“... said they were heading down…” one soldier called out.
“We’re to halt and detain them,” another stated.
Jace opened his mouth to call out to them. But then he heard the whisper of Gehenna’s voice in his mind.
Time… running… out…
If they were found and detained, it would be too late for him. Jace shuddered. Or maybe it was a shiver, because he was suddenly icy cold and yet sweat coated his skin again.
“We’re going to have a hell of a time getting inside the ship through the front door.” Thammah pointed to an opening into the ship at the very top of the scaffolding and narrow staircases.
But both Khoth and Jace were looking at the top of what almost looked like a wound in the Osiris’ side. The metal--if that’s what the outside was made out of--was peeled back. Jace frowned even as his thoughts were beginning to swirl with pain.
The rip looks to have been caused by something blowing outwards from the inside. Not an attack from the outside, he realized.
Just as Khoth was about to mention the rip, Jace was pointing at it and saying without any conscious desire to do so, “There. We need to go in there. She’s down in a lower deck.”
How do I know that?
But Jace was beyond being able to decipher his own motivations. What was coming from him and what was coming from Gehenna were all mixed. His vision was starting to tunnel. He felt a hand on his cheek. The skin was soft and warm.
“His body is weakening,” Khoth said. “Jace, you must conserve your strength.”
“Why should he do that? What’s the point of it?” Thammah asked quietly. “Unless you let him finalize his connection with Gehenna… that’s the choice, Khoth. You know what the choice is.”
Jace’s hearing had gone in and out. He didn’t hear all that she said, but again, he could guess. Let him die and take Gehenna or let him connect and maybe lose Gehenna to the humans.
“We must go,” Khoth said simply.
Thammah cursed under her breath. He didn’t need to understand the words to understand that.
Khoth crouched low to the ground, practically curling over Jace’s body. One of his long lengths of hair that was caught by several of the intricate beads fell across Jace’s face. Khoth’s hair was incredibly soft like fine strands of silk. The beads clacked softly as he moved. He found himself concentrating on them as Khoth snuck from box to box towards the rip, avoiding soldiers like a blue shadow.
Aliens exist. Spaceships exist. Gehenna exists. I cannot die now. Not when I’ve finally found this!
The fluorescent lights that illuminated the cavern suddenly seemed to go dark. A shudder went through Jace as he feared that his vision was going. But no, they had stepped up to the Osiris’ side and were underneath one of the sections of skin that had been pulled back. It blocked out the electric light.
Before them was darkness. It was the interior of the ship. Khoth and Thammah both touched something on the fronts of their suits and piercing beams of light streamed from their suits into the darkness. The rip opened up into a hallway that sloped down into the earth.
The hallway was broad, about twenty-feet wide with floors that were a glassy blue, the color of cobalt. They almost looked wet like water, they were so shiny. The walls were gray with various insets that looked like they could open up.
A holo-display appeared above Khoth’s right wrist. He tapped something and then confidently stepped onto the sloping floor. Instead of tumbling forward, his boots made a clicking sound as they locked into place. Thammah did the same.
Again, Jace was pointing where they were to go. He indicated towards the sloping end. “Go to the door at the end of the hall. There will be a hatch on the left wall. Open it. We need to then go down three levels before exiting through another hatch.”
“Will our cutting tools get through?” Khoth frowned.
“No. but the hatches will open for me,” Jace said, even as he had no idea if that were true. But he felt it was true.
All of this feels so familiar. Like I’ve done this before. Maybe my training included getting to Gehenna.
“How do you know this, Jace?” Thammah asked as they started to walk down the sloping hallway with their boots making thunking sounds as they released and locked with every step.
“Gehenna. She showed me this. Where she is. And I can feel… feel her,” Jace got out even as the effort to talk seemed to increase with every word.
“Do not speak, Jace, unless necessary. We will have plenty of time to talk after,” Khoth said.
“After?” Thammah’s voice lilted dangerously.
