The eight heavy transport crawlers roared northward along the cracked heavy-duty viaducts of Sector 2, their steel tire chains throwing sparks against the wet concrete. Behind them, the golden domes of District 4 faded into the night mist, safe, decontaminated, and breathing freely. Ahead, looming four thousand meters into the low storm clouds, the needle-sharp dark shape of the Federal Apex Spire pierced the darkness like a black glass obelisk.
Inside the command cab of the lead crawler, the air had ceased to be that of a triumphant returning convoy. It was the grim, high-pressure stillness of an explosive disposal unit driving toward a live blast.
Arthur sat in the navigator’s bucket seat, his combat harness stripped open to allow Dr. Morrigan Calder to bind his bruised ribs with high-pulling elastic squeezing tape. Beside him on the metal floor, Grimm sat rigid, his single intact ear cocked ninety degrees downward toward the signal tunnel, his amber eyes unblinking, his black lips parted to taste the tiny sulfur fumes seeping through the vehicle’s floor seals.
At Arthur’s chest, Echo was floating in his glass flagon. His external pink gills shook with rapid, rhythmic pulses. The blind axolotl didn’t blow his usual lazy bubbles. His tiny webbed feet pressed against the glass, his sense barbs tracing the subtle, sound pressure waves traveling through the earth, emitting a low, nonstop bloop... Bloop... Bloop that matched the hum of an approaching ground-shaking shock.
