There was nowhere to go.
“Where’s Ariki?”
Hayes turned around, looking on the verge of a massive panic attack. “He couldn’t stop. He fell. I… I didn’t see him after he hit the water.”
Elena turned around. Daman ran toward them at full speed, his eyes wide with disbelief. “What are you stopping for? They’re right behind me!”
“It’s a cliff, Damon. The fall is too steep to—”
Damon never slowed. He brushed past them and leaped into open air. They stared in shock as he fell faster than she thought possible, dwindling before her eyes. A tiny splash was the only register that he struck the water.
Spittle flew from Hayes’ quivering lips. “Oh my God!”
Elena turned toward the jungle and opened fire, spacing her shots to cover as much space as possible. The branches swayed with the weight of the grotesque bodies. One of the spiders toppled to the waterlogged ground in an explosion of broken branches, but the rest continued to advance with nightmarish speed.
There were too many of them.
“The hell with this, man.” Hayes nearly sobbed as he took a deep breath.
“Hayes, what are you—?”
He bellowed as he jumped off the cliff. The sound faded as he fell.
Rain slid down Nathan’s terror-etched face like tears. “We have to go, Elena.”
She continued to fire at the advancing spiders. Some were on the ground, others swaying in the trees. They were so close she could see the insidious intelligence glittering in their scarlet eyes. Their spindly legs carried them across the water so fast they appeared to be skimming the surface.
“We won’t survive the drop!”
“We won’t survive this, either. We have to do it!”
She kept shooting. The nearest spider scuttled at them despite the barrage, splashing across the water with its bristly pedipalps outstretched like fingers. Bullets tore into its wiry, translucent flesh, but it limped toward them with ravenous determination.
Nathan seized her by the harness straps and yanked. They tumbled backward into empty air and stinging rain. The wounded spider followed, multiple legs splayed out as if to slow its fall. Elena never stopped firing, even as the shrieking winds whipped, and gravity yanked her toward the salivating waters below.
Chapter 15: Heterochthonous Sanctum
Cynthia stared at Michael, her mouth open in shock or terror. It was hard to tell because the moment was awash in haze, as though in the stratum between dreams and awakening. Michael couldn’t tell where they were, or how he got there. Explanation defied him, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t important to him, because she was there. She was real, beautiful as ever as she clutched a child to her bosom whose eyes looked like his.
Soldiers surrounded her, men and women armed with sophisticated firearms that did nothing to alleviate the fear on their faces. Fear of him. Of what he could do.
Perhaps because he hovered above them, affixed in midair as though standing on solid ground. He was a god to them, a being pulled from myth, a living idol whose very presence demanded subservience and awe. He was the Herald. He was the inevitable. He lifted his hands.
They were stained with blood.
Michael shook his head. No. Not real.
He opened his eyes and sat up in a pool of water, gasping for breath. Rain fell in sheets, liquid pellets that struck hard enough to sting. He stood and shielded his eyes, straining to get a sense of where he was. The recollection gathered slowly, pieces clicked together to form a picture of recent events.
Still in the jungle. Still in the Aberration.
The last thing he remembered was a stream of pale, twisted Others rushing past him. They were even more devolved than the ones that attacked the mill, just gangly, grotesque flesh sticks embodied with the singular notion to slaughter whatever they encountered. Then the ravens came out of nowhere; thick, black and gleaming. Everything fused together in a chaotic rush of ebony eyes, stabbing beaks, and rupturing flesh.
He remembered nothing beyond that.
It didn’t matter. The Aberration pulsed, an ebony migraine in his head.
The rest of the squad was probably dead. Guy might still be alive, but Michael knew the terrors that stalked the shadows, the abominations spawned from the nether of the Aberration. The chances of survival grew slimmer with every passing moment. He couldn’t count on anyone else being able to stop the distortion. It was his responsibility.
He was the key. Somehow he knew it.
A flicker of movement caught his eye. It was a man, cautiously pushing his way through thick, green branches. What was his name?
Alexander Blackwell.
“Hello, Blackwell.”
Blackwell jumped at the sound of Michael’s voice. HIs hair was sodden, his face spattered with mud. His uniform was torn in several places, but he didn’t look seriously injured.
He sighed in relief. “Michael. Thank God. I didn’t know if anyone survived.”
“You did. Unfortunately.”
Blackwell gave him a wary glance. “Look, Michael. I know we got off to things on the wrong foot…”
Michael’s face heated. “The wrong foot? That’s what you call separating me from my wife and unborn child? Putting me in an asylum for insane people? Are you serious?”
Blackwell raised a hand. “True. All of that is true. I didn’t personally sign off on everything, but I take responsibility. It’s my operation. I was focused on the big picture, and that kind of tunnel vision makes you invisible to the personal side of things. I apologize, and what’s more, I promise to make things right when we get out of this. But first we have to get out of this, Michael. That will take everyone working together, including us.”
Michael gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, I get it. You see anyone else?”
“I tried to follow Guy. The ravens were… everywhere. I think he called them. Controlled them somehow. They were attacking those monsters.”
“And the rest? Did you see any of them?”
Blackwell’s jaw clenched. “I saw Chen go down. Didn’t see him get back up.”
Michael took a wary glance around. Visibility was severely limited, but he knew what was out there. Pushing his sodden hair away from his face, he nodded. “All right. We have to keep moving.”
He hadn’t lost his machete, and used it to hack away at the fiercely snarled foliage. Somewhere in his mind a phantom voice whispered. You know that’s unnecessary. There are better ways, faster ways to clear your path. You are the forest. You are the island.
He pushed the voice away. It wasn’t real. It was madness. He glanced back at Blackwell, desperate to distract himself. “Your team compiled all the raw data on Aberrations. I never heard Guy talk about it in technical terms. How do you science something like this?”
Blackwell stepped carefully, eyes swiveling as he checked for threats. “Dr. Kelley and her research team compiled an enormous amount of sensory projection data on the foundation of Nathan’s rudimentary findings. The algorithms were conclusive in their results. These Aberrations appear to be the detritus from a doorway, or portal to another dimension.”
“Don’t have to be a scientist to know that, Blackwell. Question is: why is the Other side full of sick, perverted monsters?”
“The figures suggest the Others, as you call them, are a byproduct of corrupted data. Shadows of submerged consciousnesses unable to fully negotiate the threshold.”