PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 198 Blindsight
The scrambler seemed to have thrown off whatever cobwebs our
entrance had spun; it surged along the walls now at full speed, its
arms shooting ahead like a succession of striking snakes, slinging
the body forward so fast the drones could barely keep it in sight, a
writhing silhouette in the fog. Suddenly it leapt sideways, sailing
across the width of the passageway and down some minor
tributary. The grunts veered in pursuit, crashing into walls,
stumbling—
—stopping—
—and suddenly Bates was braking hard, shooting back past me
as I flailed with my pistol. I was past the drones in the next instant;
my leash snapped tight and snapped back, bringing me to a dead
drifting stop. For a second or two I was on the front line. For a
second or two I was the front line, Siri Keeton, note taker, mole,
professional uncomprehender. I just floated there, breath roaring
in my helmet, as a few meters further on the walls—
Squirmed...
Peristalsis, I thought at first. But this motion was utterly unlike
the slow, undulating waves that usually rippled along Rorschach's
passageways. So hallucination, I thought instead— and then those
writhing walls reached out with a thousand whiplike calcareous
tongues that grabbed our quarry from every direction and tore it to
pieces...
Something grabbed me and spun me around. Suddenly I was
locked against the chest of one of the grunts, its rear guns firing as
we retreated back up the tunnel at full speed. Bates was in the
arms of the other. Seething motion receded behind us but the
image stayed stuck to the backs of my eyes, hallucinatory and
point-blank in its clarity:
Scramblers, everywhere. A seething infestation squirming
across the walls, reaching out for the intruder, leaping into the
lumen of the passageway to press their counterattack.
Not against us. They had attacked one of their own. I'd seen
three of its arms ripped off before it had disappeared into a
writhing ball in the center of the passageway.
We fled. I turned to Bates—Did you see—but held my tongue.
The deathly concentration on her face was unmistakable even