Lou composed himself and quickly covered the gap between him and Stone. “My radar machine picked up some sort of expanse down here,” he said. “I suppose this is it. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Instead of responding, Stone surveyed the crowded underground laboratory, training his gun wherever he looked. With a nod, he motioned Lou down a central corridor toward another door. It was stainless steel, like the others, but this one had no keypad. Lou moved up beside the cop.

“I think you’ll want to see what’s behind this,” Stone said.

“Aren’t we being a bit cavalier, not sending for backup?” Lou asked.

Stone did not reply. Still training his gun ahead of him, he opened the door. It seemed to Lou as if the man knew precisely what he would find, and was not at all concerned. From where Lou stood, the space ahead was dark. Stone disappeared through doorway, reached to his left, and flipped on high-powered fluorescent lights. Moments later he motioned with his gun for Lou to follow.

Lou hesitated, feeling increasingly uneasy. Oh, well, he thought, in for a penny—

One step through the door, and he froze.

The space, warm and humid, was at least the same size as the laboratory. Echoing off the stainless steel walls was the machinery-like humming of insects—many, many insects. He stepped forward onto a grated steel walkway with heavy metal pipe railings and three- or four-foot chain-link sidewalls that crossed a pit at least twenty feet deep. The whole space just below the walkway was covered with a dense metal screen. With the overheads reflecting off the fine mesh, it was difficult to see what was in the pit.

But Lou had no doubt.

Stone reached over to the wall next to him and depressed a large red plastic button. Smoothly, gears engaged and the vast screen slid back on tracks and rolled up on a reel at the far end. Revealed below was a terrible, surreal landscape. The sides of the massive pit were lined with brushed stainless steel, gleaming beneath the overheads. The surface of the space looked like an alien moonscape, formed by at least a hundred termite mounds of various heights and sizes, some of which reached upward to within ten or fifteen feet of the walkway. The chilling diorama was swarming with Macrotermes bellicosi. Like the mound in the forest, more insects were humming about through the air—some actually flying above the steel catwalk.

For a time, Lou remained transfixed on the bugs below as they moved with blind purpose in and out of the mounds. This was their city—their home. The clicking of thousands of feet and jaws made his fillings ache.