Overlord

4

Slater woke the next morning and looked about the stark, white room she had been assigned. It was comfortable and functional, but no more than that. She couldn’t complain. It was actually refreshing in its own way. Immediately her thoughts returned to Sam Aston. Rage still boiled in her gut that he had let her think he was dead for all that time. But despite her hurt and fury, a great relief lurked somewhere under the surface. She had enjoyed the time they spent together, despite the horrors. And of course, they had shared the experience of those horrors, so perhaps Aston was the only person in the world she could ever talk to about that stuff. Maybe the relief lived there, in the knowledge there was someone still alive who got it, who believed her because he’d been there too. And then the rage came again. He was the only one who could have made any of it easier for her, and he’d hidden for months, like some cowardly whipped dog, refusing to come out from under the house.

Was she being unfair to him? She made a noise of disgust. Screw him! He’d left her to suffer. Maybe he had his reasons, but she didn’t care. Perhaps one day the relief that he lived would take over the anger at his hiding, but she didn’t think it would be any time soon. In some ways it felt petty to ensure he suffered before she even thought about forgiving him, but that was exactly what she intended to do.

“Asshole,” she muttered to herself, and went into the cramped en-suite to shower.

When she headed into the canteen half an hour later, the entire team was present. She winced at Jeff Gray funneling scrambled eggs into his face like a factory machine, half of it already down his sweater. Aston caught her eye, started to smile. That twisted combination of anger and relief flooded through her again and she looked away.

Once she had eaten and gulped down two mugs of coffee, she began to feel a little more balanced. The coffee, she noticed, was pretty good, so that was something positive about this whole debacle of an expedition.

Sol Griffin stood and called out for their attention. “We’re heading down this morning, so get wrapped up for the short trip to the elevator, but you won’t need to overdo it. A jacket and regular clothing will be fine once we go down. Be sure to bring all the gear you want with you, as it’s a long ride back if you forget anything. Our first foray will be relatively brief, though.”

Wrapped in parkas and lugging gear, the team soon found themselves crunching over fresh snowfall from the warm comforts of the base. Despite the bright sunshine, the impact of the cold on Slater’s face made her catch her breath as they stepped out. The landscape was awe-inspiring, undulating white, occasional ridges of gray stone, then the huge peaks of the mountains rising over them, almost close enough to touch. The morning sun struck the north faces of the strangely geometric range, making bright white and dark shadow stand out in stark contrast. Sol led them about fifty yards from the main base building, past two large garages and a stack of oil barrels, to a fenced off area with a bright yellow sign above the gate. The sign read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and an armed guard stood by the gate, his breath clouding in the cold air.

“Good morning,” Sol said.

“Sir.” The guard opened the gate and stepped aside to let them through. Beyond was a metal hut about five yards square and inside what looked like a huge freight elevator.

Slater was reminded of the elevator in the movie Aliens, where Ripley, flamethrower in hand, descends to save Newt while the entire complex explodes and falls down around her. While the elevator looked just like that, Slater hoped she would never be using it under anything like those circumstances.

Come on, she told herself. We’re here for a damned rock of some kind. Calm down. But memories of Lake Kaarme and how that job had gone still regularly gave her nightmares. She would wake in terror, images of deep underwater caverns and that huge maw full of teeth snapping at her, fresh in her mind. She drew a deep breath and steeled herself. This place couldn’t be more different.

The elevator was more than big enough to comfortably carry all eight team members, plus Terence Reid, the muscled security guy, and two of his subordinates. They came in last and as Reid slid the large gate closed, he said, “This is Mike Gates and Ronda Tate.” The two nodded, their faces serious, weapons at their sides. “The three of us will always go where you go, so get used to us hanging around, but feel free to ignore us.”

“I’m still not sure why you feel there’s such a need for so much… muscle,” Aston said.

Despite her annoyance with him, Slater agreed with that assessment.

“Like I said,” Sol interjected before Terry could answer. “Just company policy. Take the man at his word, just ignore them.”

Sol reached for a large control hanging from a thick cable at the front of the elevator. It only had two large buttons, one above the other. Up and down, Slater presumed. Sol pressed the lower one and the elevator jerked once, then began to smoothly descend.

The shaft was dimly lit, a black cable hanging down along one wall with small, oblong halogen lights every so often. The car rattled softly, steel cables hissed through the mechanisms above. They passed rhythmically through bright patches, then dimness, then light again for what seemed entirely too long to Slater. Just how deep were they going? Her ears popped once, then again. As she began to feel an irrational fear that they would never reach the bottom, the elevator slowed, then bumped to a stop.

“Holy cow,” Jeff said. “Journey to the center of the earth, am I right?” He looked around, grinning, but no one else shared his humor.

Slater saw the same trepidation in all the other faces, except Jeff’s, that she was certain was mirrored on her own features. Being this deep underground was uncomfortably claustrophobic despite the fact that ahead of them was a large and well lit cavern.

Reid slid the gate open and stood back to let everyone get off the elevator. As Slater stepped out, she stopped dead and gasped. The cavern wasn’t large, it was huge, arcing up above them into a dome of rock high above. Stalactites pointed down, stalagmites beneath them, some taller even than Terry Reid, the biggest of their group. Warm air tickled her face, the temperature higher than she had expected, and almost humid. Striations of the glowing green fungi covered the walls like veins, spread out mostly, but occasionally in a thick patch. Spotlights on the ground provided the light, pointing up into the dome, creating areas of light and shade.

“Stand still one moment,” Sol said, his hand resting on a control box near the elevator. “I’m going to turn out the lights. Give your eyes a moment to adjust.”

Once everyone had stopped moving, he flicked a switch and darkness fell like a lid had been closed. Almost immediately, the glowing fungi stood out, a network all over the walls. Slater’s sense of wonder increased as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark and the whole cavern took on an otherworldly glow, more and more features standing out in the soft green illumination.

“That’s some of the most bioluminescent fungi I’ve ever seen,” Jahara Syed whispered, eyes wide as she scanned left and right. “Is it a fungus?”

“That’s partly what we’re here to find out,” Sol said. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Okay, watch out, lights coming back.” The cavern burst into life again, orange and suddenly artificial. “Take a look around, everyone.”

“Jeff, get footage of everything,” Slater said. “Start with a close-up of the elevator and controls, pan around for wide shots of the cavern, then start gathering all the details you can.”

“Yes, boss.” Jeff gave a crooked grin, waited as if expecting some response, then shrugged and turned away when Slater just stared at him.

She turned to Marla. “That guy, honestly.”

Marla laughed. “He’s an idiot, but he’s harmless enough. I’m going to try to be more forgiving of him.”

“You’re a better person than I am, then! We need to pick a spot where I can do a piece to camera. Somewhere that looks good, but the sound won’t be lost.”

Marla’s eyes widened as she turned away from looking up at the vaulted ceiling high above. “Oh yeah, work. This place is amazing.”

But Slater wasn’t really listening. She watched as Aston and O’Donnell were led away from the group by Sol, over to a distant part of the cavern. Suspicious, she called Jeff back and had Marla fire up the mic and set her levels. Once they were ready, camera and audio running, she said, “Follow me.”:

Sticking to the shadows, she led them around one side to slowly creep up on the three men. Aston and O’Donnell were examining a strange-looking, smooth black door while Sol and another man, clearly a guard, watched over them. The guard wasn’t one of the two who had come down with Reid, so Slater assumed he must be stationed down here, guarding the door. She wondered if that was really necessary. He stood by, looking bored, absently balancing a metallic blue fidget spinner on one finger as it spun silently. His other hand rested on his holstered pistol.

Slater turned her attention to the door. Large blocks of gray stone, neatly carved and fitted together, made the frame, the door itself a single slab of smooth black rock. It had a kind of recurring pattern lightly carved into the surface. Immediately, cold settled into her gut. From an interesting cavern with strange fungal growth, the place suddenly had something to be scared of, front and center. She remembered the door deep under Lake Kaarme, the mystery of its presence that they had never been able to ascertain, now lost forever. What was this door doing here? It certainly wasn’t new, but how long had it been there? Did that early twentieth century expedition Sol had mentioned put it in? For what? Where did it go? And even as she thought these things, she knew it had to be far older than that.

None of the men were talking as they looked over the door, Aston running his fingertips over its surface. Eventually he said, “I can’t say for certain that it’s the same, but it looks similar.”

Similar to what? Slater thought, but deep down she knew, thinking of Lake Kaarme again.

“I’ll need to do some checking,” O’Donnell said. “But I feel like I’ve seen photos, or maybe drawings, of doors like this before. There’s a lot of conflicting stuff out there, a lot of made-up nonsense. But I’ll take photos and cross-check this.”

“You’ll be able to get online when we return to base,” Sol said. “You can do all the checking you need.”

They turned away from the door and were all clearly surprised to see Slater and her team, filming them. Sol’s face darkened with annoyance.

“Just documenting everything,” Slater said, before Sol could speak.

She strode toward them, making a beeline for Aston, forcing the others to step out of the way or be run over. She knew the action was partly irrational, but her anger at Aston seemed to override every other thought. She shouldered past the men and approached the door, catching Aston’s arm as she went to stop him from moving away. The guard quickly pocketed his fidget spinner and made a move to stop her, but Sol raised a hand to stay him. “It’s all right.”

Slater took a long look at the door, enjoying Aston’s discomfort as he stood beside her, too scared to move away after she had stopped him. But the door held her attention. It felt somehow alien to her but she had no rational way to explain why. Discomforted herself now, she drove away the eerie feeling by focusing on a more powerful emotion: her desire to punch Aston in the throat. She took his elbow and yanked him back toward the door, then took up position next to him, and turned toward the camera.

He started to protest and she gave him a hard stare and held her index finger in front of his face. He shut up like a told off school boy. She turned back to the camera, caught Marla’s nod that she was ready, and said, “Three… two… one…,” then paused a moment before her television face fell down like a mask. With a soft smile, she said, “Believe it or not, this is Sam Afton…”

“Aston,” he said meekly, his expression annoyed and cowed at the same time.

“My apologies, Mister Aston.” She turned back to the camera. “Sam Aston is a member of the team,” she said, enjoying the juvenile pleasure of intentionally omitting any credentials. “Mister Aston, what can you tell us about this door, on the far side of a huge cavern, hundreds of feet beneath the Antarctic surface?”

He frowned, swallowed, shook his head. “I’m really not sure. It’s not necessarily my area of expertise.”

“Is it proof of life beneath Antarctica?”

From the corner of her eye she watched Sol and Dig smirking, enjoying her putting of Aston on the spot almost as much as she was. She remembered how resistant he was at Kaarme too, never even suggesting a theory he couldn’t prove. And how uncomfortable he was in front of the camera every time she had it pointed at him. And now he almost squirmed under the eye of the lens, and the others grinning at him.

“Maybe you should ask Dig,” he tried. “It’s probably more his…”

“What do you think could have made the door, Mister Aston? From among known Antarctic life, I mean?”

“I’m really not sure…”

“Do you believe subterranean penguins did it? Or Antarctic Terrestrial Invertebrates?” While she was enjoying her mockery of him, she realized it was also a cover for how much the presence of the door had disturbed her. She found herself perturbed by everything since the elevator had gone so deep, and was using her anger at Aston to deal with it.

“Penguins?” Aston said, forcing a smile. “What?”

“You said the door looks similar. Similar to what?”

Aston’s forced smile melted into a frown. “I know you’re not happy with me right now, but you know what? We’re done here.” He turned and stormed away.

Slater watched him go, then turned her attention to Sol, who startled slightly to find himself suddenly under her scrutiny, the grin sliding off his face.

“Sol Griffin, expedition leader,” she said. “What do you know about the door?”

“Not much,” he replied, rallying as the camera turned to pin him in its gaze. “The survivor of the twentieth-century expedition reported seeing it. Otherwise, we haven’t studied it yet.”

“And what’s on the other side?” Slater asked.

Sol smiled. “You’re going to find out very soon.”