The air-powered elevator dropped from the high-sky chill of Spire Apex back into the warm, lit up cave of Sector Zero.
Arthur Vance stepped onto the slate floor. Then, the scene that greeted him was one of organized, disciplined triumph. The one hundred and ninety-eight recovering young beasts lay safely bundled in heated fleece around Titus’s massive, humming shell. The ten liberated Siege Behemoths stood in a calm, protective circle, their massive heads lowered. That kept watchful guard over the nursery.
Dr. Morrigan Calder walked forward, wiping a smudge of saline from her cheek. “Arthur, Spire Apex tracking data confirmed the turbine shutdown. The upper skies are clean.”
“The air is secure,” Arthur replied, clipping his carbine to his chest harness and adjusting his field pack. “Now we claim the true prize that Apostle Nyx was guarding with her life. The working manifests, the donor bloodlines, and the Year 0 research files. Vesper, take point.”
High on an overhead iron narrow high walkway, Vesper rose to her feet. The shadow panther stretched her back in a fluid, high-born arch, jumped down twelve feet without making a sound, and trotted purposefully toward the northern foundation wall of the cave.
Behind a row of drained amniotic supply tanks sat a hidden stairs carved from cold, dark granite. It dropped deep into the bedrock of the mountain: Sub-Level Minus Two.
