Inhaling a gulp of burning chemicals, I gag as stars immediately form behind my eyes. Dizzy, I slowly climb back to my feet.
I don’t make it very far. My eyes water as I crumple once more to my knees just as I reach the stairs. The pain bursting in my kneecaps has me shooting back to my feet and climbing up the rest of them two at a time, desperate now. My vision tilts when I reach the top and I collapse again in a wave of hacking coughs. My throat explodes in pain.
Good thing I’m expendable.I smile to myself, my world fading into a murky haze. Dropping to the floor and rolling onto my back, I settle my flashlight on my chest. I stare up at the pipes criss-crossing over the ceiling.I’ll just take a short… nap…
I'm almost out when I hear a hissing sound. But it’s not darkness or smoke that meets me when I blink my eyes open and startle back to consciousness. It’s the Boa.
His shadowy pale cream and yellow face encompasses my vision. His icy blue gaze twinkles with triumph in the fiery light of the explosions.
“There you are.”
TWENTY-FIVE
BACKTRACK
Krellix
It is nearly nightfall yet,uncaring of the many obstacles in my way, I rush through the forest, breaking through the thick branches that dare be in my path to locating Julia.
Using every sense I have, I search for her tracks and strain to catch a whiff of her scent in the breeze. But even once I return to the area where I last saw Benjamin and Quinton before leaving with Olivia, there is nothing, not even a hint of Julia anywhere. She has not been here.
Instead, another scent reaches me. One I have not smelled since Zaku’s. One I had hoped I would not smell again.
My hands clench and my jaw tightens, breathing Sada’s unwelcome smell deep into my nostrils. I had thought Julia and I were free of the other nagas from the mountain…
I was wrong.
Sada has found us.
And Julia’s gone.
As I catch Benjamin’s and Quinton’s trail back through the crumbling walls and trees, I soon come upon a small clearingwith a lone standing doorway in the center. Behind that is the long wall of a ruined building, with more broken walls beyond.
Julia’s been here.
Sucking in the air, I smell her now. But spinning around, scanning the ground for her bootprints, all I see are Sada’s tail tracks everywhere I look.
He has her.
I move past the standing doorway and follow Sada’s tracks towards the wall.
It is worse than him just having her. I detect something sharp and putrid the closer I get to the building, which worsens when I round its corner. As I breathe more of the reek in, it grows nauseating, more pervasive, covering even Julia’s and Sada’s smells.
Furious and upset and more worried than I can recall ever being, I search the forest floor frantically, looking for where the smell could be coming from, hoping it’s not been caused by a gruesome death. After a few moments of following the stench, I discover a small cement building hidden within the trees and the brush. Finding the entrance to it wide open and smashed to bits, I duck inside a room that is overcome by the foul smell. In the back, through a second door, I see a staircase pouring smoke up toward the open air.
If she’s down there, I have to get her out.
I press forward to the interior door until I am peering down into the dark. “Julia?” I shout, seeing if she is close enough that she can hear me. “Julia!”
All I get is silence. Taking one more clear breath before I dive below, I notice something on the ground outside the door and against the wall, almost hidden behind a desk and chair. Julia’s rifle and pack.
She would not go anywhere without her rifle.Scouting the floor outward from her stuff, I find her flashlight on the groundand, picking it up, discover the lens cracked and the power switch not working.
I look back at the darkened staircase and the pathway downward. She is not down there. She was, but not anymore. Growling, I grab all of Julia’s stuff and leave the small building behind.
It has only gotten darker since I went inside. Soon, the sunlight will abandon me completely.
Swiftly searching the forest for any clue to the direction Sada took her, I come upon a series of broken branches—branches that were not broken by me. Heading into the damaged trees, I find more snapped branches leading me back the way we came.He is taking Julia in the direction of the river.
