"How long do you think is this thing?"

The Captain asks desperately.

He has been watching Rayne in silence in the past 10 or so minutes as she kept her arms inside the oozing exposed flesh of the worm. Her face is slightly lit by the bright flashlight reflecting from the exposed oozing flesh of the worm.

"The calculations were wrong. It is way longer than a kilometer."

The Captain looks around, outside of the flashlight; his eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. The enormous corpus of the worm extends meters beyond the limited reach of the flashlight; the slightly reddish night sky cast shadows on the curvatures of the snow-covered mountain. He is certain some of those curvatures are the half-buried body of the worm. It has not moved in the past 10 minutes, or at least he hopes.

"How far did you say your device can scan inside the flesh for...whatever it is you're looking for?"

"I'm looking for the central nervous system. Around 12 meters."

The woman sounds calm, the desperate look on her face has now vanished; she looks determined. The Captain can see small drops of blood on her face. He sighs in discomfort and scans their surroundings, adjusting his eyes again to the darkness. As far as he knows, the worm can be kilometers long; "this will take forever." He looks back at the eyes of the white-haired woman. This is the first time he can see their color. He only paid attention to their color once when they were in the monitor hall; they seemed to reflect the monitors. Now, under the indirect light of her flashlight, he can see that they are... grey?

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The woman looks calm and focused. She has not said a word for the past hour or so. He has been removing the rocky scales of the worm for her, 20 or so meters apart, exposing the flesh. It would slowly start oozing red blood, and the woman would push both her arms into its flesh, holding a triangular device in her right hand. Each time, the worm would immediately jitter, shaking the ground under their feet, and go back to laying motionless once Rayne stopped pushing, halfway to her shoulders.

The Captain's mind cannot stop racing; his gut feeling has never let him down, and right now, it is screaming at his brain. He can't stop analyzing the situation, even though there isn't much to analyze. The mission is simple: keep scanning for the central nervous system, which seems to be the only vulnerable part of the monster. And find it before the damn thing wakes up. No matter how he analyzes the situation, his life and his entire crew's, hang on the weird triangular device inside the woman's fist. He is certain she was carrying it in the pouch fitted to the curvature of her lower back when they were riding the worm on that near-death roller coaster. "What else is she hiding in the pouch?"

Wooooosh

She pulls her arms out in a violent motion. The worm jitters and they feel the shaking through the snow under their feet. Blood dripping from her arms, she walks and scans the worm, then points to a one of the giant scales "This one".

The Captain removes his knife from one of the many holsters on his belt, pulls it under the scale, uses it as a lever and lifts it. The exposed flesh bleed and the woman repeats the same action: pushing her arms deep into the flesh. "This is going to take forever."

Suddenly, the Captain feels a part of the shadows moving. His heart sinks. He scans the giant curvatures mixed with the mountain behind them; it is too dark to see. He reaches for a pouch on his belt and, this time removes his brass lighter. Click! The purple flame lights up parts of the mountain in front of him. The giant creature seems to be motionless. He sharpens his ears. Nothing. Was he imagining?