Alex reached out to get hold of Matt so he could drag him away from the edge of the pit. The smell of ammonia was now growing and Alex could perceive massive movement below them; his senses were making him tingle all over. Pushing a bow wave of air pressure before it, the creature exuded a sense of power, hunger and deadly intent.

More rocks bounced to the tunnel floor and fell away into the pit’s darkness and dust once again started to rain down on them. Noises were coming now from both the pit in front of them and Monica’s side tunnel.

Ping. “Two minutes, mark.” The countdown had begun. They needed to be closer when those blasts started to occur—they were still much too far away.

“We need to go now. That is an order. Dr. Kerns, that is not Ms. Jennings.”

Alex started forcibly dragging Matt backwards when a figure appeared in the mouth of the side tunnel.

“Monica!” Matt looked like he was about to leap across twenty feet of gaping blackness to reach her. Even Aimee broke out in a smile.

“She’s alive!”

Monica stood there, just out of reach of their fading torch lights. She stared ahead and remained unresponsive to all Matt’s shouting.

Alex’s unique senses were going into overdrive, even without his infrared equipment he could tell that the figure of Monica was even colder than its surroundings. A normal human figure generated a slight orange to yellow warmth aura, however, Monica appeared totally blue-black—as cold as a fish, or a corpse.

Alex’s whole body was screaming to run and he reached for Matt just as Aimee happened to look down into the pit before them. At first it looked like the floor of the pit was rising to meet them until the torchlight brought detail to a single emotionless eye, as large as a Buick, that swivelled to focus on them. Aimee screamed.

It all happened very fast from there, the orthocone’s giant feeding tentacles burst from the pit and slammed down onto the tunnel floor. They lifted huge blocks of the stonework out from in front of them, creating a deadly shower of massive debris. Alex lifted Matt and Aimee and pushed them forward up the tunnel towards the ice door. His movement triggered activity in the figure of Monica and it flew forward as if fired from a cannon; its mimicry fell away and turned back into a lethal, hooked and sticky tentacle club. It struck with unnerving accuracy—onto the centre of Alex’s back.

The pain was unbelievable. Alex’s backpack and armoured suit protected him from the full extent of the lethal, dagger-like talons that erupted from their sheaths to impale him. However, he was stuck fast in the biological adhesive that the creature used to ensnare its prey.