Choi's mind cleared at the same instant her survival instincts kicked in. She understood the situation fully, that she was being dragged into the ice to be studied, picked apart and analyzed by the Europhids. She had no idea how such complex tasks could be carried out by the malleable beings, but having seen the kind of control they could exert over Peterson, she knew they would find a way. Choi reached out with her hand and squeezed one of the nearest Europhids. For a moment, it seemed her purchase would hold and her descent would be stopped, but the Europhids began squirming, shoving her down with surprising force.

With tightening fingers, Choi felt her grip on the firmly planted Europhid begin to slip away. As her hand slid up from the base of the clenched Europhid, it began to expand like a compressed water balloon. The gelatinous guts of the Europhid were being compressed. The result was an explosion of red swill and spiraled veins that covered Choi's face mask.

Her grip released, Choi was pulled down the tube at an ever increasing rate of speed. She did the only thing that came to mind—flailed. Screaming, she thrashed her arms and legs, smashing Europhids in a savage and uncontrolled assault. Her PMS became coated in Europhid guts, but her downward slide only grew quicker, the ooze acting as a lubricant.

Choi caught her breath and realized that the physical fight had been lost the moment she'd been pulled into the cave. She'd never escape as long as even a few of the Europhids were left to push and pull her down. Setting her mind to the task at hand, Choi closed her eyes and began imagining the solution. What could stop these creatures? What were they afraid of?

With Choi's eyes closed, she did not see the interior of the tunnel begin closing in around her as the diameter shrunk a few inches with every foot.

It wasn't until a tight pressure around her feet that Choi realized her situation had worsened. Abandoning her thoughts of escape, Choi looked down and saw her feet being pulled into a smaller section of tunnel that looked barely wide enough to fit her body. She knew that any hope of escape would be over as soon as she was fully entrenched in the tight tunnel beyond.

As the pressure spread past her ankles and up onto her shins, Choi frantically refocused her efforts. There had to be a way to escape. The Europhids had a weakness. Somewhere in her filing-cabinet-like intellect was a mental note that contained the solution.

Luckily for Choi, not only did she perform well under pressure, she performed exceedingly well. It was like nitrous for her mind. Thoughts came and went faster than she could comprehend and then suddenly, they stopped, focused on a single thread of synapses. She'd found the note.

Decontamination. Her specialty.