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Jessica stumbled into the open encampment, and looked around. By this time she was quite thirsty, and was starting to feel dizzy. Sitting down on an ancient looking broken refridgerator that was sticking out of the ground, she caught her breath, and then called out, "Hello? Is anyone here?"
"Jessica" her construct started, "I'm detecting frayed and insubstantial lifesigns all around us, but they are not human."
Jessica got up, walked over to and looked into the closest tent, inside it was dark, and she couldn't see anything.
"Jessica, we should be moving on."
"No way, I'm gonna die if I don't get something to drink!"
Just then, she caught a whiff of something dead inside the tent, she used the flashlight on her datapad to illuminate the space inside, and she saw about twelve bodies, dismembered to the point where it looked like they had been eaten. Jessica jumped backwards and tried to fight off a bout of nervous tremoring.
"The lifesigns are beginning to coalesce on our position." Her datapad warned her, "I would advise we leave."
"Sure..." She said as she picked a direction leading out of the encampment, and began to run, looking all around her, she still couldn't see anything, until she stuck her leg in a hole in the ground that was roughly twice as big as she was. With a muffled scream she fell about six feet and hit the ground roughly, barely landing on her feet.
She started to cuss loudly as her datapad confirmed that the lifesigns were definitely subterranean in nature. She looked around the hole she fell in, to see that ahead of and behind her were both tunnels running just underneath the ground. And out of the tunnel behind her, she began to hear a lot of horriffic noise.
"Jessica" her construct started, "In accessing the worlds mainframes, I've discovered data relating to five possible creatures that might be responsible for this.
"And?" Jessica prodded as she slung the distress beacon over the edge of the hole and began to try to climb out.
"And I advise you climb faster."
But in junction with being very short, Jessica's hands were soft and her arms were weak, from the past ten years, which she had spent in a sedated state as her ship came across the galaxy to get to Earth... And the dirt forming the upper lip of the crevasse was made of jagged chunks of sod, as well as rocks that were very sharp, so she cut her hands every time she tried to pull herself up.
"All of these creatures home in on the scent of fresh blood" She construct then related to her.
"You're not helping!" She spat, as she panickedly tried to climb out.
The sound coming from the holes now had a skittering portion to it, like insects legs, she started to sweat and water at the eyes, as she put more deep cuts into her upper arms and hands, every time she got a good hold, the rock or dip in the dirt would break off and spit dust and sand into her face.
Push came to shove, and she started to scream for help, looking down the dark cavern to her left, she saw faintly glowing red lights fade into view. There was no way was she going to run down the other cavern to escape, for all she knew that could have been worse.
Her datapad beeped and began to glow brightly in lantern mode, "Jessica, subterranean scans indicate that the heart of the creatures' dwellings are where these creatures are coming from, run down the other cavern, and you will reach the extremities with minimal incident."
She didn't have to hear that twice, as the creatures were starting to collect environmental light and fill a description, a very nasty sounding description.
Jessica held her datapad out in front of her, and raced her petite body through the caverns. The light illuminated the passages barely enough to keep her from cracking her head open on any of the hanging portions of the cave ceilings.
But soon after running down that cavern, she hit an uphill portion of cave, and was spit out into the light, with the creatures only a few steps behind her.
She leapt out of the cave, hit the ground and rolled over a few times, looking behind her to see if they would follow.
One creature lunged out after her in a blur, kicking up enough dust to obscure everything but it's eyes, but it pocketed itself back inside the cave, apparently shying from the sunlight.
Jessica panted in relief, now feeling the residual pain her hands and arms felt from being cut so grievously... It was going to be very uncomfortable to carry the beacon, now.
Speaking of which...
She looked over the lands for the hole she fell into. She deposited the beacon right at the lip of the hole she fell into so she could better climb up...
The construct told her, "Jessica, the location of the beacon is now roughly fourty five feet underground and dropping. There is no option to recover it at this point, not without killing every creature in that cave."
It seemed ridiculous to Jessica that those creatures would steal the beacon... It was fairly shiney, however... Whatever good that would do to subterranean monsters who live in eternal darkness and probably can't even see how shiney it is.
At least she escaped with her life.
"Jessica, I advise we vacate this area and continue heading west to the nearest city. The sun will be setting in three hours."
So silently, Jessica continued on her way, now tired, thirsty and bloody.
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