Chapter 10 #2
I reached down and grabbed a heavy, insulated emergency thermal blanket from the open survival gear locker near the entrance—one made of multi-layered thermal fabric designed to withstand extreme volcanic radiation.
I folded it gently over her chest and shoulders, tucking the thick, heavy material around her bare body like a protective wrap.
It would shield her from the initial, brutal forces of the launch acceleration.
I stood there for a single, agonizing second, looking down at her.
Her body lay completely limp, a heavy, trusting weight in my arms. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, peaceful rhythm, utterly motionless despite the sirens screaming through the bulkheads and the concrete dust settling over the pod.
I was about to lock her in a tomb to save her from myself.
"Live, Tove," I whispered, my voice cracking, thick with a grief that felt far heavier than the tectonic energy in my veins. "You have to live."
The mate bond in my chest sheared, a raw, physical pain that felt like a blade slicing through my lungs as I stepped backward, out of the pod.
I reached out and slammed my hand onto the pod’s exterior control panel.
The heavy, armored hatch slid shut with a deep, hydraulic hiss, sealing her inside the quiet, protected cocoon.
The small, reinforced viewport on the door showed her sleeping face, safe behind three inches of tempered lead-glass.
I turned to the main system console, my hands shaking, my fingers slick with a glowing, golden sweat that sizzled and vaporized the moment it dripped onto the metal deck.
"Automated launch sequence," I muttered, my voice tight. "Target: Orbital rescue station."
I raised my hand and pressed my palm flat against the primary launch interface screen.
The moment my skin made contact with the terminal, everything went wrong.
The surging thermal and electromagnetic charge radiating from my superheated core was no longer containable.
The moment my hand touched the glass sensor, the raw energy surged out of my palm.
A violent, crackling arc of white-hot current leaped from my skin, snapping up my arm in a blinding blue flash that made every muscle in my shoulder spasm.
The electricity surged straight into the terminal's wiring.
Bang!
The console erupted in a violent shower of blue sparks, popping capacitors, and thick black smoke. The digital interface shattered, the screen going completely dark as the delicate circuitry vaporized instantly.
Throughout the bay, the amber guide lights flickered once and died, plunged into a terrifying, suffocating darkness. The heavy, resonant hum of the automated launch rails instantly cut out, replaced by the high-pitched, dying whine of a short-circuited power grid.
Then, a heavy, deafening mechanical clank echoed through the dark bay.
The industrial durasteel launch clamps on the rails snapped shut, locking the pod securely to the launch pad in a fail-secure state.
The mechanical clamps were frozen, completely jammed in the darkness.
Tove was completely safe, sealed inside an armored vault that could withstand a nuclear blast, but she was trapped. She could not launch.
"No! No, no, no!" I screamed, slamming my fists against the smoking casing of the console.
The backup systems didn't engage. The entire terminal was dead, fried by the sheer intensity of my biological surge.
I grabbed the manual release levers beneath the console, pulling with all my strength.
The durasteel levers bent and twisted in my superheated grip, the metal softening like warm wax under my hands, but the mechanical locks on the rails refused to budge.
They were locked in a fail-secure state, requiring a direct electrical pulse to release.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped beast.
I looked at my left wrist. The bio-link screen had completely melted, the plastic casing bubbling and dripping down my arm. The fire inside me had reached a critical, irreversible threshold.
My scales were no longer just glowing; they were beginning to weep a thin, liquid plasma that dripped onto the durasteel floor beneath my feet, eating through the gray paint and pooling into tiny, sizzling craters.
The air around me was so hot it was warping, distorting my vision in shimmering, liquid waves.
I looked back at the pod's viewport.
If I stayed here to try and manually tear the launch rails apart, I would kill her. My physical presence—the sheer, radiating heat of my Rebirth core—would soon exceed the thermal limits of the pod's titanium shielding. I would literally cook her alive inside her safe-haven.
To save her life, I had to leave. I had to get as far away from this bay, and from this resort, as my wings could carry me.
The agony of that realization was worse than the fire consuming my flesh.
The mate bond screamed, a physical, tearing sensation that made me gasp for air, demanding that I rip the pod open and drag her back into my arms. But I had to run.
I had to choose her survival over the biological demand to stay by her side.
"I will find a way back to you," I choked out, my eyes burning with a heat that had nothing to do with the caldera. "I promise."
I turned away from the viewport, forcing my legs to move, forcing myself to run.
I sprinted toward the far end of the pod bay, where the heavy pneumatic exhaust gate led out to the resort's exterior cliffs. The gate was designed to vent high-pressure launch gases into the ocean, but the electronic controls were dead, fried along with the rest of the grid.
I didn't care.
I gathered the remaining strength in my legs and leaped, slamming my shoulder against the manual override lever on the wall. The heavy iron lever sheared under my superheated weight, the internal pneumatic seals rupturing with a deafening, explosive hiss of steam.
The durasteel exhaust gate slowly slid upward, exposing a jagged sliver of the world outside.
A freezing, violent blast of the volcanic winter storm swept into the bay, howling like a pack of starving beasts. The air was thick with falling black ash, freezing sleet, and the distant, terrifying glow of the erupting caldera.
I didn't hesitate.
I threw myself forward through the opening, my ash-dusted charcoal wings flaring to catch the freezing gale. A sharp, hot spike of pain flared in my left shoulder—the joint, though back in its socket, was stiff and tight, stubbornly resisting my attempt to open it to full flight capacity.
The moment the icy air hit my burning skin, it hissed violently, a dense cloud of white steam erupting around me as I plummeted toward the jagged black rocks below.
Gritting my teeth against the rigid, protesting drag of my left wing, I forced it down, catching a powerful, superheated updraft rising from the fissures in the cliff face.
I soared upward into the dark, ash-choked sky, a streak of blinding, white-hot light cutting through the freezing winter storm. Behind me, deep in the dark, silent bunker, Tove was safe, sealed inside the armored pod.
Ahead of me lay the Dead Zone—the yawning, glowing mouth of the caldera.
I leaned into the wind, fighting the uneven, painful drag of my injured wing as I flew as fast as I could manage, desperate to reach the empty wasteland before the fire in my chest finally tore me apart.