The heavy steel blast doors had barely sealed. Just then, the bedrock beneath the command bunker began to hum.
It didn’t begin with the sharp, violent blast of an artillery impact. It began as a deep, sub-heard world-size groan that traveled through twenty meters of dark rock foundation, shaking through the soles of Arthur’s boots and rattling the enamel mugs on the map table. The nested ripples in the washbasins turned into violent, frothing waves, splashing cloudy water over the zinc-coated rims onto the concrete deck.
Beside Arthur, Grimm’s head snapped toward the floor plates. Every bristle along the hound’s dark spine stood rigid as iron wire. His single intact ear flattened tight against his skull, and his black lips pulled back. He exposed gleaming white canine teeth as a reflex, low-register warning growl ripped from his throat. Grimm didn’t bark. Instead, the hound lowered his balance point, planting his massive black glass paws wide. Through his carbon-honeycomb bone structure, the dog was absorbing the ground-shaking waves directly, his eyes widening in primal recognition of an underground hunting beast of huge mass.
On Arthur’s shoulder, Pip let out a piercing screech. The cinder raptor launched himself into the bunker rafters, his wings shedding wild golden embers as he circled the iron ceiling channels in tight, panicked arcs. The little bird’s breathing air-sacs were hyper-sensitive to sky chemistry. He was tasting the air, his beak clicking in rapid distress as tiny plumes of sulfur dioxide and white-hot gas began seeping through…
