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Thank God.

If there was, its body heat would have stood out as bright white.

The tension in my shoulders relaxed. Slowly, my hand inched away from the holster. Could never be too careful.

Time to get to work.

I dragged my pack through the hole. Weighed down with shovels, pickaxes, and dynamite, it landed with a crunch at my feet, probably crushing millennia-old limestone formations which would never grow back.

Bummer. But I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the minerals.

I was here for something else entirely.

From the pack, I slid out a thin metal equipment case and opened it on a nearby stalagmite. Inside, set into a foam pad, thirty nickel-sized, quartz oscillators all displayed00:00on their faces. They were essentially nothing more than fancy stopwatches.

The only difference was these cost several grand.

They were wired to each other, so they could all be started and stopped at the same exact time. This would matter.

I made my way around the cave, planting each one in a rough grid pattern. I even tossed a couple into the pool for good measure—they were waterproof, so they’d be fine. For this first measurement, I just wanted to get a general idea of the anomaly’s location.

I could zero in on it later.

As I moved around the pool’s milky, crystallized banks, shadows grew and shrank behind me, like figures ducking out of view. Freaked me the hell out. My hackles stayed up the whole time.

Behind me, the sound of a stone skittering down into the cave broke the silence. The chamber’s echo made it sound like an avalanche.

I spun around and leveled my gun at the cave’s exit, my normally cool pulse now quickening.

Nothing there.

Keeping one eye on my exit, I went back to placing oscillators.

Once I’d placed them all, I began the experiment.

The experiment.

Back at the case, I clicked on the master switch that started all the timers simultaneously. A green indicator light told me they were perfectly synchronized at the time of starting.

Then I waited.

A minute and a half.

While thirty tiny clocks did my work for me.

After exactly ninety seconds, the master timer in my hands automatically sent a signal to each of the thirty others spread about the cavern, telling them all to stop at the same time.

Start. Stop.

Nothing but a fancy stopwatch.

I began reeling in my net of oscillators. As expected, the first one displayed ninety seconds exactly—90:00.

No surprises there.

I checked the second one.

Also 90:00.