Free Oracle by David Wood, Sean Ellis

mic and held it down. “Is it my imagination, or did that thing just perk up its ears?”
    “ It’s your imagination.”
    Jade flung the radio toward the approaching robot. “Get down.”
    “ Hey!” Professor stifled his protest. “What exactly was that supposed to—”
    There was bright flash and an imperceptible moment later, the blast hit them. A wall of energy—heat and force—slammed into them. If the men had not heeded her advice, they would have been knocked down, and likely shredded by pieces of shrapnel and chips of stone that surfed the leading edge of the shock wave.
    The blast resonated through Jade ’s body, pummeling her intestines. Her ears rang with the noise of the detonation, and she felt particles of debris stinging her exposed skin. For a moment, she wondered if she had delayed too long, given the warning too late. Was this her premonition coming true after all? Were they all dead?
    A cough broke through the shrill constant pinging noise, and then she heard confused mumblings. Someone was alive… she was alive.
    She raised her head and looked around. The cavern seemed darker, and not just because Shelob ’s light had been extinguished. The flash had momentarily overloaded her retinas and now everything was shrouded in a pinkish haze.
    She saw the others. They were all intact, covered in a fine layer of dust, bleeding from minor cuts just like her, but there was no evidence of serious injury. Professor recovered faster than the others—it probably wasn ’t his first explosion—but, his expression was no less shocked than hers.
    “ Impossible,” he said, or at least that was the word his lips formed. Jade couldn’t tell if he had spoken it aloud. His eyes met hers. “Are you okay?”
    He must have shouted because she heard that. She nodded and he immediately turned his attention to the others. She joined him, verifying that no one was seriously hurt, rousing them all. When they had finished, he turned back to her.
    “That was a bomb.”
    “ No kidding.”
    He shook his head. “No, I mean a real bomb. High explosives. Probably C4.”
    “ Does it matter?”
    “ You knew the robot would follow the walkie-talkie signal. Was that another premonition?”
    “ No. It was a hunch.”
    “ Well, either way, it saved us.” He gripped her arm as if trying to squeeze his revelation into her. “Jade, this was an attack.”
    “ You think Hodges is working for…them?”
    Even though he must have already believed that, her statement seemed to catch him off guard. “It doesn’t make sense. The Dominion killed his family.”
    She could see the gears turning in his head, running through scenarios that might explain how his partner had been turned. What if the story about his family was a lie, planted to ensure that he would be accepted into the Myrmidons? What if he was a sociopath, so driven to support his secret masters that he had willingly sacrificed his loved ones?
    “We’re not going to figure it out down here,” she said. “We have to find another way out.” Without waiting for an answer, Jade turned to the other men. “We’ll go the edge of the cavern and skirt along it until we can find the other entrance.”
    “ What if there isn’t one?” asked Acosta, a nervous quaver in his voice.
    “ There has to be. That Spaniard found a way in.”
    “ And never got out. What if it’s sealed?”
    “ Then we dig. What we’re not going to do is give up. Got it?”
    The men nodded, and she noted that while Acosta and Sanchez looked thoroughly beaten, the physicist seemed eager, almost triumphant.
    Jade reminded herself to have to have a long talk with Paul Dorion.
     
    After the initial shock of the explosion wore off, the enormity of the task before them settled upon the group with the weight of the earth that separated them from freedom. No one spoke. They all just trudged forward into the open endless darkness. Even the discovery of another huge sphere—this one made of a granular