I had been in the middle of categorising the jumble of artifacts left for me by my predecessor, the rather sullen man I had displaced, when Sita entered breathlessly.
“Come look!” she said, nearly running into my desk. I set down a long-handled spoon made of a strangely smooth clay.
“What is it?” I asked, somewhat loath to leave my post. I looked at the in-tray full of items with their little white identifying cards. I hadn’t expected this to take long, but the system I had inherited was archaic. I explained this to Sita.
“Doesn’t matter!” she said. “Come on! That man Gordons, the one who tried to kill Anthony at dinner last night!”
“What about him?” I asked, carefully picking up an object that was labelled “ritual purposes” with no further detail. It was curved, with sharp protrusions along its length like a centipede’s legs. These were made of a brownish metal, set into the clay like jewels. Whatever purpose this had served, I would hate to be involved in the ritual.
“He’s disappeared!” Sita said excitedly.

The holding cell in the security station stood forlon, empty. From the twist of metal in the lock, it seemed to have been broken open, although from outside or inside was impossible to determine.
“This is troubling,” Cheung said. “I suppose a search party is in order, don’t you think?” he turned to me. As his archaeological right-hand woman, I had apparently taken over first mate duties over the entire camp, I supposed. It didn’t seem like an efficient way to run a dig, but I went with it.
“A search party, yes,” I said hesitantly. “But first, I would like to ask some questions.”
“Ask away,” said Cheung. “What do you want to know?”
“Not you,” I said. “-with all due respect, that is. I meant that I want to question Anthony. He was in the best place to observe the escape, after all.”
Cheung nodded. “Our own little mystery!” he said, giddy with boyish excitement.
I walked over to the second cell, the big plastex window in the door revealing Anthony, the bearded man who had attempted to strangle Gordons last night. He was a picture of calm, reclining on the narrow bench that was his only furniture with his hands clasped over his stomach. He ostentatiously opened one eye when he heard me approach, and sighed.
“Doctor Ryder,” he said, with absolutely no emotion. He enunciated every bit of my title. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything at all that might be of use to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cut the crap,” I said. “You help us, maybe you don’t have to stay in this cell until next month’s supply dropoff. Did Gordons say or do anything that might have indicated where he would go?”
“I’m sure, I couldn’t say,” he said. “You see, for the duration of his escape I’ve been bloody stuck in here!” His voice rose over the course of the sentence until spittle flecked from his mouth and his voice went hoarse. “I couldn’t see or hear a damn thing!”
“You can see me. You can hear me. You sure you didn’t see him leave? Did anyone come in here to let him out?”
“Oh, yes. Big fellow, bolts through his neck-”
I slapped my hand against the door in frustration. “Don’t play stupid games with me!” I shouted.
When my anger had dissipated a bit, I looked around. “What?” Sita nodded towards the door.
Where my hand had struck it, right in the centre of my palm, there was a wide, spider-web crack.

“I didn’t think I hit it that hard,” I said, dropping my dusty clothes into a basket by the door of the dormitory. From behind the changing screen in the corner, Sita’s voice wafted over:
“The guard told me those doors are supposed to be nearly bulletproof. If that’s the standard they make them to, no wonder Gordons got out as easily as he did.”
Lying back on the bed, I opened my notebook and began reviewing the day’s work, writing careful notes in the margins beside each item I had recategorised.
“Are you still working?” said Sita, a disbelieving smile creeping onto her face. Her day clothes slung over her shoulder, she was now wearing a long, elegant nightgown. I, in my practical pajamas, cast a glance over at her as if to imply that I disdained even the idea of answering the question. She bent over beside me and peered at the neat scrawl of my practicedly untidy handwriting. “Are you pathologically afraid of living life or something?” she said, laughing.
“Done all the living I wanted to do already,” I said. “Long time ago. You’ll get used to the feeling.” I allowed a smirk to cross my lips, to show I wasn’t completely hostile. “Now, I have my notebooks.”
Sita raised an eyebrow. “Notebooks, huh?” She sat down on the edge of her own bed, which was at a right angle to mine. I was facing away from her, and I continued writing for a minute. Then I set my pen down.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t very nice, was it?” I said.
“Not really,” she muttered. I propped myself up on one elbow and dropped my notebook onto the side table that we shared.
“You want to talk about something?” I asked. She shrugged.
“Maybe,” “Maybe yes or maybe no?” I said irritably. “Sorry,” I added. “I’m on edge today.”
“I don’t know. I’m just- overthinking some stuff,” she said. “Ignore me.”

Later that night, I woke up from a nightmare with a feeling like I had been underwater and suddenly surfaced, like I had narrowly avoided asphyxiation in midnight-black waters.
“You too?” said Sita. She was sitting on her bed, her legs pulled up tight to her chest like a kid. Her eyes glittered in the precious little light shed by the green safety lamp.
“Horrible,” I said, gasping for breath. “Like I was running-”
“-for your life. Me too.” I noticed for the first time a note of genuine fear in Sita’s voice, and suddenly realised that I too was trembling.
“The same dream? Is that possible?”
“Apparently. There was something in the darkness, too. I didn’t get a good look at it.”
“I know. You gonna be OK?” I asked.
Sita shrugged. “Probably won’t sleep.”
I lay back in my bed, and despite my shivering assurances that I wouldn’t fall asleep and leave her alone, I was soon roaming in the darkness again. I hadn’t been able to tell her that when I dreamed of the tunnels, I wasn’t being chased.
I was the hunter.

Darkness surrounds me yet I see with perfect clarity.

I catch a glimpse of what I have become, and it is too horrible to bear.

The next morning a note was passed under our door that informed us that Cheung wanted everybody together for the first expedition into the depths of the ruins. Sita, true to her terrible state last night, hadn’t slept at all. She looked at me with haggard eyes.
“You feel up to it?” I asked, though I could see by her face that she wasn’t. But to my surprise, she nodded.
“I ought to be there,” she said. “After all, imagine what I’d have to say to my kids! ‘Mama, where you there when the human understanding of an alien civilisation was rocked to its core?’ No, my child. I was in bed feeling sorry for myself. Ridiculous.” She got up and dug a pleasant-looking formal outfit out of the bottom of her trunk. It was red, a more vibrant red than the rusty hue of the rocks outside, with gold braiding.
“You brought a suit?” I said. “To a dig site?”
“That filmmaker might be there,” she said. “If I was making a film, I’d have cameras set up to catch every moment of this.”
“He probably does. You want to look good for that old pervert?”
“Not for him,” said Sita, bending over to check her hair in the mirror. “For history!”

There was much shuffling of feet in the large group by the side of the pit. Nobody wanted to be the closest to the edge, even though that was still more than a meter away.
Because of the way the ground dropped away, and the fact that scans had established that the hole led down into a much larger chamber than had been thought, the only way to let the exploration team down was on a single long safety rope. They stood by the edge, a human daisy-chain, loaded up with handlamps, picto-cams and survey gear. The last one was a scrawny apprentice I had seen shadowing the filmmaker, and he carried strapped across his body a bulky film camera similar to the ones that were capturing the occasion from intervals around the edge of the pit.
The winch rumbled into life, and it was time. Both the survey team and the rest of us began waving for the cameras. First the five of them were hoisted into the air, as prelude to their long descent. I watched them swing back and forth, watched the pulley at the top of the rope shake. It was rated for this- hell, it was designed for this- but still I felt a gnawing horror that it would just snap and send the five spinning into the void.
That horror never had time to be realised, however.
“Sandstorm!” came the cry from outside the little cloister in which we were gathered. “Sandstorm right on top of us!”