The stairway was illuminated with yellow strip lighting down the sides of a low ceiling. As first Markus, then myself, and then Quinton descended the deep spiral, the walls quickly fell away to hard bedrock. Would the staircase take us all the way down to the underground city of Jotham? It certainly felt that way as we continued to descend into the depths.

  The further we went, the dimmer the yellow lighting became. I was glad that Markus had found a box of luminary rods at the head of the stairs. I was surprised the blast from the caved-in door had not destroyed it. But he pulled out three long white rods from the metal box that could be switched on with the press of a button.

  It was mostly our three lights that made enough light to keep me from tripping over my own feet and the roughly cut slabs of stone each stair was cut into. We’d been carefully moving down the staircase for close to five minutes, the administration building above already a distant memory.

  “How far down do you think this goes?” I asked, my voice echoing through the spiraling tower of rock.

  “It’s difficult to see with this yavit staircase curling around,” Markus said from his position ahead of us. “Just watch your step. They didn’t do a very good job of cutting the stone out. Either it was a rush job or just sloppy work.”

  “At least we won’t have to worry about the rappavore down here,” Quinton’s voice echoed down to me from behind.

  She had a point, but it didn’t calm me. I remembered the last time I had gone into a deep underground place when I had been on Sora X. My older brother Zorren had taken me there to get his revenge. He considered my entire existence an insult to him and an impediment to his desire to be Emperor. That trip had almost killed me. It was only the emergency bonding with Markus that had saved my life. A shiver went through me as the memory of the fight with my brother washed over me.

  I felt a surge of calming energy coming from Markus, and understanding. He knew. He understood. And that lessened my anxiety as I realized that even though that day had been terrifying, I had gained something incredible in the process. I sent back a feeling of gratitude to my friend.

  It was several more long minutes before the spiraling stairway opened up to a small, cramped room. There was nothing in it except a few crates. A quick look showed them empty. There was, however, the opening of a tunnel with more yellow strips lighting the way. With nowhere else to go, Markus led the way forward. His luminary out before him and a tight grip on the dragon’s head of the executioner’s staff still clipped to his belt, but ready to be used in an instant.

  I kept my eyes fixed on Markus’s back as he led the way, his broad shoulders nearly spanning the width of the narrow tunnel. His luminary rod cast long shadows that danced across the roughly hewn rock walls. The air smelled damp and musty, with a hint of something metallic that only made me think of the caverns on Sora X again.

  “I wonder if the team got out of Mine Shaft Seven yet?” Quinton asked.

  I immediately felt bad. Since our first encounter with the rappavore, I had not thought once of the team. To be fair, we’d been going strong since then with danger and mystery surrounding us, but it didn’t lessen my guilt. I was concerned about the team. Surely they had found their way back to the surface by now. And they were far enough away from the administration facility that there would be no danger of them running across the rappavore.

  But I still remembered Commander Leyva’s words right before the network had crashed. Something about the unusual readings. Unusual readings from what? The olthometer? Another piece of equipment? Was it a reading of one of the firestone samples, or something else entirely?

  “I’m sure they did,” I said reassuringly more to myself than to anyone else. “Maybe they are in Jotham already. Vossner said he was taking them there after they were done with the mine. Maybe we will meet them when we get there.”

  If we got there. I hoped this did indeed take us to the underground city of Jotham. That was the word written on the outside of the door leading to this underground passage. Where else would this go? Though I wondered why they needed a passage like this if they had transporters that could do the job in the blink of an eye.

  Maybe this was an emergency back door in case the transporters weren’t working? I would certainly want a way back to the surface if the transporters malfunctioned for some reason. That explanation satisfied me, and I continued to move through the tight tunnel. Because of my height, I had to hunch down so my head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. It was a very uncomfortable way to walk.

  After what felt like an eternity, the tunnel dead-ended into another. Markus walked into the new passageway and stood there a moment, looking one way and then the next. I peered down each as well.

  The ceiling was a little higher, so I could stand without hunching over––thank goodness. And I could clearly see support beams at regular intervals, unlike the rock tunnel we’d just left. The walls of this tunnel seemed a mix of bedrock and softer material. They were further apart too, so much so that two people could walk side by side comfortably. And the lighting here was brighter, with the yellow steps running along the ceiling, as well as along the walls at waist height. The only problem was they stretched in both directions with no end in sight.

  “Which way?” Markus asked.

  There were no clear markings to indicate which direction Jotham was in. Clearly, anyone who used the tunnels was supposed to know where they were going. That was just great, because even though we’d escaped the threat of the rappavore, now we had to worry about getting lost. This was shaping up to be one hell of a day, and I had to admit that at this point all I really wanted to do was to get back onto the Quortous and leave this planet far behind.

  “There appears to be a slight descent to the left. I suggest we try that way and see if it leads to the city,” Quinton said. She had come out of the smaller tunnel and squatted down to rake a hand across the packed earth of the tunnel floor.

  I studied the left and then the right carefully. I didn’t really see much of a difference in the grade of either of them, but she’d been on two mining expeditions before, so I decided to take her word for it. Markus did too, because he swiveled around to the left and led our group in that direction.

  We continued our walk in silence through the wider tunnel. Markus was four or five steps ahead and on heightened alert, though I wasn’t exactly sure what we might run into down here in the solemn half-darkness. Though Governor Korrel and Vossner had warned of wild animals that looked for shelter and roamed in the mine shafts. Would they be in these tunnels too?

  There was also the possibility we could run across a person who knew exactly what was going on in the north wing and knew that we had been through there. My mind remembered the doors Markus had blasted holes through to get down here. Would they be upset to find us down in the tunnel? Would they be stupid enough to try something in an attempt to keep their secret? Suddenly, I realized that was exactly what Markus was thinking and why he was stalking through the tunnel like he was on the hunt for someone to kill.

  An eternity seemed to pass as we walked and walked and walked some more. There was not much change as we continued, though it was light enough that all three of us decided we could turn off our luminary rods to save on energy in case we needed the light later. After a short time, I did notice a slight decline as we continued down the passage. Other than that, the tunnel was an unbroken monotony of the familiar musky smell of being deep underground and the soft plod of our feet as we marched deeper into the bowels of Talion Proxi.

  A few hundred feet ahead was a dark alcove in the tunnel wall. We’d run across two others during our long walk, but found they were just small recesses cut into the tunnel by water runoff eroding away the softer parts of the walls. A careful check had found them empty, but there was a sharp scuttling sound echoing from this one. It caused Markus to stop mid-stride. He raised his hand in a silent command to halt, his posture instantly shifting into combat readiness. I froze, straining my ears to identify what might have made the sound.

  “What was—” I began to whisper, but Markus cut me off with a quick gesture.

  The sound came again––a distinctive scratching of claws against stone, followed by a low, rumbling growl that sent ice down my spine. An animal of some kind was moving in the shadows of the eroded recess.

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  “Seriously,” I breathed. “We can’t catch a break.”

  “Whatever it is, it sounds significantly smaller than the rappavore, so there’s that,” Quinton whispered back.

  Markus’s movements were swift as he unhooked the executioner’s staff from his belt, extended the weapon to its full seven-foot length and rooted the end into the ground before him. A heartbeat later, he activated the staff’s shield, which extended from each side of the weapon and nearly spanned the whole width of the tunnel.

  I took a few steps backward and to the side of Markus, urging Quinton to do the same on the other side of the Protector. Markus had put me through protection drills so I would know what to do when there was danger or an attack. I already knew that the shield could stop many attack types, including a closely fired blaster shot. But in case Markus had to attack himself, he’d drilled me to give him enough space to do so, while still staying close enough to be fully covered by the shield.

  I almost didn’t catch the dark lurking thing as it launched itself into the air, but Markus was ready for it. He tapped at the center of the staff, and while I couldn’t see the energetic pulse that was sent outward, I felt the abrupt shift and the familiar whomp as something invisible slammed into the lunching form.

  A visceral scream rent through the air, and there was a slight tremble in the tunnel floor under me as something slammed abruptly into it. My eyes were then finally able to make out what had attacked us as it lay there sprawled a few feet in front of Markus, breathing heavily from a panting chest.

  It was a black creature that looked like ink against the ochre of the tunnel floor. The animal was about the size of a large wolf, but with six legs instead of four. Its body was covered in what appeared to be scales, and there were small barbs along its spine. I couldn’t tell if the scales were natural armor or some type of exoskeletal plating. The creature had no visible eyes that I could see, just a wide mouth filled with needle-like teeth that were now bared in our direction.

  “Is it dead?” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off the creature.

  “No,” Markus replied, maintaining his defensive stance. “It’s only stunned.”

  The creature twitched, and that’s when I saw multiple eyes set far back in the head blink in rapid succession, and then they were gone. I almost thought I’d imagined the six small beady yellow irises. They were there and gone so fast.

  “What is that?” I asked, curious and more than a little horrified at the strange creature.

  “It’s an altrik,” Quinton replied. “And despite what they look like, they are normally quite scared of our kind, and I can attest to that personally. I was doing geological work on Demos Fa a few years back. A technician and I accidentally ran into three of them while we were surveying iteractol crystal formations in a deep trench. They took one sniff of us and hightailed it in the other direction as fast as they could.”

  “So they aren’t normally so aggressive?” I asked, mulling over that information.

  Quinton shook her head. “Altrik’s natural prey are rodents and small mammals. I wouldn’t trust them around younger children, but I can safely say they’d never attack an adult and certainly not three at once.”

  “This is the second animal we have dealt with in a very short period of time that has exhibited more than usual aggressive behavior,” I mused out loud.

  The woman looked at me questioningly in the low light of the tunnel. “You think that the altrik’s aggression is connected to what happened with the rappavore?”

  I nodded slowly as I weighed everything that had happened since we’d arrived on this colony world. “I suppose it could be pure coincidence, but I have a feeling that it’s not.”

  I didn’t add that I thought that the aggression might very well be connected to whatever was going on in the secret lab, but that was a bit more of a leap without more evidence to back up my theory, so I kept it to myself for now.

  Another growl came from the dark alcove; in fact, there were several. The growls reverberated off the walls, echoing ominously in the confined space. My heart raced as I gripped my luminary rod tighter, the cold metal pressing into my palm. I then watched as four more of the altriks stepped into the light. These were a little bit smaller than the animal still sprawled at our feet, but it was clear by their exposed teeth they were taking an aggressive approach just like the first one.

  The altriks moved closer, their lean bodies shifting with predatory grace as they crowded around the fallen member of their pack. Their yellow eyes suddenly appeared, and I realized it wasn’t that the eyes were hidden, but that they were changing color from black to yellow and back again. In the yellow eyes, I could see a primal hunger dancing, which filled me with unease.

  I also felt the tension in Markus’s stance as he stood between us and the pack. He held the executioner’s staff ready, prepared for an onslaught that seemed inevitable. Could he take on all four at once?

  The lead altrik snarled, a guttural sound that reverberated through the passageway like low thunder. It reverberated all around us, and then the tunnel quaked. It wasn’t much, but it shook pebbles loose and caused a dusting to fall from the low ceiling. It certainly sent a stab of terror through my heart. The last thing we needed was for the freaking ceiling of the tunnel to collapse on us.

  My eyes locked with the lead alrick’s. They were the color of ink again. Those dark orbs were like deep pools of blackness, and from that black, I felt a wave of aggression wash over me that made me shiver. But beneath the aggression was a wide abyss of fear. A fear that matched my own.

  I blinked in startled realization that I was so closely connected to the animal’s emotions. Certainly, I had grown used to wading deep into the emotions of my own kind, but this was the first close connection with a species outside my own. It was shocking how similar it felt to what I would pick up from a person. The most startling of all, though, was that the animal’s fear and my own were nearly identical in its intensity and scope.

  He was afraid of us just as much as we were of him. He also registered the shaking of the tunnel and what it meant. The creature even knew on some level that it was causing the shaking, but its anger at what happened to its pack mate and another almost uncontrollable aggression deep within was clouding its judgment.

  I paused as another realization came over me from the alrick. No, not clouding his judgment. The alrick knew exactly what he was doing, and his call was a rally for his companions to join in.

  “He’s doing it on purpose. He wants the tunnel to collapse, or at least part of it. He wants to trap us so we’ll be defenseless and unable to fight back,” I said with horror.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Quinton asked from beside me in a whisper, as if being quiet enough might enable her to hide herself from the pack on the other side of Markus.

  My Protector simply grunted. Short, sharp—a sound I’d come to translate with ease. After three months at Markus Nador’s side (or perhaps him at mine), I’d learned to decipher his personal dialect of non-verbal communication. This particular grunt meant he believed me without question. Others in his repertoire ranged from dismissive snorts to thoughtful rumbles, each carrying meanings as clear as spoken words to those who’d learned to listen.

  “Empathic Dome-ni. I’ve been training in it lately, and I think it’s making me more sensitive to emotions and interpreting the reason and thought behind them.” I explained absentmindedly as my mind tried to figure a way out of this new trap.

  But before my mind could even consider a resolution, the other alrick’s join in with guttural growls, and the tunnel shook much more violently around us.

  The altriks pressed forward, their sharp claws scraping against the rocky ground as they moved in a coordinated advance. The lead creature’s furious growl hung in the air, a menacing sound that vibrated in my chest. I could feel the tension thickening, like a taut wire ready to snap. The stench of the altriks mixed with the damp earth, a primal scent that filled my nostrils and left my heart racing.

  I glanced back at Markus, who stood resolute, bracing himself for the impending attack. The executioner’s staff hummed with power, its energy shield glowing brighter as the altriks drew closer. I also saw the downed alrick finally shake off the damage it had received from the staff. It stood to join its pack. The sound from the animals was now an almost deafening roar. The quaking intensified as more dislodged rocks pelted us from above.

  “What about activating the full shield?” I yelled at Markus to be heard over the noise.

  I knew the shield could become a box that surrounded all four sides and even come over the top. But would it be powerful enough to stop a complete cave-in? And once we were in the shield box, it would cut down all movement dramatically. In order for the shield to stay intact, all those inside had to move in tandem while it was activated, which meant there would be no mad dashing in search of other safety.

  Markus shook his head. “Too risky. We need to make it back to the smaller tunnel. You two go. I’ll catch up.”

  For a moment, I was rooted in place. I didn’t like what he was asking me to do. I didn’t want to leave him behind to a possible cave-in and face five very angry animals alone. But in our training, Markus had made it very clear that if he was to be effective at his job in protecting me, he couldn’t wonder if I was going to follow his directions. When there was trouble like we were in now, he was in charge, and that was that. So, I honored our agreement and grabbed hold of Quinton.

  “We have to get back to the passage we came down.”

  She hesitated too, as if she didn’t want to follow Markus’s orders, but then she nodded, and we began the run back the way we had come.

  The sound of the altrik pack echoed behind us, growls reverberating through the tunnel like a sinister chorus. The walls felt claustrophobic and close, the weight of the earth above pressing down as we raced through the rocks raining down on us.

  Even as we ran, I knew we weren’t going to make it. The opening was too far. And what exactly were to do when we got there? If we went back up to the admin building, the rappavore would be waiting for us. I didn’t have time to consider other options, though, as we were pelted with more dust and even rocks as we ran.

  We had only gone a short distance when I heard a sharp crack. It reverberated through the passage, and adrenaline surged through me like an electrical current, making me run even faster. But there was no outrunning anything when the floor beneath your feet started to give way. I had only time to cry out as the ground disintegrated right from under me, and I was instantly swallowed up by darkness and chaos.