My brother rushes to the ruined door and June. I rush to Pumpkin. He’s puffed up and terrified, eyes as big as moons, and at a snap of gunfire, he turns tail to run. I pounce on him before he can get too far. He hisses and yowls as our bodies flatten to the floor. I pin his scrambling form in my arms and squeeze like if he gets away, I’ll lose him. And I will, if he does. He bats me with his booties, and my stupid, shaking hands grasp numbly at the straps across my chest to bind him.
There’s a flash of light behind the door, behind my brother and June, stuck halfway through. There’s the whumpf of a sonic rocket, maybe, and Gunner’s voice, maybe. He’s shouting for June to go, to hurry. It’s coming.
Pumpkin makes a desperate lunge, and I forgo fumbling with the straps for a better hold. I catch him by the hips, but he’s slipping, slipping—
Metal rips apart. Kieran’s shorted the card reader or lock or whatever it is in the frame, and the door pulls open a little more, highlighted by a flash from another rocket. It fires off from behind the door, bright as a flare, and through the slight crack in the door, I see it tail off into—into nothing. A mass of shiny black glitters in the light of the rocket like oil on water, like stars in the abyss, and then the rocket is swallowed. Not just the object, not just the light, but the sound. The screaming trajectory of the projectile is cut like a plug being pulled, and the darkness seethes closer.
Remnant. It’s a Remnant.
“Kieran!” I scream. I want to run to him, drag him back from the door. It’s not that I want June or Gunner to die. But courage has dropped out. Chivalry is dead. Terror is everything now, every moral, every ability to think. It’s just: Remnant, Remnant, Remnant.
I squeeze Pumpkin to me with all the strength of one arm, and with the other pull just one of the straps all the way around him. It’s not enough. He could slip or escape, but my whole body is shaking and Kieran isn’t moving fast enough and there’s a Remnant. A Remnant. I yell at my brother again.
He’s shaking too, from head to boots, as he clutches June’s flailing hands and pulls her through to our side. In her absence my light catches a swirl of dark and glimmering orbs like eyes. An icy draft, cold as death, snakes through the gap.
Gunner ducks down, squeezes partly through. June goes for him, but he’s pulled backward—there and then gone—with a scream. It’s earsplitting. Pained. Afraid. And then it’s gone.
June cries out his name like all is lost. Something inside me wilts, hearing it.
But then she screams “Go!” and she and Kieran run right at me. Dark slips through the door like a tendril, like ink in water, and I’m snapped back to the need for my legs, to Pumpkin writhing against me, to my heart’s frenetic sputter, to the fact, the idea, that we’re next.
I turn and run. My knees buckle, but I catch myself. Pumpkin swings dangerously in the single strap, but I catch him. I’m the first to the cord and descender hanging through the hole in the ceiling. I reach for it, but it takes two tries for my shaking hand to grasp it. I fumble with the carabiner. My fingers have gone numb, it’s so cold. Pumpkin howls.
I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I’m sorry.
“No time!” June catches up to me and tugs me along by the arm. She forces me into a full-paced sprint, then lets me go, leading the way. Kieran’s right behind me.
I am not keen on trusting a Verity Co. grunt with my life, and my cat’s life, and Kieran’s life. But June is combat-trained, no doubt. June is not sobbing on the ground over Gunner’s death. She is moving fast and leading the way through a labyrinth of hallways so assuredly that I’m certain she’s moved through these spaces before. So I follow. I have no choice but to follow.
“Here!” she calls. We’ve reached a room that looks like it barely survived an explosion. Earthen rubble on the far side lets in cracks of light. The steel wall that once kept the earth and elements at bay has been sundered inward as if something once broke into this place, straight through the rock and steel, with one deadly, piercing motion.
Before I can stutter out a terrified suggestion, her grav shock boots jump her over two tables toward the rubble, and she plants a small device between the rocks. It detonates outward in a flash. Light pours in. The ground shakes. The cold hits my back in a wave like a draft, knocking me forward.
“Hurry!” June plants herself at the edge of the open wall and holds out her hand.
Kieran squeaks out a question, but he’s running forward anyway. He grabs her hand, and she slingshots him—throws him—out the hole and to the right. He disappears.
I don’t have time to freeze or doubt or worry or question. I grab June’s hand too, stumbling only a little at the relentless shaking. She flings me and Pumpkin.
For a moment, I am airborne in a mountain range. I thank Verity Co. despite it. I thank their tech and their exosuits and their gravity-adapting strength enhancers. I go flying two meters and land on a small outcropping about as wide. Kieran presses himself to the wall to dodge me.
When I land, catching myself so Pumpkin, swinging in his one strap, doesn’t flatten beneath me, the ground is still trembling violently. Red dust is coming down like a waterfall. Behind me, rocks tumble and crack down the steep mountainside into the barely visible open mouth of the exploded cave we’ve left behind. Then there’s June. She jumps the odd angle without the slingshot or any help, and dust and rocks rain over her. She’s dropping too fast through midair, and I can’t think, but something registers in my gut: she’s not going to make it.
For a moment, I am airborne in a mountain range.
One of my hands closes over her forearm, hers over mine. My other snags our little ridge’s edge, and together June’s, my, and Pumpkin’s weight all pop against those fingers. The arm bearing June pops too. Something dislocates. My grip on her goes slack; my fingers go numb. I think I can still feel her holding on to me, but all I can really feel is pain, like someone’s put a hot iron to my shoulder and kept it there. I can’t tell until the mountain’s shaking finally stops and the lab we’ve left behind is sealed in with rocks that I’m screaming.
“Scout!” Kieran’s head appears over the edge. He grabs my hand, but at his pull my grip almost slackens, and I know he can’t bear all our weight.
“Stop!” I scream.
He does. He looks frantic. Pumpkin arcs dangerously across my chest, the energy of the fall sending him into a pendulum’s swing. He yowls and twists, and I can feel him slipping. I can feel me slipping.
“Scout.” June’s voice is commanding, calm. “I’m going to climb up. Hold on.”
I want to warn about Pumpkin, but the pain is too much. It washes over me in hot, nauseating waves. When June tugs, I cry out. I’m certain my arm is going to rip off. “Don’t,” I gasp.
“Scout, focus. Just hold on. For ten seconds, all you have to do is hold on.” She pulls her weight up my arm, and I hiss with pain. “This is it, okay? Hold on.”
This is it.
The arm I can still feel begins to shake. I realize that if I let go, I’ll die. Pumpkin will die. June will die. I realize these might be the last few moments of our lives. But not if I can just hold on.
This is it.
...This one is.
I can really feel my fingers. They are crimped with all the strength I have in me. They are pinching into the ridge layer by layer. My gloves, my skin, my bone, my muscle. And not just the muscles in my hands, but in my forearm, in my biceps, in my still-feeling shoulder. I breathe out.
My pulse thuds in thick, heavy bursts. Thud thud, thud thud, thud thud. The static of the electrical storm above me cracks and ripples. I breathe in.
June’s weight comes off my dead arm. Her knee presses between my shoulder blades. I grit my teeth with the new pain and turn my head as she presses upward. The horizon is a thin, flat line interrupted frequently by slices of mountainous fangs. They twist intricately, impressively, reaching skyward. I imagine their peaks touched with frost, the pencil-thin river far below full and blue.
A weight comes off my shoulders—literally—and in a flurry of grasping hands, Pumpkin and I are pulled up safely onto the ridge.