Page 90 of The Inheritance
Adaline’s prediction proved correct. Less than an hour after she exited the gate, the DDC arrived and whisked her away. He led the new assault team into the breach five minutes later, right after he’d informed London that he was fired with a Sontag code. Alex Wright didn’t even argue. He seemed shellshocked, as if the world had suddenly kicked him in the face.
True to Adaline’s word, they encountered no resistance in the breach. The way to the anchor chamber was well marked and deserted. They reached the anchor in three hours.
Considering the chamber’s proximity to the gate, he made the decision to shatter the anchor. They had three days before the gate collapsed, more than enough time to remove all of the bodies and mine the rest of the adamantite. The miners were already working, under much heavier guard this time and with all three northern tunnels collapsed to ensure their safety.
While the mining and recovery crew worked, he scoured the area around the anchor. Something had happened to Adaline in this breach, something that turned her from a regular person into a dangerous, calculating… he didn’t even know what to call it. Survivor seemed inadequate. Combatant didn’t do her justice. He wanted to know what she went through.
They’d found a cavern filled with dead monsters and some sort of weird device. He tried to detach it, and it disintegrated into dust. They found a pile of ash in the anchor chamber and the body of a massive feline-looking monster. He had seen hundreds of creatures in his time in the breaches, but nothing quite like that one. Jackson informed him that it died from being repeatedly stabbed, and that the puncture wounds all over its body came from canine teeth.
He glanced at the darkness at the other end of the bridge. She had come this way. Just her and the dog. Without weapons, without food or water. How did she manage it?
“We found something,” Samantha said at his side.
He almost fell off the damn bridge. There were twenty yards between him and the side passage she came from, and he neither heard her nor saw her approach.
The phantom ranger tilted her head to look at his face. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” Make some damn noise next time. “What did you find?”
“A doohicky. Leo wants you to see it.”
Elias followed her through the tunnels to a narrow side passage. A strange disk hung in the center of it. A dial of some sort made of concentric circles carved from bone or ivory with circles gouged in the rims. Leo stood next to it, pondering the dial.
Elias stopped next to him. “What is this?”
“It’s a forcefield,” Samantha told him.
Leo raised his hand. A thin tendril of lightning snaked from his fingertips and licked the space around the dial. A wall of light flashed, sealing off the tunnel, and vanished.
“Carver touched it,” Leo said. “It zapped him. Stopped his heart.”
“Is he okay?” Elias asked.
“He’s fine,” Leo said. “Jackson was right there, so he brought him back. Carver said it was the worst pain he ever felt. I tried overloading it, but it eats energy like it’s nothing.”
There were only two reasons to have a forcefield block the tunnel: to keep something from getting out or to keep them from getting in.
Elias pulled his sword off his back. Leo and Samantha backed away.
He concentrated on the blade. A pale red glow slicked the adamant sword, and vanished, sucked into it. The weapon turned translucent. A familiar feedback hummed against his hand, as if he was holding onto the rail of a rope bridge while people marched across it and the impact of their footsteps reverberated into his fingers.
Elias swung. The massive blade sliced through the barrier. The two halves of the dial clattered onto the rock, split in half.
Elias walked into the passageway. It opened into a roughly rectangular cavern about twenty-five yards long and roughly half as wide. Veins of jubar stone crisscrossed the ceiling and the walls, illuminating the rocky walls and floor. At the far wall, a creature sprawled on the ground. It raised its head, and he realized he was looking at a smaller version of the dead cat they found in the anchor chamber.
The feline beast stared at him with big green eyes. It was sturdy, with a broad squarish frame that reminded him of a jaguar or maybe a lynx, except it was the size of a cow. Dense fur sheathed it, rippling with black and red.
The two of them looked at each other from across the chamber.
The imbued energy in his sword would dissipate soon. If he was going to strike, now would be the time.
The cat made a noise. It sounded almost plaintive. It didn’t move.
“It’s tame,” Samantha said by his left ear.
Damn it. “Samantha, stop sneaking up on me.”
“The cat is tame.”
