Page 15 of The Inheritance
Sanders, Hotchkins, Ella Gazarian, they were in front of me when I was sprinting for that exit. My memory served up Sanders being swept away by the blast.
“They were her guildmates. They trusted her, and she fucking left them, and worse, trampled over them trying to escape. Sanders is probably the reason I survived. He took the brunt of that aetherium grenade.”
We cleared the stream and carefully went up the shallow slope to where the carts waited. Water sloshed in my boot. The other one was wet, too.
I tied the leash to the cart, found the first aid kit, and flipped the heavy latches open. A nice big bottle of antiseptic rinse. We were in business.
“Stay, Bear.”
The shepherd sat again.
I opened the antiseptic and poured it over the wound. Bear shook but stayed.
“You are so good. Such a good dog.”
I capped the bottle and grabbed a tube of antibacterial gel.
“Melissa’s priority was the mining crew. But London’s priority was keeping everyone safe, and if that failed, keeping me alive. He was in charge.”
I remembered the cold calculation in London’s eyes, too. The way his face iced over when he hurled the grenade. The set of his mouth. I squeezed the gel onto Bear’s wound.
“He was looking straight at me, and his eyes said, ‘Fuck you. I’m not dying here today.’ His shield lasts two minutes. Two minutes, Bear! That man is fucking invulnerable with the shield up. I was halfway across that stream when he bailed. If he just activated his shield and waited ten seconds, I would’ve been on the other side of the cave-in. The rest of the mining crew would’ve been on the other side with me.”
Bear tilted her head, looking at me.
“The hostiles weren’t even paying attention to us. They were fighting each other, and they cut us down because we were in their way. We could’ve run all the way to the gate. Even if the creatures had followed us, they couldn’t exit into our world. They are trapped in the breach until the anchor gets enough energy to rip the gate open.”
Bear tilted her head to the other side.
“You know what he said to me? He said, ‘I’ll get you out of here in one piece. The only way you go down is if I’m down, and I’m really good at surviving.’ Well, we know he didn’t lie. That asshole is excellent at surviving.”
I screwed the cap back onto the gel tube.
“The Cold Chaos assault teams are good at clearing the prospective mining sites before moving on. I’ve never seen their escorts deal with anything more serious than a skirmish. The most London had to do was to cut down an occasional left-over creature popping out of its hiding place. This – everything that happened – was the reason why Cold Chaos sent him into the breach. When the worst-case scenario occurred, he was supposed to step in and that fucker... All those people…”
A sob choked me.
I shut up.
Being an escort captain came with a lot of responsibility, and you didn’t just become one. It wasn’t enough to be powerful or trusted. The position required experience. London had put in years with the primary assault teams. He was seasoned. He looked at those hostiles slicing people like they were weeds in passing, and in a split second he knew that he had never encountered anything like them and nothing he had in his arsenal could stop them. He saw death, and he made a deliberate choice to save himself.
He could’ve waited. He could’ve stood in that gap with his invulnerable warden shield up and let the rest of us escape, but it was a risk, and he chose his life over ours. The only reason Melissa made it out was because she happened to be close enough and he would need a witness to back up his story. When your job is to put yourself between noncombatants and danger, coming out of the breach alone wasn’t a good look.
Even if they fired him, he would live. That’s all that mattered to him. And if he had been one of the ordinary miners, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but he wasn’t a miner. He was a high-ranking combat Talent. We trusted him. I trusted him, and he threw an aetherium grenade in our faces and ran.
“When death stares people in the face, they revert to their true self, Bear.”
London’s true self was a cold, calculating coward.
I checked myself for scrapes and bruises. I didn’t find any. I had some red welts here and there but no broken skin. I’d crawled on my hands and knees across a rough cave floor dragging my broken leg behind me. My hands and knees should’ve been raw, but I didn’t find any abrasions. I rubbed some gel over the red mark on my leg just in case.
Don’t think about it. That was best.
The generator was next. The industrial model was rated for seven to nine hours run time. The fuel indicator was almost empty. I’d been in this cave for at least seven hours.
If London made it out of the gate, he would immediately report what happened to the guild. London and Melissa didn’t stay long enough to see how the fight turned out, so for all they knew, there were still active hostiles in this cave. Since bodycams only recorded static in the breaches, Cold Chaos would have to rely on London’s testimony, and I was sure that Melissa would confirm whatever he said. She wouldn’t just suddenly grow a heart and admit that she climbed out of the cave over her guildmates’ bodies. As she so often told me, she had mouths to feed.
This was going to go one of three ways.
