"Yes," Nell said.

"I thought you said we'd be safe in here," Bear said to Galia.

"We would have been," Galia said.

"This must have happened in the last few days," Nell said, incredulous.

"Jeezus Christ," Abrams said.

"What the hell is this, Nell?" Nastia asked.

Nell sighed. "This is Pandemonium."

01:47:03.

As Sasha found a camera view, they saw Nell and Nastia climbing into the bus, chased by a column of gammies.

"What?" Geoffrey exclaimed, moving his throbbing foot higher.

"Uh-oh," Sasha said.

01:48:29.

Abrams shook his head, climbing out of the XOS suit. "OK, what now?"

Nastia pulled out her phone with shaking hands to photograph the multicolored creatures swirling around them in the darkness.

"What are you doing?" Bear asked.

"This is an entirely new ecosystem," she said.

Bear laughed. "We'll probably never make it out of here, and you're taking pictures?"

"That's enough!" Dima said, glaring at Bear.

"The rumors were true," Nastia said. "There are monsters here. They did run into Hell while digging this city." The terror that had possessed her the moment before was momentarily replaced with scholarly satisfaction. "I have studied caves all my life," she said. "There has never been a system of troglobites such as this. How big is the cave system they came from?"

"It stretches a hundred kilometers," Galia said.

"Wonderful!" Nastia whispered.

"You should see the underwater window in the palace," Nell said.

"You mean there are stygobites as well as troglobites?" Nastia laughed nervously.

"Hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic species," Nell said. "Like nothing you've ever imagined."

"OK," Abrams said. "Is everyone all right? I think my fibula's broken. I don't know how that thing did it through this armor, but my calf's fucked up."

"Spigers have a trebuchet-like strike, like the mantis shrimp," Nell said. "A big one could probably shatter that suit like an egg."

"Glad I didn't know that till now," Abrams said.

"Hey, your back's smoking, Nell!" Dima said.

"Better take that off," Nastia said. "She was inside the spiger's mouth! You should have seen it."

Nell's tunic seemed to be steaming as she pulled it over her head and discarded it. "Wow-must be digestive juices," she noted. "Thanks."

"You were inside its mouth?" Abrams asked, chuckling. "OK, Rambo. You win."

"That's pretty awesome." Bear nodded.

Dima reached out to shake her hand.

Hender grabbed Dima's wrist firmly with one of his hands. "No! Nell can't control the nants. Don't touch her. OK?"

"Oh, yes." Dima nodded. "Spasiba."

Nastia noticed the purple sheen on Nell's face and arms, taking a step back.

"How do you feel, Nell?" asked Nastia.

"Like I'm wearing a wetsuit."

Bear pulled his glove off. "That rat bastard cut my finger off right inside my glove."

Nastia's eyes widened as she saw his hand missing his middle finger as Bear pulled his hand out of the bloody glove. She looked at the big man, horrified.

"It's OK. I've got four more." He grinned, laughing.

"Tape that up, Nastia," Abrams said, pulling a bag off the XOS suit and fishing out a first aid kit.

"How?" she protested.

"Spray this on his finger." Abrams handed her a bottle of an antibiotic disinfectant coagulant.

Dima took the bottle from him. "You think she is automatically nurse?" he said.

"I think anybody not doing anything is automatically nurse," Abrams said. "Whatever. You take care of it, Romeo."

Dima sprayed the bloody stump of Bear's finger as the big man gritted his teeth.

Nell noticed Hender's lower legs and hands were stained blue. "Hender, you're bleeding."

"That's blood?" Abrams asked.

"Yes," Nell said. "It's copper-based."

"You OK, Hender?" Nastia asked.

Hender's fur was nearly translucent now, faintly projecting what was behind him as it mimicked invisibility. "Yes." He nodded, bowing his head in exhaustion. The blue bloodstains seemed to fade on Hender's silvery fur as nants scoured each filament clean.

Outside the bus, rows of stacked shelves holding glass jars and flats of soil stretched north and south from the circular clearing. Nell looked through the skylight at the glowing clouds of hovering shapes drifting through the air. Beams of faint light crisscrossed the cavern's roof.

"So this is a farm?" Dima asked.

"Yes," Galia said.

"What do they grow here, mushrooms?" Bear asked.

The sound of scrabbling legs scraped the bus on all sides as dog-sized gammies crawled over the vehicle now.

"Nell!" Nastia pointed at one of the gammarids, which sat in the driver's chair.

"That one's dead," Bear laughed. "We had to kill a few that got in."

Nastia smirked.

"We should move." Abrams squirmed as the mass of gammies crowded around the bus. "I don't like being in the counter of a delicatessen."

"He's right," Bear said. "We better get where we're going, fast."

"Nell and Galia-what's the next move?" Abrams asked. "How the hell are we going to deal with these fricking things now? There're millions of them out there."

"There must be a powerful lighting system above us," Nell said.

"There is," Galia said. "With the power on, it should light the whole farm."

She frowned in thought. "Most of these creatures are tuned to very low light."

"There's a light switch next to the entrance," Abrams said. "A huge switch like something out of Frankenstein's lab."

Galia nodded. "Yes. I believe that switch does turn on the farm's lights."

"So, if we turn it on..." Dima looked at Nell. "What?"

"We will blind many of the species," Nell said. "At least temporarily." She looked at the dead gammy sitting in the driver's seat. Its bullet-riddled body was pale under the cabin lights, its back covered with jutting spikes. Its head was smooth, however, with small, sharp mandibles. "But gammies don't have eyes."

"Wow. You're right," Bear said.

"I thought they were herbivores," Nell said, examining the mouthparts. "But apparently they're omnivores."

"Hmm." Abrams looked at the giant bug. "How do they get around without eyes?"

"They're a lot like army ants, which are also blind," Nell said. "They must follow scent trails."

"OK," Abrams said. "Since light won't affect them, what can we do?"

"I think I know," Nell said. "We have one ROV left, don't we?"

"Yeah, Talon-1 is still with us." Abrams nodded.

"Good. Bring the dead gammies over here and give me a field knife," Nell said.

"Why?" Dima asked.

"Some ants use glands to lay down a scent trail-one pheromone acts as a primer and another completes the trail-following scent." Nell sliced open the gammarid's abdomen and pulled open the exoskeleton, probing with the knife. Two long sacs of fluid led to a nozzlelike orifice at the point of the abdomen. "Here! These must be the scent glands." Nell blew away a strand of her hair from her face as she cut around the sacs. "I need a rag, or some cotton. Any in the first aid kit?"

"Yeah." Abrams gave her a wad of cotton from the kit on board.

"We need to rig something on Talon-1 so it can drag a swab behind it."

"OK. But I don't see how we can draw enough of them away to make a difference."

"Cut that other gammy open, Dima, just like I did," Nell said, pointing to another of the creatures lying on the floor. "Can I borrow your gloves?" she asked Nastia. "I'm afraid I'll have to throw them away afterwards, unless you want those things chasing you out there." Nell winked.

"Here," said Nastia. "They're yours."

01:30:07.

"What happened?" Geoffrey asked.

"It caved in, Geoffrey," Sasha said. "Yesterday."

"What?" Geoffrey said.

"I had to take Ivan for a walk in the ballroom, instead, yesterday. I didn't tell you 'cause I didn't want you and Nell to be scared."

Geoffrey shook his head.

"Sorry, Geoffrey!"

"It's OK, Sasha." He bowed his head, covering his face with both hands.

01:29:57.

Inside the dormitory, Kuzu found the humans and Hender on Maxim's laptop through a security camera: They were inside a large vehicle in a wide clearing. Hender had gotten them somewhere else, somehow. If they made it to the palace, they could reach the train tunnel again through the tunnel Nell had taken and possibly set off the charges. But Kuzu saw that they were trapped now by a multitude of weird animals inside the giant cavern of the farm. He turned to Maxim. "Where?" his voice crashed like thunder. "Tell!"

Deep inside, Maxim had reconstituted a small piece of himself as he began to calculate a way to beat this devil.

01:28:50.

"OK, Talon-1 can run backwards. It can lower the swab attached to the barrel by aiming the gun down," Abrams said. "You wanna drive, Nell? Just look in this screen-it's just like a video game."

"Yeah, I'd be happy to," Nell said. "Let's open the door and send it out."

Abrams and Dima guarded the door as Bear opened it. Nell toggled the ROV forward from the lowest step onto the ground. They closed the door as a few small gammarids got in, but the men squashed them under their boots.