Look at these grieving orphans! We must hold Cold Chaos accountable for their suffering. Your father abandoned you. Your mother was torn apart in the breach by monsters. Tell us how that made you feel. Cry for us. Cry louder.

  Tia and Noah both knew to refuse all interviews, but they were only kids. They would be so scared and vulnerable…

  I had to make it home.

  Sixty feet. Almost halfway there. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I would make Melissa eat those words when I got out.

  Bear must’ve been a shoulder cat in another life because she sat steady like a rock. Come to think of it, carrying her should’ve been a lot harder. Maybe it was the adrenaline…

  Bear stiffened under my hand. A low growl rumbled from her mouth. She craned her neck, looking at something in the tunnel behind me. I didn’t have room to turn around and check what was happening.

  Ninety feet.

  Another growl.

  Running would get us killed. I wove my way through the ridges. Whatever was coming up behind us would have to deal with the Grasping Hand as well. It would be fine.

  Growl.

  One hundred and twenty feet.

  Fine. Just fine.

  A dry skittering noise came from behind me. It sounded insectoid, as if a giant cockroach was scrambling through the tunnel at top speed.

  Bear snarled, trying to lunge off my shoulders. I wobbled, careened, caught myself at the last moment and kept going, feverishly trying to keep from slicing my legs to ribbons.

  Bear erupted into barks, jerking me to and fro.

  “Stay! Limp! Stay!”

  The chittering chased us.

  Almost there. Almost through. Just a little longer. Just a little bit…

  Bear threw herself to the left. I spun in place, my boot catching on the nearest clump of thorns, shied the other way, and jumped over the last ridge. My boots hit the clear ground. Alive. I was alive somehow. The thorns didn’t penetrate through the boot.

  I dropped Bear to the ground and spun around.

  The awful chittering sound filled the tunnel behind us. I flexed and saw the dark outline of four-foot-long chitinous legs.

  “Run!” I turned and sprinted down the tunnel. The dog dashed ahead, pulling me forward with the leash.

  It wouldn’t get through the Grasping Hand. Surely, it wouldn’t.

  I glanced back, flexing. A massive insectoid thing tore out of the tunnel. It sampled the red field and plowed right into it. Shit!

  I flew across the cave floor, drawing even with Bear. No turnoffs, no branching hallways, just a death trap with the thing behind us charging full speed ahead.

  The tunnel veered right, curving. We took the curve at breakneck speed. I slid, caught myself, and dashed forward. Ahead the mouth of a tunnel opened to something lighter, glowing with eerie purple. We raced to it and sprinted into the open.

  I flexed. Time stretched. It was the strangest thing. The world slowed down as if throttled to half speed. My enhanced vision thrust the feedback at me and I saw everything instantly.

  A huge cave lay in front of us, its jagged walls rising high up. You could fit a ten-story office tower into this chamber. Natural stone bridges crossed high above, a waterfall spilled from a fissure in the wall far in the distance, and straight ahead, in front of us, a small lake lay placid, its color a deep blue. Short shrubs grew along the shore, about a foot high, with leaves the color of purple oxalis, dotted with glowing mauve flowers.

  Two stalker corpses lay in the flowers, torn apart, and in the lake itself, a large shape waited, hidden in the water. It flared with bright yellow. Danger. Chances of survival: nil.

  The world restarted with my next breath. I didn’t have the luxury to freak out about it. We had to run. Now.

  I pulled Bear to the left, where a chunk of the wall protruded in a miniature plateau. We couldn’t crawl onto it, but there were boulders around it. It was the only cover we had. Anything else would bring us too close to the lake.

  We dashed through the flowers. My heart was beating a thousand beats per minute.

  A screech erupted from the tunnel.

  We reached the ledge, and I ducked behind a large boulder and pulled Bear close. She squatted by me, and I hugged her, my hand on her muzzle, and whispered, “Quiet.”

  The shepherd stared at me with big brown eyes.

  A monster burst out of the passageway. Its front end resembled a silverfish that had somehow grown to the size of a rhino, with razor-sharp, terrifying mandibles. Its tail was scorpion like, curving over its head, and armed with another set of flat pinchers, studded with sharp protrusions.

  The monster paused. Its tail blades sliced the air like two huge shears.

  I held my breath.

  The creature skittered forward, straight for the stalker corpses on the shore.

  The thing in the lake waited, still and silent.

  The bug monster reached the closest stalker corpse. The mandibles sliced like two sets of shears, cutting the body into chunks, dissecting it. The first shreds of flesh made it into the creature’s mouth.

  The thing in the lake struck. A blur erupted out of the water, lunging onto the shore. Somehow the bug monster dodged and scampered back, out of reach.

  The lake owner paused, one massive paw on the torn-up corpse. It was huge, ten feet tall, thirty-five feet long, and it stood on four sturdy legs armed with eighteen-inch claws. Its body was a mix of dinosaur and amphibian, dark violet, with scales that shimmered with indigo and pink as it moved. A massive fin-like crest crowned its head and flared along its spine all the way to the tip of a long, thick tail. Its head with four small deep-set eyes and a wide, triangular mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth was straight dragon. There was nothing else to compare it to. It was a lake dragon, and it had sighted an intruder in its domain.

  The bug monster scurried backward, then sideways, its tail raised high, ready to strike.

  The dragon’s flesh rippled. Pale pink spots appeared on its sides, near its crest, glowing softly. Was it a warning or was it trying to mesmerize the bug?

  The monster silverfish veered left, then right, but did not retreat. Bugs weren’t known for their strategic thinking. There was meat on the shore, and the bug wanted it.

  The silverfish lunged forward, the bladed tail striking like a hammer. The dragon shifted out of the way and the chitin shears hit rock instead of flesh. The dragon lunged, swatting at the bug with a taloned paw. The silverfish dodged and charged in from the side.

  I grabbed Bear’s leash, leaving her six inches of lead, and moved carefully away, past the boulders, along the ledge, toward the back of the cavern. Bear made no noise. She didn’t bark, she didn’t growl, she just snuck away with me.

  Behind us, the bug monster screeched. A deep eerie hiss answered, almost a roar.

  I picked my way along the wall, through jagged boulders. On our left, the cavern’s sides were smooth and almost sheer. On our right, the river that flowed from the waterfall rushed to the lake.

  I flexed again. The water was twenty-two feet wide and seven feet deep. Too deep to easily cross, and the other shore sloped up, littered with large rocks. A chunk of cave ceiling or one of those stone bridges above must’ve collapsed and broken into big chunks. Too hard to climb.

  I kept scanning. There had to be a way out of this deathtrap.

  My vision snagged on something ahead, where the wall curved left. A dark gap split the rock face, twelve feet high and fourteen feet wide. I focused on it.

  No dice. The gap was fifty-three yards away, and my talent told me that there was nothing valuable in the rock wall around it, but I couldn’t tell how deep it was. My ability was always tied to my vision. I could sense things buried within rock, but I still had to look at the rock while doing it. If I closed my eyes, I got nothing, and that fissure was just a dark hole. Once I entered the gap, I could scan it but until then, it was a mystery.

  There could be other passages on the other side of the cavern, but I didn’t want to risk it. There could be nothing there.

  The boulders ended. The ground here was almost clear and sheathed in the mauve flowers. We’d have to leave cover to get to the gap.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The bug monster had circled the lake. It was on our side now, still facing the dragon, but two of its left legs were missing and a long gouge carved across its chitin carapace. It wasn’t darting quite as quickly. The huge lake monster kept advancing, its crest rigid, the spots on its sides almost blinding. A wound split its right shoulder, bright with magenta blood.

  We had to risk it.

  I tugged Bear’s leash, and we padded into the open, heading for the gap. My enhanced vision snagged on the flowers. Deep blue. Poisonous when eaten. Everything in this fucking breach was trying to kill us.

  Something thudded. I risked a glance. The bug had crashed into the wall, falling on its side, and the dragon bore down on it, mouth gaping. At the last moment, the silverfish flipped and dashed away, heading straight for us.

  I ran, pulling Bear with me. We flew across the cave, scrambling over rocks. The air in my lungs turned to fire.

  The bug was right behind us. I felt it there. I didn’t need to flex, I knew exactly where it was.

  The gap loomed in front of us.

  Bear and I scrambled into the darkness. For a moment I was running blind, and then my night vision kicked in. Ahead, the passage narrowed down to four feet wide.

  Yes! The narrower the better.

  An awful scraping noise came from behind us, the sound of bug legs digging into the rocks.

  Beyond the narrow point lay darkness. It was too deep and too dark.

  We dashed through the narrowed gap, and I slid to a halt, yanking Bear back. We stood on a seven-foot ledge. Beyond it the ground disappeared. There was no way down. There was just a gulf of empty dark nothing.

  We were trapped.

  The wall behind us shook.

  I spun around.

  The bug rammed the stone, trying to get its tail through, but the gap was too narrow. It screeched and struck the rock again. The mandibles shot toward me through the gap, slicing.

  I jerked my right arm up on pure instinct. The cuff around my wrist flowed into my fingers and snapped into a long sharp spike, and I drove it into the bug’s head. The blade sliced through the right mandible and bit into the armored carapace. The mandible hung limp. I yanked the blade free and stabbed again, and again, and again, thrusting and jabbing in a panic-fueled frenzy. To my right, Bear launched forward, exploding into snarls, bit the mandible I had partially severed, and ripped it free.

  The bug screeched. Pus-colored ichor wet its head. It tried to back up, but its head was wedged into the gap.

  I kept jabbing. Bear bit and snapped, foam flying from her mouth.

  Stab, stab, stab…

  The bug collapsed. I drove the sword into it seven more times before my brain finally processed what I was seeing. The giant silverfish was dead. It wasn’t even twitching.

  I heaved, trying to catch my breath. We killed it. Somehow we killed it.

  Bear snarled next to me, biting a chunk of the bug she had torn off. All her fur stood on end.

  “Good girl,” I breathed. “Finally snapped, huh?”

  Bear growled and bit down. Chitin crunched.

  The bug shuddered.

  I jerked my sword up.

  The silverfish slid backward, into the gloom of the dark passageway, and behind it, I saw the outline of a massive paw and pale glowing spots.

  I dropped into a crouch and hugged Bear to me in case she decided to follow.

  The silverfish vanished, swallowed by the darkness. The pale pink spots winked out.

  5

  The plane shuddered as it hit an air pothole. Elias put his hand on the glass of the ginger ale sitting on his desk to keep it from flying off.

  Across from him, Leo sat very still, his eyes unblinking. His XO didn’t like planes. It wasn’t the flying; it was the lack of control. And if Elias mentioned it, Leo would just feel more self-conscious and withdraw deeper. He learned long ago that comfort and logic didn’t work for times like these, but distraction did wonders. The sooner he sorted through his thoughts, the faster he could put Leo’s sharp mind to analyzing the Elmwood disaster instead of focusing on being stuck in a metal tube hurtling through the atmosphere thousands of feet above the ground.

  Elias peered at the mining site map on his tablet. Compasses didn’t work in the breaches, so traditional directions didn’t exist. Instead, the moment you entered, you faced north and the gate behind you was always due south. It was obviously simplified but it worked, and all breach maps followed this principle.

  The cave biomes were Elias’ least favorite, and this one was a fucking maze. A tangle of tunnels, passages, and chambers, resulting from eons of erosion, as water shaved and carved the stone. A chunk of another world, wedged between Earth and elsewhere.

  Gate dives had stages. Of all of them, the assault phase was the main and most important. Humanity entered the gates to destroy the anchor and collapse the breach. Everything else was secondary to this goal, no matter how much some people wanted to twist it. Yes, mining paid the bills, but the focus of the mission was to keep the invasion at bay.

  Like many others, Elias felt the anchor the moment he stepped through the gate. It tugged on him, a knot of energy, a distant nexus of power that demanded attention. The stronger you were, the more it pulled on you. To Elias, it was inescapable, like an evil sun. It called to him, and he hunted it down until he cut through its defenders, forced his way into the anchor chamber, and shattered it.

  The trick wasn’t just carving a bloody path to the anchor. The real challenge was to destroy the breach and come out alive. Successful gate dives required preparation. The breach protocol was written in the blood of the gate divers.

  On the surface, Malcolm, the leader of the assault team, had followed the Cold Chaos protocol. Like Elias, Malcolm could feel the anchor and he also had the benefit of Lila Mason, a pathfinder, with enhanced anchor sensitivity. They quickly identified the most likely assault route. It punched almost straight north from the gate. They mapped about three miles of it, clearing the hostiles, went back to the gate, and began looking for the prospective mining sites.

  Determining a good mining area was more art than science. Things would have been so much simpler if they could hire their own assessors, Elias reflected. As it was, they were forced to play the guessing game.

  It was about control. If the government didn’t trust the guilds to share the spoils, the DDC could simply station observers to log everything that came out of the gate. Instead, they chose to hoard the assessors. They wanted to dictate what came out of the breaches and how much. If the DDC wanted more sebrian, the DeBRAs would find sebrian deposits and ignore aetherium that would sell for ten times as much.

  It was also the way to bring problematic guilds in line. Three years ago, the DDC had an issue with Halcyon, and the DeBRAs stopped finding valuable resources in Halcyon’s gates. Six months later, Halcyon was on the brink of bankruptcy, and they threw in the towel.

  The DeBRAs were spies. They mingled with the guilds, they saw how they operated, and they were actively discouraged from forming any personal attachments to the guild members. That’s why most guilds limited the assessors’ access. They were given a survey to review, came in during the mining stage, and then left as soon as the last of the mining was completed.

  Except that Ada Moore never left Elmwood.

  The mining site Malcolm chose lay off to the east, roughly a mile from the gate, at the end of a branching tunnel. It ticked all of the boxes outlined in the guild protocol for cave biome mining: a large stable cavern, close to the gate, with a good mix of promising mineral deposits and an abundance of vegetation in case those minerals turned out to be trash.

  It also had to be defensible, and that’s where they ran into a problem.

  Elias looked at Leo. His XO leaned forward slightly.

  “You are Malcolm,” Elias said.

  Leo nodded.

  Elias tapped the map of the mining site on the screen. It showed a massive cave with a stream running north to south. The entrance, through which the mining team had accessed the site, lay in the lower left, in the west wall. The east and south walls had no accessible egress. The north wall, at the top, showed three tunnels spiraling into a labyrinth of passageways and small chambers, half of them carrying running water.

  “You find this site,” Elias said. “You sweep it. It’s clean. Your next move?”

  “I set up aetherium charges in these three tunnels and detonate.”

  Exactly. “Why?”

  Leo swept his fingers across the three passages and the maze beyond. “It’s a mess. Everything is connected. The only way to secure the mining site is to prevent access completely. One way in, one way out.”

  “Agreed. Malcolm would have known that.”

  “Yes.”

  The two of them peered at the map. This was basic shit, and yet Malcolm left the tunnels as they were.

  “Why?” Elias murmured.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  Leo considered the map. “Perhaps he was unsure whether he picked the right path to the anchor and thought he might have to double back and take one of the tunnels instead.”

  “Yes, but with the firepower in that team and the mining crew’s equipment, he could easily reopen one of the entrances. Why gamble with the miners’ lives?”

  Leo shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Malcolm had been with Cold Chaos for five years. An Interceptor class Talent, he was a maneuverable, fast damage dealer who positioned himself behind the tank, which allowed him to rapidly respond to the changing battlefield. He fought with a spear, could summon plasma javelins, which he hurled at incoming threats, and could teleport about twenty yards once every hour or so.

  The man had an uncanny situational awareness. He was slightly precognizant, anticipating the enemy’s actions as well as his team’s. He could predict how and where an opponent would attack and how his people were likely to respond to it. He sensed when someone would need assistance, and he was always where he was needed the most.