Chapter 10 #2
He looked up, saw the man fleeing into the woods with the crystal clutched to his chest, and his entire body went rigid.
“Back to the cave! We need to eliminate the threat before we retrieve it,” he roared.
The words hit like an order—absolute, leaving no room to argue.
We fell back in sync, covering each other as we fought our way toward the cave mouth. Every step was a blur of movement, steel clashing, snow flying, gunfire strobing in the dark.
Con cut down another attacker, pivoted, and grabbed my arm, hauling me backward as a round snapped past my ear. His injured shoulder barely moved, the blood soaking his sleeve now dripping steadily onto the snow. “Move!”
Two of the humans pressed forward, relentless, but the ground beneath us was rough, unstable.
The snow gave way to jagged stone as we neared the cave.
I slashed one man across the face, ducked a strike, then kicked another down the slope.
His augmented body hit the rocks with a crack that echoed through the valley.
Con snatched up a broken length of timber from the earlier collapse and swung it with brutal precision. It connected with the side of a soldier’s helmet, snapping his neck instantly.
I stumbled over the threshold, my boots skidding on loose gravel. The air inside was colder, darker, the scent of dust and old magic still clinging to the stone. Con followed, bracing his back against the entrance as another burst of gunfire chewed into the rock near the mouth.
“Keep moving,” he ordered.
I nodded, forcing my legs to work as we pushed deeper into the cave. Behind us, the shouts grew fainter as the surviving men regrouped. The rhythmic crunch of boots on stone lingered for a few seconds more… then faded.
“They won’t stop,” I said, breathless.
Con’s gaze flicked to me, then to the artifact’s absence at my hip, his expression carved from steel. “Then neither do we.”
The mountain groaned above us, dust sifting from the ceiling as if the cave itself disapproved of our return. We ran deeper into the dark.
Only our breathing remained. And the echo of what we’d just lost.
The silence that followed was thick and absolute—no more gunfire, no voices, just the slow drip of water from unseen cracks and the shallow rasp of our breaths.
Con slowed first, lifting a hand in a silent command. I obeyed, turning back toward the entrance. The glow of morning was bleeding into the world outside, soft gray light edging the jagged frame of the cave mouth. Dust hung in the air, glimmering.
We waited. Listening.
Nothing.
No boots, no shouted orders, no shifting gravel. Just stillness.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” I whispered, my voice too loud in the quiet.
Con didn’t answer right away. His eyes stayed on the entrance, where dawn was beginning to stretch a pale hand across the snow. The light caught the line of his jaw—and the blood that had soaked through his shoulder, dripping from his sleeve in slow, stubborn drops.
Then he looked at me. “Because it’s dawn,” he said finally. “They won’t follow. Not now.”
I blinked. “You think they’re waiting for us to come out?”
He shook his head once, expression grim. “No. They don’t need to. They already have what they came for.”
The realization hit like a blade to the ribs. “The artifact.”
Con nodded. “They wanted the piece, not us.”
“Shit.”
The word echoed off the stone—harsh, helpless, small compared to the weight of what we’d just lost. I pressed my palm flat against the wall, breathing hard. “We had it, Con. I had it in my hands.”
“You were outnumbered. We both were,” he said quietly.
“That’s not the point.” The anger in my chest flared, then collapsed in on itself, leaving only exhaustion behind. The thought of those augmented bastards holding the artifact—the thing that had been breathing beneath the mountain—made my stomach twist. “We can’t let them keep it.”
“We won’t.”
I turned toward him, ready to argue, but the look in his eyes made the words die. There was fury there, tightly leashed, banked like coals—but also something else. Resolve.
And pain.
Up close, the damage was worse. His jacket was shredded from the electrical hit, the fabric fused to torn skin in places.
The flesh along his shoulder and upper arm was scorched and split, dark blood still seeping through slowly despite his vampiric healing.
His fingers flexed once, a tremor running through the muscles before he forced them still.
“You’re hurt,” I said, more accusation than observation.
He glanced at the wound as if he’d forgotten it was there. “I’ve had worse.”
“That doesn’t make this better,” I snapped. “You took that hit for me.”
His gaze locked onto mine, steady and unrepentant. “You were about to take it in the head.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again, the argument dying on my tongue. He wasn’t bragging. He wasn’t fishing for thanks. It was just a fact to him. A choice he’d made without thinking.
Outside, the light crept a little higher, softening the edges of the rocks. The mountain seemed impossibly still, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
“They’ll move before nightfall,” I said, forcing my thoughts back to the mission. “They’ll take it somewhere secure. A bunker, a transport, a lab. Somewhere we can’t walk into without getting torn apart.”
Con studied the entrance again, then let his gaze track deeper into the cave, where the shadows thickened. “Then we don’t move until dusk.”
“What?”
“The sun’s rising. You’re already spent, and I’m not at full strength either.” His injured shoulder twitched, betraying the lie of his composure. “If they’ve set scouts along the ridges, we’ll be dead before we get within range. We rest until sunset.”
I hated that he was right. My muscles trembled with fatigue, my magic still felt scorched raw, and every breath carried the dull ache of overuse. I slid down the wall until the cold stone pressed against my spine.
“Damn,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a moment.
Con sank down beside me, close enough that our shoulders brushed—his good one, deliberately. “We’ll track them when it’s dark. The snow will still hold their trail for a few hours.”
I nodded reluctantly, watching the light creep a fraction further onto the cave floor. Dawn painted the stone in washed-out grays, turning the dust in the air to bands of gold.
“They won’t destroy it,” I said. “They don’t understand it yet. That buys us time.”
Con’s mouth tightened. “Then time is what we use.”
The silence that settled between us was different this time. Not the brittle quiet of shock, but something heavier, denser—like the moment between drawing a bowstring and letting it fly.
I tilted my head back, tracking the thin beams of light filtering through the cracks above. “We wait till dusk,” I said softly.
His answer came low and certain, sinking into the stone around us. “We wait. Then we hunt.”
And as the morning deepened and the light crawled further into the cave, the weight of what we’d lost pressed down like the mountain itself.
But beneath the exhaustion, beneath the anger, beneath the ache in my chest and the throb in Con’s ruined shoulder, I could still feel it.
The faint thread of the artifact.
Somewhere out there—alive.
Still calling.
Waiting for us to come and take it back.