In the corner of a mud-slicked hovel, Sheba found a girl huddled against a rusted ore cart.
Scarcely fifteen, she was a skeletal wraith with flesh the translucent gray of an irradiated corpse.
Her left leg was a mess of necrotic flesh under her chains.
‘What’s your name?’ Sheba asked, her tone soft but firm, pulling her back to reality.
‘Lira,’ the girl whispered, a dry rasp.
Idan appeared from the shadows, eyes flicking over the scene.
Without a word, he crouched and placed his glowing palms on the iron shackle binding Lira’s ankle.
The metal cracked and sheared under his touch; the metal shattered into cooling shards.
He also pressed two of his fingers into Lira’s forehead to send a wave of flaring energy through her nerves, killing the agony from the septic wound around her ankle.
The golden glow from his hands also set off a wave of healing within her body.
Lira gasped at first, then slumped back, breathing as if for the first time in months.
Sheba knelt in the muck in front of the girl.
‘Keep your eyes on me,’ she commanded, her voice a steady anchor. ‘Focus on my breathing. I’ve got you.’
She worked with total intensity, flushing the wound with her last vials of antiseptic and using a laser-scalpel to debride the dead tissue, before wrapping it in gauze.
As she worked, the memory of Imani rose in Sheba’s mind, but this time the grief was bearable.
Helping these locals eased the sting of survivor’s guilt, offering a sense of redemption that validated her purpose. Each life she mended served as proof that her presence here, and her survival, actually mattered.
Lira glanced up at the couple, her eyes shining with gratitude. ‘Sante.’
‘Go, Lira,’ Sheba whispered, supporting the girl to her feet and handing her a rudimentary cane. ‘Don’t stop until you find your people, and make sure your healer keeps a close eye on your injuries.’
The girl nodded, then hobbled to join a group of liberated workers heading into the mountainous shadows. They welcomed her, their arms encircling her waist, as she joined in their shared exodus.
When the last of the freed miners disappeared into the treeline, Idan turned his focus to the primary drill.
The groaning monolith of brass and iron was a giant tooth biting into the mountain’s heart, powered by a massive subterranean steam-boiler.
I’m shutting this fokkin’ place down forever,his timbre vibrated through their mental tether, hard and uncompromising.
He stalked toward the machine, hellbent on dismantling evil.
He placed his palms against the central piston casing, the metal screaming and warping under his touch.
With the pure heat emanating from his hands, he melted and welded the drive shafts together, fusing the internal cylinders so they couldn’t move.
‘This ensures the massive build-up of steam has nowhere to go,’ he murmured.
The air around him shimmered with a searing-hot haze.
‘Pressure is our weapon,salkia,’ he murmured, his hands glowing a searing, dangerous white as he gripped the intake valve, forcing it open to max flow.
Under his direction, Sheba moved to the secondary cooling manifold.
‘Right there,’ he signaled, his chin jerking toward a discarded metal rod. ‘Use it to jam the overflow vents. We need to trap the thermal energy inside the core.’
