Page 144 of Almost Midnight

He ignited all the lights on his arms, shoes, and the top part of his face-mask, using the voice command inside the suit.

Immediately, the cave walls around him grew visible.

Nick could still see eerie waves coming off the rock walls and floor, rippling his vision from the dense, radiation-contaminated air. It looked almost like they were boiling hot, like he’d stepped inside a volcanic cauldron. He didn’t dare get any closer to either side.

He walked further into the cave to give the others space.

Then he turned around, both to give them light, and to count bodies to make sure everyone was still with them.

He winced, grimacing, when Rose Walker, Forrest’s mother, stumbled and nearly fell into the rock wall. Forrest caught her, luckily, and gripped her arm, guiding her the rest of the way through. Everyone else walked so slowly and carefully, Nick started to get stressed out for other reasons. He checked the timepiece inside the suit, and noted they’d already used up four and a half minutes.

He watched nervously as the clock tipped under thirteen minutes left before the last person was inside.

“Okay,” he said. “We don’t have much time. We’re all going to walk forward as far as we can, then make a decision. We all decided we would continue forward if it seemed likely the cave was open the rest of the way. That said, anyone who wants to go back, anyone who gets a bad feeling…” Nick looked at Malek. “…Or changes their mind, only needs to say the word. Anyone can turn back whenever they want.”

The silence after his words felt dense.

Nick wasn’t sure what the silence meant that time.

Truthfully, he couldn’t let himself think about what it might mean.

It was too late for that, too.

He turned around slowly, and began to walk deeper into the cave.

* * *

Nick thoughthe was hallucinating the light at first.

Three minutes, thirty-four seconds,pulsed in the corner of his mask.

They had only three more minutes and change before they had to make up their minds whether they needed to turn around and go back out of the cave and into the armored vehicle to be decontaminated.

The corridor continued to slant downwards, at an increasingly steep angle as they walked. The angle was nerve-wracking on its own, and not only because it might be slightly tougher to walk out than it had been to walk inside.

They hadn’t hit any real obstructions yet, though.

To Nick, the lack of obstructions was almost more unnerving.

It meant they might actually risk going forward.

It also meant that, if they did, they could die before they got to the portal itself.

Or the portal might not even be there.

He wondered suddenly, whether they should turn back when they hit the time limit, even without any obstructions. Was he being foolhardy? Should they come back tomorrow, send in the drone, wait for a third or even fourth day before attempting to go all the way?

Every part of this suddenly struck him as insanely reckless.

They reached an area where a small part of the ceiling had caved in. There was plenty of room to walk around the debris, single-file, so Nick didn’t so much as slow down.

That’s when he realized the light ahead had grown brighter.

He was trying to decide if he should say something, when Malek’s voice rose in Nick’s ear inside the mask.

“I see it, too, Nick,” the prescient seer said.

“So do I,” said Tai.

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