Time Loop

Part 02

God, she had been too selfish.

This unchartered territory was a gold mine and that was all she'd been thinking. How much she could profit, how much of a name she could make for herself. It was disgusting. 

Finally she allowed her gaze to fall to Uncle Frank's blue, lifeless face jerking up and down as Anna cut in to him. Dani forced herself to take in all the slurping, cutting sounds Anna made. She found herself debating what was worse, those gushing sounds that seemed to echo on the walls of the cave, or her own need to seek out fame.

Dani tore her gaze away from Tommy only to see Edward and Andrea. Edward was just another one of Tommy's thrill seeking friends. A real conceited jerk. The type who thought he knew everything. But when push came to shove, he was always the guy Dani came to when she needed advice about technology. What was the most current, the most accurate and the most affordable...he was their unofficial tech guy. On approved jobs, he freelanced, but this one he'd chosen for fun, like all of them had. All of them had trusted Dani. But look where that trust got them now, she thought to herself.

And then there was Andrea, Tommy's intern, and Edwards 'main squeeze' of the month. A nice, bookish girl that normally had her curly fire-engine red hair pulled into a tight ponytail with black rimmed glasses falling down her freckled nose. Now it was wild around her face and her glasses had been replaced with special diving gear that had been tossed aside, broken, worthless. Dani didn't know what was worse, being able to see everything or not being able to see anything.  Andrea had gone diving occasionally, but she wasn't as advanced as this fun expedition required her to be. She shouldn't even be down here. Dani had told her as much, but Edward with his intense pleading brown eyes had stroked her ego. You're the best Dani, what could possibly go wrong? Those words replayed in her head every time she looked at them.

"Okay, I've got something," Anna said, holding up a piece of serrated material that looked like it was steel.

Releasing a breath, Dani nodded, realizing, in the end, she'd still made Anna do the partial autopsy alone. Now who was the strong one? She couldn't help the thought. Attempting to put her game face on, Dani took a step to kneel down beside the girl holding up the foreign material. "What is that, a miniature knife?"

Anna shook her head. "I thought so at first, but after cleaning the blood off it, I accidentally squeezed the end of it and an orange liquid came out. It's probably some sort of toxin."

Licking her bottom lip, Dani reached for it, only to have Anna pull it away. "You can't touch it, Dani, you have a cut somewhere on your hand and I don't know what these toxins do."

A cut?

Dani glanced down at the blood streaming down her right hand. She didn't feel anything; the only thing that was really physically bugging her was the scratch on her neck. "It's on my neck. I must've broken skin." She concluded out loud, but decided it best to not touch the specimen. "So is it plant or animal?"

Anna shrugged. "I don't know. Tommy, could you—"

"All of our equipment is broken and the only light we're getting is from that shit of a flashlight on Edward's head. It'd be an educated guess at best." Tommy informed them as he finally got to his feet, hunched over, and zigzagged through the pointed rocks as he walked towards them.

She watched as he carefully turned Anna's gloved hand. "I'd say it's definitely some type of sea creature," Dani heard Tommy's voice conclude in the distance. "It's not one I've seen before though."

This animal with thorns must have also had claws because it ripped Uncle Frank's chest to shreds. Small brown thorns filled with an orange toxin, and large claws, big enough to leave three inch wide slash marks across a grown man's chest...maybe it was Christmas, Dani thought bitterly.