Tunnels 03, Freefall

father talked for hours about what else they might also find in this new world, such as huge mountain ranges and vast shipless seas and oceans. So, he decided, the cliff could have been formed as a result of a fault line, and either the land on which he and Elliott were standing had subsided, or the land on the other side of the escarpment had risen up, or possibly both. He was brought abruptly from his reflections as Elliott called him over with a whisper.
    She was squatting down and studying a patch of mud and rotted leaves. She looked anxious. For the life of him Will couldn't work out what she was getting so wound up about.
    She traced out a shape with her index finger, then moved crab-like across the ground, putting her cheek almost to the mud to examine an adjacent area. As Bartleby strained on his lead, she ignored him, crawling forward a few meters, still examining the ground. She suddenly looked up at Will. She held up three fingers, then pointed ahead.
    It was another of the signs she and Drake had used in the Deeps.
    Will knew only too well what it meant.
    He felt a rush of adrenaline, his heart beating hard in his chest. As he failed to react and just stood there, Elliott leapt to her feet and came over to him.
    "People. Three sets of prints -- one adult, two smaller," she confirmed.
    He shook his head, not wanting to hear any of this, not wanting to register what she was saying. Wide eyed, he stared at her, his hands gripping the Sten.
    "People?" he asked numbly. "Or Styx? Are you telling me it's the two twins and the Limiter?"
    Elliott turned to where the tracks led off. "One set is certainly the right size for a man, and his tracks are light -- like someone with military training."
    "On the ball of the foot," Will murmured, recalling the way Elliott had tried to teach him to move around on the Great Plain.
    "Yes, that's it," she said. "But the other two sets are far smaller, and identical in size.," she went on.
    "Oh my God," Will said to her. "What do we do now?"
    "What Drake asked us to. We have to make sure the Rebecca twins and the Limiter are inoperative, and that the Dominion risk is neutralized," she replied succinctly.
    "Inoperative... neutralized," Will mumbled to himself. That all sounded fine if one just concentrated on the words alone -- those two tidy, detached words were like something one read in a book or newspaper. But this was different, this was real, and in order to achieve Drake's objectives he and Elliott would have to do things that were far from tidy . Will himself would have to do things that he wasn't sure if he was capable of, not any more. Things that would probably change him, forever. Of course, Elliott was right. It was their responsibility to make sure -- however they could -- that the virus didn't find its way back Topsoil. But as he looked at Elliott and how she was immediately equal to the task, she seemed so clear cut about it as if she had no reservations whatsoever, whereas Will's head swam with doubt.
    Glancing in the direction they were about to take, he guiltily admitted to himself that he wished the three Styx were long gone and that Elliott wouldn't be able to find them. But as he thought about it, that couldn't be the case -- the tracks had to be relatively fresh because otherwise the frequent monsoons would have washed them away.
    Elliott tethered Bartleby to a tree, then pulled the rolled-up fishing net from her Bergen and stowed it under some branches. Will knew she was getting herself battle ready as she checked the equipment in the bottom of her Bergen, then put it back on. "Single file, four paces behind," she said to Will, as she began to read the tracks and slowly creep forwards.
    Will regarded their surroundings with mounting dread. The trees and the foliage were no longer benign -- each bush harbored a Limiter, and each tree trunk hid one of the malicious girls who attempted to kill him any chance they got. Will's mind hammered with various thoughts, as loud as shouts. I can't do this anymore. I'm not ready for this. Not now . He felt as if his head was going to rupture.
    They came to the foot of the escarpment and looked up. Very little grew on its face -- the odd sapling or bush had managed to anchor itself in the cracks, and along the upper reached long trailing tree roots and dried-out vegetation hung down, like a pale green frill.
    She led him under an overhang in the escarpment. "They stopped here for a while, maybe to get out of the sun,"