Tunnels 02, Deeper

he stood by the top of the rope, he noticed that Elliott was walking slowly from room to room. Was she checking to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything or just having a last look, suspecting she'd never see the place again?
    "OK, let's go," she said as she joined him by the entrance.
    She slid down the rope, and as soon as they were both at the bottom he untied the packs and bags. As he straightened up, he noticed she appeared to be reading a roll of material.
    "What's that?" he said.
    She snapped at him to be quiet. When she'd finished she looked across at him.
    Will just stared back.
    "The message is about Drake... it was pinned to the rope," she replied. "It's from another renegade."
    "But... but I only just let the... I didn't see anyone," Will stammered, scanning the shadows, terrified that they were going to be ambushed by the likes of that creepy Tom Cox.
    "No, you wouldn't have, and anyway, this is from someone we know -- a friend. We need to get a move on," she said. From one of the bags, she whipped out the biggest charge Will had seen so far. She anchored the gunmetal-gray canister, the size of a large can of paint, to the rock wall under where the rope hung, then she backed toward the opposite side of the tunnel, feeding out an almost invisible trip wire behind her. Will didn't have to ask: Elliott was setting a powerful explosive in case anyone came looking for the base -- so powerful that the whole place would be buried under tons of rubble.
    She tested her handiwork, plucking the tautly stretched wire, which gave a threatening twang. After pulling out the pin to arm it, she returned to Will.
    "So what now? Do we take this with us?" he asked, pointing at the bags.
    "Forget it."
    "We're not going to the island?"
    "Change of plan," she said, her eyes flashing with a fierce determination. He knew then that she had something else in mind, and that they weren't going back to join Chester and Cal.
    "Oh," Will said as it sank in.
    "We've got to get to the other side of the plain, and quick." She looked furtively up and down the tunnel, sniffing several times.
    "Why?" Will asked, to which she held up her hand, silencing him.
    He heard it, too. A low whine. Even as he listened, the whining grew louder and louder until it became a howl. He felt the gentle breeze on his face and saw it tug at the ends of Elliott's shemagh.
    "A Levant," she said, then exclaimed, "the wind's coming: Just our luck!"
    Will reeled on his feet as if about to collapse at the thought of facing it, exposed, in the Deeps. Elliott eyed him with concern, then ferreted around in her pocket and offered some more of the root. He took several pieces and chewed on them grimly, tasting the sourness as it spread over his tongue.
    "Better?" she asked.
    He nodded in acknowledgment, seeing in her eyes not the concern of a friend, but something cold and detached, a clinical professionalism. She needed someone to assist her; she didn't really care about him .
    "Try the headset," she ordered as he continued to chew.
    He nodded, flipping down the eyepiece, then fumbling for the switch on the box in his pocket. There was a faint tone -- it began to build, reaching a high pitch and then descending in octaves to a lower sound, so barely audible that he couldn't tell if he was hearing it or just feeling it through his cranium.
    "Shut your left eye -- just use the one behind the lens," Elliott directed him.
    He did as she said, blinking his left eye shut, but could see nothing at all through his right eye, the lens tightly pressed to it. Just as he was beginning to think the device might be faulty, dim points started to swirl, as if ocean waters were being stirred to reveal an eerie phosphorescence beneath their depths. From an initial amber, it rapidly transformed into a brighter yellow, until it almost hurt. Everything was intensely visible, as if bathed in stark sunlight. He looked around, at his dirt-ingrained hands, at Elliott securing the shemagh over her face, at the wisps of blurry darkness rolling toward them.
    "Have you been in a Black Wind before?" Elliott asked.
    "Not in one," he said, remembering when he and Cal had watched the clouds from behind closed windows in the Colony. Cal's words came back to him: The boy had mimicked a nasal Styx voice: "...pernicious to those that it encounters, it sears the flesh."
    Will quickly looked at Elliott. "Aren't they, like, poisonous?
    "No." She snorted derisively. "It's only dust, garden-variety dust ,