They lost contact with Niamh and Brannigan at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Darien knew from the second he tried the communications channel and received a thick crackle of static for his trouble. Tiny bursts of what sounded like speech came back after his initial broadcast, but nothing intelligible. The three operatives were thoroughly on their own.

It wasn't the first time. Idas and Hekket simply looked at him, straightened their backs and squared their shoulders in preparation for what lay ahead. He tried not to think about Amber, lost or dead somewhere in the ruin – if he didn't keep his mind off of her he'd crumble before any of them could make it out of the place in one piece. Instead he did what a Blink Squad Leader had to do – he carried on with the mission.

These lower levels were much darker, with many of the lighting nodes having failed or fallen from their housings. They fanned out in a triangular formation, with Darien leading the way, working mechanically through the series of directions Brannigan had provided. Further evidence of the shock from the quake manifested around them, with huge cracks having formed along the interior walls. Still, the main structure seemed intact, so they pressed on.

It wasn't long before they ran into the flooded section that Brannigan had warned them about. Without the main lights functioning properly the water looked like ink, black and impenetrable to the naked eye. The three operatives exchanged looks before Darien wordlessly reached into his pack for his breather mask and goggles.

"Damn it all," Idas muttered. "I'll never go the beach again at this rate."

With a grim smile Darien led his two comrades down into the dark, freezing depths. He bit back a gasp as the cold enveloped him and blackness closed in. The thin lights of the mono-rigs and torches carved into the gloom to lead the way. Dark rooms and more crevices littered the passage and he remained constantly wary. Any one of those dark recesses might hide yet more unpleasant surprises for the operatives.

He glided gently on, trying not to disturb the water any more than he had to, keeping his movements slow and smooth as he scanned the dark recesses. The motion tracker showed only the three operatives for the moment, but he didn't take that as an absolute indicator. His eyes roved constantly from the tracker and up around the walls.

Mercifully, this watery path only extended a hundred meters and the three operatives made it to the exit at its far end. Even when he caught sight of the rippling surface, however, Darien didn't relax. He eased the micro-jets up a gear, eager to be out of the frigid water and in possession of his full senses once again.

He emerged from the water without so much as a splash, rising up like a wraith and aiming down the iron-sight of his carbine. He scanned left and right, moving forward as Idas and Hekket both surfaced on either side of him. Water sloshed around his legs as he waded up the stairway and out into the next hallway.

Then they stopped.

Darien's jaw tightened when he saw the huge, scattered forms that littered the passageway. Much too large to be human, they could only be corpses of the city's former inhabitants. His cast his torch light over them. Sure enough they resembled the hologram, though these bodies looked much thinner, little more than husks despite their size. He made a small chopping motion forward with his right hand.

"I hope Churchwood and his crew are getting a good look at this," Hekket murmured as they crept closer.

The corpses were badly decayed, but being sealed inside the clean environment of the city for the past millennia left them better preserved than Darien would have thought possible. He wished they had just rotted to skeletons. At least then the unmistakable stench of necrotic flesh wouldn't have hung around them like a poisonous cloud. He grimaced, but stepped close nonetheless to examine the bodies. Four white globular eyes stared sightlessly out from the face of the nearest body, the edges of them shimmering with some kind of waxy slime. The vertical aperture of its mouth hung open. Inhuman as it was, Darien could have sworn that it was a look of terror.

"What in the hell...?" Hekket dropped to one knee beside it, his face a mask of confusion. "Doesn't look like our friends died from natural causes."

"What?"

"Look."

Darien followed the line of the medic's torch beam and it revealed two fist-sized punctures in the fallen alien's chest plating, ringed with a dry, purplish stain. Hekket peered closer to scrutinize the incisions.

"It looks like some kind of machine punched those holes," he said, shaking his head. "A machine or...well, maybe some local wildlife we haven't come across yet. They're identical – evenly spaced. And look at the body. It looks...shrivelled."

"The others are the same," Idas commented as he moved around the rest of the corpses. "All of them have the same wounds – looks like somethin' sucked them dry."

"Any idea what it could be?" Darien asked.

Hekket shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, I can't say anything for certain. All I'll say is that time didn't do that. Something killed these poor bastards. The bigger question is whether whatever did it is still around for seconds."

"Let's hope not."

"Hey guys, what do you reckon this does?"

Darien looked up sharply to find Idas holding what looked like an alien weapon that he had liberated from one of the bodies. It looked comically oversized even for him, with a wide barrel twice the length of a normal carbine and he struggled to grip it properly, the trigger mechanism never having been designed to fit his human hands.

"Are you sure you should be messing around with that?" Darien asked, standing up slowly.

Idas considered it for a moment. "Well I lost my jackhammer and I don't fancy running into another one of those giant lobsters with nothing but a side-arm."

"Can you even aim that thing?"

"One way to find out." Stepping clear of them, Idas awkwardly placed the weapon up against this shoulder, the enormous stock extending almost halfway down his torso. He widened his stance, bracing for what was sure to be a tremendous kickback, and squeezed the trigger between two fingers and his thumb.

A high pitched crack rang out through the passageway and Darien just registered a line of searing white as it flashed from the weapon's huge muzzle and impacted against one of the walls. The jolt from the discharge knocked Idas off balance, but he managed to keep his feet. Letting the massive barrel drop, he looked wide-eyed at the result.

The area where the white blast had struck had turned into a smouldering, molten crater the almost a metre across. Melted rock dripped down to sizzle against the damp on the floor. Idas looked from the crater to the weapon and back again.

"Space me," he whispered.

"Do me favour if you're going to keep that thing," Darien said, trying to hide his amazement.

"Mhm?"

"For God's sake be careful."

*

The journey through the depths continued without incident as they traipsed through the labyrinthine arrangement of passages. Hekket moved with his mapper, working up a floor plan as best he could, while Darien kept his motion tracker close to hand. Idas didn't have a free hand as he opted to lug the alien cannon around with him. In different circumstances Darien might have overruled his friend, but right now, alone in the dark recesses of an alien city with potentially hostile gigantic sea creatures lurking in the shadows, he was quite happy to have some extra fire-power on their side.

Finally they emerged from the catacomb-like maze into a huge, arched passageway that matched Brannigan's description of a loading tunnel. Despite everything, Darien smiled. Part of him still thought the new recruit might not be cut out for Blink duty, but right now she was certainly making a good case for getting a second chance. Her directions had been perfect.

The corridor loomed overhead, but it lacked the same monolithic quality as the upper halls. This one was shaped more like a long fat tube, with supporting ribs running down either wall at much more regular intervals. Even though now they must have been closing in on the epicentre of the quakes this structure seemed undamaged, heavily reinforced against any kind of stress. He also noticed four long rows of silver discs glinting in the dim twilight. They looked like the devices that powered the city's elevators, but much larger, and they ran up and down the centre of the passage like a set of tracks.

Looking around, he saw to his amazement that two other similarly massive reinforced tunnels linked up to this one from other areas in the city. He remembered the hologram speaking of mass haulers moving material to the Coring Well. Were these huge hallways actually some kind of alien conveyor belt?

A dull scraping sound echoed out from one of the small connecting passages, causing all three operatives to snap their weapons up into a ready posture. Darien's brow furrowed but he couldn't pinpoint which dark aperture the noise had come from.

"There's motion out there," Hekket whispered. Beside him, Idas let the alien rifle drop and jerked his head in the direction of the Coring Well.

"Dunno about you guys," he said. "But I've just about had enough of getting stalked around in the dark. Let's get out of here."

"Sounds good to me," Darien agreed. "You take point. Double time."

They didn't need to be told twice. Idas took off at a run down the massive tunnel, following the gleaming silver disc tracks. Darien set off in hot pursuit, and glancing down at his motion tracker as he ran, he saw Hekket was right. The device showed no less than three other readings, faint but definite. The city walls again made the signatures difficult to define, but at least they didn't seem to be any closer this time. Right now he didn't care what they were – he just wanted them to keep their distance.

Their clatter of their booted feet rolled into an echoing din as they went. Stuffing the motion tracker back into his combat vest, Darien let a little bit of the fear and adrenaline seep through his system, letting the bottled up emotions leak out and manifest in the energy with with he bolted down the passage. His companions must have been doing the same as without any orders being given they slowly increased their pace until all three of them were pelting headlong down the passage, propelled along by an unseen but definite presence. Only when a colossal stone barrier reared its head in front of them at the end of the passage did they clatter to a halt.

"I guess this must be it," Hekket said between heavy breaths, letting his head rock back as he took in the enormous structure. While the walls around it bore signs of strain, the door of the Coring Well itself stood firm – a colossal slab of circular stone fifty metres in diameter, etched with a sea of murals all around it. Slap bang in the centre Darien was unsurprised to find another image of the spider-creature that seemed to follow them everywhere they went.

"Bloody hell," Idas murmured. "We'd better hope the mechanism's working. Either that or we find a fifteen megaton battering ram."

Darien nodded his agreement. "What say we find out?"