“Hey, Murph? You with me?”

Murphy swallowed. It felt like his throat was full of grit. “You bet, Chief.”

“Let’s go down a little more,” Bell said. “I want to see what’s down there.”

So they drifted down and down until they came to a floor of sorts. Of course, it was littered with debris and wavering lake weeds. But floor it was. Nearly, level. There was another passage down there winding into utter blackness.

The magnetometer started jumping right away.

“One-fifty,” Murphy said over the intercom. Using his thrusters, he guided his Exosuit to the passage mouth. “One-seventy, one-eighty. Two hundred and holding steady. I bet it’s going to keep rising in that tunnel, Chief. Should we…?”

“Negative on that,” Bell said. “Not this trip. We’ve mapped out a route that’ll get us closer to the anomaly. That’s what we came to do.”

They started up again and then they both stopped, canceling thrusters. They began to slowly sink back to the floor of the chamber.

“Sonar,” Bell said. “You getting it?”

“Yeah.”

They were not alone in the chamber now. Something was up there and it was coming down. It was big, according to the sonar imaging, about forty-feet long. Whatever it was, it was warm and alive. And it seemed to have come out of nowhere.

“Let’s get back to the tunnel, Chief.”

“No,” Bell said, “we’d never make it. It’s coming too fast. It’ll be on us before we get there.”

Murphy knew he was right, but the fear rising in him demanded he do something. He didn’t want to wait here and—

“Stay put,” Bell said. “Stand by with your spots. When it gets within thirty feet, put your lights on it.”

“Fifty feet and closing,” Murphy said, the lights of his suit filled with swirling specks of debris.

And what was really bothering him at that moment (besides the obvious), was that they had no weapons. The suits were tough. They could withstand just about anything. But to wait there with nothing to strike back with. It did not sit well with the human animal.

“A fish?” Murphy said.

“No…not swimming like that.”

“Forty feet.”

“Stand by with your spots.”

“Thirty feet,” Murphy said, his breath not wanting to come.

“Now!”

They activated their spots which illuminated a field above to well over twenty-five feet. When there was no light, even a little seemed like a lot. The spots didn’t exactly turn night to day, but they certainly brightened things up. All that silt and sediment, tiny organisms darting about. And—

“Hell is that?” Bell said.