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It was a long walk through the darkness of the lair. For a long while it was quiet and uneventful, until they took a turn and heard a quiet, rasping, "Help." A moment later the please came again and soon enough the two entered into a chamber full of doors. At the center of it were three tables, and on each was a body.

One was dead, and there was a tablet on the floor beside her. One was all but, his breath shallow and near motionless. The last moved her mouth and again came the call for help. All three had been opened up to varying degrees, their bodies marked and dissected, skin pulled back and pinned in place with needles of bone. Colonies a tiny black insects, marched through them, leaving obvious patterns on and underneath the hunters' skin.

The trek through that dark tunnel seemed to be almost endless, minutes stretching out before ticking by slowly, one by one. He knew they couldn't have been travelling along that long, but in that horrible enclosed space with nothing but their own footfalls, breathing, and the quiet scratching of tiny legs against stone walls, time might have very well have found a way to stand still.

It was monotonous, the way they three trudged along with Finn now taking up the rear of their small party. If it wasn't for a sudden curve in the tunnel, the moon intermediate might have thought that they had stumbled into some kind of endless loop where they would be doomed to tromp along forever.

But with that curve came more changes, the raspy sound of a voice, that plea for help, barely audible before and only slightly more so now. It took Finn's eye a moment to adjust, to decipher just what it was seeing, his mind refusing at first to give him the full picture until he stared long enough, and hard enough.

And then he almost wished he didn't have to see it at all.

The skin peeled back, the trace amounts of blood, the exposed organs, that was all okay. That was all something he could deal with. It was the shiny black shells, the tiny little legs all scrabbling along tunnels that were delved inside and out, and the fact that at least two of those bodies were still living that had him swallowing hard, his stomach lurching, his own memories of insects both below and above his skin making him shudder.

It was perhaps quite telling of Finn's current mental state that Oliver was the first to move forward, though the moon intermediate wasn't far behind as he attempted to shake it off. This was his job, after all, and no matter how out of his depth he may feel at the current moment, there was no time to spend wasting on simply staring and feeling queasy at the sight.

He was suddenly quite glad that he was covered from head to toe, his scarf pulled back up around his face before gloved fingers moved to the nearly prone body that was likely near death.

A wide eye surveyed what he could, though he glanced to the side briefly, in time to see Daisy scoop up the tablet that was lying on the floor next to the third body. "Right." He muttered underneath his breath, his bag dropped onto the side of the table before he began to rummage, coming out with runic bandages, needle and thread, antiseptic....

"What the ******** is that?" He hissed towards Oliver as a new smell, worse then what they'd been greeted with upon arrival into the room, filtered through his scarf. Off to the side, he could hear Daisy gag, but rather than look at her, he kept his attention on the hunter on the table, doing the same as Oliver as he began to unpin flaps of flesh and skin, flicking, picking, and swiping away insects as they made themselves visible though there seemed to be an endless supply wiggling all throughout the hunters body.

Bile rose in the back of his throat once more though it was quickly stifled with another hard swallow.

Before he could answer Oliver, Daisy, who was studying the doors, did instead.

"I'll see if my phone works, maybe get Griz and Garrett down here to lend a hand." She kept her voice low, quiet, and began to move back towards the mouth of the tunnel. "We should bring the body as well if we can." She meant the dead one, of course. Taking her phone out, she checked for service, though she wasn't feeling very optimistic for their chances.

A rotting mouse. Well, that certainly explained the extra terrible smell in the air, but even Finn had to admit, it was a pretty solid idea. If it succeeded, at least. Either away, an attempt was made, and anything was better than simply picking beetles out as he saw them before squishing them beneath his boots heels lest they just crawl right back in once more. However, if any amount of progress was being made, he couldn't see it. How was this guy even still alive?

"Unless, of course, they're being controlled." Which was entirely plausible, considering what he'd seen in past missions. Somewhere behind him, he could hear Daisy pacing near the tunnels entrance, attempting to get a signal to contact the others, but eventually Finn decided to just tune her out, eye closing briefly as he tried to remember how best to proceed in a situation like this.

Reaching into his bag, he removed several large squares of gauze, pieces normally cut down in size to cover wounds. Each was about twelve inches by twelve inches, sizeable enough, he thought, for what he had intended.

A water bottle was removed next, the cap untwisted before he carefully began to pour the water over the gauze, just enough to make it damp, not quite enough to soak. Each one was placed over the now-patients abdomen, covering the exposed internal organs, for whatever good it would do.

"Right. Like leaving an opening to drain puss." It was in no way similar, comparing infectious ooze to flesh tunneling beetles, but he couldn't see any reason not to give it a try as well.

A glance down showed beetles crawling up his boots and pant legs, and Finn cursed under his breath, kicking until they fell away, stomping until they were either crushed or had scattered.

"Any luck with that radio?" He called over towards Daisy, who he assumed was still trying to make contact with Griz.

Splitting up didn't seem like such a great idea now, he bet.

Several times it seemed as if the call would go through but each moment of hope was met with the abrupt silence of disconnection. This was not so strange for the Sahara, but at least the regional lines were usually reliable. Inside underground lairs apparently being the exception.

As Oliver worked, more and more beetles joined the two inspecting the vial, and suddenly a mass of tiny black bodies were obscuring the mouse entirely. In fact, soon the entire table was covered, as well as the floor. Close inspection would reveal that the many of the new insects had a slightly different sheen and moved differently than the others.

Though they only covered the floor, more and more appeared. The room was going to fill.

The beetle that startled Finn set off a minor chain reaction, the sudden actions were unexpected, and had a similar effect on the young trainee. Oliver squeaked jumped back himself, reflexively fearing whatever it was that could make Finn lose his cool. In front of him, several beetles took flight and wrapped up the cascade of events in a rather impressive finish.

"S-sorry..." The trainee mumbled in embarrassment, sheepish eyes downcast to avoid having to meet the eye of either of his companions.

Oliver worked in silence for a couple minutes, laying damp gauze down over his own patient's arm, then carefully laying the skin back over. It would have to do, keeping the exposed muscle and raw flesh protected until they could get back to camp, or preferably the island. He carefully wound a strip of gauze around the arm and tied it off to the side of the injury. In his mind, the list of requirements was checked off one by one, protecting the tissue, allowing room for beetles to escape, keeping sand out once they got to the surface again...

He processed the abdominal cavity in a similar manner, brushing away beetles as they came, and tying everything just tight enough to hold it securely together. It was a wonder the hunter he worked on was still conscious, Oliver could hear the occasional moan of pain. "Hold on just a bit longer," he said gently, and received a weak nod in reply. Conscious and still responsive, that was a good sign.

He shook a beetle off his arm, they were beginning to crawl up onto his hands whenever he set them down on the patient or the table. Suddenly his own bout of realization arrived.

Finn had barely started swearing when Oliver frantically capped the vial, precious samples still trapped inside, and used his sleeve to brush the growing mass of insects right off the table. "I-I don't know! I was only given the mouse!" He yelped. "H-how are we going to get everyone out?!"

The boy's eyes darted towards the corpse. Daisy already grabbed the tablet, but would they have to leave the body?

Oliver nodded quickly. "We're getting out of here," he said to the hunter he was working on. "Your two teammates too."

She was not strong enough to help Oliver or hold on when he picked her up, yet despite his doubts, she was an easy enough weight in his arms. He had never been able to carry someone like this before, but finally his strength training had paid off, assisted by a good dose of pure, frantic adrenaline. He was more wary of the beetles now climbing up his neck than accidentally dropping his patient.

"Daisy go!" He yelped, and while Finn booked it towards the tunnels he took up the rear after the Mist hunter had passed. The carpet of beetles was getting so thick underfoot that he nearly slipped amidst the crunch of carapaces.

The crunching of hard, insect carapaces would haunt his nightmares. The seething mass of beetles, with their shiny shells and long antennae, would be forever imprinted in his mind, a sight he would surely behold every time he closed his eye for days to come. They were disgusting, and their attempts to halt the hunters progress down the tunnel did not go unnoticed. Still, the trudged on, though everywhere the beetles touched his skin, what little of it was exposed, began to itch, to burn, much like the mark from where he'd been bitten by a "zombie" did from time to time.

But eventually, after what seemed like an endless amount of time, he saw light, and sand, and could hear the wind that whipped outside. He didn't know if leaving the lair meant the beetles would stop. He actually expected the damn things to follow him all the way back to the camp.

He burst outside first, followed close behind by Daisy, and OIiver who brought up the rear. A quick glance around showed that their other two companions were not there, a fact that Daisy noticed just as quickly.

"We have to go back for them."

"We can't. Those insects will eat us ali--" Finn began, turning to face the mist hunter.

"We have to go back for them." She insisted with a hard look, her voice a stern hiss.

Finn gave Oliver a look. "We have to get these bodies somewhere relatively safe. Somebody has to stay with them."