Page 2 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

One good thing about Mansplaining Mike: he was big on redundancy. He'd issued us all tool belts — flashlight, multitool, flare, the works. I unclipped the flashlight and swept the beam across the chamber.

A rustle behind me. I spun, heart slamming into my throat.

Just the jaguar. Still watching from the entrance. Still furious.

I turned back. I didn't know what to make of this place, or how I was getting out, but I was certain of one thing: I was moving in the opposite direction of the cat.

In the farthest corner, I found an opening at floor level that wasn't fully blocked. The flashlight showed nothing waiting on the other side. I got on my belly and slithered through.

The second chamber was different. My flashlight was reflecting brighter than it should have — something in the stone, phosphorescent or obsidian-like — and there was a hum filling the air. Low. Steady. I could feel it in the floor through my boots.

I pushed my sweat-soaked bangs off my forehead and looked around. I still needed to find a way out that didn't involve a hungry jaguar, then navigate back to the path, then get to camp. My shoulders slumped. Still up a creek.

But these walls — I squinted. The symbols here were different from the first chamber. Some of them I recognized: San Agustín motifs, well-known to anyone who'd studied Colombian archaeology. But they were mixed with the same unfamiliar writing from the hallway, interlocking with it, as if two systems had been laid over each other. I'd seen enough cheesy sci-fi to know this was where the ancient alien tech was supposed to be hidden.

A stone column stood in the center of the room, and the carving wound up it in a single unbroken spiral — two parallel channels cut side by side the whole way, close enough to touch and never quite touching. I filed it under things to photograph when I came back with a working camera and a colleague who would not laugh at me.

I reached out, paused, considered.

Nah. I touched it. What was the worst that could happen?

For a second — just a second — I thought I felt something. A hum. Low and steady, vibrating up through the stone and into my palm, as if the walls themselves were resonating at a frequency just below hearing. The hairs on my arms stood up.

Then it stopped. Or I decided it had never started. No beam of light. No hidden chamber opening. No alien tech activating. I laughed until the sound echoed back at me, wiped my eyes — laughter, not despair — and let go of the column.

Nothing had happened. Of course it hadn't. Aliens weren't real.

Would've been nice, though. A beam of light transporting me back to camp. I sighed. Time to keep moving.

Except the way I'd come in still had a jaguar attached to it. When I crawled back toward the first chamber and listened, I could hear him — the rasp of claws on stone, a huff, the unhurried pacing of a predator with nowhere better to be. Great. I retreated to the humming chamber, sat with my back against the column, and waited him out, checking my watch by flashlight every time I was sure an hour had passed. Usually it had been six minutes. It took two real hours for the jungle outside to settle back into ordinary bird-and-bug noise, and I gave it another paranoid half hour on top of that before I trusted it.

Even then, I was not crawling out the front door on the off chance he was lying in ambush like the world's most patient bouncer. I went looking for another way out instead, and the temple did not make it easy: every passage I tried was collapsed, or narrowed to nothing, or ended in rubble I wasn't brave enough to climb over in the dark. Most of another hour went to dead ends and backtracking. Then I crawled through one more partially collapsed room and found stairs — proper stone steps spiraling up around a central column. Bats, maybe. But up was better than staying down here with no exit.

The top of the stairs did not lead to a chamber of emeralds, gold carvings, or even a crown I could put on. Disappointing. But the staircase opened onto the roof of the building, with a stone overhang to keep rain off. These ancients knew what they were doing.

And from this height — the jungle stretched to the horizon. There. A small clearing. Our camp.

"Hello! Hey! I'm up here!"

Then I remembered: yelling my location with a killer jaguar wandering below was maybe not the play. I sat down, leaned back, and took a breath. Now that I wasn't about to die imminently, the exhaustion hit like a wall.

The gadgets on my tool belt dug into my back. I groaned and reached for the buckle — and remembered the flare.

Mike, I take back every mean thing I ever thought about you. Absolute genius.

Yes, a flare was basically yelling, with fireworks — if the jaguar was still in the zip code, I'd be advertising. But he couldn't reach me up here, the team could not possibly find me without it, and dying unfound in a jungle lost to every version of getting spotted. Calculated risk. I did the math in about four seconds.

I unclipped the flare, stripped the packaging, flipped the safety, stepped out from under the overhang, aimed up, and pressed the button.

Bang. Woosh.

I jumped and screamed. So much for not alerting the local wildlife that Taylor's Tasty Treats was available on the roof, ready for easy pickings.

Nothing came. No jaguars, no snakes. Just birds shrieking in the canopy. I did a slow circle, then sat, then lay down. Exhausted. I just needed to stay awake until the team found me...

I woke with a jerk.

Couldn't tell what had woken me. No unusual sounds. Nothing moving. But according to my watch — if the dive through the temple opening hadn't killed it — five hours had passed since I'd fired the flare.