The three pairs of glowing eyes locked onto Hill the instant the faint red light hit them. Without hesitating, they lunged forward with terrifying speed, their legs scrabbling against the tunnel floor as they closed the distance within seconds.
"Shit!" Hill yelped as he bolted into the darkness, the phantom hand's glow bobbing wildly beside him. He pushed his legs as hard as he could, the cool tunnel air burning in his lungs.
A glance back confirmed his fear – they were gaining on him. Their jerky, insect movements were deceptively fast on the smooth tunnel floor.
Panic surged through his veins. He definitely couldn't outrun them. He needed to act. The phantom hand was his only weapon now.
He spun around, planting his feet as the first ant closed in, mandibles snapping. He thrust his right hand forward in a check hook, the phantom hand copying the motion as it followed his right hand, heading straight for the creature's glassy head.
It passed right through.
Hill watched in horror as the glowing appendage phased through the ant's carapace like it wasn't even there, causing no physical impact. His It's useless?!
But the ant reacted. It didn't flinch, but its charge faltered for a split second. It shook its head, mandibles clicking with agitation, like it had felt something disturbing inside its skull. The other two ants bumped into it, momentarily thrown off by their leader's pause.
A disturbance! It didn't hurt them, but it affected them somehow!
Not much, but an opening. Hill turned and ran again, pushing his exhausted body to its limit.
He raced down the curving tunnel, the red light flickering, the clicking sounds falling slightly behind but still too close. Ahead, the tunnel split – one path opened to the left, the other one went right.
With no time to think, he veered left, plunging into the new passage. After a dozen yards, he killed the phantom hand's light and pressed against the wall, listening.
The clicking sounds reached the fork. A pause. Then the sounds continued down his tunnel. They were following him.
He pushed deeper into the passage which seemed to widen horizontally. Hope flickered in his mind– maybe it opened to a larger cavern? He summoned the hand's light again.
His hope died almost instantly as he did so. The tunnel did open up, but into a dead-end chamber.
It was massive, larger than the assembly hall back at the facility, but the smooth walls offered no exits. And scattered across the floor, from what he could see, were dozens of huge, leathery black eggs. A hatchery.
He was trapped. His eyes darted around. The eggs were his only cover. He dove behind a cluster of the waist-high ovoids near the side wall, squeezing into the shadows between them. He killed the light once more, plunging himself into darkness, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The first ant entered the chamber. Then the second, then third. They spread out, mandibles clicking, tongues tasting the air, searching.
Hill held his breath, the cool, leathery eggs pressing against his back. He heard them moving, scraping across the rock floor.
He needed a plan. But what? The phantom hand couldn't hurt them. It could disturb them briefly, but he needed to be in range for him to do that.
He was hidden for now, but they were searching methodically. They'd find him soon.
He focused inward again, pulling up the mental image of his soul art description.
[Phantom Hand:]
[The phantom watches. From the unseen, a hand extends to guide, to assist, to manipulate when the wielder falters or overlooks. A silent partner in the soul's shadow.]
Guide? Assist? Manipulate? How?
It felt useless and completely intangible. How could this "silent partner" help him now when he was cornered with three monsters closing in? He needed a miracle.
Then, in the pitch black, a faint red glow appeared beside his head. The phantom hand, visible only to him, materialized from darkness.
Its smooth red fingers curled into a fist, then began poking him insistently against his temple, pointing away after each poke.
What the hell? I'm not even controlling it! Is this what "silent partner" meant?
Hill flinched, startled by the sudden poking. The hand was supposed to be ethereal, passing through solid matter like the ant's head.
After all, it was a ghost. So how could he feel its solid pressure against his skin? The pokes weren't painful, but they were definitely real.
Strange... but the harbinger ghost was able to turn solid as well so... I guess it makes sense.
Where was it directing him? He followed its gesture through the darkness, toward the deepest part of the egg cluster, where the shadows were thickest near the back wall.
There? Why? Is something there? An escape?
One of the ants moved slowly toward his cluster, its head sweeping back and forth. Its clicking grew louder.
The phantom hand poked him again, harder this time, almost painfully insistent.
But Hill couldn't move. Fear locked him in place. If he moved now, the ant would spot him instantly. That would be way too risky. He stayed put, squeezed between eggs, praying it would pass by.
The ant was just yards away now. It paused, head tilting directly toward his hiding spot.
It knows!
The phantom hand seemed to reach the same conclusion. The poking stopped. Hill watched as the faint red appendage detached from his side, vanishing as it began to move across the chamber.
As the appendage began distancing itself from him, he felt a strange cramping sensation in his right hand, as if it was being pulled apart.
Ouch! That hurts!
But the appendage didn't stop, causing the cramping to get worse. From what he could tell, there was a physical limit to how far the phantom could distance itself from his body. And currently, he was paying the price of that distancing.
Please, please, please come back! Hill pleaded inwardly as the cramping got to a point where his arm felt like it was being torn up from the inside out.
And then...
Clatter-scrape!
A sharp noise echoed from the far side of the chamber, near the back wall. Like a small rock skittering across the floor.
The ant snapped its head toward the sound. The other two reacted instantly, turning their attention from their search. The first ant clicked aggressively and scuttled toward the back wall, its tongue flickering rapidly. The others followed cautiously behind.
A distraction! The hand created a diversion! Well, I'll be damned!
The poking returned, the faint red hand reappearing beside him, easing the cramping instantaneously as it began nudging him toward that spot it had indicated – the deep shadow behind the eggs near the back wall.
This time, Hill didn't hesitate. He couldn't waste this chance. Uncoiling his stiff limbs, he slipped silently from behind the eggs, keeping low. He darted across to the back wall while the ants were distracted, and melted into the deeper shadows that the hand had highlighted.
His searching fingers found it almost immediately. There was a narrow vertical crack in the rock, hidden behind the curve of the largest eggs, barely wide enough for him to squeeze through.
Without looking back, Hill jammed himself into the fissure, scraping his shoulders on rough rock, and began wriggling deeper into the darkness, leaving the hatchery behind. The phantom hand, its task complete, dissolved back into unseen energy at his side.