“But he’s here.” Zion squeezed my hand as we waded through the rubble, balanced on exposed beams of concrete, rusted rods poking out, waiting for you to trip and impale yourself on them. “He has to be.”
Zion’s grip on my fingers grew bone-crushing, but I gulped the discomfort down, filed it away. One after another, I stuffed the aches and pains into the deepest recesses of my being.
Between shouting Gedeon’s name and trudging through debris, I allowed numbness to wash over me, inject itself into my cells, and overtake my bloodstream. It was either that or succumbing to the terror clinging to me like sand after a swim in the sea.
We trekked deeper into the wreckage, went round and around, until our shouts grew hoarse and our lungs struggled to filter out the dust.
But wherever we emerged, silence met us. Wherever we checked, emptiness welcomed us. Wherever we looked, the lack of Gedeon doused our hope.
We wandered and roamed, aimlessly and with a goal, deteriorating and disintegrating, as unseeing as corpses, as cold as the blackness spiraling in the hole Zion stumbled upon in the ruins.
Unthinking, I followed him, sliding down a block of what once had been part of a wall. As I descended, my boots hit the uneven surface, and I bent my knees, engaging my about-to-split core to keep my balance.
“Gedeon!” Zion’s bellow pierced the deafening hush.
The reply came as an intermittent drip of… I prayed for it to be water and not blood.
I swiped away the sweat bead about to drench my eyebrow. “Which floor is this?”
“We’re likely still somewhere at the top.” Zion ducked under a large chunk of what probably had been a ceiling mere minutesago. “The explosives weren’t strong enough to collapse the building.”
“Where…” I searched the rubble surrounding us, ensnaring us, holding us hostage. “How far below do you think he is?” The longer we climbed down, the harder it became to navigate. Fragments of what once had been a dwelling thickened, creating countless dead ends, forming a labyrinth.
Zion rubbed his face, coating his skin in even more filth and obscuring the sandy shade in a film of gray and more gray. “I—” His throat bobbed. “I don’t know. If he’s not here, then…”
His admission popped the bubble of numbness I’d blown around myself, and I rubbed away the moisture about to abandon my eyes.
But this wasn’t the time for breaking down. War didn’t grace you with breaks. It didn’t care who met its scythe. It munched on souls, gobbled their essence, gorged on death.
So leaning against a few slabs of concrete wedged together, I took a deep breath, scolded myself for a bout of weakness, and invited determination to take the lead.
I was not going to give up.
73
KALI
Rat-tat.
I startled. The concrete my elbow was resting on had vibrated, as if struck upon. No—knockedupon.
Like a response to my wordless plea, a feeble groan emanated through the gaps in the pyramid of debris.
“Zion.” Raising my voice to catch his attention, I yelled again, “Zion!” Or more like croaked out his name. A knot obstructed my vocal cords.
He rushed to me, stumbling over the pieces of the Spire, leaping over the rusted metal rods and crunching glass shards glittering all over. “What? What is it?”
“I heard something.” I waved at a couple of thick chunks of concrete harboring a life. “I think someone is trapped inside.” I couldn’t convince myself to speak my hopes aloud. What if the wind snatched them away, erasing any possibility of them seeing the light of day?
It was foolish of me, I knew that, but after being bathed in Ilasall’s military’s blood, learning the Head of Ilasall was Gedeon’s father, hacking off his head, and surviving an explosion, my imagination should be allowed to run rampant.
“Can you help me lift this?” Zion indicated a slab, which had been either a part of a floor or a ceiling. “I can’t move it with only one hand.”
Nodding, I began prying it away. My fingers slipped and dragged across the jagged contours of the piece, the roughness abrading my palms and slicing my flesh, but it didn’t budge. So much for all the workouts.
But then Zion’s good arm joined mine, and straining, grunting,screaming, we shoved the large fragment away.
Falling to his knees, he studied the deep pit we’d opened up.
