Tank pushed Silex out of the way and cradled Mike’s head while Alex reached down and undid the straps on his caving suit. The sight that met their eyes made even the battle-hardened HAWCs wince, and Tank moaned at the vision. Where there were once wounds, there were now ragged holes that were alive with worms. Mike’s stomach and chest cavity must have been full of them as the skin moved across his bones in an unnatural rippling manner. His jaw worked as though he was trying to say something, but it wasn’t clear whether it was actually Mike or the worms sliding beneath the muscles in his neck and face.

“Dr. Weir, what are those things, leeches?” Alex himself wasn’t keen to touch Mike until he knew what they were dealing with.

Aimee had the back of her hand across her mouth; disgust and fear distorting the features of her face.

“Dr. Weir? Aimee?” Alex reached out and touched her arm.

“I, I don’t think so, more likely down here they’re some form of nematode.”

Aimee crouched down and tried to concentrate on Mike’s condition, hoping scientific curiosity would override her revulsion.

“Can we get them out of him?” Monica asked the question, although it was plain to everyone that even with the best medical care he probably stood little chance, and down here he was as good as dead. In the few extra minutes they stood around him he seemed to further deflate and shrivel as his flesh was being consumed from the inside out.

“I thought nematodes were microscopic things that lived in the soil,” Matt said.

“There are tens of thousands of types of nematodes and more than half are parasitic. Most are microscopic, but some are bigger, much bigger. There’s one species that can get to about thirty feet—it parasitises the sperm whale. These things have been around since the Cambrian and like our giant cephalopod, have probably been trapped down here for millions of years.”

“Yuck, those things were in the water with us.” Monica was stripping off her suit and checking her body. Everyone quickly did the same.

“I think we’ll be OK. Mike was the only one who was hurt and bleeding. These things are little more than mouths on the end of a fleshy pipe. They must have sensed Mike’s blood in the water and homed in on him,” Aimee said.

Mike’s eyes were like glass. They bulged up from his face and then began to sink into his sockets just as there was an almost inaudible phutt sound, and a small dark hole appeared in his forehead, not made by the parasites, but from Tank who fired a pulse projectile into Mike’s brain in an act of mercy for his brother. No one recoiled or even winced; it was the right thing to do.

“Permission to dispose of the body?”