Chapter 15: All About Traps

With straight, flat walls, a level floor, all smooth, this hallway must have been placed her on purpose. We all paused as if staring at it could reveal its secrets. Who built it and why? Well, the nanotech, presumably, but for what purpose? And what were the dangers?

I broke the silence with, “Looks like this is where we go. First, though, what do you guys think? The voice said this cave was dangerous, requiring whatever a balanced party is.”

“Me and Ave are tough,” said Fred.

Ave nodded, smiling, right hand tapping the submachine gun strapped over her shoulder. “And we have firepower.”

Bent spoke up. “Like I said, probably the quest requires a trapper. And we could certainly do with a healer. And maybe someone to buff us.”

“Buff?” I did a double take. “You clearly don’t mean shine us up and maybe a polish.”

“It means to boost your party members, or yourself, through magic. Like giving us a bonus to hit or take damage or something. I think the word comes from body building, to get buff.”

“Like these babies?” Fred flexed his giant biceps. “Maybe I don’t need any buffs.”

Bent let out a sigh.

I jumped in with, “Well, we can’t do anything about getting a healer right now. But, on that note, let’s take inventory of our healing potions. How many do each of you have?”

“One.”

“Two.”

“I’ve got three.”

“Just two myself.”

“And one here.”

“Looks like I’ve got three.” I quickly did the simple math. “Ok, let’s even it out so everyone has two. If we start using them too often, if we run down to less than one per person, we’re giving up this cave. We’ll have to find an urban center and hire a healer or more healing potions, or something, in that case.”

“And maybe,” said Ave, “farm some centipedes.”

Fred high-fived her, and they shared a smile.

“Everyone agreed?”

Dylan said, “What about a trapper?”

“We’re going to have to go by healing potions. If traps or monsters cause us to use our potions, we’ll have to leave all the same. And then find a city, figure out how to hire both a trapper and healer.”

He shook his head, “Yeah.”

“As long,” said Bent, “as they’re not all or nothing traps. Like, the cave collapses on us or something.”

Marci looked aghast.

“We’ll spread out. Me and Ave take point. We can dig our way out of a collapsed tunnel.”

I put my hands up, “Hey, let’s not invent reasons to worry about. We don’t know what kind of traps are in there. And besides, the previous adventuring party must have tripped most of them.”

Marci mumbled out, “We, uh, we don’t know that. Not for sure.”

“Right. Let’s be extra careful. Pay attention to everything.” I was getting worried about her, but she didn’t seem to be able to articulate what was wrong. And we needed to get those computers or the core or whatever to begin solving this world’s nanotech problem. If we could shut them off, or reprogram them, we could return all these people and monsters to their original selves. That was worth a little discomfort.

Being the leader, I had to step up. “Alright, marching order. Fred, take point, followed by Dylan then me. Marci, you’re in the middle, Bent and then Ave, bring up the rear.” I looked at each of them in turn and, worryingly, Marci was hugging herself tightly, so I stopped my gaze on her, “And if these caves get too narrow, or too dangerous, we turn back. We are the only people on this planet who can solve the problem, we have to stay alive.”

A chorus of agreement. Fred held the flashlight in his left, gun in his right. Dylan, too, gun at the ready, flashlight in his off hand. I put the sapling down, feeling stupid. It would make passage through the cave tunnel difficult, especially if it narrowed. Bent only held his flashlight, gun strapped over his shoulder, Ave held hers in both hands, relying on our light instead. Marci came so close to me, she bumped into my back.

“Hey, you ok?”

“Yeah . . . no. I feel off.”

“If you’re getting sick or if this gets worse, we’ll head back to the surface.”

“I don’t think I’m sick. Just very uncomfortable. It’s disturbing to be so far underground.”

I cocked my head, “Are you claustrophobic?”

“No. At least, I wasn’t.”

“You think the nanotech changed you?”

“I don’t know.” She hugged herself more tightly, then released, looked into my eyes, forced her best smile, and said, “Let’s just . . . let’s just get going. Fred and Dylan are already ahead.”

Looking behind me, she was right. They didn’t wait and had set off. I quickly followed, annoyed that they’d done so. Seemed unsafe to split up like that. “Hey, guys!”

Their lights moved around another bend, then grew smaller.

I raised my voice, “Guys! Don’t get so far ahead!” Then, under my breath, “Why are they acting like amateurs?”

The light returned, Dylan’s face poking around the wall, “What’s that?”

Fred’s sudden shout, sounding like he was in pain, echoed down the tunnel. Dylan turned around, light vanishing.

I hurried up, Marci holding onto my shirt, and we got to the bend, headed down it, then right again, and the cave opened up. Fred was sitting on the ground, massaging his ankle, muttering.

“What happened?” I asked, “You ok?

“Scraped a rock. It hurts.”

“You just scraped a rock? Isn’t that where you got bitten yesterday?”

He pulled out his backpack, reached in and found a little red healing potion. “This’ll fix it up.”

“That’ll leave you with just the one.”

He uncorked it, drank, then said, “Can’t be helped.”

Bent said, “We do need him walking and agile.”

Fred rummaged through his pack again, taking out his first aid kit.

“Are you still hurt?” I wondered if the healing potions had expiration dates, maybe these were becoming less useful. That was disturbing. What if we got food poisoning from them? They were bitter, probably fermented, so maybe that couldn’t happen. I tried to make a note of it to ask Marci when she was feeling better.

“I’m just going to wrap it, just in case.” Taking a cloth from the kit, he did just that.

“Are you sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah, Boss.”

“Ave, maybe you should take point. Fred, take her place. Just in case.”

“I’m fine, I really am.”

“Just in case.”

Ave moved up, we were about to set off when a glint in mid-air, about knee-high caught my attention. “Wait! Ave, wait. There’s something ahead of you.” I walked over there, bent down to look closer and there it was, a metallic string right across the cave. “Some kind of trip wire, but at knee level.”

“Holy shit,” said Avery. She followed the line to the left. “It’s anchored here.”

I followed it to the right. “The string goes into a small hole here. There must be a mechanism on this side of the wall. I wonder what it does.”

“Let’s not find out,” said Marci.

Slowly, with caution, I touched it. Maybe a few centimeters of give. “Everyone back up. I have an idea.” I didn’t look but heard them giving me some space. Briefly, I wondered what the trap was. Did it alert someone? Explode? Drop the ceiling on us? I hoped we wouldn’t find out.

Taking out a metal pinion in my pack, the kind used to secure our tents, I carefully pulled it around the string, making four loops around the metal, and pushed it as close to the hole as I could. I unraveled the rope that was in my backpack until I had what could passed for a string. This I tied around the pinion and wire leading up to it to keep the tripwire from slipping. I set it against the hole, stepped back and, the hairs raising on my arm, heart pounding in my chest, cut the trip wire.

The pinion was pulled against the hole but held. Nothing happened.

I let out the breath stuck inside my chest.

“How did you . . . learn to do that?” asked Dylan.

I stared at him for what was probably too long. How did I learn to do that??? “Uh, I don’t know. It just came to me.”

“Gotta be your class,” said Bent. “You’re an-”

“Explorer. Yeah. Damn, this is strange.” It was the first time I’d done something I couldn’t before and could only mean one thing: the nanotech was altering my brain. I couldn’t help but shudder, the words escaped my mouth in a whisper, “God, this is like having a parasite slowly take over.”

Marci, standing close, heard. “What’s that?”

Golden hair spilling over her new, pointy ears, her wide blue eyes searching my own, I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud, giving voice to my worries and adding to hers, “Uh, nothing. It’s nothing. We’ll talk later.”

Ave walked toward the wall where the wire was attached. Touched it. “Hey, there’s an outline here. See? This stone is different.”

I went over. Held the flashlight up. She was right. The stone of the cavern abruptly stopped and a smoother, grey stone flecked with silver took over. It went from ground to ceiling, across to the other side.

“This seems like a human-made structure. Like a building was encased in the stone.”

Bent ran his hands on it, “I think you’re right. Given the silver flakes, I’m thinking some kind of hotel or fancy government building.”

“Maybe.” From where we were, the cavern ahead was wide and straight. More tunnel than cavern. “Uhm, I’m going to go back and get my staff. The sapling, I mean.”

Looking at me like I’d left my gun loaded and unattended at a playschool, Ave asked, “You didn’t bring it in the cave?”

“Well, it seemed like the cavern would narrow and it would’ve gotten stuck. Because caves aren’t straight. Except,” I looked around, “for this one, that is.”

“After all that work I spent on it, too!” Ave winked at me.

“I will fetch the stick.”

“Don’t be too long, lest Fred here finds a new rock to break his ankle on.”

“Be right back.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Marci. She unclenched her arms, took a deep breath, and led the way, hurrying along.

“Hey, hey!” I caught up to her, “Racing out of here might not be the best idea.”

“I just want fresh air one more time!”

“Marci, we’re not going to die in this quest. Dungeon? I think it might actually be an old building further down that passage.”

“You don’t know that!” She stopped, turned around to face me. “Sorry, yeah, I know. I don’t know, I just feel . . . awful. Impending dread. Great unease. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Do you want to wait outside? Set up camp, keep watch? Dylan or Bent could go with you.”

“No, no,” she rocked back and forth, from one foot to the other, “I don’t want to break up the group. I’ll be fine. I’ll keep it together.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, giving her a squeeze. “We’ll be ok.”