“Yeah…” He nodded. “Yeah, me too.”  He broke the tooth from the matrix, and held it in one hand. In the other, he hefted the remaining rock and exhaled loudly through pressed lips. “I just wish…” His jaws tightened. “I wish we…” He looked at the large tooth for another moment before his teeth bared and he swung the stone back behind them. “Fuck it.” The rock pounded into the wall with a deep thump, and then ricocheted off the ledge to then bounce down the chute.

The echo thumped back in the alcove they had wedged themselves in, fading away, until there was nothing, but their own breathing.

“Feel better?” Cate asked.

“A little,” Jack said. “You should try—”

The thump came back again, twice.

Jack lifted his head, and half turned. Cate looked up at him, while Abby jumped to her feet. Two more thumps, followed by a soft tapping.

Cate frowned. “Is it… a rockslide?” She waited, listening. “Maybe we should…”

Jack also got to his feet, and turned to shush her.

She rose slowly. Both Jack and Abby stood with eyes round, heads tilted. Jack licked paper-dry lips.

The tapping came again: dot-dot-dot-dash.

Dot-dash.

Dot-dash-dot-dot.

Dot.

Dot-dash-dot.

Dash-dot-dash-dash.

“That sounds like…” she began.

Jack waved her to silence again, his eyes closed tight in concentration.

Dot-dot-dot-dot.

Dot.

Dot-dash-dot-dot.

Dot-dash-dot-dot.

Dash-dash-dash.

He turned and clapped once. “Yes, it is, Morse code… goddamn-Morse-fucking-code.” He concentrated. “And it says: Valery, hello, Valery, hello.”

He rushed to the wall, still holding the massive tooth, and used its hard edge to bang against the stone.

Dot-dot-dot

Dash-dash-dash

Dot-dot-dot

He waited, and sure enough the dots and dashes repeated. Jack listened, his grin widening. “Okay, we need to stand well back, they’re going to come through.”

“Who is?” Cate asked.

Jack grinned. “One of Valery’s teams, I’m guessing. But frankly, I don’t care if it’s Satan himself.”

Jack herded Cate back behind him at the far end of the ledge as there came the pneumatic staccato of a small jackhammer behind the wall. Abby was beside them, and pointed.

“Be careful; if the rocks fall this way, they’ll bounce right at us.” She looked over the edge. “And knock us over like tenpins.”

The hammering stopped, and was then replaced with the whine of a saw, then something unidentifiable that was even softer, until finally a single spike appeared in the center of the wall. It was quickly withdrawn, and then in the dimming glow of their remaining light, they could just make out the tip of a snaking cable that poked in.

“Camera,” Jack said.

Cate held up her hand to wave, and the cord pointed towards her, and then moved all about, as if searching. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared.