~*~*~ OOTU ~*~*~

  The world folded.

  Ootu’s last memory was scrambling down the slope after Sister Pathsong, who herself was sliding toward Brother Stellaroak. Then came the sickening sensation of the ground giving way beneath him. There had been a moment of weightless plummeting, then bone-jarring impacts over layers of tearing biomass. He remembered reaching desperately for Pathsong’s hand, their fingers touching before the ground surged, slamming up from below, enclosing them in the suffocating darkness he now found himself in.

  Complete darkness…that itself was a novelty for Ootu, one he did want to experience right now. His natural eye was probably fine, it just didn’t have any light to work with. His special eye was cycling through reset attempts, occasionally offering ghostly glimpses in infrared that winked out the moment the system initialized.

  He also had a catalogue of hurts demanding to be indexed, but that could come later.

  Sitting up, he gently tapped his left eye socket. This produced a rattling sensation, like a couple of parts were loosening up for an unauthorized field trip through his sinuses.

  “Come on,” he muttered. “Eye, don’t fail me now.”

  “Ootu?” A quiet voice close by.

  “Sister Pathsong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, let me see if I can get some vision going.” He shook his head softly, and the eye spun straight up. With a sigh, he bent forwards, twitching his head in an angled nod, trying to bring the eye back to a more useful orientation. With a tiny click, it fell into place. The image flickered, then stabilized to reveal two warm blobs in a huddle.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Nothing too bad,” said Pathsong. “You?”

  “Mostly intact.” Ootu looked up and saw the cool blue of a low ceiling. “Brother Stellaroak?”

  “He’s around here somewhere. I saw him just before everything closed in around us.”

  The second thermal blob behind Pathsong shifted and groaned. “I’m here.”

  “Good. I’ve got an eye on you both. I think we’re in some kind of air pocket.” Ootu raised his hand and found a slanted, fibrous ceiling. “I suppose we’re safe for now, but in the long term…”

  “But in the long term, this pocket will either hold and suffocate us,” said Pathsong, “or it won’t hold and it'll crush us.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to put it in such stark terms.”

  Pathsong’s thermal blob lengthened as she stood. “I’m not one to mince words.” She froze. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “That sound. Wait, there it is again. Can’t you hear it?”

  Ootu listened. There was indeed a sound. A soft slithering accompanied by a rhythmic squelch, like fluid being pumped through tubes.

  “It’s…probably just the ground settling.”

  Another sound, louder this time. Like drenched leather sliding across stone, followed by a scattering of damp pops and hisses. Something brushed past Ootu’s arm, so light it might have been imagined.

  “Did you feel something?” Pathsong whispered.

  “I…” There it was again. A gentle caress across his shoulder this time, coming from the low ceiling. The touch lingered, as if assessing him.

  “I think there’s something in here with us,” he said.

  “Yes, and it’s found my ankle,” said Pathsong. “It feels like a cable, but warm. Hard yet flexible.”

  Something crawled over Ootu’s foot, like a slowly coiling rope. The texture was smooth but subtly patterned. Organic, certainly, with a consistency that suggested fluid movement within.

  A new sound joined the others. Soft and wet, like suction cups being pulled from glass.

  “Don’t move,” he said, then flinched as something whispered close to his neck, trying to settle on his skin. “Actually, never mind. Move as much as you need to get rid of these things. Brother Stellaroak? Are you still with us?”

  “Yeah.” The Brother stirred and sat up with a groan. “I think there’s one on me. It’s tightening.”

  Ootu knelt beside Stellaroak, ignoring the crumble of broken knee components. “Where exactly?”

  “My left hand. Wrapped around my wrist.”

  Ootu’s fingers closed around something thin and sinuous, indeed very much like a cable. He carefully untangled it from the Brother’s wrist and held it in front of his eye. The image was faint, but he could detect a throbbing. And then a wriggling.

  “That’s...impossible,” Ootu whispered, scientific curiosity warring with mounting alarm. “It’s moving independently. But Kabus flora doesn’t—”

  The thing suddenly coiled around his fingers.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Or maybe it does,” he continued, excitement rising as it began constricting his hand. “It must have evolved to exploit the chaos of extreme tides. Mobile propagation segments seeking new ground...I shall call them wanderfibers!”

  “Ootu...” said Pathsong.

  “Yes...” He didn't notice her warning tone. “These must be detached segments using bio-hydraulic propulsion to exploit the post-tidal environment! They detach, move, and re-root. Absolutely fascinating.”

  “There’s one fascinatingly around my arm,” said Pathsong. “And it’s—”

  The segment on Ootu’s hand suddenly contracted, its surface texture changing from smooth to bristled. Pain erupted as tiny bristles extended like microscopic needles, penetrating his skin.

  “It’s digging into me!” Stellaroak howled. “I can feel it burrowing in my foot!”

  “Digestive enzymes,” said Ootu, yanking the wanderfiber from his hand. He felt through the darkness, finding Stellaroak’s thrashing leg. “They’re breaking down organic matter for absorption.”

  “Get it off me!”

  As Stellaroak thrashed in panic, his arm swung wildly through the darkness. His fist connected with Ootu’s face with a solid thud, sending a shock of pain radiating across his cheek. Ootu’s artificial eye jolted loose in its socket, the visual feed spinning as he stumbled backward, arms pinwheeling. He fell hard, landing on something that gave way with the familiar crunch of field equipment.

  His duffle bag! He hugged it tight. “Everyone, stay calm!” he said, fumbling with the bag’s ties. “I have some things that might—”

  A wanderfiber wrapped around his elbow, tightening slowly.

  “Ootu!” Pathsong’s voice cut through the darkness. “Whatever you’re doing, do it faster!”

  His fingers closed around a familiar cylindrical shape. “Got it!”

  With a desperate twist, he activated his portable lamp.

  Light flooded the pocket.

  And every surface .

  The ceiling, floor, and walls were covered in wanderfibers, some thin as fingers, others thick as arms, all glistening with secretions. They dropped from above and crawled from beneath. They covered Stellaroak’s leg to the knee and Pathsong’s entire arm.

  “By the bitter dust,” Sister Pathsong hissed as she flung one from her shoulder. “They’re everywhere.”

  “Yes.” Ootu was aghast. “This is significantly worse than I anticipated. We need to get out of here.”

  “Great idea! What else is in that bag of yours?”

  Ootu hugged his duffle. “Nothing. Really, hardly anything of use right now. Just my collection equipment, perhaps some half-filled sample containers—”

  Pathsong was already reaching for it. “Let me see.” She upended the bag, dumping its contents onto the ground, sending vials, bottles, scanners, tools, and handkerchiefs tumbling. She snatched up a sturdy-looking device with a pointy end. “This looks solid enough.”

  “No! That’s my molecular analyzer!” Ootu cried. “That’s the only one I have. It’s irreplaceable!”

  “So are we,” she said, raising it to whack at the ceiling. “Grab something and start hitting.”

  Each smack of analyzer against fibrous material tore away chunks, gouging deeper through the layers and sending a wave of dismay through Ootu. Years of meticulous calibration destroyed in seconds. Then a wanderfiber landed across his shoulder, and the immediate threat of being consumed overcame his attachment to his equipment.

  He took up his spectrometer.

  As they hacked, the writhing strands kept on coming, coiling around their legs and slithering down their shoulders. One had found the soft flesh of Pathsong’s underarm, and she gasped as the bristles dug deep. Ootu had them on his wrists, their slippery lengths weighing him down. Each time he raised his arms to strike the ceiling, more of them lashed out, trying to snag his limbs mid-motion. Soon, they were spending more time ridding themselves of the things than digging.

  Then a low voice rose behind them. It was Brother Stellaroak.

  “Eleven worlds,” he said as he got to his feet, his eyes filled with the fire of the devout. “I have walked eleven worlds before this one. I have suffered the freezing plains of Iel.” He pulled a wanderfiber from his arm. “I have crossed the glass deserts of Grandar.” Another fiber tore free. “I have endured the crushing gravity of Soloson’s canyons.”

  He calmly bent to retrieve a sample container lid from Ootu’s scattered equipment, snapping it in two.

  “Brother?” Ootu asked.

  Kicking wanderfibers aside, Stellaroak cleared a path towards them.

  “Kabus will not be my end,” he said, delicately peeling a fiber from Ootu’s neck. As he started on Pathsong’s arms, he added, “The world tests, and I answer.” Then he turned and in a frenzy of sharp lid halves, set about clearing the space around them. Scraps of fiber tissue went flying as the Brother roared with laughter.

  “The world!” Pathsong gasped, suddenly pointing to a sliver of brightness above. “Dig faster!”

  They tore at the edges of the hole, pulling away spongy strands and glutinous tissue. The opening widened, blessed light and fresh air spilling through. After one final, desperate heave, the ceiling gave way with a wet, sucking tear. The biomass parted like a wound, and through the jagged opening, they glimpsed the sky.

  “The path opens,” said Stellaroak, still striking at wanderfibers. “The world offers us passage again!”

  Pathsong moved first, finding purchase on the crumbling edges of the hole. She hauled herself upward and disappeared through the opening.

  “Quickly!” she called from above. “Before it closes!”

  Stellaroak followed, but Ootu hesitated, his gaze lingering over his scattered equipment. Sample containers, analyzers, the tools of a lifetime’s work…all now writhing beneath a blanket of wanderfibers. With equal parts relief and quiet grief, he turned away and pulled himself through the hole. He lay still for several moments, simply drawing breath, allowing himself to acknowledge how close they had come to becoming nutrients. Finally, he sat up and took inventory of his condition.

  The bristles had left multiple neat rows of itchy punctures across his skin, each one seeping a mixture of blood and clear fluid. His left eye had rotated inward, treating him to an unsettling view of his own braincase. His knee was a concerning jumble of loose components that jangled with the slightest movement. His kidneys felt intact, but the filter embedded in his collarbone clicked with every breath. It had never done before.

  Then he turned his attention to their surroundings.

  The landscape was unrecognizable. The long-glow night was still in full effect, the gas giant’s massive presence illuminating everything in ethereal purple hues. Where lush jungle had thrived only hours before, a grotesquely contorted terrain of folded biomass now stretched in all directions. Massive ridges rose where valleys had been, like frozen waves in a muddy sea. Deep crevasses carved through what had once been level ground, venting wisps of acrid vapor. The golden bud field, the finger-crown, everything familiar was torn, gone or buried.

  “Kabus has been remade,” Sister Pathsong said quietly, rising to her feet beside him.

  “Yes.” Ootu tapped at his eye socket, trying to knock the mechanism back into proper alignment. The enhanced optics would have let him scan the horizon and zoom in on distant features, perhaps even locate survivors, but the eye stubbornly refused to cooperate. “The others…Sixflame, Starcarver, all of them…I can’t see them.”

  Pathsong scanned the horizon. “Perhaps we should wait for daylight.”

  The reality settled over them like a shroud. Their escape had been a lucky fluke. The likelihood of others surviving similar entrapment was vanishingly small.

  “Kabus may have claimed them,” Stellaroak said. “We, however, have been granted another chance to hear the world’s voice. We must secure our position, find higher ground with stable footing for the night. We shall know more when the world awakes.”

  Ootu reached for the strap of his duffle bag, then winced as he remembered it now belonged to the moon.

  Never mind.

  The expedition disaster protocol was clear: contact the Hub, report their position, and request extraction. Ayan would need to know about survivors and the dramatically altered terrain...

  Wait.

  His hand went to his belt, searching for his comm-unit. It was gone.

  “Looks like we’re alone out here,” he said.