The subway stopped suddenly inside the tunnel. Colliding with another train tends to have that effect.
It had twisted them both. The impact echoing back, reverberating through the cars and turning them sideways.
Just how long ago this had happened was unclear. Through a sea of connection errors and ancient runes, Prin's headsup placed it anywhere between four to seventeen thousand annuals before. This far from the Pit it was essentially worthless. The entire tunnel was windless, exposed to vacuum as the display put it. Even the bodies remained preserved. They look...juicy. Ugh, I wish I hadn't thought that.
Prin swallowed back an urge to vomit and adjusted her mask. Nope, not again. I'm not cleaning this suit out again. Sifting through the detritus, she kept one eye constantly on the dead. There were hundreds of the small black rectangles. Great source of processing power. She even found a few servos and a full construct still intact. Shoving it all into her travel bag, she made her way back out of the train and down the track. The tunnel was pitch black beyond the edge of her flashlight.
Just before the surface access, she came to a break in the tracks. The edges of the hole thrust upwards, jagged curled fingers in the dark. Where the metal of the tunnel ended, ice took its place, spanning the gap and reaching upwards all the way to the ceiling in places. She picked her way carefully through it, back to where she'd carved a hole in the ice.
The portable airlock was right where she'd left it. Slipping inside she connected her suit and began to pressurize, then opened the hatch.
The air in the cave was cold and wet. Prin winced at the sound of the hatch slamming shut damn it as she pulled her equipment through. She held her breath for a long moment. Once the echoes died down she let it go. Silence. The locals clearly had some taboos about these kinds of things. They had dug out this chamber very recently but had left at the first glimpse of the metallic door in the ground. They hadn't even finished uncovering it. Considering what could happen if one were openned and left that way, the reaction was understandable.
This was her fifth trip down. So far she'd been able to avoid detection. Their superstition meant not many came this way. She prefered to not interact with them anyway. The cave dwellers were half her size, stocky with pale skin and large eyes. She shivvered in instinctual revulsion, then felt immediately ashamed of the reaction. They were not exactly welcoming to outsiders in any case, doubly so those that violated their sacred laws.
Her headsup chirped in her ear as it connected to the Pit. The indecipherable symbols resolved slowly into language she could understand. She pulled up a rough map of the cave system she'd been working on, overlaid with a heat map. The village she'd labeled as Mole-town was the highest concentration of heat signatures, but there were others in ones and twos scattered throughout the mines.
Silently counting to herself to time her steps she made her way back to the surface, holding her needler close. She hadn't yet had to use it.
The meadow outside the cave was empty save her lean-to on the edge of the forest. Home, disgusting home. The expedition was almost over. It was intended as an anthro mission, nothing more. A chance to study the inhabitants of the cave system. Clearing the underbrush below the lean-to she activated her auto-tent. The artifacts though, they were a huge bonus. The Institute would frown upon this sort of profiteering, of course, but they also didn't pay her very well. As she was crawling inside to rest, red warning signs began to flash on her headsup and an alarm blared. It took her a few moments to realize the alarm was not just in her ear, but was actually coming from the caves as well. Ancient runes appeared on the edge of her vision, only just readable as a countdown. As she tried to convert the numbers in her head the ground lurched and her lean-to collapsed.
She awoke to what sounded like laughter. Beautiful, sparkling laughter.
Her headsup was still sending warnings, red arrows flashing and alarms blaring, though just in her ear now. The countdown had stopped. She tried to crawl out, but found her arm wedged beneath a fallen tree. All she could do was wait and watch. The laughter continued, pouring out of the cave entrance. As she listened she realized it was not laughter at all but a kind of language. For several long moments, the laughter stopped. Finally, a group of creatures emerged from the cave. They were not the small forms of the native inhabitants, but long and lithe. It was more than height that made them different, though. These people were like nothing Prin had ever seen. Their eyes, if those were eyes, were tiny black specks on long triangular faces with no noses. Their hands were long and their arms were thin. Strange as they were there was an ethereal beauty to them.
Prin tried to shrink into the wreckage of the lean-to, but the creatures seemed to take notice of her instantly. Setting her headsup to record she held out her hand to show she was not armed. She'd lost the needler anyway when she'd passed out earlier.
The display flickered for a moment and all the symbols vanished as the beings approached. A single blinking dot appeared in the upper right of her vision. The tree pinning her arm was hoisted by one of the creatures, and she came to her feet, rubbing her wrist. The creatures laughed to each other. Up close it was a terrifying sound.
The creature nearest to her cocked its head to the side as words appeared in her heads up. A sharp pain radiated from her belly and as she looked down Prin realized one of the creatures was holding a device pointed at her. Her vision began to fade. The letters blazed in the center of her vision, in warning red.
"Peace. We've come to save you."
