“What was that?” Kory asked. Zol’s sharp inhale betrayed a similar concern.

  Nash struggled to think for a moment, then offered the most plausible explanation she could muster. “Plate tectonics,” she said, cooking up an artificial amount of confidence. “We’re right on the continental shelf, remember? If we were up in the boat right now, we wouldn’t feel these little vibrations because the water would dilute the shock waves before they got to us.” She was proud of that one and almost believed it herself.

  “Are you sure you got that right?” Kory doubted. “Aren’t you thinking of a fault line? Is this even the same thing as a fault line?” Regretfully, she didn’t have the clearest grasp on geology either.

  Another rumbling sensation from deeper within the facility took the place of whatever argument they might have had. Not knowing where this path led, they took one last uncertain look at one other and began the plunge. The stairs spiraled downwards in right angles veering off to the left, with a landing about every thirty steps or so, while the vibrations repeated on a random basis, increasing in amplitude. Maybe it was plate tectonics. The only other change was the lights in the walls, which by now had faded from warm orange to a sickly yellow.

  “Makes you wonder if there was ever an elevator, not that I’d get in it now considering the state of this place.” Nash commented as they walked further down. The air had cooled somewhat, but the stench hadn’t abated at all. If anything, it increased, cancelling out any effect of nose blindness the three had hoped for. After a while the staircase terminated at the final landing which widened ahead into a walkway of indeterminate length. Out of the darkness beyond came a rush of air, fouler and more visceral than before. Again, the ground rumbled beneath them, this time even harder.

  The floor felt less stable, less tethered here. The three also noticed the ceiling was gone along with the wall to their left. Their path now hugged the edge of a giant chasm whose true dimensions were obscured by darkness. The lights in the right-hand wall, a little more greenish now, remained true, but failed to illuminate anything beyond their immediate area.

  “Should we go any further?” Kory whispered, noting the lack of a railing separating the trail from the untold depths below.

  “This place was abandoned for a reason,” Nash responded, nearly trembling in spite of herself. “We have to find out why.” “Remember what’s at stake here.” She thought. Slowly and surely, she led them down the winding route, which now sloped gradually as it followed the natural curve of the expanse. They crept along for only a moment when Zol stopped suddenly.

  “Look!” He whispered urgently, pointing downward. Far below their perch, blue lights, much like the ones they relied upon in that moment, were flickering intermittently. The rumbling increased to a dissonant thud, and this time it didn’t stop.

  Kory crawled on her hands and knees to the edge. “There’s something down there,” she urged.

  “Shh!” Nash warned her. “Do you want it to know we’re here?”

  “It already does.” Zol answered. Nash and Kory followed his gaze to what they believed was the bottom of the cavern. The sconces alongside the wall didn’t flicker anymore. They gleamed steadily. From below they heard the shifting of something impossibly heavy along the floor. The stink was worse than ever.

  The pale green glow at the top of the chasm revealed the frightened forms of Nash, Kory and Zol, beings so uncommonly strong reduced to trembling in the face of the unknown. At the bottom of the hole, the blue wall lights trailed menacingly upward.

  “Look,” Nash crept to the edge and pointed downward. “It’s not just two or three dots at a time, like us.”

  “It’s a line!” Kory gasped.

  “Fifteen to twenty, minimum.” Nash scooted back from the precipice, realizing she was leaning too far forward. “And it’s getting closer.”

  “Hear that?” Zol asked. They stayed quiet for an instant and faced one another. Indeed, they heard it: breathing. It wasn’t getting any quieter.

  “Are we going to wait for whatever that thing is to get us? Or are we going to do something about it?” Nash urged, not bothering to hide the panic in her voice.

  “We can’t even see what it is!” Kory snapped.

  “Don’t need to.” Zol gritted his teeth and stepped boldly to the edge of the walkway, with nothing to guard him from the emptiness below. He raised his hand and let tendrils of white-hot current manifest from his elbow to his fingertips. His hair stood on edge as smaller sparks sprang forth all over his body.

  “What are you doing!?” Nash pleaded, rising to face him.

  “Something about it.” He launched a bolt of lightning at the head of the blue trail of lights. A massive creature writhed in the darkness, revealed by the charged attack. It let out the most dreadful roar any of them had ever heard, distinctly animalistic, but as loud as an avalanche. In spite of the sound, the image of the beast left a greater impact. It was the size of a train, with fins and scales and a great gaping maw full of teeth as big as a person. To make things worse, the attack hadn’t harmed it so much as it had roused its anger further.

  “What is that!?” Nash shouted.

  “An eel?” Zol guessed. “Never seen one this big.” The words scarcely left his mouth, when Kory, not content to stand idly by, rushed past them both and leapt into the dark. Before Nash and Zol could process her departure, she began to levitate, fully charged in the center of the chasm. By the light of her power, they could see more of the chamber and more of the eel. It was hideous, with oozing greyish skin and crusted-over, white eyes. As she concentrated more of her electric force upon the beast, not only did it not succumb to her assaults, it launched one of its own. The rebuttal shocked her, but it was nothing she couldn’t withstand.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Why isn’t it working!?” She cried out to her friends, not fully grasping the enemy’s capabilities. The others flew out to join her in the air above the cavern and looked down to where the eel was seen last.

  “It’s not there anymore!” Nash exclaimed. At once they felt a rush of air directly behind them, thick with the stench of ozone and decay. Sparks spilled from the cavernous mouth threatening to consume them all. In the blink of an eye, Nash managed to pull them all away from the jaws of the beast that now joined them some one hundred yards above the ground. In a flash, it disappeared again, but the force of its presence remained. The eel was still nearby.

  “Is there more than one?” Zol called.

  “How could it get up here?” Kory yelled. For its size, it traversed greater heights quicker than she could.

  “We have to catch it!” Nash commanded. “And electric attacks won’t work.” Directly above, they heard yet again, the deafening roar of the monster. This time, they scarcely dodged its teeth, as its speed and size sent them reeling in opposite directions. Kory landed against a wall and slid thirty feet down it until she landed on another walkway. Teal lights illuminated her crumpled form. “You have to get back up!” She heard Nash call from above. With a pained grimace, she rolled over onto her side and began to rise again, first to her feet, and then to the air as voltage once again enveloped her battered body.

  “Follow my lead!” Nash called, as the eel vanished below them before reappearing directly to her left. Like the force-fields she often summoned, this shape was solid and impenetrable, though it resembled less of a bubble and more of a noose around the beast’s massive neck. With a fearsome cry of her own, Nash wrestled the eel down to the chasm floor by its new glowing collar. “Don’t just hang there! Help me before it disappears again!” She commanded as she strained to hold the unruly thing under her will. Its mighty tail thrashed about, destroying the remains of unidentifiable industrial equipment that had seen better days. Nash tightened her telekinetic grip on its neck as Kory and Zol landed on either side of its head. Without hesitation, Zol plunged his arm, shoulder-deep, into the creature’s milky eye. It writhed and flailed even harder, shaking its assailants loose.

  “Again!” Zol shouted, rushing headlong at the wounded eel. Nash applied as much force as she could manage. Kory followed Zol’s lead and launched herself at the beast, enduring all of its electric defenses. She gripped the side of its face and plunged her own arm into the remaining eye, grabbing madly at whatever tendons and connective tissues she could feel, hoping to disable its brain. Opposite her, Zol did the same. The beast let out a shriek of death before spasming one last time and collapsing upon the floor.

  The conquerors fell with it, exhausted from the effort of their battle with the newly dead thing before them. Here and there a few sparks danced over its enormous corpse, failing to cut through the heavy pit of darkness in which they lay.

  “There’s just the one?” Zol panted. Upon the cool and slimy floor, he wished for total and permanent blindness if it meant never having to see one of those things again.

  “Yeah, I think so.” Nash replied, casting a beam of lavender light over their surroundings. Finding only stillness in the wreckage and ruin, she was almost content to lie down for a moment, when she saw Kory, silent and mangled. Her eyes were half closed, and her breathing was ragged. A stream of blood trickled from her mouth. Fighting on in spite of her impact with the wall had taken its toll. “We have to get out of here. Now!” Nash insisted. Investigating the facility could wait. She collected them all in a force-field and thrust Kory into Zol’s arms. Before could process what was going on, he was being lifted through the dank, rotten air to the passage above, with Kory struggling for breath beside him. “Hold her head up!” Nash said as they flew higher. He gripped the roots of her hair and raised her head. More blood spilled from her mouth as she gurgled something approximating speech.

  #

  On the placid surface of the bay, Greg reclined, half-asleep, on a bench on the boat’s port side. The sun’s heat beat down upon him in the lengthening afternoon. He imagined it was something like 2 P.M. now; too early to shut it down and too late to get it all done. Being alone with his own thoughts always led him down lonely rabbit-holes which made him dearly miss the company of others. His wish was granted when the water behind him began to bubble, rousing him to action. He jumped to attention to see a rapidly advancing, spherical glow arriving from underneath the water, the same way it had departed. In no time at all, his three companions appeared beside him in the boat, injured and reeking of a stench worse than death.

  “She’s hurt! Let’s get out of here!” Nash cried. Greg looked to Kory, still in Zol’s arms. She was covered in blood and God only knew what else. He hesitated but for a second, choosing his next actions carefully.

  “We will. Just trust me!” He insisted. Without another word, he gripped the pocket of his cabana shirt and tore the fabric apart, then he dove into the ocean. When he re-entered the boat, he threw one of his shoes overboard and popped a lens out of his sunglasses. “Into the water, all of you!”

  “Are you insane!?” Nash screamed. “We need to leave! What’s the matter with you!?” Tears welled in her eyes. The one time she most needed to lean on Greg and he had cracked.

  “I didn’t explain myself well!” He raised his hands in front of his face and gestured rapidly. “But we both know y’all weren’t supposed to be down there. And unless you’re prepared to answer some questions I know your uncle don’t want you being asked, there’s no way we’ll get medical care for her unless we look like stupid tourists that got in a boating accident!” His voice was grave, and his eyes were full of terror. In that moment he seemed ten feet tall.

  “I- I don’t… but why?” Nash stammered, still reeling. She didn’t want to admit she was starting to understand his point.

  “Dunk her or I will.” Greg commanded. He stepped to Zol and reached out to take Kory from him. The other man, still baffled and disoriented, loosened his grip, and nearly handed her over when Nash stopped him.

  “Wait!” She winced. “I can do it.” From the ocean she pulled a great mass of seawater and held it over their heads, letting it pour over them and soak the inside of the boat. She was careful to protect Kory’s face from the deluge.

  “That’s more like it.” Greg said as he resumed his place at the controls. “Now sit down… and hold her head up, man! What are you doing?” He scolded Zol as he brought the craft’s engine back to life and raised the anchor.

  “Didn’t I already tell you that?” Nash rebuked as she took Kory from Zol, holding her in telekinetic suspension for the bumpy ride ahead. A sound idea, as Greg soon put the boat into gear and pushed it as fast as it could go. In no time they were cutting through the water, bouncing off the waves, and heading back toward the glittering city in the heart of the bay.