Before being pulled into darkness by the unstoppable force of dragging, even with the oxygen mask and protective hood of the suit on, Adam closed his eyes as a reflex and squeezed his mouth shut so that nothing would get in there.

He felt the warmth of the substance, submerging him completely, holding him tightly, and then he experienced what it was like to be swept away by a current, something similar to what it would have felt to have been inside a washing machine: Spin around, and around, and around; besides repeated blows against something hard: the ground; then against something harder: surely one of the dome’s steel rafters, and a lot of muscle strains caused by such an impulse. However, the most horrible thing was the feeling of suffocation and the fear of continuing to spin and spin around until the end came for him.

This is where I’m gonna die!

Malin managed to move an arm while being dragged and threw a Photia with the naïve intention that her energy would have some effect on the goo. Of course, her ball of light disappeared into that purple ocean, and the frenzy continued.

The hot avalanche swept them across the eighty-something feet between the rock and the edge of the clearing, leaving them bruised on the ground at the foot of the first line of trees in the forest.

Once the onslaught was over, the substance retracted itself to the Ita-Hu, moving backward as if it were in reverse motion, returning to its puddle shape under the hole from which it had come out, and leaving a viscous film as a remnant on the cracked ground.

Malin had ended up banging her back against a tree. The impact had sucked the air out of her lungs, causing excruciating pain that numbed her muscles, beginning with those at her lower waist, and held her paralyzed for a moment.

Leaning on her knees, she waited until she caught her breath and slowly got to her feet; she didn’t want to get another lash of pain. She stopped feeling her head was a spinning top and realized her gas mask had somehow come off her face, even having the suit’s hood above it. The stench of the goo, which was a hundred times stronger than that of hot tar, mixed with the smell of melted plastic from the dome and the raised dirt, penetrated her nose, injecting a pungent sensation into her throat.

And then, when she could focus her vision, she noticed that the stain in front of her eyes, in the visor of her hood, was not a residue of that thing, but a crack.

She cursed, crossing her fingers, begging that her bracelet detectors had been right about the absence of bacteriological danger. Then, with a racing heart, she searched for other tears in his suit. At first glance, beyond the white fabric being covered with that viscous residue, her suit had resisted the mistreatment of the fall and the heat of the goo.

A few feet away from her was Reed, rolled on the ground in a position so twisted no human could imitate, and covered in that oily residue.

“Halstein, do you copy?” she asked.

Apparently, no. There was only static in her ears. The lurch must have damaged the transmitters, or…

She looked at her bracelets; they were dead. Not only had her transmitters been damaged, but her suit’s electronics must have been damaged by an overload.

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Adam, carrying the weight of the blows on his body, recovered from the purple tar tsunami, groaning in pain. He staggered between the sunlight that fell on the clearing, now open to the sky, and the shadows of the first trees of the forest until he regained his sense of balance.

His belly was burning, he had it scratched when he fell to the ground; and upon rubbing it, he discovered that while he was unharmed, his chemical protective clothing had a large tear in the hip area. ‘As long as you wear the suits, there’s nothing to be afraid of,’ the red-haired biologist had said. When did the suit get ripped? Had it been torn when scraping against the floor? Against one of the fallen rafters? Or maybe—?

Oh, no. Panic seized him. Contaminants that may have escaped from the black rock could now be eating the cells in his body.

And then he felt something; something that made him forget the possibility of succumbing to a deadly virus. The shudder in his stomach was gone, and under his pants, something sticky and lukewarm was dripping down his crotch. Oh, for goodness’ sake! Had the shaker dilated his sphincter without his consent?

How would he face the battalion of scientists and the arrogant Halstein if he had his pants stained with shit?

He looked down and discovered what was slipping between his butt and thigh. The purple goo had seeped through the crack in his suit and got embedded in the green sweatpants he wore underneath; right in his groin area, moistening his skin. Having shit on him would have been far better than that!

Forgetting any muscle pain, Adam put his gloved hands through the cut in the suit and tore off the dirty piece of the tracksuit. As he tugged, a few drops of amethyst splattered his bare thigh, and he desperately wiped himself with his gloved hand.

“Malin…” he called to her, trying to appear calm, though the terror was escaping his eyes.

“Easy,” she said. “I don’t think the goo is toxic.”

Malin, who had also been exposed, knew there was no use wearing the suit anymore, and to give her words more credibility, she took off her damaged hood and the gas mask. Leaving her face in the open air, she shook her golden hair so that the little breeze that was blowing would dry out the sweat that ran down her flushed cheeks.

Following her example, Adam removed his hood and the transparent mask and, fed up with discomfort and heat, he dared more. He yanked off his rubber boots; unfastened the adhesive straps of the suit, somewhat disgusted by the oily film covering the fabric, unzipped it, and took it off completely, quickly tossing it to the floor as if he would catch the plague if he didn’t. He put his boots back on so he wouldn’t be barefoot.

He used the gloves to wipe every last drop of that horrible pasty liquid off his thigh, then disgustedly discarded them; he had thought about leaving them on, but in addition to being dirty, they were torn in the palm area, and the computer screen of the bracelet was cracked; there was no reason to keep them. Checked that there were no marks left on him and looked at other parts of his body; nothing, luckily. His sweatpants had earned a scratch, but it was a low price compared to what might have happened. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked at Malin.

“You say they’ll sue us for ruining the suits?” he asked and let loose a giggle that decompressed the ball of nerve and adrenaline that was stuck in his throat.

Malin responded with a similar smile, and she got rid of her suit as quickly as with delicacy, leaving only her boots on, just like Adam did, but she kept her gloves on. The synthetic fabric of hers had resisted scratches, and it was best not to remove them in case she was forced to touch something like that horrible goo. Digging into the suit’s tool belt, she took out the plastic vial with the fragment she’d collected, which luckily had withstood the blows, and put it in her jeans pocket. After what happened, the sample had lost interest, but a mission was a mission, and that was what they had come looking for.

Her heart was pounding, racing, and the pain from the bruises received was noticed. Still, she folded her suit and left it on the floor next to Adam’s—which was all bunched up. At some point, one of Halstein’s explorers would come and pick them up.

Well, it was time to go back. But…

Plop, slop, plop, slop!