The cavern erupted.
Thousands of blue eyes opened across the walls and ceiling as Lurkers tore themselves free from their hanging shells. Their claws scraped against the stone, filling the chamber with a deafening metallic shriek.
“Run!”
Ramona seized Julian by the shoulder and shoved him toward the tunnel.
A Lurker dropped directly in front of them.
She ducked beneath its claws, drove her broadsword through the gap beneath its jaw, and ripped the blade free before the creature hit the ground.
“Don't stop!” she shouted. “They're coming from above!”
A guard glanced upward just as another Lurker crashed down.
He went beneath it.
Two soldiers immediately slammed their shields into the creature, forcing it away while Julian fired three bolts into its head.
“Get him moving!”
The soldiers dragged their wounded comrade toward the tunnel as Ramona covered their retreat. She could hear the swarm closing in behind them, but something about the attack bothered her.
The Lurkers weren't simply charging.
They were moving with coordination.
Every time one creature changed direction, several others adjusted with it.
Ramona looked over her shoulder toward the enormous controller rising from the cavern floor.
Its circular skull opened, revealing dozens of blue lights pulsing beneath its armored plates.
The first pulse made the swarm freeze.
The second sent every creature turning toward the fleeing soldiers.
The third triggered the attack.
“It's coordinating them,” Julian said.
“I know.”
They reached the tunnel and pushed inside.
A Lurker lunged after them.
Ramona caught its claw against her sword, twisted with the force of the impact, and drove her elbow into the joint beneath its neck. The armor cracked. She finished the creature with a slash across its throat and immediately continued after the others.
The tunnel shook as the controller roared.
Julian looked back.
“That thing is coming.”
“Then we'll make sure it can't follow.”
Ramona stopped beside a section of cracked stone and pointed toward the ceiling.
“Charges.”
Julian pulled two explosives from his pack.
“You want to collapse the tunnel?”
“Only behind us.”
He planted the first charge against the fractured rock while Ramona searched farther down the passage for another weak point.
“Here.”
Julian hurried over and secured the second charge.
A low scraping sound reached them from the darkness.
The Lurkers were approaching.
Julian looked toward the tunnel entrance.
“Now?”
Ramona studied the rock one last time.
“Not yet.”
The scraping stopped.
Silence settled over the passage.
Julian frowned.
“They stopped.”
Ramona's expression hardened.
“They know what we're doing.”
“How?”
“They don't need to understand explosives. The controller only needs to recognize that we're trying to change the environment.”
She stared toward the darkness.
The Lurkers were waiting beyond the blast radius.
That was the problem.
The creature was learning.
Ramona looked back toward the cavern.
The blue veins covering the walls had been pulsing in perfect rhythm with the controller. They weren't decoration, and they weren't merely part of the nest.
They were carrying something.
Power.
Information.
Perhaps both.
Her eyes narrowed.
“We're attacking the wrong target.”
Julian stared at her. “The controller?”
“The network.”
Another pulse traveled through the mountain.
The blue veins illuminated the tunnel walls, revealing countless hair-thin branches spreading through the stone.
Ramona finally understood what she was looking at.
The controller wasn't commanding the hive from a central position.
It was plugged into the entire mountain.
If they killed the creature, another could eventually take its place.
But if they severed the network, the hive would lose its coordination.
“Detonate the charges.”
Julian hesitated. “I thought we were going after the network.”
“We are. But first we need to get past the swarm.”
He understood.
Julian triggered both explosives.
The tunnel behind them collapsed in a thunderous wave of stone and dust. The Lurkers disappeared beneath the rubble, and the shockwave knocked several guards against the walls.
Ramona waited until the dust began to clear.
“Everyone still standing?”
Eight voices answered.
“Good. Move.”
Julian stared at the collapsed tunnel.
“You realize we just destroyed our way out.”
“We'll find another.”
“And if there isn't one?”
Ramona looked deeper into the mountain.
“Then we'll make one.”
They continued downward.
The passage became narrower before opening into another cavern. Blue veins covered the walls from floor to ceiling, all converging toward a massive column of black crystal at the chamber's center.
Something had grown around it.
The mass resembled flesh, roots, and hardened armor fused together, wrapping the crystal like a living cage.
Julian stopped beside Ramona.
“What is that?”
“I don't know.”
She stepped closer.
The crystal pulsed.
A wave of energy passed through the cavern.
Every blue vein brightened at once.
Ramona felt the vibration in her bones.
Then she heard a voice.
“Ramona.”
She froze.
Julian immediately raised his weapon.
“You heard that.”
It wasn't a question.
Ramona stared at the crystal.
The voice came again, clearer this time.
“You weren't supposed to remember.”
Her fingers tightened around the sword.
She knew that voice.
She had heard it in another life, years before Kaelen's Pass fell.
The owner of that voice had died.
Ramona had watched it happen.
There was no possible way they could be here.
Julian stepped closer.
“Who is it?”
Ramona didn't answer.
A hairline fracture appeared across the crystal.
Then another.
The enormous controller roared somewhere beyond the collapsed tunnel, and the entire mountain shook in response.
The crystal split open.
A pair of eyes appeared inside.
They looked directly at Ramona.
Then the thing imprisoned within smiled.
“You came back.”
Ramona's blood went cold.
It knew about her second life.
And whatever was inside that crystal had been waiting for her.