Crossing the underground salt water river needed razor-sharp care.
The black fluid was not merely saline. It was soaked with dissolved heavy metals and extra-space-folding void residue that sizzled against the stone banks like boiling acid. If Titus tried to wade through it, the skin-burning fluid would corrode the softer connective tissues between his marginal armor scales.
“Echo, bridge formation,” Arthur commanded.
The pink axolotl drifted forward, his external cyan gills flaring with soft, glowing light. He opened his rounded mouth, releasing a nonstop, low-hum:
Bloop-bloop...
A sheet of semi-clear, folded space unrolled across the surface of the salt water river. It formed a two-meter-wide bridge of tightly packed gravity that hovered six inches above the toxic liquid.
“Cell Alpha, hold the rear,” Arthur ordered. “Titus, cross at steady rhythm. Grimm, watch the ceiling vents.”
Titus stepped onto the spatial bridge. The tightly packed space groaned under the tortoise’s huge earth-shaking mass. But Echo’s spatial control held firm, the bridge flexing like hardened steel beneath Titus’s heavy dark rock claws.
