Matt walked a few paces towards the water. “Whatever it is, it’s extremely salty; I can smell it.”

The surface of the oily water was only at times still. At other times the surface bubbled and rose as small waves lumped up from hidden things that moved beneath its surface. Far out from the shore, perhaps at its center, the water, or whatever it was, rose in a huge column many miles wide, and disappeared into the air. It twisted and pulsed with a strange life.

Matt turned to look along the cliff walls surrounding them. In the far distance he could see multi-colored waterfalls emptying from many caves on the cliff walls for as far as he could make out – there could have been hundreds of them emptying into the dark water.

Matt frowned. “Can anyone else hear that? Weird sounds, like howling wind, or…voices?” He turned slowly. “The voices of the damned in Hell.”

Abrams nodded. “I hear it – yeah, like wind blowing, but there’s not a breath of it down here.” He panned slowly. “I have no idea what it could be.”

“Shit.” Adira jumped aside and pointed her rifle at the ground.

What looked like a long-legged trilobite had lifted itself from the coal-dark sand and proceeded to scuttle toward the water.

“Just like in the terrorists’ camp,” Matt said.

The thing only managed to wade in about a foot before something rose up from out of the depths and, using a long talon, speared it, and then silently pulled it back out into deeper water.

“Jesus.” Matt backed away from the water.

“You’re right, this is not our world any more,” Adira said softly.

Abrams switched off his flashlight. “Save your lights: there’s enough illumination for us to see.” He swiveled. “Nothing, no plants, no mosses, nothing growing at all.”

Adira snorted. “You must have missed that thing in the water.”

“No, I mean, there’s nothing as the basis of the food chain – no sun, so no life should be able to exist,” Abrams responded.

“I wish that were true,” Matt said. “There are other forms of energy that can cause life to spring up. Deep-sea thermal vents are one. We have no idea exactly what’s below that water.”

“And I, for one, have no interest in finding out,” Adira added.

“Me either.” Matt pointed into the distance. “We need to go there – close to the first waterfall – I think that could be a structure.” He frowned, trying to understand the weird fluid in the falls. There was a constant stream falling from the caves to splash into the dark water beside the massive barriers. The sea boiled and frothed as it was struck.

Abrams lifted his compact field glasses. “Well I’ll be damned. Looks like doors.”

They walked quickly, their feet sinking into the dark granules. As they neared, they could see now that set into the cliff wall stood a massive pair of red granite gates. Each of the doors would have towered half a mile in height and twice that across.