Page 21 of The Inheritance
“His entire crew and the DeBRA are dead, and he doesn’t know. Did he see the DeBRA die?”
“He says he did. The mining foreman backs up his story.”
The foreman made it out, too. “What about the other two miners?”
“They aren’t saying much. One didn’t see anything, and the other is keeping his mouth shut.”
Elias deposited the last bit of gear into the SUV and slapped it shut. The vehicle rocked. His control got away from him a hair.
Leo got behind the wheel, Elias climbed into the passenger seat, and they drove out, past the police barricade and the onlookers onto I-205, heading north, toward the airport, where the guild jet waited.
“From what London described, we will need the primary team,” Leo said. “Kovalenko is on loan to Texas’ Lone Star Guild and Krista is on vacation in the Caribbean. Jackson is in Japan.”
And they would have to wait for Jackson because they would need their best healer. When it came to Talents, quality far outpaced quantity. Jackson was a top-tier healer, capable of near miracles. In the breach, where split seconds mattered, he was irreplaceable. Sending in five mid-tier healers wouldn’t have the same impact. No, they needed Jackson. Both for his heals and his forensic capabilities. They needed to know how their people died.
“Jackson has the longest travel but should make it within forty-eight hours. The real problem is the tank,” Leo said. “Both Karen and Amir are inside gates right now, and both have gone in less than twenty-four hours ago. We can substitute Geneva, but she lacks experience…”
“No need,” Elias said. “I’ll take them in myself. Tell Krista I authorized triple rates. We can swing by Dallas and pick up Kovalenko. We have twenty-eight people in that breach. We must recover the bodies so their families will have something to bury.”
If there was anything to recover. With the kind of delay they were facing, they could get there and find only bones stripped bare. Dead people became meat, and meat didn’t last long in a breach. He would shower and sleep on the plane. The office would have to wait.
“Are we pulling them to HQ or straight to Elmwood?” Leo asked.
“Straight to Elmwood. Nobody goes into that gate until I get there.”
“Understood.”
Elias looked at the city soaking in the dreary rain of the Pacific Northwest outside the window and glanced back at his XO. “Was London injured?”
A hint of bright electric lightning flared in Leo’s eyes, turning them an unnatural silver white. He pronounced words with crisp exactness. “Not a scratch, sir.”
“Hmm.”
He had to get to Elmwood. The sooner, the better.
The cave passage gaped in front of me, a narrow tunnel painted with bioluminescent swirls of strange vegetation. It split about twenty yards ahead, with one end of it curving to the right and the other cutting straight into the gloom.
I had a light on my hard hat but decided against using it. It didn’t illuminate much, while making me easy to target, and I had no idea how long the battery would last. It was better to save it for emergencies. The pale green and pink radiance of the foreign fungi and lichens offered some light, but it made the darkness seem even deeper.
It was like I’d turned five years old again, lying in my bed in the middle of the night, too afraid to move, until the need to pee won out and forced me to make a mad dash to the bathroom. Except that back then, if I got really scared, I could flick the lights on. As long as you had electric light, it gave you an illusion of safety and control. Without it, I felt naked. It was just me, Bear, and the tunnels filled with underground dusk.
There would be no dashing here. We would go carefully, quietly, and slowly.
A cold draft flowed from the tunnel, bringing with it an odd acrid stench.
Bear whined softly by my side.
Whining seemed entirely appropriate. I didn’t want to go into that gloom either.
“We don’t have a choice,” I told the dog.
Something rustled in the darkness, a strange whispering sound.
Bear hid behind me.
“Some attack dog you are.”
That’s probably why she survived. If she were braver, she’d be dead.
