in."
She pulled out her flashlight and gripped the barrel in her teeth, then with a heave Kait pulled herself headfirst into the hole. JD watched as she wiggled forward and her boots disappeared into the darkness.
"Fahz," he said, waving the man forward. "You're up."
Fahz looked surprised and pointed at himself, his finger landing in the centre of the navy blue tank top he wore under his armour. "Me?"
"Yeah you. Get in there." JD said, swinging his hand towards the opening.
Fahz looked at JD, JD's pointing finger, then the dark narrow hole in the metal.
"Nah, mate. I'll bring up the rear." He said, easing back with a shake of his head.
"Yeah, mate," JD shot back, mimicking Fahz's accent. "You're going next." Fahz's mouth tightened into a pouting scowl, and JD eased his expression to one of sympathetic patience and softened his voice. "Look, I know you're not loving this, but we'll be with you the whole way. You're gonna be fine, I promise."
Fahz stared up at him for moment, then at the opening. His gaze lingered there for a few seconds and then he gave a small nod, his throat tensing as he swallowed.
"Okay." Fahz's normally cocksure voice came out as a bare, dry whisper, and JD tried to keep the astonishment from appearing on his face.
Fahz climbed up past Marcus and positioned himself in front of the opening, his fingers clenching the edge of the metal in a white knuckled grip.
"Just so you know," Fahz said, plainly trying to inject some of his normal snark back into his voice but failing miserably. "I'm choosing to believe you want me go next so you can stare at my ass." There was no humour in his tone and his eyes never left the darkness of the opening.
Without waiting for JD's response, Fahz bit down on his flashlight and squirmed into the hole.
Marcus moved up beside JD as Fahz vanished from the light of the fungus. They could hear him moving inside, groaning and hissing as his boots squeaked and shoved against the metal.
Marcus ducked his head to stare into the dark.
"You made him go second so he couldn't chicken out." He said quietly, giving JD a knowing sidelong glance.
"Yeah, though now I feel a little bad about it."
His father gave a short huff of amusement, then followed Kait and Fahz inside. It took a bit of angling at first, Marcus's broad shoulders barely squeezing between the jagged metal, but he made it and soon he was gone.
JD took one last glance back over the admittedly spectacular view of the stalactites, stalagmites, and glowing fungus, then put his flashlight between his teeth and pulled himself into the metal opening.