She rolled over on her side, groaning, unsure what had happened. The skin on her face and the places on her arms that hadn’t been covered by her shirt felt tight, like she had been standing too close to a fire.

That made her think about the time in chemistry class when some of the jocks had been screwing around with the bunsen burner. They’d caused a sudden flareup. One had lost an eyebrow.

Flareup… No. An explosion?

The sparks.

Cracking open her eyes, Morgan looked around. Thick, black smoke filled the small cave and obscured her vision. Something nearby thrashed wildly. It took a second for her eyes to focus.

It was the dark-furred wolf.

Shock cleared out the last of the confusion from her mind. She scrambled to her feet, then almost immediately fell on her butt again. Her balance was seriously messed up.

“Al!” she called, and it was like her voice was trapped underwater. A high pitched whine sang through both ears, like she had been next to something very loud.

Slowly, a theory started to take form. The gas that had spilled out of the globe must have been flammable, and she had accidentally lit a spark with the glowing rock.

She had been very lucky that most of the gas had already escaped the globe, and that she had been standing at least ten yards away. It could have easily been become a bomb. Only luck had kept her uninjured.

Where the Knowledge Transfer Device once stood was now a smoking ruin.

Or, maybe not. Now that her senses were returning, she was aware of the pulsing pain from her right wrist, and she couldn’t flex her hand. Blood trickled down both arms from the scratches from earlier. She was a mess.

Clutching her wrist with her good hand, Morgan staggered back up to her feet. The nearby wolf was trying to do the same, but he looked even more dazed than she felt. Its human like hands clutched at its ears which were bleeding red.

Morgan didn’t hesitate. She lurched into a stumbling run and kicked it, hard. It yelped a lot like a dog and fell back. If she were in any other frame of mind, she would’ve felt guilty. Instead, she leaned back and kicked it again right in the ribs.

That was for the Yellow Crests.

Grimacing, still holding bleeding ears between its hands, it cringed away.

She let it go and looked around. “Al?” she croaked. “Al?”

A high-pitched whine caught her attention. It came from the crumpled mass of feathers against the wall. She hurried over to him, heart in her throat. Broken bones were deadly to his people. “Al? Are you okay? Can you get up?”

He made a noise, shaking his head back and forth. Not in a negative gesture, but out of confusion. The explosion had knocked him for a loop as well. She wished she could give him time, but she had no idea where the second wolf was, and the explosion had to have attracted attention.

They had to get out of here.

She helped him to his feet with her good hand. He was able to stand, and nothing seemed broken. Not like her wrist.

“Are you okay?” she repeated

“I… think…” He shook his head again as if to dislodge a buzzing fly. “What was that?”

“An explosion,” she said brusquely. “We need to leave.”

The bugout bag had managed to stay on her shoulders, which was good considering she didn’t have time to find it. Together, she and Al made their way out.

The floor both inside the cave and just outside was blackened with soot. All things considered, she was glad to still have eyebrows, though her hair felt a little crispy and the edges on some of Al’s feathers curled inward.

They found the big gray wolf outside the entrance, either knocked out cold or dead.

She hoped he was dead. It had been standing right in the middle of the fog and had taken the brunt of the fire. Raw red skin, blistered and burned, went up its legs. The Yellow Crest feathers it wore around his neck smoked faintly. The wolf didn’t stir, and she and Al didn’t pause to check on him.

By the sound of the howls, more wolves were coming, but the smoke still pouring out the room helped obscure their escape.

Al seemed to become more alert the further the away they got, though Morgan had to repeat herself a few times to get any answer. His eyes were half slid shut from smoke irritation, and his voice was raspy as he said, “I want to go home.”

Her heart clenched. “Yeah. That makes two of us. Any ideas on how to get out of here?”

He wriggled his upper body in negation. “I don’t know. Follow the fresh air?”

She stopped. “You can smell fresh air?”

“You can’t?” He raised his muzzle and took in a couple of short breaths. “The smoke gets thinner in that direction.” He pointed to a pathway to the right.

She started to grin, but then winced as the movement pulled against heat-chapped lips. “I guess your nose is a lot better than mine. Come on.”

* * *

Either she and Al weren’t the main target for the invasion, they didn’t pose enough threat, or the blown up Knowledge Transfer Device took all the wolves’s attention, because they weren’t followed from the cave. At least, not that Morgan could tell.

Morgan’s wrist started to swell up, purple and blue, and ached every time she jostled it. Definitely broken. Gritting her teeth, she tucked it against her chest. There was nothing wrong with her legs, and right now they had to put as much distance between themselves and the wolves as possible.

News had clearly spread about the invasion. The deeper they went into the city, the more Stone Seekers they saw. Some honked questions at them from within the watery pools. Morgan tried to reply, but of course they didn’t have her language. Eventually, they gave up and swam away.

Al ignored them completely. From a few pointed comments, Morgan got the impression he considered them traitors for inviting the wolves into their cities at all.

One thing was for certain: If the Stone Seekers were able to repel the wolves from the city, they were going to be beyond pissed that she had destroyed the Knowledge Transfer Device.

Not Mud Bubble, though, she thought with a quick flash of grief. She hadn’t had time to process his death, and wasn’t sure what she expected to feel when she had time to sit down and think about him. She hadn’t been sure if he considered her a student, a friend, or just a weird science project. Either way, he hadn’t deserved to die like that.

Neither had the Yellow Crests.

“This way,” Al said, taking another twisting path. She was glad he led the way because she had become totally lost.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. The pathways head and behind were totally deserted, and there wasn’t so much as a ripple in any of the ponds and canals. She wasn’t sure if this part of the city was abandoned, or if everyone was hiding.

Then, without warning, every softly glowing rock set into every wall and along every pathway, dimmed out and died. She and Al were plunged into a blackness so absolute she could almost feel it pressing in on her.

The world had narrowed to sound: The gentle slosh of water and, distantly, howls of wolves.

They didn’t sound victorious. They sounded angry. Someone had cut the lights, and she was willing to bet it hadn’t been the invaders.

Al shifted, and Morgan realized she had reached out to cling to him with her good hand, her fingers sunk deep in his feathery back.

“Oh no, no, no…” She had never feared the dark before, but until now she hadn’t realized what true darkness could be like. Even in the depth of night on Earth there had always been some sort of light somewhere. Now, she literally could not see a hand in front of her face. “What now?”

He didn’t sound concerned at all. “We keep going.”

“How? I can’t see a thing!”

“You have ears.”

“How is that—” She stopped. Duh. Al’s people lived in tunnels. The sudden lack of light had startled him, but he’d adjusted in an instant. Did he have echolocation? She had no idea, but whatever he used, she didn’t have it. “Al, I can’t tell where I’m going without light.”

The stone pathways were treacherously narrow. One wrong step and she would go tumbling off into unknown waters. The yellow stuff hat been bad enough. Some of those pools were dangerous looking colors.

Al made a low sound in his throat, a sort of long, extended buurrrrr. It was a noise of reassurance. “I’ll guide us both.”

“Okay,” she squeaked. She didn’t have a choice.

Al began to walk. Fingers digging into his soft feathers, Morgan stepped with him.

She didn’t know how long they walked like that. There was no way to tell time, but her aching, sore body told her it had to have been hours. She suspected she had a light burn after all because her face and the skin on her arms itched. Or maybe that had been the yellow stuff.

Much worse were the haunting sounds she heard in the dark. Once or twice, she could have sworn she heard breathing as if a wolf had come up from behind them.

Al said he didn’t hear anything, and she forced herself to believe him. But they both caught the sounds of water sloshing as if there were Stone Seekers moving within the pools. When she or Al called out, no one replied.

Then, abruptly, Al halted in place. “The pathway ends here.” He kept his voice as low as a whisper even though at that moment it felt like they were the only two people in the world. “I can smell fresh air straight ahead, but I don’t see a way forward.”

Morgan dragged in a deep breath. She thought she could smell clean air. Maybe. Or she was fooling herself with hope.

“Is there a door or something?” Tentatively, she stretched out her good hand, and then startled back.

A wall of stone stood not a foot away. Like most things in this place, it was slick and wet as if covered in algae.

She was so ready to get out of the Stone Seeker City.

Curious, she ran her hand up and down, trying to get a sense of what she was facing. Her fingers brushed a rough, plant-like substance. She pressed it, and her fingers sunk to the wrist. Pulling her hand back, she rubbed one tiny leaf between her fingers and got the impression of rough ferns, only in miniature.

“I think we’ve found an old tunnel, but it’s grown in with plants.”

Al nudged her aside, and with ripping sounds, his claws took care of the plant stuff. “It’s clearer inside.”

“So… maybe it’s an old entrance to the city?” One long abandoned and forgotten about, and camouflaged by plants. She would have never found it without Al’s nose, and she doubted the water-loving Stone Seekers had the same sense of smell. “There could be anything living in there.”

“There is a whole war-pack of wolves back the way we came,” Al said dryly.

Morgan took an unsteady breath. “Yeah. Good point. I’ll go first.”

She took out her box cutter and gripped the handle in her teeth. It would be hard crawling through with only one hand, but she would manage. Plus, she wanted Al to guard their backs in case something was following them.

Trying not to think about what kind of creepy alien bugs probably made their home in wet stone tunnels, she pushed her way in.

It was for the best she couldn’t see. The bottom of the tunnel was filled with wormy… things that squirmed unpleasantly against her hand and knees. Biting back a scream, she put her good hand down, squishing what she could, and pulled herself forward.

“I hate this place,” she muttered from around the box cutter. “I hate it, I hate, I hate it…”

There was a crunching sound from behind her. “Not bad,” Al decided. He’d obviously given the worms a taste-test. “A little wriggly on the way down.”

Morgan let out a sound that was half a laugh, half a sob, and took another crawling step.

Between the low ceiling and her busted wrist, it was slow going. Old matted plant material came away and rained down on her whenever she accidentally brushed her shoulders or the top of her head against it. It felt like something squirmed in her hair, but when she reached up to brush it away, her fingers came up empty.

At least the tunnel seemed to be curving upward.

“Not far now,” Al decided.

“How can you tell?”

He made a disgusted noise. “Are you that nose-blind?”

She shut her eyes and inhaled, but could only smell damp earth, oil from her trip in the yellow pool, her own fear-sweat, and the rot of plant-life. Then, reopening her eyes, she stared.

Was that a slightly grayer patch ahead?

Hope sent new life through her limbs. She inched forward, putting her good hand down and pulling herself along. Once, twice, three more times. The gray patch grew closer.

“Al! I see it! I see the opening!”

And now she could pick out the edges of the tunnel, rough with centuries of fallen-in rocks and debris. Morgan shoved it away with the flat of her hand. With the feeling of a deep diver finally breaching surface, she stuck her head out and breathed deeply of fresh air.

It was night time with a thick, wet layer of fog obscuring the moon and stars. The sky had been the gray patch. Around her stood the cold, damp Stone Seeker swamp above the city. She had never been so glad to see it.

She cleared the tunnel and Al pulled himself up next, shaking out his feathers in distaste. He was covered with streaks of brown mud from the close tunnel walls.

At least, she hoped it was mud.

Standing, Morgan looked around… and saw why the Stone Seekers were doomed.

There was a movement out in the far distance. Like a churning along the deep gray horizon. She squinted, but it wasn’t until the wind carried the sound of a distant bark that she understood.

She was looking at the silhouette of the army of wolves, made tiny by distance.

Raising her good hand, she pointed them out to Al and said, “Looks like they’re surrounding the upper part of the entrance pool, just pouring more soldiers in.”

Al growled, but bobbed his head in agreement. “The wind is in our favor, blowing their scent this direction, but that can change.”

They exchanged a glance.

There was the good chance there was a massacre going on beneath their feet. Unless there were more exit tunnels like the one she and Al had found, the Stone Seekers were trapped. But there was nothing she or Al could do about that. They had to get away.

Morgan was tired. Her wrist ached and her muscles burned. She longed for a rest and to get clean, but they couldn’t stop here.

Luckily, she knew Al had an innate sense of direction. “Do you know which way would take us back to my home range?”

He pointed his snout just to the right of where the army stood. They’d have to travel past them to get home.

She winced. Well, it probably wasn’t a good idea to take a direct path back, anyway. Good thing she had a few MREs left, and the animal life in this range was somewhat edible.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.