Harrington had shared another nugget of wisdom before they vacated the gondola: Whatever you do, stay clear of the water.
The ecosystem down here was dependent on that main river and its lakes, all of it fed by geothermally melted ice from the miles of glaciers overhead, and drained under the continent to parts unknown.
Before the gondola had stalled, the professor had educated them about the primordial world down here, how it was mostly amphibious in nature, thriving at that boundary between solid ground and the flowing rivers and pools. Many of the life cycles had evolved to incorporate stages that transitioned between those two extremes: juveniles sheltering along the rocky banks, adults living in the water, or vice versa.
Harrington had described the ecosystem as being stuck in the Carboniferous Period, an era when the topside world was dominated by primordial swamp forests. The professor had noted parallels in the evolutionary pathways taken by the life down here. Only this isolated and insulated world had become stagnant, never experiencing the radical changes wrought upon the world above by the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangaea or by the ravages of meteoric impacts. Still, the highly adaptable XNA genetic matrix had compounded the inventiveness of life dwelling inside this cavern system.
Soft words reached him from below, another warning from Harrington, directed mostly at Kowalski.
“Careful with your gun,” the professor said. “Besides noise, scent is a strong trigger, especially blood. The racket of that weapon and resulting bloodshed could trigger a feeding frenzy.”
Jason pictured the angry thrashing of sharks through spilled chum.
“To your right,” Stella called quietly but urgently from above, drawing his attention in that direction.
At first he didn’t see any threat. The massive bole of a fossilized tree rose twenty yards off. Then a veil of movement caught his eye, wafting around the trunk as if on a slight breeze—but there was no wind down here. He hooked an arm around a rung of the ladder and brought his gun around, clicking on its IR beam. The cone of brighter illumination revealed what Stella’s sharper eyes had picked out.
Around the tree, a tangle of threadlike worms squirmed through the air toward them. Each floated on small parachutes of silken strands. Jason knew how some spiderlings and caterpillars used a similar technique, called kiting or ballooning, using either wind or the earth’s static electric field to hold themselves aloft.
The flotilla drifted toward them.
“Move faster,” Stella warned.
Jason obeyed, trusting her experience. He shouldered his DSR and began clambering more quickly down the ladder. Brought to his attention, he had no trouble continuing to track the threat.
Looking up as he climbed down, he failed to note a lone scout, coasting ahead of the others. The threadlike worm brushed against his cheek and clung there, burning into his flesh like the butt of a cigarette. Stifling a cry of pain, he tried to scratch it away, but the gossamer of silk settled over his skin, as sticky as Super Glue, pasting the larva to his cheek.
He dug harder.
“Leave it!” Stella urged, more loudly now, nearly on top of him. “We must get off the ladder. Now!”
Jason forced his hand back to the rungs, his eyes tearing up from the burning agony. He hurried down. Stella kept right above him. Beyond her body, the drifting mass collided into the length of the emergency ladder. Silk and flesh enmeshed into the steel, coating it thickly. Curls of sizzling smoke rose from the rungs and cables, as the creatures’ corrosive acids reacted to the metal.
One of the individual wires in the tightly corded cable running through the rungs snapped with an audible twang.
Oh, crap . . .
Jason moved faster, almost sliding his way down now. He was still a good ten yards above the ground when Stella called out again.
“Your left!”
He twisted that way, bringing his rifle around one-handed, responding to the panic in her voice. Something large sprang off the trunk of the neighboring fossilized pillar. The creature must have been perfectly camouflaged as it worked into position, possibly drawn by the earlier passage of the three men.
Wings spread wide as it dove, revealing its nature.
Hastax valans.
A flying spear.
The sharp beak aimed for his chest, moments from impaling him. He pulled the trigger on the DSR, firing out a bullet of sound. The sonic burst struck the beast head-on. The Hastax screamed, its wings seizing up, sending it cartwheeling to the side.
While the spear missed its intended target, the recoil of the gun came close to throwing Jason off the ladder. One foot lost its rung, but his fingers clenched hard to keep himself perched. A glance below revealed the ladder’s end sweeping from shore and dragging into the water as they swung out over the river.
Jason held his breath, waiting for the pendulum to swing them back again—when the cable running down the left side of ladder snapped, weakened by the corrosive acids and stressed by the sudden swing.
Jerked around, he lost his footing entirely but still hung by one hand.
Someone else wasn’t as lucky.
A body tumbled past him.
Stella.
1:24 P.M.
Gray rushed to the shoreline as the young woman splashed into the river, vanishing underwater.
Harrington cried out and waded into the shallows, ready to go to his daughter’s defense.
Gray grabbed and pushed him toward Kowalski. “Stay . . . I’ll go.”
But he was already too late.
A shape hurtled down from above, dropping feetfirst into the river.
Jason followed Stella underwater.
Gray held his breath, letting two seconds tick past—then both came sputtering up. Stella struggled, her lips barely above water. Jason fought to pull her forward, but she seemed stuck. The young girl’s eyes were wide with terror.
Jason called out. “Something’s got her leg!”
Gray dropped his rifle, bent down, and yanked a dagger from a boot sheath. He sprang from his crouch and shot out over the water, diving smoothly under. His night-vision goggles picked up the glow from the weapon still tangled around Stella’s torso. He kicked toward the light as schools of silvery fish scattered from his path. Small fist-sized shells burst away with whips of tentacles.
He prayed all the marine life remained equally spooked.
He reached Stella and followed the length of her body down to where a knot of leafy vine was bound around her calf. Tendrils of dark blood seeped from her leg. He grabbed a fistful of loose vine near her ankle and sawed at it with his dagger. The razor-sharp edge cut quickly through the vine.
Freed, Stella accidentally kicked him in the side of the head. He didn’t blame her panic. He twisted back to the surface.