Relief flooded through him, followed immediately by a surge of focused purpose.
“Your samples?—”
“I have what I need.” She tightened the straps on her pack, settling it firmly against her back. “The most important specimens are already secured. We can collect more later, if…” She trailed off, unwilling to voice the possibility that there might not be a later.
He squeezed her hand.
“There will be time. I promise you.”
He led her away from the main cavern, moving with quiet efficiency towards a section of wall that looked solid but felt, to his enhanced senses, subtly different from the surrounding stone. A seam, nearly invisible, where two geological formations met and left a gap barely wide enough for a body to pass through.
“Through here.”
She peered at the crack, her brow furrowing.
“I don’t see?—”
“Trust me.”
He went first, turning sideways to squeeze through the narrow opening. The rock pressed against his chest and back, rough and cold even through his borrowed clothes, but he’d known tighter passages in the fragmented dreams of his before-life. This was nothing compared to the tunnels his people had carved throughdying mountains, desperate to find any source of heat or water that might sustain them a little longer.
On the other side, the passage opened into a corridor—not wide, but tall enough that he could stand upright, stretching away into darkness in both directions.
“Give me your hand.”
Alina’s fingers found his in the blackness, her grip tight with barely controlled fear.
“I can’t see anything.”
“I can.” His eyes adjusted to the darkness with ease, picking out details that would be invisible to human vision—the texture of the walls, the slope of the floor, the faint luminescence of mineral deposits that glowed with their own cold light. “Stay close. Don’t let go of my hand.”
“Not planning on it.”
They moved through the tunnel system, deeper and deeper into the mountain’s heart. Rhyx navigated by instinct and vibration, choosing pathways that led downward, away from the surface and the approaching threat. The sounds of the vehicles faded as they descended, replaced by the profound silence of geological time—the weight of millions of years pressing in around them like a physical presence.
Alina stumbled once, her foot catching on an unseen obstacle. He caught her before she could fall, pulling her against his side.
“Sorry. I can’t see anything down here.”
“You’re doing well.” He kept his arm around her, supporting her weight as they continued forward. “The darkness is a friend,not an enemy. It hides us, protects us. Your eyes will adjust eventually, and in the meantime, I will be your sight.”
“That’s very poetic for a situation that’s also terrifying.”
He smiled in the darkness, appreciating the thread of humor she was maintaining despite her obvious fear.
“My people valued words. Poetry, stories, the speaking of truths in beautiful forms. It was said that a warrior who could not compose a proper death-chant was no warrior at all.”
“A death-chant? That’s… morbid.”
“Perhaps. But also honest. We knew that death came for everyone eventually, even those who seemed invincible. Better to face it with beauty than with silence.”
They walked for what felt like hours, though Rhyx suspected the true passage of time was much shorter. The tunnels branched and merged, rose and fell, twisted in ways that would have been impossible to navigate without his instinctive sense of the mountain’s structure. Several times he paused, pressing his palm against the wall to read the vibrations that traveled through the stone.
The vehicles had reached the cavern. He could feel them above—heavy machines, many footsteps, the high-pitched whine of scanning equipment trying to penetrate the rock.
But they weren’t following. They couldn’t. The passage he’d led Alina through was too narrow for human bodies in their bulky suits, and too irregular for any scanner to identify as a viable tunnel.
They were safe. For now.
