I passed equipment wreathed in tarpaulins, stacks of prefabricated wall panels, cement blocks, and pipes. Distant metallic groans interrupted the tomblike atmosphere of the collider track. A seismic shift? Generators kicking in? The groaning morphed into the shrill bellow of a primitive hunting horn, then an air raid klaxon. The ground trembled and its vibration traveled through my bones. The hairs on my body prickled the way they do when you scuff your socks on a carpet. My heart fluttered and I imagined a cartoon version of myself pulsing with an electrical current that caused tiny bright sparks to travel along the contours of my body.

The headlamp blinked out. I remained stock-still, right hand glued to the wall, enduring waves of vertigo while coming to terms with the idea that I’d gotten myself into a bind.

■■■

The chorus of deep-sea rumbling subsided. Silence resumed except for the gurgle and drip of water oozing through rock. I thumbed the headlamp toggle and hoped my eyes would adjust, but nope on either score. Dark as a mine. Dark as the bottom of a sealed supercollider tunnel. I’d possessed the foresight to carry an emergency all-weather penlight as a backup. One of those dense little steel numbers that fits in the palm of your hand. I got the light out of my pocket and was feeling for the on-switch when I heard an odd noise somewhere back the way I’d come. My brain required several moments to reconcile this particular sound with the context of my environment—nearly two hundred feet beneath the surface, alone in the dark. Except not entirely alone. Arrhythmic splashing approached. Someone, or something, was shambling along the tunnel toward my position.

For a long, horrible second, I didn’t think the penlight would activate. Its ghostly thin beam powered on, feebly. Much better than nothing; still crappy. I aimed it with my left hand and drew the revolver with my right. It’s too embarrassing to catalogue the fevered possibilities my mind conjured as a shadow moved against the backdrop of deeper gloom. Heart rate jacked into the red, pouring sweat, I was a little boy confronted by the absolute certainty monsters lurked under the bed and in the closet.

Something larger than a dog and shaped like a spider broke into view. I didn’t hesitate to empty the .357. The revolver kicked in my fist, booming in that enclosed space. Bullets sparked as they pinged the lurching thing’s carapace. The object advanced with a herky-jerky, side-slipping gait. No time to reload; I twisted, dove, and skidded behind a pallet of pipes. The dog-spider thing lunged past on segmented legs, off-balance and whipping a pair of spindly, flexible arms that ended in pincers. Its cylindrical body was metal-plated and pocked by bullet holes. Blue and red running lights glowed softly on its carriage, vaguely illuminating the blades of a retracted auger. That last detail would’ve been hilariously phallic under other circumstances. This mining machine was an updated, highly modified cousin of the militarized robots that soldiers and SWAT teams sent ahead to perform reconnaissance and defuse bombs. Few carried onboard weapons, although rumors of autonomous killbots abounded. The aggressive style of its approach and those flexible, telescoping arms spelled lethal prototype at the very least. Was the device automated or was it piloted remotely? Excellent questions for future study, assuming I had a future.