A tendril shot down from his right leg. Planted in the snow. The blood there responded, although sluggishly, the connection forming a beat slower than it did before. Flowing toward the contact point. The tendril contracted. His body lurched forward. Dragged. His boots splashed through viscera. Through blood. Toward the opening.

  'Stop. Hold there.'

  The tendril held. He was closer now. A meter from the cavity.

  'Left shoulder - release the wall. Grab inside the cavity. Far side.'

  The tendril retracted from the wyvern's scales. Shot forward. Through the opening. Found the far interior wall. Slick membrane. It stuck and pulled him toward it. His upper body pitched forward. His face angled down toward the opening. The tendril on his right shoulder kept him from face-planting into the snow.

  'Right shoulder - grab the ribs. Left side of the opening.'

  The tendril shifted. Found bone. Wrapped around it. Anchored.

  'Ground tendril - release. Grab my right leg. Lift it. Feed it through the opening.'

  The tendril retracted from the ground. Shot to his right leg. Wrapped around his calf. Lifted. His leg rose. Stiff. Dead weight. The tendril guided it toward the opening. Between the ribs. Through. His boot landed inside the cavity. In blood. He heard the splash. Felt the warmth through the leather. A fourth tendril - from his left leg - grabbed his own left calf. Lifted. Guided it through. Both legs were in. His torso was still outside feeling the cold snow lashing against him as his upper body leaned against the ribs.

  'Inside tendril - pull harder. Rib tendril - push me through.'

  Both contracted simultaneously. His body shifted. Scraped against bone. The ribs were too narrow. His shoulders wouldn't fit straight through. Snow howled at the back of his head.

  'Stop. Angle me. Turn my shoulders. I need to go through sideways.'

  The tendrils adjusted. His body rotated. Right shoulder forward. Left shoulder back.

  'Try again. Pull.'

  His body slid through. Ribs scraped his back. His chest. Tight. Barely enough room. Then he was through. Upper body inside the cavity now. But his weight was wrong. Top-heavy. He pitched forward. His face heading straight for the pooled blood at the bottom. A tendril shot from his chest. Pressed against the far wall. Stopped his fall. His face hung a hair above the blood pool. His mouth open. Paralyzed. If he'd landed face-first, he'd have drowned.

  'Pull me up slightly. Just enough to keep my face above the blood.'

  The tendril adjusted. His face rose. Not much. Just enough clearance. But he couldn't hold this position. The tendril would tire. Run out of fuel.

  'I need to settle. Lay me against the back wall. On my side.'

  The tendrils worked together. The one inside pulled him deeper. Another guided his shoulders. A third positioned his legs. His body rolled. Settled on his left side. Back pressed against the inner wall of the cavity. The membrane was warm against him. Slick. The texture wrong but not cold. His face was above the blood now. Angled up slightly. He could breathe without drowning. But his mouth was still open. Blood had gotten in during the process. Pooled in his mouth. On his tongue. He couldn't spit. Couldn't swallow.

  'Tilt my head. Let it drain out.'

  A tendril adjusted his neck angle. The blood flowed out. Down his chin. Into his collar. Warm. Disgusting. Most of it drained. Not all. Some remained on his tongue. Metallic. Thick. The taste filled his mouth. He couldn't escape it.

  'That's... that's as good as it gets.'

  He assessed his position. On his side. Back against the cavity wall. Legs bent slightly. Head angled so his airway was clear. The warmth surrounded him. The smell was overwhelming. Iron. Bile. Musk. Fresh kill. But he wasn't in the wind. Wasn't in the snow. In the relentless storm. He could hear it. Muffled now. In here, there was only the warmth. The dark. The wet. The smell. And his own heartbeat. Echoing in the enclosed space.

  'My eyes are hurting. I can’t see much of anything. Close my eyes.'

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The gecko obeyed. He sagged from two tendrils detaching, His eyelids pulled shut by them.

  'Release the tendrils. All of them. The blood coagulating should actually help seal the breach I entered through. How I get out of here once the paralytic wears off is future-me’s problem.’

  One by one, the tendrils retracted. Back into his body. His body settled. Full dead weight now. Sinking slightly into the pooled blood at the bottom. His cheek pressed against warm membrane. No movement. No control. Outside the blizzard howled, Inside only the sound of his own breathing, slow and shallow, and the distant thrum of his heartbeat. Just waiting. In the belly of the beast. Within the dark oppressive warmth. He was breathing, sheltered from the storm. That was enough for now.

  * * *

  Christofer came to in the dark. Exhaustion had put him out like a light, he didn’t know when. He didn’t know how long he had been lying there in the dark. But enough feeling had returned to his face that he could grimace to the smell. He was feeling a tad dizzy from the humid heat in there. Like falling asleep in a bath, only said bath was guts and viscera used as some kind of impromptu storm shelter body-bag. With an emphasis on body.

  The more he could feel his ability to move returned, the more he noticed the pounding headache. Different flavor of headache compared to the near detonation of the gambeson, but a fairly sizable headache nevertheless. He groaned. He tried to move his fingers, but it seemed he couldn’t really, yet. When adrenaline left, exhaustion took over. Memory was still hazy. His left wrist ached differently than everything else. A deep, structural ache, like a reset bone still finding its place after his arm had been snapped back into the right orientation. The gecko had straightened it at some point. Whether that was what knocked him out, he couldn't say. He didn’t remember.

  The sensations were also flooding back to him as he woke, in realtime, regrettably. He felt an odd buzzing sensation in the pocket of his pants. Vibrating. He tried to grip with his hands, but they felt like trying to command noodles to grip. Someone swore. Probably him, considering no one else was in there with him. He was still a little bit out of it. A mechanical sound again. Familiar. Buzzing. Something lit up in his pocket. Lighting the interior of the creature through the fabric. He squinted. Half pleased to be able to see and half wishing he couldn’t. The dark red hugged tight around him. Something crackled through. Static hissed.

  “My phone? That doesn’t make sense… I’m talking to myself, why am I talking to myself?”

  Without accepting the call, his phone came to life. The speaker crackled. A call had connected. The phone answered on its own. A shifting voice assembled from different broadcasts, each word a different speaker, different tone echoed through the phone.

  "533. Citrinitas. Liber Primus. Kenoma."

  "272. Irminsul. Michiton. Instar."

  "Rebis. Circum. 733. Turris."

  Silence. Then the audio cut out completely. The phone's speaker crackled again. Same fragmented voice. The storm was fragmenting the already static filled voice.

  “-ce that. Instar. ID: 5-3-3-7-C-Y-7-2. Primality. Ab Initio. 3301. Turri-”

  The phone crackled, the screen went dark and the call shut off.

  "What?" Christofer blurted out in confusion, in the darkness.

  * * *

  Doc had his head half inside the access panel, lying on the floor of the tank, wrench gripped in one hand, the other tracing wires back to their source. The tank's interior smelled like old oil, metal and ash. He'd been at it for twenty minutes. His German curses echoed off the metal walls with each fresh frustration.

  "Verdammt... scheisse... beweg dich, du-"

  The hardline array crackled. Not static. Clearer. Doc hit his head on the control panel. He crawled from under the panel and crouched down by the dials. He cleared his throat.

  "That's…" He caught himself, switched to English. "That's a transmission."

  Vodko leaned against the tank's exterior, rifle across his knees, scanning the tree line. Doc was already at the screen, hands moving, trying to isolate the signal. It was weak. Incredibly weak. Fainter than anything he'd tracked before. Cutting through the storm outside. A pulse. A heartbeat in the static. The signal cut out. He spun the dial back. Forward. Just the same white noise hiss, the storm eating everything. Vodko looked up.

  "Schei?e!" Doc exclaimed, glanced to Vodko, then back to the panel,“There was something. A transmission… Before you ask. I don't know."

  "The system caught something, but the audio feed-" Doc pulled off his glasses, wiped them on his sleeve. "It wasn't for us. Or we weren't in range. Or the storm ate it. I don't know. There’s someone else out there in the storm, with a receiver.”

  "Signal?" Vodko gestured vaguely at the trees, "We go there, find out."

  "It’s exceedingly weak. We don't have a location. The triangulation requires at least three-"

  Doc stopped. Took a breath. Vodko was still looking at him with that same flat expression.

  “Best I could do is figure out in what direction the receiver was. But that’ll only cover direction, it does not cover elevation. It could be in a chasm or at a mountain peak. It’s essentially a guess. As for distance? Could be twenty kilometers in error. Maybe more.”

  “Da. Then we go. In direction.”

  “…Fine, but first, give me an hour, maybe two,” Doc groaned as he massaged the bridge of his nose, “I might be able to get us something portable enough to carry. If we’re gonna follow a guess, we need this with us. In case the signal transmits again, we need to know to adjust course. I’m already halfway in stripping the array from the tank.”