'Nest, this is Black Caiman. Please respond over.' I sent the message through my watch
'It has been quite some time since your last transmission, Caiman. How does it feel to finally breathe fresh air again?' My watch vibrated and blinked very shortly after, implying that the person right in front of the transmitting machine had been expecting me for a while then.
'Frankly speaking, I prefer breathing polluted air for once in a while rather than being trapped in a dark void.' I replied the message.
'Good thing you finally managed to get out. So, how is the condition outside the cave?' it responded.
It took a while to realize that I had yet to look at my watch again ever since we were stuck for some while inside that cave. When I did, it showed me the time was already 04.51 p.m., which made me put to a little shock in knowing that we were stuck inside the cave for perhaps more than four hours. It was also then when I began to look around our new surroundings in more detail, and to the least of my expectation we had in fact reached the region of the higher ground like we had originally planned.
'It is currently cloudy, and I expect rain will fall shortly after this. A favorable weather for us if it indeed happens. That aside, we will also need to move fast or it will be dark before we find another place to rest.' I detailed my surroundings.
'I see.' my watch answered, probably pretty much loss in other words for a proper respond.
'There is one good news however.' I sent another message through my watch. 'We have reached the higher ground, although not through our original plan. Therefore, I want to request another update on our current location, perhaps through Commander General Girsang and Golden Jackal, sir.'
'Yes. Already on it, and Golden Jackal should be receiving some more updated information by now.' My watch replied by vibrating and blinking.
I turned to Billy for a moment, and saw that he indeed seemed like he was receiving some messages through his watch and looked like he was about to respond something more based on his serious look on his face.
'Thank you, sir.' I responded. 'There is one more thing. The archeologist found another artifact while we were still inside the cave. Not only that, there were also a total of twelve carved symbols and markings along with nine gravestones.'
I explained all of the findings from the cave to Commodore Quentin, starting from what had happened after our last transmission, to how we found the gravestones and the artifact besides the skeletal remains, until we had finally found our way out of the cave. I also included some of Jessica's hypothesis inside my explanation.
'Apparently the cave had something to do with a prehistoric community residing not far from our current position.' I concluded my detailed explanation.
'We should stay with the archeologist's hypothesis for now. In any rate, you should focus back on searching for another place to shelter. Golden Jackal should have a good suggestion for it anytime now.' my watch replied, taking a bit longer of time.
'Roger that, Nest. Black Caiman out.' I ended the transmission.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a long deep breath before I let it out and opened my eyes again, as an attempt to calm my mind. The very next thing that occurred on my mind to do was none other than to discuss with Billy on a suggestion about where to go next.
However, he was apparently still occupied with either about something or was going to respond another message through his watch as he still had his right hand on his watch and did not blink his eyes, not even for once. Seeing that, I decided to talk to Jessica for some moment while waiting for him to finish.
"Have you regained your strength to move out again?" I asked her.
"Well, I have to be ready whenever we must move out, right? So I guess the answer should be yes." She responded, with a warm smile to me as she chuckled.
I looked at Billy again, only to see that he was still sending messages through his watch. To be honest, I was starting to think that perhaps his direct Commanding Officer had so many crucial information that he had to receive them all at once, as soon as possible.
"I… have something to ask about the second site, actually…" I said to Jessica, as I suddenly reminded myself of something.
"What is it?" she asked me.
"Earlier before we entered the cave, you mentioned that the second prehistoric site was somewhere about two kilometers northeast of a cliff edge by the river, right?" I detailed my question to her.
"Yes. What about it?" she responded to me.
"Is it possible that the location actually refers to something that may give us a hint or a clue of a prehistoric site buried somewhere underground on that location?" I asked her.
She fell silent, just looking at me straight in the eyes without blinking and saying any words, perhaps stoned or rather, confused at what I was trying to ask.
"Okay. Let me rephrase my question." I said, eager to hear what she was thinking. "Assuming that we are now in the northeast direction of the dam that we had escaped earlier, could it be that the cave was actually a part of the second site, and that we actually had discovered what was buried there?"
She then slowly looked down, still not blinking and was in a complete loss for words, before she finally gave out her answer.
"Yes. It is possible." She said, after she nodded twice and smiled a little. "But, we should not jump to any assumptions yet since we are still not sure on which directions we are anymore, so we cannot-"
"We can assume that the cave behind us IS the second site." Billy suddenly came to us, cutting Jessica's words and surprised me a little.
"Let me guess, it is confirmed by something that you received from General Girsang, just now?" I turned to Billy, demanding his answer.
"Implicitly, yes." Billy confirmed it. "We are approximately one point nine kilometers to the northeast direction from the destroyed dam. If anything, I would say that it is already very close to the supposed location of the second site for the archeologists, at least that is what I understood from what the cartographers had told the Commander General."
Billy then continued by explaining what were the things ahead of us. First of all, the higher grounds we were currently on had less dense forestry than it was on the lower grounds, meaning that we would have less places and spots to hide should we encounter some aliens on our way to the next destination.
Then, he proceeded to mention our next destination, which was another village but already abandoned long before the current incident and the distance from our current location was about four kilometers to the north direction. He said that once we arrived there, it would best for us to rest there for the rest of the day, especially since we would most likely have some tougher times for the next day.
I then immediately asked him on what he meant by tougher times, to which he said that we would have to cover no less than six kilometers of steep surface grounds to the west direction if we were to reach halfway to the mountain peak by midday. After that, assuming that it would not rain during the afternoon, in which the current weather prediction for rain to fall was still roughly 50-50 by the time he was informed earlier, we would have to traverse along a narrow cliff, before we finally could reach a highland meadow.
"Narrow cliff… How narrow?" I asked Billy as soon as I heard him mentioning it.
"According to the cartographer, no more than two thin people will be able to traverse along together there." Billy responded, as he sighed and looked down with both his hands on his hip, indicating that he was also rather uncomfortable about the information.
Just when I thought that the roads ahead of us would be at least not getting harder, a far more challenging obstacles seemed to already be placed before us before we knew it. I then asked Billy again if there would be more obstacles after we arrived at the highland meadow, to which he answered that he had yet to know more about it. The only thing that he had known was that there was some sort of old volcanic rock debris scattered around one region of the highland meadow according to the cartographer.
"Jess? Can that be a sign for your third site?" I turned to Jessica when I heard about the volcanic rock debris.
"No one in the team had ever told me anything about a third site, so no." Jessica responded to me, plain and simple.
I nodded once, before I then concluded that there really was no other choice to get to our next checkpoint. I also hinted that we would be better to move out right away since the clouds right above us indicated that it would be raining very soon, not because we wanted to avoid the rain, but rather because we would not want the rain to stop before we could get to the third village. The two of them agreed with me, and we began to take our first step to the third village, our third safe haven, at least supposedly…