'Black Caiman calling to Nest. Please respond over.' I sent the message through my watch.
'This is Nest. What is the current situation on your end, Caiman?' my watch vibrated and blinked a short moment later.
'We had arrived at the dam, but we were forced to take an alternative route.' I responded to the message.
'What do you mean?' my watch vibrated and blinked again.
'We were ambushed by a dozen of aliens when we were inside the dam, and since they were all coming from the only way to the next destination, we had no choice but to destroy the dam in order to wipe them up.' I sent the message through my watch, as I sighed just when I began to wonder what would be the next response.
At first, there were no responses at all, most probably because Commodore Quentin was in a total loss for words, let alone opinion and/or suggestion. I decided to give the whole detail for my explanations to him by sending him more messages through my watch. It was when I finally finished explaining, that my watch began to send another message again to me, asking in more details about my current new surroundings.
'Where are you now?' my watch showed the message.
'We are currently still inside the cave, and working out on how to get out from here.' I responded the message quickly.
'I assume that the archeologist will be the one who lead the way for both you and Golden Jackal?' my watch vibrated and blinked its next response.
'Exactly. If you feel like she should not be the one leading, I can give another suggestion to both of them on your behalf.' I sent my response while I began to scramble a few words for a possible change of plan.
'No. The current decision is the best option we have for now. Let her lead you, and let me know if you find anything else or when you have found the exit.' my watch replied almost as soon as I sent my message.
'Roger that.' I answered to the reply as I nodded once since I realized that the decision was actually already satisfactory.
'One other thing. Please give Golden Jackal my salutation. Although his decision was pretty reckless, but now looking at your current situation it was actually a clever move. I believe that no more aliens will be after your back right now since they most likely cannot swim.' my watch sent its last message just when I was about to end the transmission.
'Understood, Nest. Over and out.' I replied as I could not contain the smile across my face when I read the message.
To be honest, it had not occur to me until that moment that another one of the aliens' possible weaknesses would be their inability to swim, which was actually could be pretty high since they had wings on their back. Nevertheless, they were still able to fly if they got wet, a feature which both Billy and I witnessed directly back at the mansion in the first village. I then sent Commodore Quentin's salutation to him for deciding to blow up the dam, and he responded it with a brief and satisfied laugh.
"Well, if he said so then I appreciate it." Billy said to me, with a smile across his face.
"No kidding." I responded to him. "I wonder if they would chase us all the way here had you did not blow that dam."
"Uh guys." Jessica said from between us. "So, when do we start to move?"
"Right, of course…" I replied to her as I forced my mind to focus back on the current tasks at hand. "Lead the way, please…"
Immediately after that, we took our first steps in going deeper into the cave that we had unintentionally entered, with only her lighter as the source of light for all three of us. As we kept on venturing more into the cave, I began to look around at what I could amongst the very dark surroundings.
The first thing that I had my attention locked to, was the overall features of the cave itself. I could not see very clearly since our light source was only the small flame coming out from Jessica's lighter, but I was still able to roughly guess the height from the cave ground to its ceilings. Apparently, the cave had the height of around seven feet. I also had expected that the wall surfaces of the cave would be rough, but strangely enough it was actually pretty smoother than what I had imagined.
The second thing that I noticed shortly after was, the ground, walls, and even the ceiling of the cave were apparently dry since there was not even a single water drop was heard by any of us which was probably had something to do with the pressure and wind on our current altitude from the sea level. It was also at that moment that I decided to confirm to Jessica if we were in fact, inside the region of the abandoned mine. That was, if she could determine it by the cave's appearance.
"Do you think this cave is connected to the abandoned mine?" I asked her as we continued on walking.
"There is a possibility, but I am not yet completely sure." She responded shortly after. "Especially since Billy said that the mine sometimes contained chalks."
I turned to Billy for a brief moment, only to see that he was looking at me as well without hinting anything. I did not know much about caves, let alone speleology which is the science about it, however I was confused at Jessica's words since as far as I know for a cave to have some decent amount of chalks it would some stalactites and stalagmites formations inside it.
"Are you thinking if there should be some stalagmites or something like that inside here, Travis?" Billy asked me.
"Actually, yes." I responded to him right away. "However, we still have yet to see what is more inside this cave, so I guess we will have to wait for more."
"I agree." Billy nodded once.
Jessica did not give any respond towards our conversation, and seemed to just be focusing on the dark path ahead of us. It might be only my imagination, but she also looked as if she sometimes had herself focusing on the lighter flame more than the road itself. I wondered if it had anything to do with determining the right path for us.
After about five minutes of walking, we came across a splitting path. The right path was the wider, but shorter and somehow looked like it would lead us to a lower level. The left path was the narrower, but seemed a little taller and apparently it would neither bring us higher or lower. Both Billy and I quickly turned to Jessica, to see what she would decide.
"Jess?" Billy asked to her.
"I need a few moments to choose." Jessica responded soon after. "Travis, Billy I will need you guys to lean against the wall.
I could not think of any possibilities of what she attempted to do. Billy however, looked like he had some sort of idea of what she might be up to. Nevertheless, the both of us followed Jessica's instruction. I leaned against the wall to the left of us, while Billy leaned against the wall to the right of us. Jessica then proceeded to walk towards the right path first, and seemed to be blocking one side of the lighter flame with her hand. After a short while, she went back to where we had stood before and headed towards the left path.
She did the exact same thing, without giving out any words about what she was attempting to do. However, either I was just imagining it or not I saw that the lighter flame looked like it was blown off by something, but not to the point that it went off. It was then when I realized that she was probably trying to figure out which path will lead us to the exit, by testing the direction of the wind. Apparently, there was not any wind blowing towards the right path, thus concluding that it would lead us to a dead end.
"Wow. The more I know now…" I said to her as I looked at her eyes.
She only responded by only giving her gentle smile to me and told the both of us that we should pick the left path. Since Billy did not ask anything about the decision, I assumed that he also had realized of what had happened.
"Kalau gue tau bakal begini, gue ikut elu eksplorasi gua waktu dulu kita masih di kampus." Billy said to Jessica, stating that he would have gone with her in her first cave exploration back in their campus days had he known that things would turn out like that.
"Hehe. Seneng gue bisa beneran berguna akhirnya buat kalian." Jessica responded to him, stating that she was happy to be finally able to contribute something useful for both of us.
We continued to venture deeper into the cave by taking the left path. The features of the cave still had not changed much, except that it seemed to get a little narrower with each a couple of minutes passed. Somehow a little short while after, I also felt like we were going down to a lower level although neither Billy nor Jessica complained about it.
Then, after about a little more than ten minutes had passed, the path suddenly widened up and the ceiling suddenly became much taller than before that I could not even estimate the distance between the ground to the ceiling anymore. Jessica at first stood still, with a confused expression clearly drawn on her face, and ended up in deciding that we would be best following the left wall.
We followed her instruction with her leading the way, followed by Billy in the middle, and me in the back. It was not until five minutes later, when the left wall looked like it slowly began to curve to the right direction, indicating that there were no more branching to the other direction. As we kept on following the path, it eventually led us to the second branch. However, all three of us were immediately thrown into confusion as there were three different paths ahead of us.
"Well? Should we lean against the wall again?" I asked Jessica.
"Yes, please. Thank you." She responded to me, but somehow with doubts on her face.
Both Billy and I proceeded to do what we did earlier, and waited for her to finish checking with her lighter. Unlike when she was determining which path we should go earlier, in which she did it with a confidence, that time she looked like she was filled with doubts. After several minutes later, she returned to us and was just standing in front of without saying anything for a short while.
"Well, uh…" she said, as she sighed once. "All three paths showed an indication that there was a wind flow…"
"Huh…" I responded right away, almost at loss for words. "I suppose you had yet any experience on determining the right path out of three options, then?"
"No, I have not…" she answered me as she shook her head.
"Kalau gitu, yang mana yang niup paling kencang?" Billy asked Jessica, wanting to know which path had the wind blew the flame the hardest.
"Yang jalur kanan, terus yang kiri, terakhir yang lurus. Itu urutan dari yang paling kencang ke paling kecil." Jessica responded to him, saying that the flame was blown the hardest from the direction of the right path, followed by the left path, and it was blown the weakest from the path straight ahead of us.
"I suggest that we take the right path first, then. What do you think?" Billy said to me.
"Well, I do not think of any other options, so okay." I answered to him. "But do not you both think that it is also about time that we switch the light source from lighter to flashlight? At least, for some while now?"
Billy turned to Jessica, signaling if it was a good idea for her, to which she quickly nodded and agreed with what I said. I then took out my flashlight from my backpack and turned it on, before Jessica turned off her lighter. We then headed to the front of the right path as we began to determine if we were heading to the right way.
"Well…" I said as I cleared my throat, "Guess I will be the one leading this time…"