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)
Untouched. I was somehow uninjured.
I turned to Stella on my right.
Her head was missing. There was her torso in indigo Magnaprene, her neck, but no head.
The headless body crumpled to the ground.
A gasp came from the side. I turned on autopilot, still trying to process Stella’s missing head. Elena’s guts spilled out of her stomach. The scout clutched at herself. Dark blood poured out of her mouth. She made a horrible gurgling noise and fell.
This couldn’t be happening. It was a weird, horrible nightmare. I was dreaming that I found the magic motherlode of adamantite and then monsters came and killed everyone.
The air smelled like blood and bile. To the left four inhuman creatures tore at their prey in the blue robe, running on the walls and leaping in for the kill only to be knocked aside. Two miners floated in the stream, face down, and the water was red, so red…
Oh God. It’s real. It’s all real.
Panic smashed into me like an icy hammer. I had to get out of here. Now.
The only safe exit was on the other side of the stream. I sprinted across the ridges to the water.
To the left, the fight swung back and forth along the lake’s shore.
I slid over the first rimstone dam, tore through the pool, climbed over the other side, and landed into the stream. Water came up to my thighs and I waded through it, squeezing every drop of speed out of my body.
Half of the mining crew was still drilling.
“Run!” I screamed, waving my arms. “Run!”
Sanders turned, plucking the headphones off his left ear. He saw my face, whipped around, saw the creatures, hurled the drill aside, howled, and ran. The line of miners broke as people charged to the exit.
The world shrank. There was only me and the water trying to stop me. I just had to make it across the stream.
At the cave entrance, Melissa was scrambling up the slope, toward London. The blade warden stared straight at me. Our gazes met.
Help me…
A door slammed shut in London’s eyes.
No. No!
Melissa shoved Anja Presa out of her way. The slender woman slid on the rocks and fell, rolling down to the stream.
I can’t die here. I have to get home to my kids!
I was running so fast. Faster than I’d ever run in my life, and I wasted precious breath on a scream. “Wait! Wait for me!”
London yanked something off his belt. A grenade. He carried aetherium concussive grenades to be used as a last resort.
“Throw it!” Melissa howled and ran past him.
London looked straight at me. His face was cold like ice.
Alex! No!
He dropped the grenade. It rolled toward the stream, bouncing over the limestone. The blue forcefield of his warden talent flared into life, wrapping around London. He turned and fled into the tunnel.
The world exploded.
The blast slammed into Sanders ten yards ahead of me. Water punched me off my feet. I flew like a rag doll and smashed against solid rock. My right leg snapped like a toothpick. My spine crunched. Agony splashed across my side and bit into my ribs. My ears rang, my head swam, and the air in my lungs turned to fire.
I tried to breathe and couldn’t. There was water on my face. I was in the stream face down. I had to get upright, or I would drown.
I wrenched myself up.
Bright white aetherium smoke filled the cave. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t breathe. I could only hold still as the pain drowned me.
“Mom! Don’t die!”
I won’t. I promise.
I forced myself to take a tiny breath. It felt like jagged glass cutting its way through my throat. I coughed through it and willed myself to take another. And another, swimming through the pain, one tiny sip of air at a time.
The smoke drifted up. My vision cleared. I was sitting in one of the pools by the shore, with the water up to my armpits, my back pressed against the rimstone wall. Next to me a severed human head rested on the pool’s bottom. The dark curly hair swirled with the current. Stella.
It should’ve hit me like a semi, but instead I simply noted it, the same way I noted the blood spreading from my right leg and the broken glass that ground in my lungs with every breath.
I pulled the leg of my coveralls up, out of the boot. A jagged bone cut through the skin of my calf. A compound fracture. Okay. I tugged my pant leg over it.
I had to get the hell out of here. Out of this cavern. Out of the breach.
The exit was no more, blocked by a wall of rubble. London’s grenade collapsed the ceiling of the tunnel. He and Melissa left me to die.
The clump of alien creatures passed along the opposite wall, all but floating over the debris that had sealed the exit. I didn’t hear any gunfire. Our escorts were dead.