Black
Not the clean, simulated shadow of the training grid, but a thick, suffocating dark that pressed against Jack’s eyes like wet wool.
He lay flat on his back, his skull rattling from the violent concussive wave of the gate’s closure.
A high-pitched, metallic whine dominated his hearing, drowning out everything else.
Dust, thick and smelling of scorched carbon, tasted sharp on his tongue, slipping past a minor face seal leak in his helmet.
A cough tore through him, hollow inside his visor, and he blinked hard against the grit smearing the glass.
His ears rang with a dull pressure, as if the mountain itself had exhaled into his skull.
For a moment he couldn’t tell if the ache in his chest came from the fall or from something older, some memory his body refused to let go of.
He forced himself to breathe slower, counting each inhale the way he’d trained himself to do when panic threatened to take the wheel.
The red simulation lights were dead.
In their place, a harsh, strobing yellow began to pulse from the ceiling, casting long, jagged shadows across the debris.
A real hazard siren cut through the ringing in his ears, not the recorded alarms of the exercise, but the low, violent howl of the facility’s actual emergency system.
The simulation parameters had failed, leaving only the raw, ruined reality of the mountain.
Jack pushed himself to his knees, his boots grinding into wet gravel that shifted like broken teeth under his weight.
He scrambled to the gate, hammering his fists against the locked steel plating.
The bolts were driven deep into reinforced sockets.
He pressed his visor to the narrow seam, but no light came through.
No voices penetrated the metal, only the low, rhythmic thud of structural collapse transmitting through the stone.
The silence on the other side felt heavy.
It was the same dead weight he remembered from the day Nolan vanished into the black depths of Forward Base Kestrel, leaving nothing behind but an unanswered transmission.
Jack’s damaged HUD flickered.
The automated scoring timer had glitched, its display showing penalty markers stacking up in a rapid, amber countdown of degrading points.
It was a useless ledger now.
He stepped back, his eyes parsing the structural failure.
The basalt walls had sheared, exposing raw rock and twisted rebar.
A pipe along the ceiling had ruptured, venting a dark, boiling stream that pooled on the stones and steamed in the dust-thick air.
Above him, the ceiling had buckled, but his scavenger’s gaze caught a rusted steel hatch set into the basalt.
A secondary pressure-release crawlspace.
It was accessible only by a crumbling section of wall where the exposed rebar formed an ugly, desperate ladder.
Jack slung his rifle across his back and jumped.
His fingers hooked a loop of cold steel, and he hauled himself up.
His training gloves, already split at the knuckles, tore open against the jagged rebar, allowing the rough stone to bite into his palms.
He reached the hatch in three rapid, lunging motions.
The latch was seized with rust.
Bracing his boots against the basalt, he grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled.
The metal groaned, a long, vibrating shriek that traveled up his arms.
He pulled again, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
The hatch swung open on a single corroded hinge, revealing a pitch-black shaft that smelled of hot oil and stagnant water.
Jack squeezed into the opening.
The crawlspace was barely eighteen inches wide, a concrete squeeze designed by someone who clearly hated shoulders.
He dragged himself forward on his elbows, his rifle scraping along the metal floor beneath him.
The heat hit him immediately.
Conduit lines ran along the base of the shaft, radiating waves of dry, blistering heat that bled through the torn seams of his gloves.
He hissed through his teeth but did not stop, ignoring the burn as he dragged his knees across the rough metal.
Below, the muffled sounds of the crisis grew louder: the grinding of falling stone, the hiss of steam, and the sharp, panicked shouting of his squad.
The shaft ended at a rusted output grate.
Jack kicked his boot into the wire mesh.
The rivets sheared, and the grate crashed to the floor below.
He dropped through the opening.
He landed hard on the rubble-strewn floor, his knees buckling before he straightened into a run.
The exit chamber was a visual chaos of blinding white steam and crumbling basalt.
Vance and Kayla were straining against a massive basalt slab.
Beneath it, Ryker lay pinned, his armor frame cracked and leaking hydraulic fluid onto the stone.
The heavy suit hydraulics had locked around his legs, trapping him in a steel vice.
Vance looked up, his face streaked with sweat and soot, his eyes wild under his visor.
“Jack! The main geothermal lines are venting. We can’t lift this thing! We can’t move him!”
Jack did not waste breath.
He spotted a sheared metal support strut lying in the debris.
He grabbed the heavy steel bar, wedged it deep beneath the jagged edge of the slab, and leaned his weight into the makeshift lever.
“On three,” Jack said.
“Leverage the pivot.”
Vance and Kayla braced their shoulders against the cold stone, muscles straining under the weight.
Sweat beaded on Kayla’s brow despite the chill in the air, and Vance’s jaw tightened with grim determination.
Jack threw his weight onto the strut, every fiber of his body committed to the effort.
None of them spoke, but a shared understanding passed between them – failure was not an option.
“One. Two. Three.”
They heaved.
A cold sensation threaded through Jack’s tendons, his heart rate dropping as a freezing focus took hold of his muscles.
The somatic surge gave him just enough strength to keep the lever steady.
The slab rose with a slow, grinding shriek.
Kayla reached down, grabbing Ryker’s shoulder harness, and dragged his broken, heavy frame backward across the gravel.
“Drop it!” Vance shouted.
Jack released the strut.
The slab crashed down, throwing a cloud of grit and a shockwave that knocked Jack to his knees.
He scrambled to Ryker’s side.
The larger boy’s helmet visor was spiderwebbed with cracks, blood smearing the inside of the glass.
His breath came in wet, rattling gasps. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Pipe…” Ryker whispered, his voice weak and broken.
“Main line…”
Before Jack could answer, the volcanic steam pipe along the rear wall violently ruptured.
A jet of superheated white vapor erupted across the chamber, cutting off their primary retreat path and filling the air with blistering mist.
A sudden cascade of rock struck Kayla’s shoulder, shattering her shoulder lamp and plunging the room into semi-darkness.
Vance pointed to a narrow manual bypass tunnel on the south wall, his rifle light cutting through the gloom.
“Bypass tunnel! It’s tight, but we can make it. But the main exit gate is dead, completely locked!”
Carrying Ryker through that narrow passage would be slow, dangerous, and stupid.
The scavenger code screamed at him.
Never risk your life for someone else’s mistake.
Always know the exits.
Jack stood rigid.
The path of the bypass tunnel was clear, and he could easily outrun the collapse alone.
He looked down at Ryker.
The larger boy was staring up at him, stripped of his pride, his eyes filled with the raw, animal terror of someone who knew they were about to be left to die in the dark.
Jack dropped his rifle.
The weapon clattered against the stone, its tactical light spinning across the floor.
He turned on his helmet lamp, its narrow beam cutting an unstable cone through the swirling dust.
He knelt and hauled Ryker’s heavy, locked armor over his shoulders.
“I’m carrying you,” Jack said.
“Don’t…” Ryker rasped, his head lolling against Jack’s shoulder.
“Too heavy… won’t make it…”
“Shut up,” Jack said, his muscles screaming as he stood, taking the full, dead weight of the larger boy.
“Vance, lead. Kayla, flank us.”
They plunged into the bypass tunnel.
As Jack crossed the threshold, the chamber behind them gave way completely.
A massive, deafening roar echoed through the stone as tons of basalt collapsed, sealing the tunnel mouth behind them.
There was no going back.
The bypass was narrow and choked with loose gravel.
Kayla stayed close, using her body to shield Jack from falling rock chips while Vance’s rifle light guided their path through the darkness.
The air grew rapidly hotter, the steam from the ruptured pipes turning the atmosphere into a suffocating oven.
Jack’s legs shook with every step.
The device in his arm pulsed with a cold, steady rhythm, regulating his panic and forcing his burning lungs to keep drawing breath.
Vance called out from the darkness ahead.
“Fissure!”
Jack stumbled forward, his helmet light shaking.
The ground beneath his boots buckled.
A jagged fissure tore through the steel floor grates ahead of them, and a blinding, superheated steam geyser erupted from the dark gap, blocking their path.