Beckon

He noticed Rudy crouching down, video camera in hand, filming the slimy substance covering the rocks. It looked like his fear had gone—at least temporarily—and now the biologist in him seemed to be taking over. “D’you guys see this?”

Jack turned his attention to the spongy material as well. It was a light color, appearing nearly white in the glow of their lights. “What is it?”

“It looks organic,” Rudy said. “Like some kind of bacterial slime.”

“It’s everywhere,” Ben said, shining his light across the walls. He shook his head. “I’ve heard of bacteria growing inside caves. But not like this.”

“How does anything even survive this far underground?” Jack said.

“Bacteria are very adaptable,” Rudy said. “Some strains can grow in total darkness. Even in toxic waste. Whatever this stuff is, it’s obviously adapted to the dark. And it looks like it’s adapted pretty well.”

“That’s cool,” Jack said.

Rudy nodded. “It’s pretty incredible, actually. We used to think all organisms needed sunlight to exist until we started exploring the bottom of the ocean and found complex ecosystems thousands of feet deep thriving around thermal vents where no sunlight ever reaches. So instead of the sun, these organisms get energy from the heat and chemicals coming up from those vents.”

“Makes sense.” Ben seemed to catch on. “Probably why this stuff seems to be growing more around the hot springs.”

“Exactly.” Rudy nodded. “The heat and water—maybe sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide. I mean, I’m just guessing here. But this… this is incredible.” He turned to Jack with a slight smile. “This could be a whole new microorganism.”

Jack grinned back at him. “Aren’t you glad you came along now?”

Rudy continued filming, but after a minute he stopped. “Hey, guys, do me a favor and shut off your lights.”

“What?”

“Just shut off your lights for a second. I want to see something.”

They snapped their flashlights off, and darkness fell around them like a blanket. Jack could almost feel it draping over him. They stood in silence for a few moments until Rudy spoke up.

“Do you guys see what I’m seeing?”

As Jack’s eyes adjusted, he saw that the entire chamber glowed with a pale light that seemed to come from all around them. It had been nearly imperceptible in the glow of their flashlights.

A sinewy network of glowing tendrils shrouded the cave floor and walls. Jack could even make out Rudy and Ben in the light.

“Whoa,” Ben whispered.

“Glow-in-the-dark slime?” Jack quipped.

“Bioluminescence,” Rudy said. “This stuff just keeps getting more impressive.”

The light was nearly hypnotic as Jack found himself staring at the substance. For a moment he felt oddly detached, like he was far off somewhere, watching himself from the outside.

Then he shook himself out of his trance. This discovery—as awesome as it was—didn’t change the fact that they were still lost. More than that, he had yet to find evidence of the N’watu. Despite their circumstances, he needed to find some answers. He wasn’t about to leave these caves empty-handed. “So which passage do we take?”

Ben stood, hands on hips, surveying their surroundings. After a minute he pointed up ahead. “That looks like a way out.”

The fibrous growth clung to the floor and crawled up the walls like a network of glowing veins and arteries. Ahead of them appeared to be a small opening, as if the luminous tendrils had grown around the mouth of another tunnel.

They found a tunnel about five feet wide, though less than four feet high. The slime continued far down the passage but became less dense the farther they got from the springs.

They found they could navigate the passage by the light of the microorganisms alone. It reminded Jack of a carnival fun house he’d been to once as a kid where the trail was marked by phosphorescent paint on the floors.

“This is a little psychedelic,” he said.

Ben stopped abruptly and held up a hand. Jack and Rudy froze in their tracks.

“What is it?” Rudy whispered.

“Something’s moving up ahead.”

Jack drew up beside Ben, who was pointing down the passage. He saw an elongated black shape detach itself from the wall and glide across the ground maybe twenty feet away. It almost seemed like a hallucination—just a long shadow that flitted across the glowing veins on the cave floor.

In the dim light, Jack saw Ben slowly remove his flashlight and point at the switch. “Watch your eyes,” Ben whispered.

Jack winced as the light flicked on, and he felt Ben move away quickly. In the commotion, Jack found himself momentarily stunned, surprised by how bright it seemed. He shielded his eyes and spotted Ben ahead of him, shining the flashlight around the passage. Then Jack felt Rudy brush past him and heard their voices elevated in excitement.

“Did you see it? Did you see that thing?” Ben was saying.

“I—I didn’t get a good look.”

“It was huge!”

“What was it?” Jack stumbled up to where they were standing.

Ben climbed onto a jagged rock formation along the side of the tunnel and shone his light into the cracks behind it. “I don’t know. It was… like a centipede or something. But I mean, the thing was huge!”

“A centipede?”

Rudy shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

“It crawled back behind this rock,” Ben said.

Jack crouched beside the rock to inspect the opening. It was far too narrow to crawl through—not that he would’ve gone into it even if it were big enough.

“Shut your lamps off,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s obviously trying to avoid the light. Let’s wait a minute and see if it comes back.”

Ben switched off the light again, and in several seconds Jack’s eyes readjusted to the lower luminosity inside the tunnel. They moved away from the wall and waited.

Jack bit his cheek absently. He’d only seen a shadowy shape with no real detail. But it was far too big to be a centipede.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. Ben motioned for him to keep quiet, then pointed at something moving farther down the tunnel. Jack spotted a second shadow as it crept out from the side and paused in the middle of the passage.

Jack inched closer. It was definitely some type of elongated creature—as Ben had described. And it was enormous—he estimated its length at roughly five feet. He also heard a gentle scraping sound, like a mouse scurrying across linoleum.

Ben pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and wrapped it over the lens of his flashlight. Pointing it away from the creature, he flipped it on. Jack could see the light was dimmed considerably but still bright enough to illuminate the area around them. Then Ben turned the light toward the animal in front of them.

Jack suppressed a gasp. “Whoa.”

The creature had a solid black body five or six inches thick that looked more like a section of segmented industrial tubing than a living animal. It didn’t flee but instead turned toward the light, lifting the front portion of its body. Its legs—dozens of red, fingerlike claws—wriggled in the air, and a pair of long antennae snaked forward from its bulbous head. It had no eyes that Jack could see, and only a small, horizontal opening for a mouth that munched on a glowing wad of the yellow slime.

Its antennae groped about in the air as if trying to determine where the light was coming from. Then after a