“I’ve had enough,” Magnus said over the link. “How about you?”
“Yes. It’s so frustrating! Let’s go back and see if we can find Joe or Shiny.”
Magnus appeared from the direction he had gone hours before. He ran toward her, looking more excited than she expected.
“Something may be up after all,” he told her. “The doors and the halls are the same as on my way out.”
“The same? Can you tell from such a short distance?”
“Well, I think something would have changed before, even for just a couple of hallways. Let’s go back toward the cache and maybe we’ll see more.”
They walked away from the human-style area and returned to the dim red caves. The tunnel angled slightly left of where they wanted to go, as Telisa remembered. Then they jinked to the right through two caves and continued in the right direction.
“It does seem familiar,” Telisa said. “Or is it my imagination?”
“I think it does. I’m hesitant to jump to conclusions, but it does really look like the tunnels have stabilized. Shiny’s plan worked.”
Magnus led the way the last few meters into the large cavern with the equipment cache in the center. Everything looked the same as they had left it.
“It’s all still here!” Telisa said.
“Minus Joe and Shiny.”
“They may not be back yet. I hope we didn’t leave too soon.”
“I think it’s okay. Shiny was careful to let us know what he needed; I think if we had to stay longer he would have figured out how to communicate that.”
“Well, what now? If everything is frozen in place, does that mean we can search the whole thing and find the exit now?” asked Telisa.
“Maybe so,” Magnus said. “You wanna go look for the exit now, or should we wait and see if Shiny and Joe come back?”
“I’m already back,” came the familiar voice of Joe. Magnus and Telisa turned to see him walking around the cache to join them.
“And Shiny?” asked Magnus.
“I haven’t seen him. Do you think he fooled us somehow?”
“It worked! The caves don’t change anymore,” Telisa told him.
Joe raised an eyebrow and looked around. “Well, this place hasn’t changed.”
“Or any of the passages back to where we waited. They always changed before,” Magnus said.
“I wonder how it worked,” Joe said. “We should try and find Shiny.”
“Or the exit,” Telisa said. “If the place doesn’t change, we could map it all out and find out for sure if there’s a way out or not.”
“Okay. Let’s take a look,” Joe agreed.
“I’ll do the mapping,” Telisa offered.
She set up an off-retina map and shared it with the others. She could see the map in her mind as she effortlessly marked the cache room and its exits.
“Ready?” Magnus asked.
“Yep, let’s go,” Telisa said.
The group walked down a side tunnel. They traversed several side caverns, moving slowly so that Telisa could map them. They worked their way through the dark caverns until coming across the Terran-style corridors where Telisa and Magnus had waited.
They found meeting rooms and a cafeteria with a group of vending kiosks along one wall. Telisa walked up to the machines and asked for a menu through her link.
“Furnam’s Chocolate Squares?” Telisa read aloud, mocking the faux items it sold. “Anyone want a Sloozebar?”
“Food is food,” Joe said. “We should break in and take some.”
“We can do that later since things have stabilized,” Magnus said. “Or even if they haven’t, for that matter. We’d just have to look around for long enough and we’d find some, even if things are changing.”
Joe shrugged. “Okay. I have enough for now. But I am a bit concerned about hoarding some more for the long term.”
They left the cafeteria behind and moved down another unmapped corridor. The wall on the left was made of clear glass, displaying an abstract art exhibit. Telisa didn’t have an eye for art, but the paintings seemed real enough until she read one of the names from a plaque.
“Talvent Checksparr? That’s a crazy name. More fake stuff, I guess.”
“How can you tell?” asked Magnus. “Artists sometimes have weird names.”
“Grumbit Shalzpleen?” Telisa read aloud.
“Um, okay, it’s fake all right,” agreed Magnus.
The next corridor broke off in a T-shape. Magnus started to go to the right, but Telisa turned the other way.
“Over here. I need to check something,” she said.
“Okay,” Magnus said. “What’s up?”
Telisa didn’t answer, her face a mask of concentration. They walked forward another twenty meters, ignoring doors on both sides. On her mental map, the corridor they were in collided with a spot they had been in earlier.
“Damn!” Telisa barked.
“What’s wrong?” Magnus asked.
“The map just overlapped itself. Something is wrong,” Telisa said.
“Let’s head back the other way and double-check. Maybe you entered a turn wrong,” Joe suggested.
“I hope I did,” Telisa said. “Okay, let’s double-check.”
They turned and went back the way they had come. After making the first turn, Joe shook his head.
“There were two doors in this hall before. Now there’s three.”
“But it stopped changing,” Telisa said. “At least for a while.”
“Whatever we did, it only lasted a while,” Joe said. “The place has started working again.”
“And there’s no sign of Shiny,” Magnus added.
Telisa shook her head. “I can’t believe it. He’s abandoned us.”