Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“I was already on my way! I’m almost there.”
I started toward the gate.
“I’m walking into the school building right now.”
“Kiss their ass, do whatever you need to, but make sure you fix it. I love you.”
“I love you too. Mom…”
The gate loomed.
“Here we go,” Melissa muttered.
“I have to go, Tia.”
“Mom!”
“Yes?”
“Don’t die!”
“I won’t,” I promised. I hung up, powered the phone off, and slipped it into the zippered pocket of my coveralls.
“Remember,” London called out. “We go in together as one, we come out together as one. Nobody gets left behind.”
The mist swirled in front of us, held back by an invisible boundary. I took a deep breath and stepped into the dark.
Stepping through the gate felt like trying to push your way through dense, rubber-thick Jello.
I blinked, trying to adjust to the low light.
A stone passage stretched in front of me, illuminated by patches of bioluminescent lichens, moss, and fungi. They climbed up the walls, glowing with turquoise, green, and lavender, some curling like fern sprouts, others spreading in a net like bridal veil stinkhorn mushrooms.
The otherness slapped you in the face. It didn’t look familiar, it didn’t smell right, and it didn’t feel like home. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Fear dashed down my arms like hot electric needles. I wanted out of this gate. The urge to turn around and run back to the familiar blue sky was overwhelming.
This burst of panic used to happen every time I entered a breach. I’d tried everything in the beginning: counseling, breathing, counting, cataloging random things I saw... My primary prescribed some Xanax, which I couldn’t take because it was strictly off limits for gate divers. Slowed the reaction time down too much.
Medication wouldn’t have worked anyway. Nothing had worked until one week we got a cluster breach. Four gates opened simultaneously in close proximity, and I was the only DeBRA in range. I went through four breaches in forty-eight hours, and by the middle of the third my panic switch got permanently broken. This anxiety was an unwelcome blast from the past, and it needed to go away right now.
It was probably residual stress from the school call.
“Alright,” Melissa called out. “We have a limestone cave biome. The assault team found a large chamber with promising mineral deposits, so we have a nice short hike ahead of us. Watch your step. Do you remember how Sanders fell into a crevice and got stuck, and we spent ten minutes pulling him out while he was farting up a storm and giggling? Don’t be Sanders.”
Sanders, a tall bear of a man in his mid-thirties, chuckled into his reddish beard. “I didn’t have chili this time, I swear!”
A light laughter rippled through the crew. Melissa was going right down her playbook: item one, put everyone at ease the moment the crew stepped into the breach; item two, reach the mining site; item three, profit.
“We have Adaline Moore with us this morning. She is the strongest DeBRA in the region, which means if there is good pay in this hellhole, she will find it for us,” Melissa announced. “Another day, another dollar. Isn’t that right, Assessor Moore?”
“That’s right.” I matched her tone. “Living the dream.”
Another ripple of laughter.
“Once more…” one of the miners called out.
“Don’t you say it!” Melissa growled. “You know better!”
“…into the breach!”
“Damn it, Hotchkins!”
The actual quote was “unto the breach,” but it had mutated long ago. Guild superstition held that if you said the line just as you entered the breach, you would come out alive, but you would kiss the chance of a big score goodbye. It didn’t matter. Someone always said the line.
“I swear if you jinxed us, I will fire you myself…” Melissa carried on.
Aaron looked at London. The blade warden nodded, and the massive tank started down the passageway, moving fast. Time was money. The mining crew followed, keeping the four equipment carts in the middle, the strikers guarding the flanks like border collies obsessed with their herd.
I joined the flow of people. Melissa and Stella walked behind me and London on my right. Elena, the assault team’s scout who’d come back to escort the miners, fell in step next to London. Lean, with a harsh face and blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail, Elena didn’t walk, she glided.
In theory, being on the mining crew was the safest part of the gate dive. Safe was a relative term. Walking across a narrow beam over molten lava was also safe, as long as you didn’t fall.
“Doing okay?” London murmured.
“Yes,” I lied.
“Is Tia alright?”
“Yes. She’s a smart kid. She will handle it. Thank you for the three minutes.”
“You’re welcome.” He glanced at me, his eyes concerned. “Not feeling this one?”
“No.”
Gate divers were like ancient sailors. We ventured into the unknown that could kill us at any moment. In the breach, survival depended on luck and intuition, and our rituals were an acknowledgment of that. We knocked on wood, we muttered lucky sayings under our breath, and we trusted our instincts. My instincts were pumping out all of the dread they could muster.