Warrior Queen

by J. N. Chaney

  “It’s okay,” Mark said, pushing his hands down in what he probably thought was a calming gesture. “No sudden movements. Ease your way around it.”

  Everyone did as he asked. I barely dared to breathe, and I guessed we were all thinking the same thing.

  Please don’t go off.

  Nell had just made it around to the other side of the damaged core and Alix was moving centimeter by petrified centimeter past it when a Boneclaw stomped around the corner. Alix froze, too terrified to move as it barreled toward her.

  I watched, horrified as it reached the edge of frail ground. It seemed to realize immediately that it was in danger because the Boneclaw attempted to leap backward, but it was too late.

  The floor began to crumble, and the broken fusion core disappeared into a deep fissure.

  17

  Mark had the door to the stairwell open and was guiding those nearest to him in first. I left him to it and focused on Alix, who still hadn’t moved.

  Without knowing which part of the floor might be safe, if any, I tested every step before putting my full weight down.

  “Alix! Snap out of it!” I yelled, trying to get her attention.

  The girl finally looked around, her eyes widening as she took in the disintegrating ground beneath her. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said hoarsely.

  I held out my staff like a lifeline. “There, that’s almost two meters you don’t have to go,” I told her, forcing my voice to stay calm.

  Alix nodded and took a step toward me. Then another. Her features were pinched in fear and concentration as she crept along at a maddeningly slow pace.

  I was almost about to urge her to move faster when the Boneclaw fell through the floor where it stood, catching itself on the firm ground it had come from.

  This threw Alix off balance and she tipped back, then leaned forward again, flailing in an attempt to right herself. One foot came down hard on a cracked portion of paneling, splitting it open. She scrambled to climb the falling section as it went vertical but couldn’t do more than hang on as it fell into the now wide-open crevasse.

  Her eyes met mine, wide with terror, then began to slip out of view. Her scream echoed from the dark below then was suddenly cut off.

  I wanted to rush headlong after her, but I knew it would be useless.

  Forcing myself to turn away and head for the stairwell, I spotted Nell. She’d fallen a little way from safety and struggled to stand back up.

  The Boneclaw roared and kicked, doing everything in its power to not fall into the now gaping hole behind it. Every movement sent vibrations through the already weakened flooring and almost sent me toppling.

  I ran the last few steps to her and hauled her up. It wasn’t pretty, but she got her footing again and stumbled her way to where Mark still held the door open.

  Another rumble sent me to my knees, and I used the staff to push myself back up. It jerked me back a step and I looked down in confusion to find that the bottom had gotten wedged into the shifting floor.

  “Lucia, don’t be stupid!” Nell yelled from the door. “Leave it!”

  She was right, the staff was a material thing and not worth dying over, but most of the floor was already gone and I just needed a second to get it loose.

  It popped free and I grinned triumphantly despite the situation. My success was short lived though, because in another spectacular instance of bad timing, an explosion rocked the area from underneath us.

  As I was falling, I had a moment to grasp that the unstable fusion core had gone off, no doubt from being jostled and having a ton of falling concrete land on top of it.

  Then the moment passed, and I had to focus on not dying. I thrust the staff forward, trying to find purchase on something, anything, but it slid off uselessly.

  The single stroke of luck I had was that where I’d been standing broke off in a large slab and dropped straight down rather than tipping back like with Alix.

  On the other side of the room, the Boneclaw was losing its fight as well. It hung perilously onto the edge of the hole by only the claws of one arm when the material gave way and crumbled under its weight. The animal and I fell almost at the same time into the darkness below.

  Not again, I thought when I opened my eyes to a pile of broken rock and darkness. This was becoming an all too familiar feeling. The first thing on my to do list when this was all over would be sleep without getting knocked out.

  Forcing myself into a sitting position, I checked for injuries. Aside from another layer of cuts and bruises, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong, though my previously injured arm ached in its cast.

  Rock shifted around me and the sound of falling water came from somewhere nearby. I felt around in the darkness, afraid the staff had been thrown out of reach. If it had, I might never find it in the total darkness.

  Then my hand brushed the familiar etched metal and I closed desperate fingers around it. The staff moved but didn’t come away in my hands. The shaft glowed at my touch, a beacon of something not quite hope, but close. It revealed a few small rocks I easily moved, then the staff was in my grasp once more.

  I turned the light up as bright as it could go and got to my feet. Turning in a slow circle, I studied my surroundings. It was an underground cavern filled with slabs of broken floor and rubble. The warehouse lift had fallen in and now lay on its side, a hunk of twisted steel and shattered glass.

  All the debris in one area had been completely pulverized. From the fusion core, I guessed. It would explain why the blast hadn’t killed us all when it exploded. If it had been under a pile of heavy rock, that would have blunted the worst of the blast.

  Looking up, I judged the fall to have been about twenty meters. The piece of floor panel I’d been on had landed on an already high mound of debris, which must have broken my fall.

  I clambered up the mound, backsliding on some of the less secure bits as they came loose. Once I reached the top I called out above.

  “Mark! Nell! Anyone up there?” I yelled, cupping my hand around my mouth to project the sound.

  No one answered. I hoped that meant they were in the safety of the stairwell and not dead.

  A groan cut through the silence and I whirled around, thinking it was Alix, but didn’t see her.

  “Alix?”

  No response.

  I tracked left to right with the staff, moving around the area where she might have fallen. Its light fell on an outstretched hand and I almost tripped over the loose stone in my haste to get to her. When I reached Alix’s broken, lifeless form, I knew the noise hadn’t come from her.

  She lay half buried under the wreckage. No one could have survived the damage her body had sustained, not even the immortal Eternals.

  Something shifted behind me and released a heavy breath that lifted the loose strands of hair on my neck. Moving slowly, I pivoted on my heel and came face to face with the Boneclaw.

  “Not Alix,” he whispered.

  I backed up several paces until out of its arm’s reach and cocked my head at him. “Not Tiberius. Yet you speak,” I returned, trying to keep my composure.

  This was not at all what I had expected.

  A long scar on one side of his face looked familiar. Had I seen this Boneclaw before? He didn’t have Tiberius’ size or human-like hands. He had eyes, but they were milky and unseeing. I wondered fleetingly if they all had the ability to talk but we had never realized it.

  So much for Tiberius being the only one, I thought. This Boneclaw seemed younger, and I wondered who he was to Tiberius.

  “Are you here to finish me?” the creature asked, ignoring my statement with a note of derision in his voice.

  “No. I fell down here, just like you. Besides, you chased us, not the other way around,” I pointed out.

  He jerked a shoulder in a decidedly un-Boneclaw way. “After you attacked us in the cavern.”

  I spread my hands in a peaceful gesture, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see it. “A misunde
rstanding. I wasn’t trying to hit anyone, only cause a distraction for my people to escape.”

  “You can’t escape what you’ve done,” he replied harshly. “I know who you are. Your scent was on her. I recognize it now.”

  Who was he talking about?

  It hit me like a blast of cold water. The Boneclaw from my first hunt. He’d known her, had been to the kill site. I stared at him in horror when it clicked. The four Boneclaws who had come running to the gorge.

  “She was my mother,” he finally said. It was unnerving to hear what I could recognize as grief in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I mean that. Our people...We didn’t know—”

  “That we are intelligent?” he finished for me. “Why should that matter? You kill life. You destroy.”

  “Your kind hunts the frost horn, don’t they?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “We hunt to survive, just like you. We fight to defend ourselves when in danger. Your people have been that danger. You’ve killed us, too.”

  The Boneclaw fell quiet again and I got the feeling he was thinking over what I’d said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. “I’m Lucia.”

  He scoffed at the question, then moaned when the movement caused him pain.

  “You’re hurt,” I said, trying to get a better look at him without getting too close.

  One of his legs bent out at an odd angle and a claw from his right hand had been torn out. A gash on his chest bled freely, the green streaming down his white fur.

  “Your observation skills are unparalleled, Lucia, Daughter of Cyril,” he said wryly.

  I sighed heavily. This creature was frustratingly hard to talk to. “Do you want my help or not?”

  “Yes,” he said after a long pause. “Call me Othello, the name my father gave me to speak with your kind.”

  “Who is your father?” I asked.

  “Tiberius is his name,” he replied.

  “Okay, Othello. I’m going to help you. Let’s get one thing clear, though. While I have no desire to hurt you, I will protect myself. You know the power of my weapon. You felt it firsthand in the caves.” He didn’t have to know that the staff was currently a glorified flashlight.

  This time he stayed so quiet I thought he had passed out. His breaths came slow before he finally answered. “You have my word.”

  I still didn’t trust him and kept an eye on his claws as I drew closer, then I stopped short. Othello lay in a shallow pool of water. I’d bet my rations it had come from the contaminated source Mark told me about.

  “Othello, besides the obvious, do you feel alright?”

  “No,” he admitted. “This water is poison. I can smell the death it carries.”

  I stepped back again in case my next words set the big guy off. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to pull you out myself,” I told him. “But I can bring back help.”

  Othello clicked in a way I quickly realized was a laugh. “It is as I suspected.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I insisted. “I will come back. Then you’ll see that we aren’t what you think.”

  I started a search of the pit. It was possible that no natural passage existed, but there might be an artificial one, perhaps built by the Eternals themselves.

  For the first time since I was old enough to attend Janus’ lessons, I regretted not paying more attention to them. I was careful not to touch the water as Mark had warned but worried it wouldn’t matter. Was it possible that the whole cavern was contaminated, and my very presence here already meant a future illness? Would my children, if I ever got around to having any, come out of me with misshaped faces and a shortage of fingers and toes?

  I decided it was best not to dwell on it. With Othello practically taking a bath in the irradiated water, he was going to need help, and fast.

  As I’d suspected, a passage leading out of the cave looked Eternal made. It had precision-cut stairs and a darkened monitor on the wall. If someone had been down here long ago, there was a path out.

  “I’ll be back,” I called out over my shoulder.

  Othello made a noncommittal grunt but said nothing else.

  I climbed the stairs, careful not to touch anything, and came out onto a platform of sorts. There was a door that looked like it belonged to an elevator shaft, so I ignored it and continued up.

  The next level had a manual door like the one the others had gone through, so I tried to open it. It turned out to be locked, so I trudged up another flight.

  This time the door opened easily, and I poked my head out to take a peek. It was hard to tell without the map, but I figured it had to be the same building we’d been headed for when the floor decided to collapse.

  The door shut behind me with a snap and I cringed a little, even though the danger had passed with Othello injured below.

  Something clanged in a different area of the building. It had to be Mark and the others. I set off, looking for a way out. This part of the facility didn’t appear to be in the untouched condition of the office space we’d previously gone through.

  Whereas the offices had clearly been for more mundane work, with tiny cubicles and drab décor, this place looked sleek and upscale. Except for the destruction.

  All the furniture and equipment were in disarray, knocked over or broken into pieces when the people working here had fled. At first the debris looked chaotic, as if everyone in the vicinity had run in all directions at once. Then I looked closer, noticing there seemed to be a pattern to the mayhem.

  I could almost imagine the scene unfolding in this area. Stampeding people, all pushing and shoving, knocking things over in their efforts to flee. The abandoned belongings and equipment highlighted the Eternals’ path out of the building. If I remembered Mark’s map correctly, it was the last stop before the caves.

  The trail thinned out as there wasn’t as much debris to follow in less occupied areas. Every so often I would spot a lone shoe or bag that someone had dropped and continue that way. So far, I hadn’t seen any bodies, for which I was grateful.

  At a split in the corridor, noises came from the left, like people running. Unless I’d been wrong, these came from a different direction than before. Frowning, I stopped, unsure which way to go. Something told me not to call out and reveal my position, so I stayed silent and turned left, winging it.

  Some of the doors were still open, like the elevator that had been half open, and I peeked inside one of them. It was a lab, still wrecked, but not quite in as much disarray as the rest. When my light fell on a neat stack of fusion cores, it occurred to me that there was a treasure trove of untapped resources here.

  I stepped inside and went to the table, intending to liberate them from their forever prison, but I stopped when I realized they wouldn’t be easy to transport. Deciding that now wasn’t the time to scavenge, I let them be, making a mental note to come back later.

  “I’m telling you, I heard someone down here,” a voice whispered from out in the hall.

  Unsure if it was friend or foe, I cut the staff’s power and looked around for somewhere to hide. If they had any kind of light, they’d have to be blind to miss me in here.

  The number of footsteps didn’t seem to match the number of our group and I feared more of Mario's men had followed us into the facility.

  As they shuffled closer, a beam of light fell across the open doorway.

  One of them mumbled something half a meter away. I raised my staff high, ready to bring it down on the skull of whoever entered.

  18

  “Hey, watch it!” yelped Don, bumbling the light stick in his hands.

  I angled the staff away just before it collided with the man’s face.

  “Sorry, thought you were someone else,” I said, propping the shaft on my shoulder. “Is it just you?”

  Don shook his head and stepped aside to reveal Jennifer.

  “Lucia!” she squeaked. “You’re alive! We thought you were a goner.”

&nb
sp; “You weren’t the only one,” I told her. “Where’s everyone else?”

  The pair looked at each other with equally grim expressions. My heart plummeted at the thought of losing more people. We couldn’t have gone through hell and back only to fall at the finish line. The staggering injustice of that scenario was almost too much to bear.

  “Guys?” I prompted. “What happened?”

  Jennifer spoke first. “After we made it into the stairwell the only way to go was up,” she explained. “Without your light, Mark used the pad.”

  She flicked a glance at Don’s light, pausing.

  “What did you find?” I asked, unable to puzzle it out.

  “Wolves,” Don finished for her, gulping. “The biggest den I’ve ever seen.”

  “Everyone freaked out,” Jennifer continued. “Then I was stumbling alone in the dark until I saw Don’s light. Good thing you found that utility closet,” she told him.

  Something in her tone caught my attention and Don nodded but looked at the ground nervously.

  “What are the chances of that?” I wondered out loud. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure,” he said, handing it over with a guilty expression.

  I studied it for a moment then stared hard at the man. “This is one of our greenhouse lights. You didn’t get that from here.”

  “I knew it,” scoffed Jennifer. “Your story just didn’t make any sense. How long have you had that on you?”

  He didn’t have to say anything for me to guess the answer.

  “From the beginning,” I said irritably.

  Don nodded.

  “Why did you let me disable our only weapon if you had that the whole time?” I demanded.

  I knew this wasn’t the best time for an interrogation, but his actions had put everyone at risk, himself included.

  “I was saving it in case I needed to break off from the group,” he muttered, then nudged his chin up in defiance to look at Jennifer. “Look, I’m the one who got it past the guards. And lucky for you I did. You’d still be running around alone in the dark if not for me.”