Mark peered out from the lip of the rock, cautiously waiting.

He had figured out a few things over the last half hour, and one of those was how to predict when the next shot was coming. Whatever kind of gun their assailant was using had a peculiar whine to it, as if it needed to charge up between shots. It had to get to a certain pitch before it could fire. And once it had been, there was almost a full second of delay before the bullet reached them.

He knew where the guy was, too. After he and Naomi had fled to the bottom, the gunman had taken up position inside the air pocket they had abandoned.

Which was a respectable move for all that Mark hated him for it. Sure, his gun might not have been all that accurate at these depths but by taking up a position inside their only known oxygen supply, that did not matter. All he had to do was wait.

He was not such a bad marksman either—however much Naomi might have thought to the contrary. Mark had played enough first-person shooters to appreciate the skill of a good sniper, and this one had managed to graze him from several hundred yards out through the open ocean. That was quite the feat.

It had hurt like a bitch, too. He felt like he had been nicked by a sword fresh from the forge. But the miscellaneous crabs and—he shuddered to remember—chopped penis clams had gone a long way toward mending his wound. Apparently, the added protein gave a temporary regeneration buff, which he was glad to have discovered despite the source.

Naomi might have thought she had fooled him, but he had caught wise to her schemes almost immediately. If she had not been so fixated on his eating them, he never would have even touched one of those things. But she had been. Even to the point of letting out little unconscious moans of delight every time he choked one of them down.

He was trying not to think about it.

Or her. Mainly her. If only that were possible. She was the kind of gorgeous that if a person were to run across her on a crowded city street, they might just be struck dumb, insensate to the crush of humanity washing over them.

He knew he had been. He felt like a gibbering moron just being in her presence. And she had touched him. Kissed him!

He shook his head, trying in vain to calm a heart that had not stopped pounding since she had—in no uncertain terms—commanded him to make love to her. He was still reeling over it. But there would be time enough for that when they weren’t about to be killed.

It was kind of amazing how much the possibility of getting laid could bolster a person’s will to live…

He tilted his head slightly, listening. The gun was almost ready.

In a flash, he lurched from their shared bit of volcanic rock and started tossing handfuls of sand into the air, as if still hunting for crabs. Mark knew their opponent would never miss the opportunity for such a tantalizing target, and sure enough, the expected bar of heat sizzled its way through the cloud of debris almost before he could make it back behind the protective outcropping.

In that brief interval of guaranteed safety, he shoved Naomi out ahead of him. She seemed confused as to what he was doing at first, but he only kept shoving and pointing. ‘Go! Go!’ She nodded, putting her webbed digits to work as she jetted away from their temporary haven.

Mark was right behind her. And above. He was not entirely certain what it was that Naomi had done to them, nor why the process had been so incremental. Something about toughening them up, she had said—from the looks of things, with layers of raw muscle. Regardless, there was no way he would allow her to suffer the pain of one of those plasma rounds—even if that meant putting his own body in harm’s way. He had to protect her!

Their destination was about two hundred yards out, at the base of the hill he had detected on first entering this oceanic cavern. Back then, he had only been able to sense it as a vague lump in the ocean’s topography. Things were much clearer now.

There was a certain… regularity to that hill. It was still quite fuzzy around the edges, but the overall shape of it was slightly too rounded to be a simple mound of dirt. And even from this distance, he could tell there was something distinctly unusual about the cave at its base.

*

Hang on. Why did they decide to break from their barricade? Where are they going?

Here, move the camera out ahead. That way…

< several seconds of silence, then gasps >

Timothy… what is that?

…?

That. Right there. On the screen. The thing our subjects are swimming toward. What is it?

…?

Exactly. So what is it doing there? You told me you had done a thorough survey of this planet!

…!

And what kind of scanner did you use? An Ack-dog with binoculars strapped to its head?! Goodness knows what’ll happen if they find anything alive in there. Or worse, if Oscar follows them.

Bloody fool. I just hope that XFD rifle runs out of charge before he gets any other bright ideas.

*

Bolt after bolt rained down from above, their alien opponent scarcely taking the time even to allow his weapon to charge. He seemed eager to finally be getting a clear shot. Or perhaps he was aware of their goal and was worried he might not get another chance. Either way, Mark felt like a loose turkey down-range of a comet-chucking competition.

Every few seconds a new streak of liquid magma would corkscrew through the water toward them. Even after penetrating so many uncounted fathoms, those bullets were still too fast and their paths too erratic to properly dodge. All Mark could do was keep swimming.

Yet despite his efforts to prevent that very thing, an errant flash of light still seared its way past his shoulder to erupt upon Naomi’s unprotected tricep. With his enhanced senses, he could easily see the anguish contorting her face. Even with her back turned. He could see her muscles seize up and down her body, tying her into knots as they instinctively attempted to push the pain away. But that was hardly the worst of it. That was reserved for the detailed view of her skin sizzling into pork rinds.

His chest instantly constricted as a petrifying mix of concern, fear, and unbridled rage flooded his body. That beast up there had mutilated her! His woman! He would kill the bastard! Whatever it took…

Fists clenched, he turned to glare while irrational fantasies of torpedoing upward, batting laser blasts aside with his bare hands, thundered through his consciousness. He would be an implacable instrument of revenge. The Kraken loosed upon the people of Argos!

But Naomi fought past the pain before he could make a move, choosing the far-less-suicidal option of fleeing toward the promised shelter. So he hastened after—this time hovering so close as to nearly touch. He could not let her suffer another attack like that. He should not have let her suffer even the one. That pain should have been his to bear!

Now that she was secured within the protective shield of his back, he examined her injury, awash with guilt. His heart ached to look at it. Her poor skin… At the point of impact, most of it had been charred away, but around the edges, it was just a bunch of mangled flesh!

Which… was still considerably less of an injury than he would have expected. Yes, it had ‘only’ been a blow to her arm, but that had been no mere graze. It was a direct hit! He had seen it happen. That gun was capable of shattering rocks! Her arm should have at least been broken… if not blown off completely. At a minimum, there should have been some muscle damage, and here she was, still using the damned thing!

How could she still be using it?! How could a person take a direct plasma round and swim away like it was nothing? She wasn’t even bleeding!

Then he noticed the strange, calcified plates the wound had exposed. They were sliding around just beneath her skin—one over each muscle—and he began to piece things together. Whatever genetic cocktail Naomi had been cooking up with her chopped penis clams had to have done more than just beef them up. It had given them literal armor—armor tough enough to sustain gunfire!

And that meant…

Mark started to grin. Perhaps his fantasies of charging the gunman were not so suicidal after all. But then he shook his head. Getting Naomi to safety had to come first.

Still, no matter how instantaneous he might have wished for that safety to come, it took them somewhere between a minute and an hour—or so the adrenaline made it seem—before they ever reached it. Yet their luck held. No other injuries were inflicted despite the continued assault from above. And eventually, the cave transitioned from some nebulous blob on the horizon to a shape of absolute clarity. A shape he now realized was not a cave at all.

It was a door! It had to be. A massive… oddly shaped door.

The thing was probably twenty feet tall and maybe half as wide. But only toward the top. There was a taper to the overall outline of the thing, making it into something of an upside-down egg in shape… or maybe a coffin.

Which was a bit of an ominous thought.

Regardless, he and Naomi scarcely hesitated in scurrying inside, chased as they were by the ever-descending balls of fiery destruction.

A quick scan of the area revealed nothing of any real help to their immediate problems beyond the simple relief of a roof over their heads. What had appeared as the entrance to some undiscovered catacomb constructed by an extinct race of giant… well, vampires, in a word… was disappointingly shallow. There was just a short hallway that came to an abrupt end at a wall, while the sides and ceiling of the enclosure maintained the angled contours of the door outside. If there was anything else of note, it had been covered by dead moss, small boulders, and sand.

Naomi paused in nursing at her wound to round on him, and he cringed, expecting the worst. She should be furious over his failure to protect her. Or barring that, there was a good chance she would want to shout at him for leading them to this apparent dead end. But she only tapped at her arm a few times and proudly grinned, as though to say, ‘See? See? Armor! I told you we would need it!’

He nodded along, a bit non-plussed, and began trying to convey his concern with his hands, ‘Are you alright, though? That looks terrible.’

For a moment, her face scrunched up with irritation, and she turned away. But then she favored him with a thoughtful glance from the corner of her eye.

‘Hurts,’ she mouthed, pouting.

He could only think to float there awkwardly. It was not like they had any painkillers, so he had no idea what she expected him to do about that…

…which brought a stinging slap across his chest, followed by quite a lot of angry gesturing. Something about her arm… questioning his intelligence… some garbled nonsense about… being raised by wolves? He wasn’t quite sure about that last part. But she ended with, ‘Hug! Now!’

He had no idea why any of that should mean he got to embrace a gorgeous and quite topless woman, but if that was what she wanted, he wasn’t about to talk her out of it. So he wrapped his arms around her diminutive shoulders and tried very… very hard not to let his mind wander toward the luscious… everything she had just pressed against him.

He failed completely, of course. Her body was everything he had ever dreamed of. With some to spare. So the moment was seared into his gray matter just as indelibly as if she had used a cattle brand.

But he did manage to keep his hands from exploring farther south. Just because she had gotten a little… uncontrollably horny the one time, that did not give him blanket permission to start groping her however he pleased. He had to be satisfied with what she allowed. Otherwise, she would think he was some kind of beast, enslaved and motivated solely by his baser instincts.

Which he was. But he could not let her know that.

After a few moments, she seemed satisfied and pushed away, though her fingers lingered upon his chest quite a bit longer than they needed to.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

‘Where are we?’ she gestured. ‘What is this place?’

He could only shrug. And pretend his dick wasn’t about to rip out of his pant leg. ‘Looked like a door from the outside,’ he returned then indicated the far wall. ‘Doesn’t seem to go anywhere, though.’

Naomi started in on a complex string of gestures. To his eyes, it seemed like she was on another of her conspiracy rants. There was something about the alien gunman. Driving them in here. Disbelief over… convenience maybe? Something about a trap?

Mark glanced about doubtfully. If it was a trap, he could not see how. The place looked like it had been abandoned for eons. But there were no convenient air pockets or anything else that might be useful in getting rid of their sniper. At best, it was a temporary solution to a larger problem.

‘Let’s look around,’ he suggested with a twirl of a finger. ‘Maybe once we scrape away some of this moss, we’ll find something along the walls here.’

With a nod, she agreed, and they began scratching and scraping away.

Mark’s detection sphere could penetrate particulate matter like sand relatively well, but the denser the object, the more stopping power it represented. Sort of like Superman’s X-ray vision, he supposed. Whatever was underneath all the muck was cutting off his ability to see completely, so—if not lead—he was at least expecting to find some carved stone or some other metal.

What they found, though…

Naomi looked up at him significantly once they cleared the debris away, apparently unsurprised. Which was ridiculous. There was no way she could have predicted this.

Because it was light. Visible light.

*

Zoom in! Get a good shot of that!

< gasps >

In all my years…

Ladies and gentlemen, we may have stumbled upon quite the find here. Ho ho! This is the kind of thing that can put a bug’s name on the map.

Quick! Someone go check the archives for any known technologies that might fit this profile. And pray you don’t!

*

It was the first light they had seen—apart from Naomi’s wrist—in what felt like days. To be sure, it wasn’t much brighter than a candle flame, but it was enough to have attracted a thriving colony of moss under the deep ocean. Perhaps that was a sign that this was far less ancient than he had initially surmised.

Maybe that was why Naomi had been so unsurprised to find it. Her specialty was in plants, after all.

As for the material…

‘What is this?’ Mark signed, tapping at the transparent surface.

Naomi’s face again assumed a look full of meaning, and she pointed skyward. ‘Aliens,’ she mouthed.

Which was not what he had been asking. But it was a fair deduction, just the same.

From what little they had managed to clear away, the surface looked to be composed of some kind of see-through material. Whether that meant it was plastic, quartz, transparent aluminum, or even a force field, he had no idea. The point was, it was just as completely invisible to the naked eye as it was opaque to his other senses. And made no sense at all.

It defied all logic! Though he could not have explained why. It was just something he felt should be true. Like an intuition. Which… was not at all how logic worked, he realized with a grimace. But never mind!

Further examination revealed that the wall presented a smooth, seamless exterior. Meanwhile, the faint light that could be seen running through it pulsed in waves along random, jagged pathways—each different from the last. It almost looked like sparks of unharnessed lightning slowed to the speed of a babbling brook.

So yes. Most definitely some kind of alien technology. But what kind? What was it for? What did it do? And could they use it? He had no answers for any of those questions, nor even a touchstone upon which he might launch an investigation.

The only thought in his head was to wonder… what might it taste like? Which was… silly. Ridiculous even to consider. Even if his teeth managed to penetrate the slick surface, he would probably just electrocute himself. He had to be experiencing some kind of misfire from his burgeoning predatory instincts.

He glanced toward Naomi out of the corner of his eye, trying to see whether she was considering it as well. However, she had moved away to begin scraping at random spots along the only vertical wall in the place, the one farthest from the entrance. Perhaps she was hoping to find a control panel or a hidden mechanism.

He settled his shoulders, immediately embarrassed. That was a much more sensible thing to be doing. Whatever this place turned out to be, there was no way their current location could account for the whole of it. The ‘hill’ outside was much too large for that. So it was almost certain that this dead-end of a hallway would turn out to be an entrance leading into a wider complex. And unless these aliens operated their machinery via telepathy, this door should have a doorknob.

Meanwhile, here he was, wondering whether he should start chewing on the walls.

Idiot.

Still… the urge wasn’t going anywhere. If anything, it was only growing stronger. And Naomi was distracted…

Furtively, he began nibbling at a corner of the moss he had picked away. It was technically alive. Or some of it was. Probably. But if they could gain benefits from fruit, there were good odds they could obtain something from plants, as well. So she would have no excuse for yelling at him.

He could only roll his eyes at himself. He felt like a kid trying to sneak a paperclip into an electrical outlet while his mom was in the other room. He knew he was being stupid. He knew he was going to get into trouble. But he had to do it anyway. He had to know.

Turning his head to spit some of the foul, spongy substance away, he knelt to begin ‘searching’ for a patch that might have been a bit fresher… and cautiously extended his tongue toward the invisible surface of the wall.

***

Naomi wanted to sigh with frustration. And she would have if only she could get away with it without popping her lungs like a train running over a basketball.

Her arm had a huge, throbbing hole in it, she had been cornered in the entry hall to an overgrown, alien bunker, and every time she tried to pull some of the stupid moss away in the vague hope of actually finding a way in, some of it would catch on her nails. They were not designed for this! Her claws were meant for tearing through flesh. Not mud!

Where was Mike? He should be helping her! Not—

She jerked in surprise as her attention zeroed in on the man she had decided would one day father her children, then whirled.

Several seconds ticked away as they floated there, staring at one another. Naomi, with her hands slowly settling into the crook of her hip in that classically feminine pose of ‘just what in the unholy hell do you think you’re doing?’

And Mike. With his tongue plastered against the wall.

His hands started flying through some unintelligible gestures, likely trying to justify himself. She had to assume it was something to do with the mostly dead and decomposing moss he kept shoving into his mouth, but if he thought they were going to get anything useful out of it, he was going to be sorely disappointed. The fill bar that had popped over his head was only barely moving. He would likely start vomiting the stuff up before an actual button appeared.

Visibly withering under the intensity of her glare, he decided to change tacks by gesturing wildly toward something beyond the confines of their shelter. But she was in no mood to hear it.

At least until she realized he had been pointing toward a streak of molten plasma corkscrewing toward them!

On instinct, she kicked away and shot toward the ceiling just as the bolt skipped off the floor and shattered against the wall she had just been beside. Frantic, she glared out into the darkness where the sniper must have been hiding.

She had been afraid of this. Yes, this little cul-de-sac of Mike’s provided excellent cover against attacks from above, but it came with the glaring flaw of being completely open on one side. All that bastard out there had needed to do was reposition.

They were sitting ducks. Fish in a barrel!

Another shot curved its way into the left-hand wall, almost taking Mike’s head off before bouncing away, ricocheting off the back, then up to the ceiling near Naomi. By that point, most of its momentum had been expended, and it gently settled to the floor where it began to cook and sizzle in a bed of moss.

Naomi stared at it, frozen. Petrified by indecision. They had to get out of here! Being targeted by those bolts was bad enough without worrying about them bouncing everywhere, too. But if they swam out again, they would be back to square one—either forced to seek shelter elsewhere or risk charging a well-armed assailant across countless fathoms of open water. Neither was a real option.

If she could just figure out how to get this stupid door open! Then they could lure the malaka inside and overpower him.

But where was the control panel? Naomi’s head swiveled about quickly, trying to find any kind of clue. She knew there had to be one somewhere, but everything was covered by that ridiculous moss! Meanwhile, all her oh-so-wonderful senses could tell her was how perfectly flat everything beneath that moss seemed to be. Did that mean she was looking for a touchscreen? An eye scanner? A god-damned alien tentacle reader? What?!

Abruptly, Mike cannoned into her just as another ball of hellfire careened into the room, but the bolt crashed against his exposed shoulder blade before he could get them clear. The force of it jerked them both spinning through the water and tore a huge chunk of his skin away.

Horrified anguish lanced through her belly at the sight. She wanted to scream. To rip at her hair. To claw and tear at anything or anyone nearby. But the target of her fury was not at hand. She could only clutch Mike’s head to her breast, trying to soothe his hurt with her sympathy while he convulsed against her.

Why had she been so foolish? A big, dumb shell would have been infinitely better than this, but in her vanity, she had discarded anything like it. And now Mike was paying the price.

Her fancy subdermal armor might have been life-saving, but too much pain was more than capable of sending a person into shock. She knew that well enough. She had experienced it herself not long before, and now she was experiencing it again, secondhand. She could feel his muscles seizing and cramping, the uncontrollable shivers wracking his body as it scrambled to protect his mind from the horrific wound.

Staying here was not an option. She had to get them out. She had to—

Another round skipped into the bunker, forcing her to twirl Mike this way and that as it ricocheted from wall to wall. But this time, one of its erratic bounces must have hit something more than just moss.

For a moment, a low kroon rattled the waters within the enclosure. Then… something… slid neatly through her awareness, slicing the ocean outside completely from her view.

Then all was silent.

Many seconds < flicker > away while she floated there, Mike’s limp body clutched fearfully to her chest. She was not entirely certain what had just happened, but they seemed… marginally safer than they had been. However, as the silence < flicker, static > a new worry began to burble in her chest—that perhaps they might have exchanged one disaster for another.

Whatever reaction that gunman had managed to trigger from this alien bunker, it had < flicker, flicker > closing them off from the exterior. So they were safe. But unless something else happened, and soon, they would be doomed to slowly suffocate within this mossy grave.

If she could just find that < static >. Maybe where that plasma round had hit? But that could wait for at least a little while. First, she needed to check on Mike.

Like her own wound, his back was showing only faint signs of bleeding despite the loss of skin. And his armored plates seemed… intact… for all that she < static, flicker, black > be visible. So, he must have taken the bullet at an angle oblique enough to deflect it away rather than suffer its full impact. However grisly his injury might have looked, it did not appear immediately life-threatening.

So why was he so still? Did he faint from the < flicker, horizontal bars >?

Anxiously, she gripped him by the head and pulled him up… only to discover the jerk both < flicker > and grinning from ear to ear. And given where his face had been not a moment before, she could well imagine why.

Psh… men. Give them an inch, and they’ll be skipping on daisies for a week.

She could have slugged him.

But still mindful of his < static >, she opted to flick his nose instead. ‘Jackass!’ she gesticulated. ‘How dare you fake being unconscious! Do you have any idea how < static >?’

From the dreamy smile still on his face, he was not quite done with his frolicking. Which was mollifying. < static, flick, flick, buzz > …let him think this was acceptable behavior, so with a smile of her own, she began edging closer.

Claws splay—

< buzz, flick >

*

Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!

Why now?

Come on, people! Everyone on deck! We need solutions. That hatch is interfering with the signal to our camera drone. There has to be a way to boost it!

Bloody Oscar!

I swear to all that is holy, if we lose the chance to document the inside of that thing because of this, I will personally pluck your antennae from the top of your head and feed them to you!