Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

ORIX

T here's blood everywhere. The ground is soaked with it. My stomach turns, gut twisting. Behind me, the test building is a shattered bloody mess, the roof gouged and damaged with talon marks. The width between each mark is too large to be gargoyle.

Graynites were here.

No dead elite bodies at the site means the elite were either taken or escaped.

Please let them have escaped.

Two teams of guardians sweep the surrounding area on foot and by air, but so far, they've found nothing.

Farnel joins me, looking out at the blood-speckled landscape. "How could this happen?"

It's obvious, and he knows it too. He just needs me to say it. "We have a mole."

"A rat, more like," he says. "This location was secure, has been for decades."

"I know."

They were meant to be safe, here of all places, and now they're gone. I want to hold out hope, but after hours of searching, it's difficult to keep the candle burning.

"Whoever the traitor is, they must be high up in the ranks," Farnel says. "This proves it."

"It also proves that they're close to their goal. To risk eyes on the upper ranks and potential exposure this way…Whatever they're planning, getting rid of the elite team was integral to it."

Then he asks the question I've been desperately avoiding for the past few hours. "Do you think…Do you think they're alive?"

I close my eyes and exhale. "I don't know."

A guardian lands several feet away, then approaches with quick strides, wings tucked against his back. "Elite Albion, we found tracks to the east. If it is them, then they must have flown for several miles before landing and continuing on foot."

Hope burns a beacon on my chest. "Farnel, keep the port secure. I'll be back." I turn to the guardian. "Show me."

We fly for several minutes before I spot more guardians below us, tracking the movements of who they believe to be our missing elites. Up ahead, the terrain is rocky and mountainous. Had Cam and the others aimed to seek shelter from the threat in the mountains? A cave perhaps?

They could be hurt.

Alive but too hurt to fly farther.

The guardians below vanish into the mountains, and we descend.

My feet hit the ground just as one of the tracker guardians emerges from a narrow aperture in the rock face.

"We found a network of tunnels," he calls out.

I jog to catch up to him, then follow him into the dark space that is barely wide enough to accommodate me. A wave of claustrophobia washes over me and passes.

The air smells fresh, a sign that there is water nearby somewhere. We go deeper, our eyes adjusting to the gloom until the tunnel widens and opens into a chamber lit weakly by the glow sticks the two guardians waiting for us are holding up. There are three tunnels leading off from this chamber.

"This place is uncharted," one of them says. "If we're going to search it, then we need to take one route at a time and?—"

A figure emerges from the tunnel to our right, and my heart leaps into my mouth so that when I speak, my tone is hushed. "Levi…"

He stops and stares at us with a face smeared with dirt, then breaks out in a grin. "Thank fuck you found us."

Sharniza and Curi slip into the room behind him, clothes caked with blood but alive. Adaline follows close behind with Derek looming at her back. If he's here, then…Yes, Cameron is with him.

The vise holding my lungs hostage lets up. "You made it. You all?—"

I freeze as a sixth figure enters the room, my pulse stuttering at the sight of him.

Serath straightens his epic gargoyle form and meets my gaze. "It's good to see you again, Orix."