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It was always better to learn by touching, I had always felt.
I shoved a thick tarpaulin to one side and entered the musty space.
And it was musty.
I almost sneezed and only stopped myself when I grabbed my nose and pinched it between my fingers.
I shook my head of the fusty scent and headed deeper into the large open space.
I didn’t turn my flashlight on.
If there was someone inside the room, I didn’t want to alert them to my presence.
I had already set my communicator to silent mode.
If it came to me being unable to reach for it and access it with my hands, I could voice activate it by bellowing the right command:
Asha’gar.
The native Chi word for “emergency.”
It would patch me through to the rest of the squad and Sleii too.
The signal grew weaker the deeper I entered the storage room, but that was to be expected.
After all, there had to besometrace elements of tiberium in the soil, no matter how hard they tried to extract it.
The huge bones of the ancient beasts that once roamed the open plains of Enchor’s Heart were incredible.
They towered over me and would have made short work of me if they were still alive.
Some unknown event had wiped them out, sending them into endless sleep.
Only to be gawped at millions of years later by the new dominant species of this moon.
I headed deeper into the room, already losing hope of finding any sign of Layla being here.
I reached the back of the chamber and shook my head.
It was no good.
She wasn’t here.
I hoped one of the others would have better luck in locating her.
Maybe they already had, I thought, only I hadn’t picked up on it as my communicator’s signal had been disturbed by the tiberium.
I began to hasten back toward the entrance when I heard it.
A heavythump.
I immediately spun around, aiming the flashlight at its origin.
I flicked it on in a single burst before flicking it back off again.
In my mind’s eye, I saw nothing there.
Just the black wall of this storage facility.
