< Ping! >

Metallic sphere jerks violently, then falls to the ground with a large, smoking hole pierced through it.

< Extended silence >

Small herd of confused Tyranno-taurs slowly wanders off.

*

Sigh… well, I suppose I ought to congratulate you, Geoffrey. That was an excellent shot. And from orbit no less. The way things have been going, I don’t doubt we’ll have need of your services again. And sooner rather than later.

Still, it does pain one to see yet another piece of perfectly good equipment destroyed for no good reason.

< pointed silence >

Never mind. Who has the camera controls?

…

Excellent. Now, uh… forgive me. I haven’t quite got down the names of all the interns yet. What was yours again?

…

Emilia? What a lovely name. Do you know… we don’t see a lot of women with an interest in camera operation. Especially in this genre. Whatever made you decide to—

< a minor chorus of cleared throats >

Alright, alright! Bunch of curtain twitchers…

Apologies, Emilia. You’ll need to direct the camera down the aquifer but make certain to keep the cloaking device stabilized. And kill the lights. Passive input only. We can’t run the risk of the subjects spotting—

< door bangs open abruptly >

…!

< extended moment of pained silence >

Thank you… Timothy.

Chuffed to bits.

Really.

I’ll just… set the remote right over here then, shall I? Where we’ll… never lose it again.

*

Naomi surged from the water, coughing and sputtering. For a heart-stopping brace of moments, her hands quested blindly through the dark before snagging onto a craggy sort of rock, forcing the current that had been dragging her along to swirl angrily around her as she transitioned from mere flotsam to obstruction. Several seconds passed while she stared at the nothingness in front of her, the only thought in her mind, the simple necessity of her next breath.

She was shaking, she realized. But not from cold. The water was quite unexpectedly warm. She did not know why she had expected otherwise. Something about it being fed from natural spring water…? Yet, she was still alive. Somehow. And the adrenaline from her recent brush with death had yet to run its course. She was not even sure if her course with death had yet to run its brush.

Jumping down here had been a desperate move. Getting out again…

“Why did I listen to you, anyway?” she muttered. “Stupid computer.”

In the stress of the moment, inches away from being snatched up by rows of sharpened teeth, any promise of a certain escape route would have been welcomed with the same enthusiasm as Moses leading his people away from bondage. So when the thing in her eyes had started flashing excitedly over the hole, she had headed straight for it without another thought. Now though, she seemed to be cursed to wander the wilderness. Or the depths, as the case may be.

“Mike?” she called tentatively. Her voice had not been loud, but still, the name echoed strangely around her, amplified by some unknown feature of the darkness.

No reply came. Not surprising. She had tumbled with the current for quite some time before finally catching hold in this dark… forgotten place. She did not even know whether he had jumped down the hole with her. He might have even been—

Her heart abruptly seized in her chest as wave upon wave of emotion crashed against it, and a ragged sob tore its way from her throat. It took her some minutes before she could even summon the will to speak, and then, it was to shake her head violently in denial.

“No…” It could not be. She refused to believe it. He was not dead. He was a fighter! He had saved her from those… those things out there. He would not have left her alone. In this place. Trapped in the dark.

Ordinarily, darkness did not bother her. It was a silly sort of fear, borne of ignorance and base instinct. But here? With water swirling around her, hoping she might slip that it might carry her along toward some unknown, as easily an endless maze of airless corridors as simple dead-fall with sharpened spikes awaiting at its bottom? No.

She had to get out. She had to find him! She needed to see!

Abruptly, some facet of her rising panic triggered something within her. A muscle she had never known she had began to twitch, forcing her left eyelid to flicker. At first, she thought it a passing spasm, perhaps an eyelash falling into her eye, but then something glided past her retina…

…and the world came alive!

Sort of. It was all in muted shades of blue—and only in the one eye—but she could see now. That was the important thing. Almost giddy, she began to scan the area, not even questioning her good fortune…

But then the muscle relaxed, snuffing her hope of salvation in an instant as the world again returned to darkness.

She gasped with sudden fear, betrayed by her own body, and quickly began tensing and flexing her cheeks and the muscles surrounding her eyes, trying to reconnect with the unfamiliar sensation. But it was eluding her. Growling with frustration, she softly thumped the rocks in front of her with a fist. Despite the crags, they were not sharp. They seemed smoothed, rounded over by the constant flow of water.

She had just had it… whatever ‘it’ was.

But she had a suspicion. For those brief few moments, she had sensed a kind of… warmth? As though her eye had been closed. Cut off from the air. But not. Like a second eyelid? A second… transparent eyelid.

Where it had come from or how long she might have had it were questions for another time. It could have as easily been a secondary feature of her recent ultraviolet adaptation as some heretofore unknown benefit from having eaten that giant chipmunk.

Gently, she began working at the corner of her eye with the tip of her finger, trying to massage the organ out of hiding. It was maddening work. Whatever muscle controlled it, her brain simply did not have the connections to make it respond on command. Not yet, anyway. It was like learning to cock an eyebrow or twitch an ear when you have never done it before.

But eventually, she managed to coax the membrane out again, and it slid comfortingly over her eye, bringing the world once more into focus. Then for good measure, she worked at the opposite side until she could bring the matching lid to bear, but it proved a fleeting victory. Every time she allowed her concentration to slip, one or the other of the eye coverings would flick back into hiding, often leaving her at square one and in total darkness.

By the time she felt comfortable enough with the ability to start looking around, she felt much calmer and, if not in complete control of her destiny, then at least somewhat equipped to face it.

The cavern around her—more a hollow than anything—was scarcely twenty feet across at its widest. The whole of it was ringed with craggy potholes along the walls, bringing to mind volcanic rock. Even the ceiling, near enough she could have reached it had she stretched, had the look of partially melted wax. Pretty much the whole of it was carpeted by a virtual forest of small stalactites, coming together somewhere in the middle where they combined into a particularly large specimen that dripped almost to the water in the center of the room.

But more importantly, the deeper blues of the shadows—near black, really—revealed a bit of a lip she could crawl into. It would not be comfortable—what with the spikes directly overhead—but she figured she could rest there for a bit. It would give her time to think and dry off, so she began working her way toward it, hand-over-hand against the current.

The move brought her attention to her hands. They were conspicuously orange against the blues all around her, almost glowing toward the center mass, but near-invisible once they dipped into the water.

However, right as she was about to pull herself up, the water surged behind her, and the sound of a sudden plop jerked her head around… just in time to see a distinctly man-shaped blob of orange floating past.

“Mike!” she shouted. Tears of relief sprang to her eyes, but her false lids would not let them flow.

He coughed and sputtered a bit by way of reply.

“Mike, I’m here!” she yelled again, urgent. “Grab hold of something. Quick!”

He must have heard, because he began flailing blindly about himself, just managing to snag the large, central stalactite. The current continued carrying his feet along for a moment and forced his back to the water.

“Naomi?” he called between attempts to hack up a lung. The inside of his mouth was an even brighter shade of orange than the rest of him—almost white—which contrasted sharply with the dull reds of his teeth. It was almost like looking at a negative photograph. “Stripes? Where are you?”

“Here,” she said, smiling for all she was worth. In truth, she had not cared all that much for his attempt at a replacement nickname, but at that moment, it was like a soothing balm. Music to her ears. Just knowing he was still alive… “Toward the side of the room. On your left.”

His head turned toward the sound of her voice. “How can you tell? I can’t see a thing!”

“Well, there’s a—a…” she began, gesturing toward her face—but floundered a bit in trying to explain. She was not even all that sure herself. But getting into it would take too much time. She needed to get Mike to safety first. “Never mind. Can you reach for me?”

“Uh…” He swung a hand blindly toward her before quickly slapping it back to his water-slicked spike. His fingers slipped down slightly. “Was that close?”

It had not been. And after a moment’s consideration, she realized that even with their enhanced size, there was no way they would be able to reach one another while fighting that current. Or rather… there was no way he could reach her. She felt confident she could swim out to him if she worked her way upstream first, but that was hardly a solution. He was only just holding on as it was. But if she could manage the reverse…

“Hold on a second, Mike,” she called and began working her way downstream, back toward the room’s outlet. That might have been where the current was strongest, but it was only a few feet wide. If she were to have any hope of saving him, it would be there. “Wait until I tell you. Then let go.”

“Let go?!” he echoed, already panicking.

“I’ll catch you,” she called reassuringly. “Trust me.”

“I… don’t know that I have much choice.” He began scrabbling at his hold, trying to find more purchase, but the algae-covered stalactite was having none of it. “I’m starting to slip!”

“Just a few seconds longer…”

“Naomi?” His voice began to rise precipitously.

“Almost there…”

“Stripes?!”

“Now!” she shouted. But she need not have bothered.

Before she had even found a means to brace herself, Mike’s fingers slipped from their purchase, and his massive form began careening toward her. In her panicked haste—trying to see where he would be coming from and how exactly she was supposed to catch him—she accidentally slipped an elbow into one of the many crags along the wall. The next instant, her palm slapped against the curving lip of the cave mouth, fortunately creating a firm—if makeshift—wedge just in time for one of his blindly kicking feet to collide with her hip.

The next few seconds were a blur of thrashing limbs, rushing and swelling water, badly strained joints, exhausting—and a few awkward—hand-holds, and more than a few hurled epithets. But eventually, Mike managed to work his way up and past her to find a stable grip along the wall and head toward comparatively calmer waters at the edge of the room.

Neither spoke for some minutes after that. Mostly from sheer fatigue. Naomi would never have believed it possible to be so drained after so little had she not just experienced it. The sheer amount of work her body had just been forced to endure in those few seconds just trying to hang on had left her limbs weak and hands shaking.

But she had plenty of excuses. In less than a day, she had swum an ocean, helped slay a massive sea turtle, been chased by fucking dinosaurs, and now this? How much more was she supposed to take? If she were not allowed to curl up into a ball, deliver a massive middle finger to this entire planet, and sleep for the next week and a half—and soon… Well, she could not be blamed if she wound up a tad grumpy.

Forcing herself to exhale slowly, she glanced over at her one consolation. Mike was alive. They were safe. Yes, they were stuck in a well beneath a bunch of man-eating Goliaths with too many feet and no escape in sight. But they had one another. They would figure something out. She had to believe that.

Idly, she glanced down at Mike’s hands. He was sporting a couple of brightly glowing spots along them now, perhaps having cut himself in his struggle to find a proper handhold along the rocks. She certainly recalled the few improper handholds he had found in the process. Handholds that would have prompted her to find the nearest tree branch and beat him senseless not an hour past. But as long as he did not bring it up, neither would she.

Propriety was one thing. Survival was quite another. These sorts of things could not be helped. None of which stopped her from wondering what he would say… if he had the balls.

However, her eyes were soon drawn to something else. Now that they were a bit closer together, and she could get a proper look at him, she noticed that she could actually see him breathing. Each puff of air he expelled from his lungs was clearly visible as a swirling maelstrom of distortions.

“I… think I have heat vision,” she announced, neatly side-stepping the groping issue.

“Really?” he said, still panting. His eyes turned toward her automatically, though they did not latch onto anything. “How? Since when?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I have some kind of extra eyelid now. They extend from the sides and close inward, toward my nose. I don’t have a lot of control over them yet, but I can see down here while they’re closed.”

*

< several moments of stunned silence >

Huh. < Throat clearing > How interesting. I uh… suppose Subject #1 must have found something to eat in that cave while we were getting the cameras down there. Not a… particularly surprising ability to have gained from a bunch of creatures living in darkness.

…?

Well, I mean… yes. Of course, I see the similarity. But just because we have a secondary eyelid that also just so happens to provide heat vision, we should not be so shortsighted as to assume nothing else in the universe would have developed something similar. These sorts of convergent evolutionary events happen all the time.

< thoughtful silence >

…?

Samantha? What Samantha? Timothy, did we have a Samantha on this project?

*

Mike’s mouth worked for a few handfuls of seconds, apparently at a loss for words. Strangely, it took Naomi at least half of them to figure out why. What she had just described was… inhuman. To say the least. It made her feel immediately self-conscious and vulnerable.

“That sounds… handy,” he said diplomatically. Then softer, he added, “To be honest, I’d kind of like to see them. I bet they’d be pretty on you.”

A quick knuckle sandwich collided with his shoulder an instant later.

“Ow…” he complained, rubbing at the spot. “What did you do that for?”

“Because you deserved it,” she stated matter-of-factly—and smiling fiercely from the safety of the darkness.

“You didn’t have to hit me, though,” he grumbled.

“Hush. Now, come on. Follow me. There’s a spot over here where we can climb out of the water. It’ll give us a chance to rest and figure out our next move.”

“Do you think I have those… eyelids, too?” he asked, pulling himself after her hand-over-hand along the curving wall.

“I dunno. Maybe.” Truthfully, she was glad the ability took some figuring out. Otherwise, he would have noticed how hot her cheeks still were. “I only figured it out by accident, and it took me a while to even work out how to keep them closed.” That admission brought up a secondary but no-less-salient point. “Why’d it take you so long to get down here, anyway? Did you try to lead those T-rexs away before diving down after me?”

“No, I followed you pretty much immediately,” he replied. “Those things… I was… I was sure I was going to die.” He stared vacantly at nothing for a few moments, before returning to her question. “You say you had to wait for me?” He shook his head, considering. “I don’t know. I was just struggling to find the space to breathe for the most part. I didn’t have time to think about where I was.”

Naomi glanced over to where the water was pouring into the room from above and recalled her own experience. It had been quite the winding path down—almost like a water slide at certain points—so she had to suppose it possible there were a few forks in the road. Either way, there was no climbing back up unless they managed to somehow evolve hook hands from out of nowhere.

All they had available was that button the turtle had spawned over Mike’s head, but she doubted they would be able to gain something that might allow them to swim back up a water slide… assuming the choices lined up with the kinds of things a turtle could do. Which they might not. That was only a theory.

Her eyes flicked over to the dim circle, wondering. It was still there, impatiently waiting on her to select something, but its normal array of bright and crayon-esque lines were so muted she might have missed it had she not known it was there. Perhaps it was an artifact from the heat vision? Something about the extra eyelid interfering with her internal computer?

Regardless, there was only about a third of its timer remaining. They would need to select something or, going from the incident with that big insect, it would likely pick something for them. Why there would be such a difference between the insect’s and the turtle’s fuse-timers was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it had to do with how much of the thing you had eaten? She would have to experiment to find out.

“Mike?” she began, climbing from the water. But when she turned, she discovered him picking at the corner of his eye.

“Hold on,” he murmured absently. “I think I’ve got something here. How do you control these things, anyway? Gah! Every time I move it… it feels like someone shoved a strip of… of tissue paper… or something around the corner of my eyeball.

The corner of her lip twitched upward fondly, relieved to discover she was not the only one with inhuman mutations. However, tissue was hardly the best metaphor. If anything, it was closer to wax paper. “You’ll get it. It just takes a while before your brain gets used to the idea.”

She glanced over toward where the water was flowing out from the cave. They had only just escaped from that swirling maw, but from what she could see, that was also their only path forward. They just had to hope that by going down, they could eventually find a way up again. Assuming they did not drown in the process.

“Mike,” she tried again. “I’m going to push the button.” His eyes jerked up to her, instantly concerned, but she forestalled him. “We don’t have any choice, Mike. We… we have to keep surviving. We have to. With those things up there… and us stuck down here. I just don’t see any other options. We can’t be afraid of… of the changes. Of what they might do to us. We have to take advantage of everything we have available if we’re going to have any hope of making it out alive.”

His eyes drifted away from her slowly, lost in thought, while the transparent eyelid he had been picking at twitched in time with his breaths. It was not quite to the point of covering his pupil yet, but she could see the muscles engaging, slowly making sense of the new organ.

“Alright,” he said finally.

She was mildly surprised. From their earlier conversations, she had expected him to put up more of a fight—however futile. There was no refuting her argument.

“But,” he added forcefully. “I want to be in on this. We need to choose together.”

“Of course!” she agreed immediately—though only for now. Once they got to safety, she reserved the right for the occasional executive decision. “Now, climb up here with me. I don’t want you drowning on me if whatever this is makes us lose control again.”

He nodded, and she quickly helped him climb into the narrow crevasse, being careful to keep his head from scraping against one of the multitude of spikes hanging over their heads. They were smallest by the edge where the two of them were sitting, but they looked plenty sharp enough still to give a pretty nasty bump if he sat up too quickly. In the end, Mike was forced to lie down with his feet left dangling in the water. It was better than nothing.

“Alright,” she began. “Here goes.”

Despite how muted the heat vision made her button, it still responded to her touch readily enough. So whatever was causing the interference was no real hindrance… at least until the options came up. Then, she discovered that none of the windows were displaying a thing! Or nothing beyond a bright blob of uniform red, anyway.

It was only once she allowed her secondary lids to slide away that images became visible… but then, of course, everything else went black. It was frustrating but manageable. Still, it made her wonder…

“Mike,” she began, describing the problem. “Do you think there might be some kind of projection component to how this works? I just can’t see how the heat vision would interfere with it, otherwise.”

“You mean… you think what you’re seeing is literally out in front of your face?” he asked, shifting slightly in the now-darkened room. “But… wouldn’t that mean I should be able to see it, too?”

She grimaced but soon cast that line of questions from her mind. The two of them could spend their time navel-gazing when they were out of there preferably, beside a nice fire and a bottle of wine in hand. Until then, she would focus on the hows and the whats—namely, how to survive, and what they needed to accomplish that.

“Anything I should be looking for?” she asked while scanning the fresh batch of cartoonish images. They were frustratingly abstract, as usual… though the first one to pop up was pretty obviously to do with the shell. It featured a turtle caught between the jaws of a red-eyed Tyranno-taur… and smiling smugly into the camera while the great beast struggled to tear into it.

Except, of course, she had seen first-hand that the shell would not be able to accomplish anything like that level of hardness. How was she supposed to interpret this? Was the computer simply conveying the idea of armor? Or had it somehow improved the design? It was an interesting idea… but only if they could get back to land. Until then, they had more pressing needs.

“Well…” Mike began thoughtfully. “We’re still on an island, so hopefully, whatever kind of spring we’ve jumped into here will eventually lead us back out and into the ocean. But I almost drowned twice just getting here, and unless I miss my guess, we’re going to be in for one hell of a swim before then. Most people equip scuba gear before jumping into places like these. And a lot of them still drown. So… water-breathing?”

She nodded along, liking the direction of his thoughts, for once. But none of the drawings seemed to hint at anything like that. “You’re into scuba?”

“Nah. Saw it on the internet.”

Of course. Rolling her eyes, she returned to the images.

Several had to do with the shell, and not just its hardness. Two of them seemed to have something to do with camouflage—one via color and the other via… texture? She was not entirely certain what to make of that one, though. Was it saying she would grow a particularly rock-like shell? Or just that she would be able to make her skin look like rocks—like an octopus? There was even one that seemed to be glowing slightly… bioluminescence perhaps? That one would have been more tempting if they did not already have heat vision, but as it was…

Then, there was one which… might have had to do with bite strength. The turtle in the image was eating one of the many hard-shelled crustaceans she had seen roaming the sea floor earlier that day. It was mildly tempting and would increase the range of options they might explore for future hunts. But not useful currently.

Another was simply an image of the turtle’s whip-like spike of a tail. She could see no use for that. Pass.

One was a snapshot of the turtle’s side, prominently displaying its many limbs angling through the water. Meaning… grow an extra set of limbs? Some sort of… increase in their swimming ability? Some unspecified maneuverability adaptation? It was unclear.

Then, there was the final image, an even closer view of one foot specifically, detailing its webbed-foot design and the claws that topped each of them. They did not look anywhere near as sharp as the dagger of a claw she still kept tucked into her top, but they would be good enough for most things. And the webbing would certainly be helpful when it came to actual swimming—which they were about to do quite a lot of.

“Okay, there’s only two that look immediately useful,” she began, detailing the final two images and her speculations about their meanings.

Predictably, Mike was quick to nix the first. The possibility of winding up with six limbs was too much for him. On her end, she found the idea of walking around with four arms kind of interesting… provided it came out right. If the extra pair was attached somewhere at her hip, that would have been awful. Of course, there was also the possibility they might end up like those dinos up above, like some kind of… human centaurs. But with all people bits? Or would the lower half be turtle?

Either way, it was weird to think about.

“So we’re agreed then?” she said finally, sliding her secondary eyelids closed for the moment to focus on him. “We’re going for webbed feet?”

Mike nodded absently, though he was still picking at his own set of eyelids. He pretty much had the thing, but it looked to be fighting him. “I… guess so? It’s better than nothing. You’re sure you don’t see any kind of water breathing?”

She side-blinked so as to give the images another quick look. The one where the turtle was munching away could have had to do with that. It was eating underwater, after all, and she doubted she could pull that off—crustacean or not. Still…

“None that I can tell,” she replied slowly before refocusing on her companion. He was looking at her, one finger held firmly to the side of his nose. The secondary lid—finally closed, at least on the one side—was obscuring some part of the heat that normally emanated from his eyes, giving them a mismatched appearance. “You’re trying too hard,” she advised by way of congratulations. “It’s just like closing your eyes normally. But not. Obviously.”

He grimaced. “Great. Very helpful.”

Turning, he gave the room a quick scan of his own. However, he was quick to spot something and nearly smashed his head into the spikes above in his haste to sit forward.

Naomi followed his gaze but saw nothing she had not spied already. “What is it, Mike?”

“There!” He pointed excitedly, but when he saw her vacant stare, he rolled forward, almost tumbling back into the water. “Here. Right here!”

He was practically tapping at the surface of the flowing stream. But there was nothing below them that she could see. It was all just shades of blue.

“Is there… something down there?” she hazarded. Was his heat vision somehow better than hers? That it could penetrate the water below? She certainly hoped not. He already had computer-assisted hearing. If he could see better as well, that would have been totally unfair!

“No!” he said excitedly. “It’s right on the surface. How can you not see it?”

“See what?” she growled.

“The words, of course!”

*

Ah, so that’s it. I’d been wondering.

…?

Well, it’s only speculation, but if I were put to it, I would say the heads-up display for Subject #2’s VENUS device is misaligned. It should have connected to his occipital lobe such that he could make his choices as normally as has been Subject #1. But for whatever reason, it never took properly.

However, it seems this latest mutation partially corrected the issue by linking his HUD to his heat-sensing filter.

See if you can get a bit closer, Emilia. If we can tap into their neutrino-pipeline connection, we should be able to take a look at exactly what he’s see—

…!

I beg your pardon. Note? What note?

< paper rustling >

Give me that!

< in a strangled tone > I see… Timothy. This is… most unfortunate. Who could have guessed that one of our own would just… up and commit suicide?

< startled gasps >

Yes… poor Samantha. What a terrible… terrible tragedy! Who could have guessed? There were… hardly any signs.

I’m sure.