Splashing up onto solid land, Rad ran through the grave-black lava tube back the way they had all come. Once she was a safe distance from the pool she should have slowed and proceeded more cautiously, since the merfolk could no longer catch her. Yet logic didn’t matter to her right then. She could have been free from the tunnels completely and careening through the jungle, and she wouldn’t have slowed down. The reptile part of her mind had wrestled control from her higher-level brain functions, it was telling her to run, and so she ran, no questions asked. She bounced off the walls, stumbled several times, and once fell hard to her knees but sprang up immediately, running, running, running.

And then the ground disappeared beneath her. She had fallen through one of the shafts they had circumvented on the way in, a shaft that connected with lower, parallel lava tubes.

She plunged through the unending dark in total silence. The impact with the ground shattered both of her legs an instant before she kissed stone, swallowed half her teeth, and lost consciousness.

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

ELSA

The only sounds were her timed exhalations and her tanks clanking against one another. Perspiration beaded her forehead. One drop trickled down her left temple into her eye, stinging it. When she reached the point where she could no longer control her descent with her lungs, she allowed a tiny amount of air into her BCD to compensate for the negative buoyancy. As she sank farther and farther down the water column, she swung the light strapped to her wrist as if she were blessing herself: left, right, up, down, left, right, up, down—

She spotted a merfolk—sans luminescence—during the last downward gesture. It darted through the white beam with amazing speed, there one moment, gone the next.

Stung with fear, she tried tracking where it had gone but couldn’t find it.

Where the hell did it go? Where are the others?

How many are there?

This was suicidal, Elsa knew with certainty. The merfolk were at home in the submarine environment, swift and dexterous, while she and Marty were slow and ponderous. The merfolk were stronger and had mouthfuls of razor-sharp teeth, while all she and Marty had for defense were dive knives with short blades. They were sitting ducks.

But what other choice did they have but to attempt to reach the assault rifle?