At the intersection, I headed right this time. Simon’s tunnel was shorter than ours had been and we soon reached the cavern again. The passage had sloped downward, so we didn’t come out so high up on the wall, and there were a few feet of a granite shoreline beneath us this time instead of pointy rocks. The underground lake stretched to the left and the front, but a narrow ledge ran along the cavern wall to the right.
A crash came from somewhere ahead, like rock toppling onto rock. I doubted that was Eleriss and Jakatra, but at least they’d hear it and know something else was down here with them, assuming they were still alive. If the monster had made the noise, that meant it was relatively far ahead of us. Good.
Simon peered over my shoulder. “We going out or staying here?”
I exhaled slowly. “We can’t get out the other way, so I think our best bet is to catch up with the others and hope they can help us escape. The predator dropped through a hole in the ceiling, but it was thirty feet above the water. I don’t see how we could get out that way. Also, if we were to stay here, and the creature finished whatever it’s down here doing, then it’d have nothing better to do than stake out these tunnel exits until we ran out of food and water and hunger drove us to desperation. If we’re going to try and get past it, better to do so while it’s distracted.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” Temi asked.
“I’ve thought about little else for the last ten minutes.”
I probed the cavern with my flashlight, making sure there wasn’t anything inimical crouching in the darkness, before dropping down to the granite beach. While I waited for the others to join me, I studied the uneven stone ceiling overhead, wondering if any more holes might lead out. I had a feeling the creature had found a special way in, one that involved holding one’s breath for a few minutes and navigating all sorts of ups and downs through a watery passage. If there were easily accessible entrances, we’d see bats and other signs of animal visitors.
“It’s stale smelling in here.” Simon shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a yellow and black device.
“Methane detector,” I told Temi when she looked at it curiously. “Though it’s not as if we can get out if the cave is full of methane, so I’m not sure I’d like to know.”
“You just want to nod off and fall in the lake and drown?” Simon asked.
“Sounds like a better way to go than decapitation and mutilation.”
“You know,” Temi said, “when I decided to drive across the state to ask if you’d hire me, these aren’t the sorts of conversations I imagined would be common during the work day.”
“We’ll have to update our pamphlet,” I said.
Simon returned the gas meter to his backpack and issued a thumbs up. “The levels aren’t any worse than in your average dairy barn.”
“Comforting.”
I headed off along the ledge. The uneven ground and the need to jump across channels of water made the going slow, and Temi gestured for Simon to go ahead of her. I made sure not to outpace her. Splitting up would be crazy. Being down here at all was crazy.
Another crash boomed from up ahead. The sound made me think of stone columns being tipped over. I hoped that creature wasn’t trying to bring down the cave on our heads.
I kept our pace steady and even. I wanted to catch up with the others—and their sword—but I was afraid we’d run into the creature first, and I couldn’t imagine my bow or whip harming it. We needed a weapon that could make a dent in the predator’s hide. Preferably a dent in its heart. If it had one. Maybe the creature was made entirely of plastic, or maybe it was some mechanical construct with a plastic hide.
The new thought jolted me so much that I slipped and almost ended up in the lake. I recovered, shaking off a steadying hand from Simon, and continued on, but it surprised me that I hadn’t thought of the idea before. Its power, resilience, and cunning would make more sense if it was a machine or robot than if it was an animal. What if it had a brain full of circuits rather than blood cells? It hadn’t eaten any of the people it’d mauled, so maybe it didn’t need to take in sustenance—it was killing because it’d been programmed to do so. Heck, maybe some battery powered it, or maybe it had a tank and stopped to fuel itself at the gas station when nobody was looking.
My snort was almost a laugh.
“Glad you’re finding our situation amusing,” Simon whispered.
“I had a funny thought. What if our monster is a robot instead of a living, breathing predator?”