again.”
With a final glance at Bass’s corpse, Stafford shouldered his MP-5 and took point. Lex and Sebastian watched him go. Weyland hobbled forward, leaning on his ice pole, the heavy oxygen tank weighing on his back.
From up ahead, they heard Max Stafford’s voice.
“The labyrinth awaits.”
CHAPTER 23
Verheiden scrambled when the wall he was leaning against slid into the ceiling, opening a small, cramped crawlspace that had not been there before.
“What now?” the mercenary moaned.
Crouching down, Miller peered into the darkness. “We never went this way before.”
“Yeah, so what’s that mean…
Miller did not reply. Instead he raised his flashlight and traced the walls of the tunnel with it. The corridor went on for about twenty-five feet, then split abruptly in two. When Miller saw the fork in the road, he actually grinned.
“It would seem that we’re rats in a maze.”
Verheiden saw Miller’s expression and scoffed.
“Sorry,” the engineer said sheepishly. “But I really like puzzles.”
With Miller in the lead, they crawled inside.
They traveled for a few minutes. Then Miller heard a voice ahead of him in the confines of the narrow duct.
“Hello?” Connors cried. “Can you hear me?”
“Who is that?” Miller called. It was difficult to make out where the voice was coming from. Sound bounced all over the place inside the shaft.
“It’s Connors,” called the voice. “Where are you?” The sound echoed hollowly, and from far away.
Suddenly, the man began to scream, his chilling voice reverberating throughout the pitch-black duct.
“Connors!” bellowed Verheiden. He hurried forward, trying to catch up to Miller. But suddenly the floor opened under the mercenary and Verheiden plunged through a trapdoor.
With some difficulty, Miller managed to turn his body around in the tight shaft. He pounded on the floor Verheiden had fallen through, but he couldn’t even find a joint.
“Verheiden?” Miller called. “Can you hear me?”
The reply was faint and distant. “Miller… get me out of here.”
Miller looked around, trying to find a way into the trap. “Hold on!” he yelled. “I’ll figure a way to get to you….”
Verheiden had fallen into a small, restrictive tunnel too low to stand up in and too tight for his lanky, six- foot-plus frame to find much comfort.
Above his head he could hear Miller trying to find a way into his prison. He pushed on the ceiling a number of times, but if the door was still there, he couldn’t find it now. There were walls on three sides of him. The fourth side, however, wasn’t a wall: It was a cramped corridor stretching beyond his vision. But Verheiden had no intention of going down it alone. He intended to wait right there until Miller found a way to get him out.
Settling in for the long wait, Verheiden leaned against one of the walls, accidentally placing his hand into a pool of slime. Searching blindly for a surface on which to wipe his hand clean of the slime, he encountered a pile of dead skin, like the hide of a snake. More slime dotted the floor, and the mercenary couldn’t help but recoil.
Suddenly, he heard a scraping sound echoing down the corridor. He took a few steps forward and shone his flashlight into the dark. Fearing a force moving toward him, he stumbled backwards, toward the wall.
Unfortunately, something more harrowing was waiting there to greet him.
From the chamber above Verheiden, Miller could hear screams and the sound of ripping flesh. He feared the man was dead.
Lex, Sebastian, and Weyland made their way through the forbidding underground maze, Max Stafford, his machine gun ready, leading them forward.
“Keep up, people. Keep it tight.”
When they reached a fork in the corridor, they halted. Lex consulted her digital compass, then gazed into the darkness, deciding which way to proceed.
Max caught her arm. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“If we stay on this bearing we should keep going up. If we can do that, we’ll make it to an entrance… eventually.”
Lex noticed that Weyland seemed to bend under the weight of his backpack. She touched his shoulder.
“Leave it,” she said. “It can only slow us down.”
Weyland shrugged her off. “Too much has been lost to walk away with nothing.”
Lex blocked him, eyes imploring.
“No,” spat Weyland. “Unknown alloys, alien technology—the value of this find is immense.”
“The device belongs to those creatures. Perhaps we should just give it back.”
Weyland shook his head, eyes defiant.
Lex tried again. “Whatever is going on here, we have no part in it.”
“This is
They locked eyes, but it was Lex who finally relented.
“Then give it to me,” she insisted.
She took the pack from his shoulders and placed it on her own. Then she curled her arm around Weyland and helped him walk.
“I’ll tell Max you need a rest,” she whispered.
Weyland shook his head. “Let’s get out of here first.”
They walked for a time, then Max halted the group. His eyes squinted into the shadows ahead. Finally, he raised his flashlight—just as a Predator emerged from the darkness.
“Move!” Sebastian cried.
Everyone scattered—everyone but Max Stafford, who dropped to one knee directly in the path of the creature and opened up with his machine gun. In the narrow, confined space the noise was deafening, the bursts blinding. This time Lex averted her eyes to preserve her night vision, and Sebastian—despite the exploding chaos—managed to spot the Predator’s thick-muscled arm as it materialized out of thin air.
In the half-second that the arm was visible, Sebastian observed a device shaped like an abstract sculpture of a turtle shell strapped to the monster’s wrist.
Max Stafford, blinded by his own muzzle blast, never saw the creature’s arm or the unusual device on his wrist. All Max saw was a metallic net hurtling at his face.
The steel mesh struck him before he had a chance to react. It met his body with such force that he was catapulted backwards. The machine gun flew from his hands as Stafford struggled against the steel cocoon that enveloped him. But the more he fought, the tighter the net became. He tumbled to the ground and thrashed there, helpless as a caught fish.
Like razors, the steel threads bit into his clothing—then his flesh.
Stafford’s cries of naked torment cut Weyland like a knife. With a moan of agony that mirrored Stafford’s, he dropped to his knees at Max’s side and clawed at the metal web.
“We’ll get you out of there!”
The piercing threads lacerated Weyland’s hands until they were slippery with blood. Yet he would not give up. The cocoon tightened, and Max’s howls intensified as the mesh chewed deeper into muscle and bone.
