FFF - Ch72

The ladder is cold underfoot, and the water when she reaches the sublevel is worse. The floor is wet; they’ve known about this leak, but it isn’t a priority because it isn’t coming from a pipe. It’s swamp water. Jane breathes in the damp scent, then listens. Everything echoes down here. A clatter and a bang make her turn around, but it’s impossible to know how far away that was or even which direction it came from because these passages are all connected.

There’s another bang. It’s definitely coming from the east. Jane fiddles with her carbine to figure out how to turn on the light bolted to the handguard. It’s almost pitch-black down here.

She can’t move fast without her feet slapping the layer of water on the floor, so she tiptoes to the corner, hiding the light with her hand. She squints into the gloom, then flashes the light. The passage is clear, although some of the pipes overhead appear deformed. She doesn’t know this level well enough to be sure if they were like that before. Jane hopes so.

A low noise comes from the next crossway, and she smells something more than swamp water. It’s foul.

A hand closes over her mouth and she stiffens as Curio pulls her into the shadows.

“It’s just ahead,” Curio whispers.

It? Not they? “Do we take it out?”

“I don’t know if it’s here alone. Did you hear that on the radio? Some kind of competing signal. Follow it. I’ll make sure nothing else gets in. Don’t engage yet.”

There’s no time for discussion. Jane would prefer for Shell to be the one making tactical plans, but she’s not going to argue with someone like Curio.

They separate and Jane creeps forward, turning off her light. Her eyes are beginning to adjust, but only to a point.

Something dark punches through the rusted metal wall, splitting a pipe and filling the dark passage with steam. Jane cries out in surprise and drops flat as a sharp implement flashes past her close enough that she feels the wind from it. She scrambles up as more metal tears and wails. So much for Curio’s plan.

Jane lunges away and turns with the carbine at her shoulder. She fumbles with the light and switches it on to see a hulking shape in the steam. The floor shudders slightly with each step it takes toward her, and its rasping breaths sound downright hostile. Its shape becomes clearer as it nears, and its height makes Jane take a step back. Then another. This thing is too big for these cramped passages; that must be how the pipes got this way. Its long arms almost reach to the floor, and she doesn’t like the look of the unnaturally long claws.