Page 22 of The Inheritance
“The exit is to our left. This is the closest tunnel to it. The other two branch off to the right, which will take us further from the gate.”
Before the assault team left to find the anchor, they had surveyed the mining site and the immediate area around it. Their maps showed three tunnels in the north end of the cavern leading into a tangle of passageways and chambers. Of the three, this tunnel, the furthest to the left, was most likely to connect to the main route.
Likely but not guaranteed. The maps only showed about half a mile of the tunnels. For all I knew, we would hike for hours only to run into a dead end. If that happened, I would turn around and retrace my steps. Walking was better than waiting and I had to get on with it while I had my strength and food to keep me going.
I started forward, picking my way through the glowing growth. It looked almost like a coral reef, except there was no water.
We took the left branch and kept moving. The tunnel was about thirty feet high and probably the same width. An almost round hole in the rock, as if some massive worm had burrowed through the mountain. Hopefully not.
Back by the entrance, we’d passed by some stalker bodies, and Elena mentioned that the assault team didn’t wipe them all out. Taking on a single stalker would be difficult. There had been eight corpses, and the stalkers typically traveled in groups. If a pack of them attacked us, the best strategy would be to run and hope the tunnel narrowed ahead so they could only come at me one at a time. If I saw a crevasse, I would have to make a note of it in case I needed to double back…
For some reason, I could actually see both sides of the tunnel with a lot of clarity. My eyes should have adjusted to the darkness, that was to be expected, but I could pick out small details now, like the cracks in the stone. The walls weren’t glowing, and the shining growth in this area was kind of sparse. Hmm.
The passage veered slightly left, then angled right. Normally, cave passages like this varied in size and shape. This one was too uniform. Whatever dug it out had to be huge.
We rounded another gentle turn, and I stopped. Ahead ridges of growth sheathed the floor and walls of the tunnel, like someone had raked solid stone into shallow curving rows. Between them bright red plants thrust out, shaped a little like branching cacti or Sinularia corals, almost like alien hands with long twisted fingers decorated with narrow frills. The tallest of them was about two feet high, but most were around eight inches or so. There were hundreds of them in the tunnel. The red patch stretched into the distance. Forty yards? Fifty?
Something about the red plants gave me pause. I crouched by a patch. The frilly protrusions weren’t leaves. They were thorns, flat and razor sharp.
I flexed, accessing my talent. The red patch snapped into crystal clarity, flaring with a bright green. Yellow was dangerous, blue was toxic. Green usually meant a lethal mix of the two.
I focused, trying to dig deeper.
The Grasping Hand. The thorns carried lethal poison. If one of those cut me or Bear, we would die in seconds, and the Hand would devour our bodies. In the distance, I could see a lump that was once a living creature, soon to become one of those ridges, drained of all fluids.
How did I know that? This hadn’t been in any of the briefings. I had never seen this before. I hadn’t read about it, no one had talked about it, and I should not have detailed knowledge of this carnivorous invertebrate. I shouldn’t even know it’s an invertebrate. The best my talent could do was identify it as animal and possibly dangerous.
The knowledge was just in my head. I flexed again, concentrating on the bright red stems until they glowed with green again.
A dark plateau unrolled in front of me, acres and acres of red stems, some ten-feet-high, blanketing purple rock with giant dinosaur-like reptiles thrusting through the growth, the stinging thorns sliding harmlessly from their bony carapace…
This was not my memory.
Fear washed over me. My heart pounded in my chest. I went hot, then cold. What the hell was happening to me?
Bear nudged me with her cold nose. I petted her, running my hand over her fur, trying to slow my breathing. Was this my inheritance? Memories from I didn’t know who, obtained I had no idea where.
I stared at the patch. I could have a nervous breakdown right here and now, or I could keep going.
It didn’t matter where the damned memory came from. It warned me about the danger. It might not have been mine, but I knew it was true. Blundering into that growth was certain death.
The Grasping Hand grew in clusters, probably determined by the availability of nutrients. Each of those clumps or ridges used to be a body. This growth was relatively young, the stems short and somewhat sparse.
If I was careful, I could pick my way through it. The problem was Bear. There was no way to communicate to the dog that she had to stay away from the thorns. One tiny scratch and it would be all over. I had to keep Bear safe. No matter what it took. I owed it to Stella, and if Bear died… Bear couldn’t die. We would leave this place together.
I could carry her. She was a big dog, she had to weigh… I flexed again. Seventy-six pounds.
And that was a lot more precise than normal. My talent helped me ballpark weight and distance, but not with that much accuracy. I focused. Seventy-six pounds and four ounces or thirty-four kilograms and five hundred and eighty-six grams. Fuck me.
I didn’t just get vision. My talent had gotten a mysterious upgrade. Who the hell knew what kind of consequences or side effects this sudden precision bump might have.
Since I had it, I might as well use it. I focused on the field of red. Forty-eight yards or one hundred and forty-four feet. Or forty-three point eighty-nine meters.
Great. All I had to do was pick up a seventy-six-pound dog and carry her across half the length of a football field. While carefully avoiding deadly thorns.
I could always double back and try one of the other tunnels. But none of the other passages led toward the exit. We’d been walking for almost two hours. It would be a long trip back, and there was no guarantee we wouldn’t run across this same problem in another tunnel.
Also, very few things could get through the Grasping Hand without some kind of body armor. It was a deterrent, a little bit of safety behind us. Nothing would come at us through that patch.
