Avery adjusted the belt on her black suit. They were covered in head to toe with black and she wondered if it was entirely necessary.
"Oh, you wear it well. You look good." Stephen Joked next to her. The black cloths did not suit the professor, but he didn't look bad in it. Ryan walks up and offers Nick a gun who politely refuses.
"Ah. No, we need torches. The most powerful you can find." Nick said.
"Take night vision goggles." Ryan suggested, not understanding why he would prefer a torch. Whatever poisoned the man in the hospital was dangerous, they needed something to defend themselves.
"Vision isn't the issue." Stephen told him. Ryan passed him his torch and Stephen placed it in his belt.
"Well, the pest controller died a few minutes ago. They're running tests on our casualty now." Claudia says approaches them weary about this anomaly, but secretly she was glad. She preferred this over her behind-a-desk job.
"So we have an estimate of how long he survived the poison. And we can be pretty sure that what Ryan described was not the culprit."
Abby approaches, adjusting her belt.
"What's she doing?" Claudia said pointing towards Abby.
"Abby's got more practical experience with animals than the rest of us put together." Nick said, Abby did very well at the last anomaly especially with Rex and the Scutasaurus. The black suit she wore look slightly too big for her, but it looked well on her.
"I don't care if she's Doctor Dolittle. Sorry, it's just too risky."
"I can help. I've just finished a study in insect behavior." Abby lied through her teeth. She loked strait ahead and did not turn to face Claudia in case she could tell she was lying. Avery could tell she didn't want to miss this chance to see another anomaly. This was a rare opportunity, it may not happen again.
Claudia sighed then walked away. "Whatever." Avery thought she heard her mutter.
"Torches." Nick reminded Ryan.
Nick and Ryan walked off to find some torches. Stephen pulled his one out and checked it over
Stephen placed his foot against a railing and asked "Is that true?"
"Kind of. To tell you the truth, spiders aren't really my thing." Abby said with a grimace.
"Yeah, well, technically these are probably scorpions." Stephen said to riel her up.
Abby's face fell slightly "I feel better already." She grimaced again, that wasn't exactly better. Stephen walked off and the girls followed him.
They caught up to Nick who handed the two girls a torch each and double checked their equipment. He looked towards Claudia and waited for her call. Claudia checked on the radio to see if her soldiers were ready to enter if something went wrong.
"Go ahead. But I'm pulling you out if you find what poisoned the pest controller." Claudia threatened pointing the radio in her hand at Nick.
"Fine." Nick promised. "Come on lets go." He told the people behind him.
"Are you really going to do that?" Avery asked jogging up to walk with her father.
"No. I did that so she would let us go." Nick told her. They shared a smile and walked away from Claudia. Abby and Stephen walked behind them; talking as they entered the underground.
The air was stale and thick in the abandoned part of the tunnel, it smelled of rubbish and rotting meat. A rat sat on one of the pipes running along the wall chewing on an old rotting apple. She looked at it for a moment as the others walked forward. Suddenly a black shape dropped from the ceiling landing the unsuspecting rodent. She cringed as she heard the pained squeal of the rat and quickly walked towards Stephen.
"What has you so freaked?" He asked looking at her. A light sheen of sweat appeared on her brow and she wiped it away.
"I saw one of those insects back there. It at a rat." She said walking beside him. She occasionally looked up incase another spider decided to drop.
They enter a tunnel into a storeroom shining their torches around. A spider was in their slightly smaller than the one she saw back on the main tracks. They were black with two sharp pincers at the front its mouth. It ran away from the light preferring to stay in the dark.
"On the ground." Nick warned them. "That's what I thought, they're sensitive to the light."
"Did you see those pincers dad?" Avery asked shining her torch around.
"Yeah they are just pincers now, but they may be the start of the evolution of poisonous fangs, or the pincers that many scorpions today have." Nick said looking towards his daughter. He was glad that she noticed them, it meant she was paying attention in her classes.
The three of them enter a tunnel, Nick first, Abby last. Another spider crawled on the wall above them. They only notice it when it moves as Abby goes past. It lifted its fangs and scurried away as light touched it. It walks onto the floor running towards where it thought was safe. Nick tensed and moved forward more carefully.
"Oh! Does anyone have a really big slipper?" Abby said looking around the tunnel.
The walls of the tunnel were cracked and falling apart. No one had walked down here in ages, no one had any reason to. Everything was covered in water from old pipes dripping above them. Small round lights covered the wall giving off very little light.
They enter another room, spiders ran in all directions around on the floor. Some were the size of a small cat, while others were not that much bigger than a rat. A dozen or so bunk beds lined two sides, covered in moldy pillows and moth eaten sheets. Random things lay amongst the space, both old and new. A coiled piece of electrical wire sat on an old dresser; an old oil lamp lay on a bed. Rusted metal stairs lay behind them, and a ladder bolted into the wall in front of them.
There was an old projector with massive reels; old yellow paper wrapped tightly in string; falling apart desks with chairs left abandoned in front of them. It must have been an old bunker from world war one or world war two. Avery walked to an unmade bed and picked up an old children's toy. One of those ones made out of steel and wood covered in lead paint. It was a toy soldier with pieces of it stripped of paint leaving patches of wood covered in mold. She wondered what happened to the boy who once owned this toy. Was he old now with his own children and ground children, or did he die during the war as a soldier or a civilian.
"I don't like this." Nick said getting a bad feeling.
They move further into the room. Stephen gags as he stands on one of the spiders. Abby finds a fence at the side of the room, there is a fairly large hole in it. "Cutter." Abby calls. It looked like it was torn apart by something big as a saliva like substance covered the edges of the hole.
Nick, Avery and Stephen follow Abby through the fence. An anomaly lay on the other side. They go and stand in front of it.
"What's happening to us?" Nick said bewildered. He was also slightly scared. This could prove to be the greatest danger the earth has ever had to face.