AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I need a plan.
I heave a deep breath and brace myself on my knees, hoping the loss in physical momentum doesn’t send me spiraling. It’s happened before—adrenaline keeps me on my feet, and the moment I take a break I end up in a full-blown panic attack. That’s just natural human instinct, but if I want to live—and if I want to save Malix—I need to figure out what exactly I’m going to do.
And more than anything, I have to be quick and quiet.
Good thing I learned from the best.
I think back to ICO training and to Mai’s first lecture for my graduating class. She’s good at this shit—fuck, she’s a case study in how to take out an enemy bigger and stronger than you—and I should take pointers from her.
…right?
Except for the fact that I don’t think she’s ever taken on athousand-limbed tentacle vine monster.
“Breathe, Frankie,” I mutter under my breath. “Your overactive imagination is not fucking helping.”
“SURVIVE.”
I almost jump out of my skin at the voice in my mind, scrambling to the other side of the tunnel and raising my weapon. Oh hell no—magic sex wall isnotgonna get me right now. I look around to make sure the voice didn’t come from a person, but there’s no one there…just pulsing, glowing green vines.
What the fuck is going on here?
A vine wiggles under my palm.Where we have failed, our children will survive. Thrive.
“Motherfucker,” I hiss, yanking my hand away and huddling into myself so I don’t touch the walls. “No me chingues…”
The vine glows a little brighter where I was leaning before, then zips down the corridor. I roll my eyes, shaking my head vigorously.
“Oh no, no,” I scoff. “You think I’m falling for that one again? You ate my boyfriend.”
I almost yelp when a vine wraps around my finger, but my vision suddenly goes blank. I zoom down the hallway, around a corner, finding two Skoropi hauling an unconscious Malix into a holding cell. There’s a Skoropi facility just down the hall, and between me and Malix is a communications hub…
I snap back into myself.
“Too easy,” I mutter. “You’re doing this to confuse me. You lured us here and now you’re…”
I trail off—because that doesn’t make sense, does it?
If Qiloka had lured us here to capture us, he would have caught us right away. If he was in full control of this place, he would have tons of drones at his disposal. Instead, he had one back there, and he hasn’t been able to trace us ever since. The only reason they caught Malix is because he knocked a damn pebble off the ledge like a basic bitch.
I’m reminded suddenly of pink hibiscus flowers blooming on Jaya, the size of dinner plates. They led me to Taraven and Malix—and before that, they led Malix to Taraven. When Bekah came aboard Jaya, she told me Jaya grew flowers to talk to her.
“Qiloka’s your pilot, but you have a mind of your own, don’t you?” I mutter.
It doesn’t respond—just keeps glowing on the opposite side of the wall.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m trusting you, and you’d better not let me down.”
As if I have a choice.
I follow the bright green glow as it flickers from vine to vine, moving like electricity in an LED strip. Maybe it’s a copout to let the mysterious alien intelligence tell me where to go, but I figure there’s not much else I can do when I have no blueprints of this temple and no prior knowledge of buildings like it. As far as I know, thereisnothing like it—the Liatran temple could be the only one of its kind—and maybe I would prefer it that way.
I kinda hate the idea that there are massive, groundedzephtanlurking under the surface of Earth.
The corridor is long and winding, and it narrows to an almost impassable width as I go. There’s no way Malix or Taraven would have been able to fit through here, and I have to wonder if taking me down a Frankie-sized tunnel was all part of the sex wall’s plan. It forces me to touch the edges, and that otherworldly voice echoes in my mind the whole time.
SURVIVE SURVIVE SURVIVE.
“Right,” I mutter. “I get it.”
