21. Cassia #3
We sprint through the collapsing hall while the chamber erupts behind us, machine nests clawing free from the walls and ceiling and ancient masonry shattering under the weight of mechanical bodies designed for a tunnel system far newer than the one they are obliterating.
The ceiling cracks. Stone slabs the size of cargo crates break free and crash into the corridor behind us, and the dust is so thick I'm running blind, following Junia's flashlight beam bouncing wildly ahead of me.
A support beam gives way a few feet in front of us.
The ceiling collapses in a cascade that fills the overflow pipe from wall to wall with tons of stone and ancient masonry crashing downward in a deafening, suffocating avalanche.
Junia dives forward through the narrowing gap, her body sliding past the falling debris with inches to spare.
The sound of glass and metal shattering into a sickening mess marks the moment her data-pad vanishes, pulverized under the weight of the plummeting ceiling.
Her escape is successful, however. A flicker of light from her torch clears the threshold just as the final slab slams down, sealing the corridor like a tomb door.
The only recording of the hologram that survived the collapse is strapped exactly to my left wrist.
I’m left in complete and absolute darkness.
My flashlight is somewhere behind me under rubble I’m blind to. Thick dust chokes the air, turning breath into a mouthful of grit. I hug my back on the nearest wall and force my lungs to work—in, out, in, out—while my hands shake and my ears ring from the collapse.
"Juno!" I scream it into the dark, and the sound bounces off stone and comes back empty. "Junia!"
Finding nothing but a solid wall of rubble spanning meters thick, and perhaps even thicker, blocking the way, I realize my fists are useless.
She made it through; I saw her flashlight clear the gap, but the barrier separating us might as well be a starship’s hull.
Tapping my wrist comm, I pray for Junia's voice but only get dead air.
Tons of stone and blighted infrastructure choke the signal, forcing the icon to flash a desperate, dying red.
I am completely isolated.
The machines have gone quiet. The grinding, tearing cacophony that filled the chamber moments ago fades into a silence so complete I can hear my own heartbeat echoing off the tunnel walls.
I know I feel him out there. Deep beneath the panic and the dark, his presence persists—muffled by miles of stone and infrastructure, but undeniable.
He is alive but furious, if the accelerating tempo means what I think it means.
He can feel me. I know it with an instinctive trueness that bypasses logic and settles into my bones. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, the bond told him something is wrong.
A faint, resounding violet glow seeps through the rubble behind me with the same cadence as the relay nodes in the nest chamber. The machines let Junia go. They collapsed the tunnel to separate us. Their goal was to isolate the one they were specifically looking for.
The hologram's bland, overlapping voice echoes through my memory, You are required to stay for further testing. The Kraaj commander will come for you. He always comes.
They want me alive and contained as bait. Legion understood the bond before I even had a name for it, and now it's using me to draw Rhykor underground, where the machines control everything.
Hunkering against the stone, I grip my pulse pistol with both hands.
The power cell shows a sixty percent charge.
My med-pack is still on my shoulder; holding onto my belongings is a habit because growing up in District Seventeen taught me that the moment you set an object down is the moment you lose it.
Taking mental notes, I verify my supplies include water and bandages alongside a single flare at the bottom of the pack that I've been carrying for months and never used.
The violet light brightens. Movement happens in the dark behind the rubble—mechanical and measured, while approaching with predator patience, knowing its prey has nowhere left to run.
I thumb the safety off my pistol and wait.
My wrist comm crackles.
Stone and warped infrastructure tear the signal into garbage, but the frequency holds—a sliver of an open connection. Elias's salvaged relay is punching fragments through the rock.
Junia's voice comes first, broken and breathless as she screams through interference so thick I have to cradle the speaker against my ear.
"—collapsed—Cassia is still down there—I'm making my way up, but the corridor is completely sealed behind me?—"
Then Rhykor's voice cuts in from the surface, raw and frantic with panic. "Junia! What do you mean sealed?"
The comm distorts, and a burst of static swallows everything for two full seconds. When the signal claws its way back, the audio degrades into pure white noise, but I can still hear the distant echo of his roar.
I sit in the dark with my pistol in my hands and hold on.
He's coming because the bond carries the truth of it through my chest—wordless and formless, acting as an absolute certainty.
It is a heat that burns through solid bedrock, curling tight around my soul and refusing to let go as I close my eyes, anchoring my hand against the cold wall to wait for the Dragon.