The Ghost Army

Chapter 10

The waterfall's roar filled the tunnel, vibrating through Robbin's teeth and down into his chest. He fought the water, arms burning, lungs screaming but his boots slipped on the old flume boards, slick with silt and something else, something greasy.

The current hit him like a shoulder check from a bar fight, driving him forward. He tried to lift his head and a wave buried him, water flooding his nose and mouth, tasting of sulfur and rot.

The flood had torn Elaine, Cedric, and Juliana away from him. He didn't see it happen. One moment they were there; the next, the lower factory collapsed and they were gone.

Through the spray, the tunnel opened into nothing. The water flattened for a heartbeat, then dropped away into black.

The drop.

Robbin got one sharp breath, freezing before the world tilted and he went over the edge.

Falling. Three seconds of absolute weightlessness, tumbling with the water, with broken timber, with nothing but dark and the roar of wind in his ears. He didn't know which way was up.

He hit the water feet first, or tried to make the impact messy, wrong, like hitting concrete. The air left his lungs in a rush and he went under, down into cold so sharp it felt like teeth. His limbs went heavy. The cold was eating him alive.

Get up, Vance.

He kicked. God, it hurts. His arms were barely responding, his fingers clumsy and numb, but he clawed upward, toward a surface he couldn't see. His head broke through and he gasped air, stale and damp, tasting of minerals and rot.

He dragged himself onto a sandy bank, coughing up black water. His whole body shook. He lay on his stomach for a long moment, tasting mud and something acrid in the back of his throat, feeling his heart hammer against the ground.

When his vision cleared, he noticed the light. Pale. Purple. Coming from the far wall.

Robbin got to his feet, hand dropping to his hip empty. The pistol was gone. He looked toward the light.

The sand ended about twenty feet out, meeting stone. Not a rough mining tunnel, this was something else. The floor was laid with interlocking hexagonal blocks, dark as obsidian, and between the seams, thin veins pulsed with that same sickly purple. The same thing from the vault. It was moving, spreading along the cracks, throbbing in time with a low vibration he felt more than heard. The stones hummed under his boots.

A splash behind him. He spun.

Elaine crawled out of the water, gasping, soaked through. Her face was cut up, one cheek gashed badly. But she had her short-sword in her grip, knuckles white around the hilt.

"Captain." Her voice was ragged, teeth chattering. "You're... alive."

"Where are the others?" He went to her, helped her up. She leaned on him hard.

"I don't know. The flood split us. I saw Cedric grab Juliana before the ledge gave, but the current took them down a different pipe. Could be anywhere."

Before he could answer, something hit the stone ahead of a heavy, metallic thunk.

The purple veins flared red. A figure stepped into the pale light.

Ironborn shock trooper. But wrong. The black iron armor had corroded, gray ash spreading across the plates, purple scars weeping where the metal had pitted. And the right arm, what should have been a heavy iron limb, wasn't an arm anymore.

It was shadow and tendril, opening and closing with tooth-lined mouths that writhed like something alive. The parasite had eaten the machine whole.

The visor was cracked open. Behind it, one massive eye burned red. Not calculating. Not tactical. Just rabid.

"It's one of Thorne's men," Elaine whispered. She raised her dented sword, arm trembling. "But..."

The creature didn't speak. It roared a wet, broken sound, like a steam engine dying then charged. Its tendrils whipped forward, leaving the stone hissing where they touched.

"Water!" Robbin grabbed Elaine's arm and they dove back onto the bank.

The monster hit where they'd been standing. Tendrils slammed into the sand, and the ground steamed, moisture boiling away in an instant. The creature turned, fast too fast, its red eye finding Robbin.

Robbin's hands found something. A length of timber, three feet, shattered from the flume. Oak, heavy, solid. He grabbed it.

The trooper lunged. Robbin dropped under the whipping tendrils, felt the heat pass over him . He came up swinging, put his whole body into it, slammed the timber into the cracked visor.

The wood exploded. But the force landed. The creature staggered back onto the obsidian highway, its red eye flickering.

"Now, Elaine!"

She moved. No hesitation she launched from the sand, slid low under the creature's arms, and drove her sword upward. The blade hit something at the chest, something that glowed red. It sank deep.

The core didn't shatter. The purple had already reached it.

The red light flared white-hot, blinding. A shockwave arced along the blade and Elaine flew backward, hit the stone wall hard, crumpled into the sand and stayed there. Her sword skittered away into the dark.

Robbin started toward her but the cold hit him like a fist. A wind howled through the tunnel, killing the purple light. The thrumming stopped. The veins on the floor went dark.

A shape moved in the shadows behind the fallen trooper. Massive. Towering. The air pressure dropped, and Robbin watched the water in the plunge pool freeze solid actually freeze, expanding into ice in seconds.

General Alistair Thorne stepped onto the highway. His great-sword wasn't ignited. It was cold, rusted, dark with something that smoked faintly where it touched the blade. The parasite's blood.

He didn't look at the dead trooper. He walked forward until he stood ten feet away, close enough that Robbin could see the cracks in his obsidian armor, the black oil weeping from the seams like old wounds. The blue light behind his visor was dim, barely flickering. He looked like a man who'd been broken by something he couldn't fight.

He raised one gauntlet not to strike, but to point back toward the darkness behind him.

"The seal is broken." Thorne's voice was metallic, hollow. "The feeding has begun. My legion is falling. Your world is next."

Robbin opened his mouth

A screech tore through the tunnel. Wet. Huge. From the darkness behind Thorne, red eyes began to open. Dozens. Then hundreds. A wave of movement, of jaws and tendrils, advancing slowly now, tasting the air.

The parasite hadn't just escaped. It had already won down here. And it was using Thorne's own highway to climb.