Having Adam in front of her, Malin couldn’t see what was happening; therefore, couldn’t understand the reason behind those startled moans in her hood’s communicators. Adam’s shock made her think he had hurt himself with one of the crystals; with so many sharp points in there and so little room to move your hand, it wasn’t difficult for that to happen.
“What’s going on?”
“It moved,” Adam replied, who was still with his face tucked into the hole.
Malin got worried. “What moved?”
Adam repeated what he had done; he needed to check what had happened. He lowered his hand and touched the purple tar with the flaming tentacles of his Photia. The liquid mass responded to the stimulus and rose again in that same place.
Wherever Adam posed his Photia, the volume of the liquid amethyst—or whatever the hell it was—increased. It was as if the white fire attracted it in the same way that a magnet attracts iron, or that a piece of meat attracts a horde of piranhas.
Until the amethyst stopped following the electric fire, and its surface stirred so much that it began to bubble, creating little domes of air that burst one after the other, giving off gases and causing a repulsive sound. It was as if someone had lit an underground stove under the rock to bring the substance to a boil.
Adam’s curiosity turned to fear. For goodness’ sake! What was going on? This time, he had really screwed it up! What would Halstein say about him if—? Well, and what did that matter now?! That possibly toxic broth was boiling so hot that at any moment it would overflow from the pan, and he wouldn’t leave his hand there to have it burned. He stepped back and walked away from the Ita-Hu.
Even without understanding what was happening, Malin followed him; then she heard the hiss caused by steam escaping from a boiling substance and knew why Adam had backed off. Those flatulence noises came from a single place. She stopped looking for the answer in his partner, turned to see the open mouth of the Ita-Hu and found it spitting out its dark slime. The purplish substance gushed from the hole, past the glass teeth, and slid down the rocky deck like putrefying lava from a volcano.
“A severe case of geological gingivitis,” Malin commented, watching that goo spread across the floor.
Neither Halstein, nor Anderson, nor Luciano Green uttered a word. Their guides were speechless; perhaps the surprise had silenced them. Likewise, they didn’t need someone to advise them to distance themselves from Ita-Hu; doing so was pure self-preservation instinct. Saliva or blood, it didn’t matter; the substance was repulsive, and they had to be careful not to come into contact with it.
The Ita-Hu finished expelling all the substance it kept inside, leaving a large purple puddle on the floor in front of it. The last drop to come out remained hanging from the orifice like the slimy trail of a nose after a sneeze. The spot of desert soil in the middle of the jungle had gained a new presence. In its center was the immense black egg, and exposed next to it, its entrails.
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“What happened?” Malin asked.
Adam was grossed out, and his partner’s inquisitive look added anxiety to that little guilt he felt for having caused that disgusting show. “It’s that—I’ve…” he tried to explain. The twisting that had seized his intestines earlier in the morning returned, so he shook his head and, taking his partner by the arm, pointed to the exit of the dome. “Look, we already have what we came for. Let’s go!”
But before going back, he took one last look over his shoulder at the pool of amethyst and he froze. It’d moved again. The substance had moved again, and this time without being stirred by his flames.
And the unexpected happened.
With the force of a geyser in full eruption, the thick mass projected itself into the air like a liquid column, reaching the dome’s cusp and piercing it with its temperature, eating the translucent fabric as quickly as a flame disintegrates a plastic bag. An effervescent sound, and within seconds, the tent was roofless.
The burnt scraps of the cover rained down on Adam and Malin, who had not yet come out of their surprise.
The tower of purple tar, standing like a cobra enchanted by a magician’s flute, made flatulent noises, revolved its neck in the heights, and struck the structure of the dome. The skeleton of the dome wobbled, creaking, and a rattle of loose screws joined that clanking orchestra, announcing the rafters would soon collapse.
“Watch out!” Malin shouted and shielded herself with her arms. Moving while everything was falling around her wasn’t wise.
The steel rafters came loose from their joints and fell to the ground, raising a curtain of dust, taking with them the airtight door and what was left of the plastic cover that had not disintegrated before. The structure fell apart, opening like a flower in spring, leaving the tar post standing in the center like a pistil.
The men in gray, who were outside the dome watching how everything fell apart, witnessed the violent manifestation of the substance and they soon left their posts and went lost into the jungle.
Reed, however, didn’t move; like a faithful servant, the android remained static in place, facing the fallen door. Either way, he wouldn’t have moved from there if there had been someone who ordered him to. By the time the Ita-Hu had exposed its guts within the still intact dome, the Cyclops’ processors had stopped working—with the racket, none of the agents with him had heard the crackling of his microcircuits as they burned; and now that the substance was rising to the sky, his capacitors exploded underneath his silicone and metal muscles, one after another, and smoke escaped through his joints.
The red light in Reed’s huge eye went out at the same time that the isolated and safe space the dome had represented ceased to exist.
If Ita-Hu had concealed a virus or bacteria that the detectors on Adam’s and Malin’s bracelets hadn’t picked up, at that moment, that threat must have been spreading in the jungle. That was terrible, yes; though for the two of them, there was another problem more immediate than a loose virus, and it was the smoking column of liquid amethyst that now threatened to fall on them.
Shrouded in an atrocious shadow, Malin shot a glance at Adam, who got the message immediately. Then he tried to fly but couldn’t. Kappa radiation still maintained the zone of intensified gravity.
“Hurry!” Malin shouted, and they ran into the woods for cover.
The intensified gravity bound the strength of their thighs; the extra weight they carried on their feet didn’t allow them to move with the speed they needed. They wouldn’t have escaped in time, either. Adam and Malin looked over their shoulders; the gigantic pillar of tar began to collapse, casting a darkening shadow over them. They had the substance almost on top of them. There was nothing they could do now but hope that the blow was not as devastating as it promised to be and that their suits resisted the temperature of that smoking mass, which, it seemed, was quite high.
The impact threw them face to the ground and swept them away like a violent wave in the sea.