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I gaze up into his eyes, both of us swaying as the bubble glides to a rapid halt. The water rushes around the glass in swirls of silt, streaming over the hatch in rivulets of blue-white.
The hatch opens before I can tell him how I feel about him staying with the crew.
Maybe he already knows.
“Boost me?” I ask.
Malix nods and kneels, cupping his hands low for a foothold. I take it and launch myself upward, then haul myself over the edge of the hatch. I’ve just clambered onto the shore when Malix joins me, landing gracefully with his kinetic rifle slung over his back.
As far as I can tell, we haven’t gone anywhere at all in the past hour. The area where we exit looks roughly the same as where we got into the pod—dark, abandoned, the barest remnants of a civilization long gone. I take a cursory look around, searching the area for any threats, but it’s empty.
Aside from a distinct set of tracks with the sweep of a tail behind them.
Skoropi.
I raise my finger to my lips and Malix gets the hint right away, the only light in the room the vague glow of the water. I still don’t know what’s down there—and I’m not sure I want to—but I know for a fact that it isn’t any of my business now that we’re out of that bubble death trap. I gesture over my shoulder to look down at the tracks, and Malix tilts his head, his eyes narrowing.
“Follow?” I mouth, raising my brow.
He confirms with a raise of his fist.
Follow.
I pull out my crossbow and fasten it to my wrist, hunkering my shoulders down and listening closely. Our footsteps are slight in the darkness—even in the complete silence of the abandoned cave, our movements make barely a whisper. The only indication I have that Malix is still behind me is the heat of his presence, that inescapable gravity that seems to draw me to him no matter what I do.
There’s no sign of the Skoropi as we move up the corridor, other than their tracks. We follow them upwards, our weapons always drawn, never losing vigilance. An assumption of safety has killed soldiers more talented than me, so I keep my wits about me. And it’s a good thing, too—because we see them before they see us.
I glue myself to the wall, looking back to see Malix has already concealed himself in the shadows. The words come to me slowly, echoing down the hall in Skoro—the Second House dialect that Jaya’s crew sometimes speaks. Their footfalls are heavy, like they don’t anticipate that someone is coming.
Good. The element of surprise is our greatest strength here.
“I don’t like it,” one of the Skoropi up ahead says. “The technology—I don’t trust what it’s doing to him.”
“General Qiloka?” another says. “He will be fine. He knows what he’s doing.”
“None of us know what this thing is,” the first says.
“Shh…” the second says. “We don’t know who might be listening.”
I steady my breathing, making sure I don’t make a sound. Malix’s free hand twines around my arm, gripping me like he’ll provide an extra bit of support.
I guess it works, because I go entirely silent.
“Sometimes I think the whole facility is listening,” the first says. “Like it’s…”
“It isn’t alive, you fool,” the second says. “Come on—we should get moving. We’ll be expected in the central chamber for our guard shift.”
They start moving again and I tense for a fight—but quickly realize they’re walking in the opposite direction. Maybe the footsteps in the sand downstairs were just a scouting mission.
“Is that where we’re headed?” I whisper. “The central chamber?”
“I think so,” he says. “And with any luck, they’ll lead us right to it.”
He releases his grip on my arm and we both cautiously turn the corner. I get just the glimpse of a glowing barb on one of the Skoropi’s tails, and I gesture at Malix.
We’re good.
We follow them at a far enough distance that they can’t sense of us, and they seem distracted enough as it is. The Skoropi sense of smell should be better than this, but I guess we’re both so dirty from our trip—and steeped in Taraven’s scent, at that—that they just think it’s another strange element of being in this place.
