Tunnels 02, Deeper

hear it so much more clearly now. Elliott froze and looked back at him over her shoulder, her eyes furtive and terrified. Her fear was infectious -- he felt it wash through him like a cold wave.
    Why had they come here? What was it? What was wrong?
    He was confused by Elliott's reaction. If the massacre he'd witnessed here before, with Chester, was being repeated, then it wouldn't have warranted such a response. She'd kept cool on that occasion, disturbing as the incident had been.
    They continued to crawl on their bellies, arm over arm, across the gypsum, inching up the incline until the wind blew harder on their faces and whipped up tiny dust devils around them.
    The carbon pall of the Black Wind was retreating.
    They came to the rim of the crater.
    Elliott's rifle was already up.
    She said something, muffled and indistinct under the layers of cloth covering her mouth. She pulled back the shemagh, pressing her cheek hard into the stock of the rifle. She was shaking, the barrel of the gun quivering unsteadily. Why? What was wrong?
    Everything was happening too fast.
    The lens over his eye crackled with static again, like a machine blink, and then he focused on the scene. There were lights on tripod stands, randomly arranged, and a decent number of figures, too far away for him to make out in any detail. A haze of dust clouds drifted in the intervening distance, like random curtains sweeping across his view, sometimes drawing apart to reveal the scene, sometimes closing to obscure it.
    He moved across to Elliott, coiling the rope that connected them as he went.
    "What is it?" he whispered, close to her ear.
    "I think... I think it's Drake," she answered.
    "So he's alive?" he gasped.
    She didn't answer.
    "They've got him prisoner?" he asked.
    "Worse," she said, a tautness to her voice. "Tom Cox... he's there. He's gone over to the other side... he's working with the Styx..." She lapsed into a croak that was swallowed by the howls of the wind.
    "What are they doing to Drake?"
    As she continued to look through her rifle scope, Elliott could hardly talk. "If it's really him, they're... a Limiter is..." She lifted her head from the rifle and shook it violently. "They're torturing him on a stake. Tom Cox is... is laughing... that evil smear of a--"
    Another wail of agony, even more dreadful than the last, cut her off.
    "I can't watch any longer... I can't let this go on," she said, gritting her teeth determinedly and staring straight into Will's eyes, her pupils turned to the deepest, darkest amber through his night-vision device.
    "I have to... he'd do the same for me..." she said as she adjusted the magnification on her scope. Digging her elbows into the dirt and bracing her arms to steady the rifle, she inhaled and exhaled several times in quick succession, then held in the final breath.
    Will watched her dumbly. "Elliott?" he asked, his voice quavering. "You're not--"
    "Can't get a shot... the clouds... can't see..." she said, letting out a breath.
    The seconds passed, as long as years.
    "Oh, Drake," she said, her words lost to the wind.
    Then she inhaled again and took aim.
    She fired.
    The crack of the rifle made Will jump out of his skin. The report echoed around, rolling across the plain and back to him, time and time again, until there was just the whine of the Levant again in his ears.
    Will peered into the inky distance, then at her.
    She was shivering badly.
    "I don't know if I did it... the bloody, bloody clouds... I..."
    She worked the bolt of the rifle to chamber a new round, then suddenly pushed the weapon at Will.
    "You look."
    He drew back.
    "Take it," she ordered him.
    He reluctantly held the rifle just as he'd seen Elliott do and, flipping the lens up over his eye, peered through the scope. It felt cold -- and wet -- but he couldn't think about that now. He was getting his bearings on the group down in the base of the crater. The scope was set on a high magnification, and in his inexperienced hands he panned it erratically as he tried to locate them.
    There! He caught a glimpse of a Limiter!
    He panned back. Another Limiter! No, it was the same one, standing by himself. Will held the rifle steady on him, they Styx's terrifying face in pin-sharp focus. Will's stomach fell through the floor: The Limiter was looking up, looking up at the ridge where he and Elliott were lying. The Will saw other figures, other Styx, running behind him. He moved the scope.
    Where's Drake?
    The wizened form of Tom Cox came