Over the metallic clamor of their footsteps, Evie thought she heard voices. She slowed, reaching for her pistol. Victor slammed into her.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“I hear something—”
“It’s coming from the surface,” Owen said, bringing up the rear. “They’re fighting overhead. I can hear better than you. Keep moving.”
Evie nodded, took off again. He was right, she realized. The faint strains of gunfire and screaming drifted down through the tunnel ceiling.
Two minutes left.
“We’re almost there!” Dorian called out.
“Looks like a dead end!” Victor called back—Dorian was leading them straight into a wall.
“It’s not a damned dead end,” Dorian grumbled, and as if to prove it, he picked up his pace, barreling straight toward the wall, his arms stretched out in front of him.
He slammed into it and it swung open, revealing another narrow tunnel.
“See?” he shouted as he slowed, leading them inside. A doorway loomed up ahead. “This is it. Victor, you should recognize this place.”
Thirty seconds left.
“Yeah,” Victor said begrudgingly. “I do. But we aren’t there yet. We still have to get to the drill site.”
“He’s right,” Owen said. “Keep moving.”
And they did, scurrying single file down the tunnel. When they arrived at the exit, Dorian stopped and turned around. Evie thought his face looked pale.
0:00 blinked the countdown on her HUD.
“You know what you’re supposed to do,” Owen said, and Evie turned around, along with Victor and Saskia. He stood a few paces away, holding his gun at his chest. “I’m going out there first. Let’s hope Green and Blue cleared it out for us. But be prepared if they didn’t.”
Evie glanced sideways at Victor, but after all his complaining, he only responded with an expression of grim determination.
“Let’s get this done as quickly as possible,” Owen said. “Dorian.”
There was a long pause, a moment of inhaled breath. Then Dorian pushed open the entrance door.
Muggy heat wafted into the tunnel. Owen nudged himself to the front of the line, ducking out into the closet first. Dorian went next. Then Saskia. Evie. Victor brought up the rear. They stepped into a moldering old bedroom, weapons raised and trained on what was ahead. Clouds of smoke drifted up near the ceiling, and Evie caught the scent of expelled plasma. But the world was quiet. No rifle blasts, no harsh squawking of the Covenant language.
Owen crawled out the open window, disappearing into the growth outside. The others followed, moving in tandem, the way they had during training. The rain had stopped, and the sun peered out from behind the gray clouds, turning the world to steam. Evie wiped the sweat from her forehead and followed behind Saskia as they wove through the tangled, overgrown path. A garden, she remembered. This had been a garden, gone to seed when the tourists left Brume-sur-Mer for wealthier destinations.
“They’ve shut off the drill,” Victor whispered into her ear. “I can’t hear it.”
She nodded. That should be a good sign, then. Took all their minimal resources to deal with the more immediate threat of the two squads. Still, she gripped the handle on her pistol so tight her knuckles bleached, and she kept sweeping her gaze over the greenery, looking for a rustle of movement, a flash of Covenant armor.
Nothing.
The plasma scent grew stronger. It reminded Evie of melted metal, of chemicals burning in the science lab at school. She caught sight of something big and silver and glittering through the web of flowering bushes, and her breath caught.
“Get down!” Owen roared just as a white plasma bolt blasted overhead.
Evie hit the ground hard, rolling immediately into the bushes, scanning the garden to find the source of the shot. Owen’s rifle fire shredded the leaves. More plasma bolts scorched through the garden, leaving charred vegetation in their wake. Evie spotted a flash of pale light, and finally she saw it: a Jackal, firing off its plasma rifle from behind an energy shield. She pushed herself up to sitting and fired off a round of shots from her pistol, trying to aim in from the side.
She must have been successful; the Jackal howled and whipped its body toward her, the plasma bolts streaking through the trees. She dove back down and crawled more deeply into the vegetation. Where were the others?
A blast from a rifle. Saskia, shooting from Evie’s left. The Jackal shrieked and whirled around again, firing rapidly in Saskia’s direction. But its movement gave Evie a clear shot of its armored back. She aimed her pistol at the narrow wedge of flesh beneath its quills. She took a deep breath. Fired.
The Jackal dropped forward, dark blood splattering over the leaves.
Evie slunk back, let out a long breath of relief.
“No time to rest!” Owen yelled. “Someone’s going to hear that. Keep moving!”
Evie pushed herself up from the ground, her clothes and backpack streaked with mud. The others emerged too, stepping out cautiously from the growth.
“Nice shooting,” Saskia said.
Evie smiled. Three months ago, Saskia had shot a Jackal to save Evie’s life. “Just returning the favor.”
They rushed forward, hacking through the damp growth, clearing a path until suddenly there was no more growth at all, but rather a vast sunken clearing, the earth scorched black, a huge four-legged structure stretching up toward the sky. Not a structure, Evie reminded herself—it was a Scarab, a massive vehicle that had left a path of destruction as it crawled through the old neighborhood. Now it squatted above the dig site, a stationary energy shield shimmering around the entire city block, preventing any entrance.
“Commander didn’t mention this in his briefing,” Owen said quietly. “But it is strange to see a Scarab used like this. They normally level cities, with that cannon turned on buildings and streets. We need to go unnoticed for this plan to work.”
It was bigger than the Locust they had taken out last time. More fortified. But there were ventilation shafts—weak spots. The right amount of firepower could take it down.
Once they got through the shield.
“The skinners should be powerful enough to overload the energy field,” Owen said. “Then the chain reaction should knock out the Scarab as well. But we’re going to have to use all of them. Hurry. There are probably other scouts in the area.”
Evie and the others scattered, running around the perimeter of the drill. Evie could feel the heat from the energy shield, a different heat from the air’s thick swelter. It was more mechanical. Less human.
She pulled her backpack around front, her hands shaking. Lifted the first of the explosives out, unlocked its case, nestled it into the ground next to the shield. She started to do the same with the second one. Eight skinners going off at once. It had to work.
Plasma fire exploded from somewhere off to her left; she yelped and dropped the second explosive, and the whole world went still. But it didn’t set off. Evie breathed a long sigh of relief and hunched down lower. She could hear Owen returning fire. She reached over, activated both of the explosives. Then she grabbed her pistol and ran back toward the old tourist house. Someone was up ahead of her—Dorian. He fired into the trees just as a green plasma bolt streaked past Evie’s head.
“Watch out!” he called. “Grunts!”
She still couldn’t see them, but she fired in the direction the plasma bolt had come. Something squawked in anger. More plasma fire, setting the tree leaves to smolder. Then Owen came crashing through the greenery, laying down a hailstorm of bullets. Saskia and Victor were right behind him.
“Get inside!” Victor shouted. “There’s more of them coming! We’ve got to blow the bombs now!”
Evie nodded and scrambled through the empty window. Dorian was leaning up against the tunnel entrance, breathing heavily, his hair soaked with sweat. He had pulled out the detonator. “We shouldn’t go underground,” he said. “Not with all those explosives go
ing off at once.”
“Will we be safe here?” Evie asked.
“We should,” Saskia said, crawling through the window. “We placed them so that the blasts are shaped inward toward the shield. But—”
Plasma burned through the wood of the house, centimeters from her head. Saskia shrieked and dove inside. Victor whipped around, firing into the garden.
“Get inside!” Dorian bellowed. “So we can set these things off!”
“What about Owen?” Saskia said. She already held the detonator loosely in her hand, her eyes wide. Victor swung himself up through the window, firing his rifle over his shoulder.
“He’s on his way,” he said.
And then there he was, a gleaming streak of metal against the greenery.
“Blow it to hell!” he ordered through his helmet’s comm. “Now!”
Evie looked up at Dorian. At Saskia. At Victor. Their detonators glowed red.
“Now!” Owen shouted again.
Evie closed her eyes and pressed her thumb into the indentation.
She heard the sound of exactly one of her inhaled breaths.
Then the roaring came. A wave of furnace heat. Owen dove through the window of the house as the walls trembled and cracked. The ground lurched, and Evie flew into the closet, landing hard on the floor. The ground groaned beneath her. The floorboards cracked.
“Those tunnels are caving in,” Dorian whispered.
No, she realized, with a shout—it was just her ears ringing hard from the explosion.
Evie got shakily to her feet. She flung open the door to the service tunnel. The steps were still there, everything coated in dust. But the ceiling was lower. The metal was dented, distorted.
“Did we get it?” Victor asked. He sounded a million kilometers away.
“Waiting on visual confirmation,” Owen said.
“Is it safe to go down there?” Evie asked, nodding at the tunnel entrance.
“Do we have a choice?” Dorian asked.
“Surveillance team said we got it,” Owen said. “The Scarab’s been taken out.”
Relief flushed through Evie, and exhilaration overpowered her exhaustion. But then she smelled smoke, heard a roar like the ocean that she thought was her damaged eardrums but was really, she realized, a fire. Distantly, there came a strange, alien wail. An alarm system, its inhuman baying calling the Covenant to action.
“Take the tunnels,” Owen said. “It’s worth the risk. We’re going to run headfirst into the Covenant if we take the surface streets.”
Evie didn’t doubt that. She glanced at Dorian. A flicker of panic passed between them.
“Let’s go,” he said, heading down the stairs. A plume of dust swallowed him, and Evie took a deep breath before stepping into it. Even with the helmet, her eyes immediately stung with tears, and she blinked rapidly, focusing her gaze not on the thick white dust in front of her but on the readings on HUD, on Dorian’s bio-signs. With her damaged hearing and the heavy dust, the readings were the only sound pulling into the tunnels. The rest of the world felt muffled and claustrophobic.
Then a low, sharp screech cut through the silence. The dust billowed, clearing briefly, and Evie saw Dorian crouching up ahead, a large sheet of metal from the tunnel’s ceiling dangling at an angle above him.
“We’ve got to hurry!” His voice came through on the helmet’s comm system. “This whole thing could collapse.”
The dust was closing in around him again. Evie dove forward, the particles burning the back of her throat, the inside of her nose. “Saskia?” she said into her comm. “Victor? Are you okay? Owen?”
“I’m fine,” Saskia said.
“I’m clear,” Victor said. “Keep moving. The dust is starting to settle. I’ve got a visual.”
“Clear,” said Owen. “And Victor’s right. Keep moving.”
Evie crept forward through the slow-falling dust. It settled in jagged, unnatural shapes—the distorted metal that had once lined the tunnel keeping it secure. The ceiling dropped dangerously low, metal hanging in shredded stalactites that reflected the light from Evie’s helmet back into her eyes. Evie wound through them, her gaze on Dorian’s back.
A crash behind her; a scream on her comm. Evie and Dorian both froze, and Evie whirled around into another blinding cloud of dust.
“Saskia,” Dorian said, rushing up beside her. “Saskia, are you okay?”
“The ceiling dropped,” Owen said over the comm. “Dorian, Evie, keep moving. Saskia—”
“I’m clear. A piece of the ceiling almost hit me. I’m fine. Keep going.”
The dust was clearing again, and Evie saw Saskia pulling herself up. A shard of metal jammed out of the ground beside her. “We’re almost there,” Dorian said, grabbing at Evie’s hand. “Come on.”
They moved on, the tunnel groaning and shrieking around them. The walls shifted centimeter by centimeter, kicking up new showers of debris and dust—so much dust, thick and choking like smoke.
“There,” Dorian said. “We’re almost there.”
Evie could barely see anything in front of her. Dorian was little more than a dark blur moving across the shadows of the tunnel. Her helmet light could barely penetrate the dust. Or maybe it was so coated it was useless.
Dorian let out a shout. There was the horrifying screech of metal against metal. But it wasn’t the ceiling collapsing. It was the exit, grinding open, revealing a wash of lemony sunlight and clear, clean air.
Evie bounded forward, back into the surface world.
Saskia sat on the cot in their tent, her fingers wrapped loosely around a hydration pack of stale-tasting water. Three hours since the explosion and her ears were still ringing.
At least they’d been successful, the reports said. The skinners had burrowed the entire dig site deep into the ground, wedging it between the tunnel systems. Of course, now the whole camp was on high alert. The Covenant would be gunning for them big-time. So far, they hadn’t come this far out into the forest, though, thanks to Owen’s explosion out on the beach. They were focusing their search on the water, not the woods.
Still, when she and the others made it back to the camp, a team was already patrolling the perimeter, and the nonessential tents and structures had been dismantled to shrink their coverage area. Seeing that had solidified to Saskia what they had accomplished. Would the Covenant rebuild? Of course, they had before. But it was so satisfying knowing that her actions would set them back. It was the sort of reassurance she needed, the whole reason she had agreed to come back and fight: She wanted ONI to know she wasn’t like her parents.
In the week since coming back to Brume-sur-Mer, she hadn’t had much time to really think about her parents. No one was getting messages from their family anymore, and it was easy to let herself get swept up in the routine of life with the militia. But when she had these quiet moments between ops, she would find herself wondering, yet again, what her parents were doing. Where they had wound up after leaving Brume-sur-Mer before the invasion. If they were still working with Chalybs Defense Solutions. If they had tried to find her. If she would even want to see them if they had.
Saskia drained the last of her water and tossed the hydration pack onto her cot. She was the only person in the tent aside from Victor, who was sprawled across his own cot, sleeping soundly. Evie and Dorian had gone to look at the reports themselves. Dorian wanted to find out what happened to the rest of the tunnels. The trip had been terrifying, all that unsettled dust, the steel walls bowing inward from the force of the explosion.
Saskia drifted to the tent’s entrance and peered out at the camp. Everything shimmered as the tents reflected the faint misting drizzle. No one was out—they’d been told to stay inside unless absolutely necessary, but Saskia didn’t want to be in that tent anymore, the air damp and stifling. She wanted to talk to someone, to not think about her parents anymore, and their months-long silence. It was strange how less lonely she had felt during the invasion, huddled up inside her parents’ house no
t knowing yet that they had abandoned her. Here, surrounded by grizzled soldiers, part of her felt lost.
She slipped out and cut across the clearing, heading toward Owen’s tent. Maybe Dorian and Evie needed another set of eyes as they looked over the reports and the city maps. Evie had also mentioned something about trying to get in contact with Salome as a way of finding out the extent of the tunnel damage.
The flap to Owen’s tent hung open, and Saskia ducked in without announcing herself. She was startled, then, to find it empty except for Owen himself, who was sitting behind his desk, reading over a data pad. His brow was furrowed with something that almost looked like concern, although the expression vanished as soon as he glanced up at her.
“Oh,” Saskia breathed, stumbling backward. “I’m sorry, I was looking for Dorian and Evie.”
Owen set the data pad down. “I sent them off to help patrol,” he said. “Yellow squadron needed them out in the woods more than I needed them here looking at maps.”
Saskia’s heart thudded. “Do you want me to go out there too? I’ve spent a lot of time in that terrain.”
But Owen shook his head. “We don’t want the group to be too big. Ideally I would have only sent Dorian, but I don’t like putting the four of you in danger without backup.”
“Are we in danger?” Saskia slid into the chair across from Owen’s desk. “I thought the Covenant were focusing on the ocean—”
“They are,” Owen said. “That’s what the aerial reports are telling us.” He tapped the data pad. “The UNSC has remotely piloted drones patrolling the shoreline, looking for UNSC watercraft. But that doesn’t mean the Covenant won’t send a team out to scour the woods.”
Saskia shivered. “Do you think we did too much, blowing the whole thing up like that? They’ll know we’re here now.”
“They knew we were here already,” Owen said. “They were just more focused on unearthing the artifact. And they’re still focused on it.” He shook his head. “We slowed them down, but we didn’t stop them.”
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