Behind him, I noticed some other boneforgers were busy pulling on their clothes or adjusting
their equipment. I busied myself doing the same, stripping out of my stinking gym clothes as
Seth pulled his white-plated armor from his own bag. This wasn't the first time I'd changed in
front of people—it was an occupational hazard—but normally there was a little more room
for privacy than the dropship seats provided. I felt eyes on me as I pulled long johns woven
from parabeast fibers up over my hips. I peeked up to meet the black and yellow gaze of
Priscilla settling in across from me and quickly pulled a long-sleeved para-fiber shirt over my
head. An older guy with a wispy blond mustache and close-cropped military haircut flanked
her, holding a bone war hammer with a spiked head the size of a bull's head like it was
nothing as he rewrapped the leather grip on the shaft.
Pull yourself together.
"Aw look, bro, baby Gray is blushing," said Gavin as he and Fintan passed in the aisle. He
shot me a shit-eating grin, flashing teeth so white and square they looked like pieces of
peppermint gum.
"Baby…?" Fintan's face scrunched up until Gavin drew a pointed line at me with his eyes. A
spark of understanding opened Fintan's expression with a soft, "Oh." He chuckled, low in his
chest, almost nervous.
Gavin joined in, nodding along, and then said through his fixed smile, "You have no idea
what's funny, do you?" He smacked Fintan's chest with a hard backhand. "He's simping over
Priscilla, numbnuts."
"Not as hard as you, though, right, Gavin?" said Jace.
I released the breath I was holding and shot him a grateful glance, but he was busy staring
Gavin down with a taunting brow cocked.
Priscilla laughed, and this time the sound was tinkling bells. She levelled a savage smile on
Gavin—more a baring of teeth—then softened to wink at me. "Baby Seth has a better shot."
"Oh yeah?" For a second, Gavin turned to me with chest puffed like a posturing pitbull, then
took a look at Seth's granite scowl and thought better of it, angling toward the back of the
carrier as he snapped, "Well, if the Red doesn't die, we'll see how that works out. Come on,
Fintan."
Neck hot, I yanked stained overalls over my underclothes, wishing that I could just fade into
the background like I usually did. Sneakers swapped for boots, I strapped on my heavy
jacket, the pockets already laden with my personal equipment. I pulled on my goggles,
letting them dangle around my neck as I transferred the best items from the prepped kit into
my personal pack. Zipping up the bag, I set it across my lap and waited.
"You're a Red?" asked the ardent with the war hammer, shoulder brushing Priscilla's as he
leaned forward like he wanted a closer look at the monkey in the zoo. He scoffed in the back
of his throat, shook his head as he retreated, and said, "Cannon fodder. We're all cannon
fodder."Excuse Leon," Priscilla told me. "He hasn't been laid in a very long time. Unless you count
getting screwed by the system. According to him, anyway."
The dark glower he aimed at her reminded me of Seth, and I almost chuckled… before a
familiar voice near the front said, "I'm with Leon."
Matthew pinned me with that same vindictive glare he'd used when I corrected his spear
extraction technique. "Who let the Red on?" he asked, nudging Arnold, who was buckling
into the seat beside him. "We wait around for him to fix our weapons, and we're all dead."
"If you end up dead, it's because you don't know when to stop running your mouth," said
Jace, pleasant as a summer breeze, though his smile was a slash of winter ice.
Bolstered by Jace's support, I met Matthew's eye with my own challenge—a neutral,
confident stare I dared him to try and crack.
Seth leaned into me, holding his sheathed sword in one hand. "Ignore them. We both know
your forging skills aren't the issue. Focus. Remember your training."
Was that… almost a compliment?
Someone beat against the side of the carrier, and outside several people in yellow vests
began backing away. My nerves jumped as the pilot announced our immediate take off.
Ahead, the lead dropship's engines roared, and four sheathed rotors lifted it off the landing
pad. A couple dozen feet up, it banked away, providing room for the second carrier to go
airborne. I instinctively grabbed the edge of my seat in the seconds before our craft followed,
the third of four.
The dropship bucked as the rotors whirred. The headwind grabbed the aircraft and shook it.
My heart leapt into my throat, and I instinctively looked to Seth, his profile staring straight
ahead, his body language comfortable. Nothing to worry about. The craft stabilized in
seconds.
A snicker drew my attention to the Calhouns, Gavin side-eyeing me as he mumbled into
Fintan's ear. Leon huffed at me, upper lip curled as he drew back his boots like I might be
sick on them.
I swallowed heavily and looked out the window.
The rift dominated my vision. Girders and gangways connected its containment ring to both
Tower roofs, providing a frame for the series of mechanical equipment and piping that
Conglomerate engineers and scientists accessed daily. However, the spider web of
scaffolding and stairs wasn't ideal for transporting a troop of heavily laden ardents and
boneforgers up to the rift.The containment ring purred like it should, barely audible beneath the whirring of the
dropship rotors. Maybe whatever mechanical issue had caused the power surges was
already resolved. I tried not to think of myself as a coward for hoping that it had all just been
some kind of crazy misunderstanding, and that we were going to step into that rift and find a
bunch of confused researchers going about their business, ignorant of the stir they'd caused.
The first of the carriers was already aligning itself between two identical dock-like platforms
that allowed for the delivery of equipment too heavy for the gangways. Despite the
rainstorm, the aircraft hung right at the receiving platform's edge as if strung up by unmoving
chains.
I recognized Rhea Dunn when she jumped down first, but as our ship lifted higher to avoid
the nest of cabling, I couldn't make out who was who as equipment bags and ardents came
out behind her. We waited for the first two carriers to unload, hovering near the center of the
rift. In the dim light, surrounded by mist and hovering a thousand feet in the air, it was like
staring into the eye of some giant monster of myth. Except that wasn't right, it was more like
a mouth, about to swallow us all and drop us into—
I cut these thoughts off, forcing myself to breathe. I signed up for this, I reminded myself. I've
been in over a dozen rifts. This one isn't any different.
While we waited, I busied myself by checking my various pockets and the partitions of my
pack to ensure I had everything I needed. I was running low on solvent, not having had time
to make any more since the rift yesterday, but otherwise I was in good shape. If there were
parabeasts inside this rift, my primary role would be to make on-the-fly repairs to equipment,
retrieve spears from fallen parabeasts, and harvest certain valuable components that
wouldn't last once the beasts were dead.
My stomach lurched as the dropship began to descend toward the steel mesh receiving
platforms. At a word from the pilot, the ardents shot to their feet. Seth was first to leap out
into the elements. When the others followed, boneforgers began passing up bags from the
back of the ship. Taj and I ended up at the door, tossing the bags down. Once that was done,
Taj leapt out without hesitation.
The wind tugged at my vest and drove stinging rain into my eyes. One after another, the
other forgers and the medic hopped down to the platform. Seth helped catch and stabilize
them, but after every one, his gaze jumped to me and vibrated with a look that said, Just
stay. Go back with this carrier to Tower One. The shame is better than being dead.
I hated that I could read him that well.
Gritting my teeth, I gripped the rail running along the top of the sliding bay door and used it
to throw myself out of the quadcopter.
The wind caught me, and I flailed. Seth's fist snatched the front of my jacket, and my feet hit
the platform lightly. With a curt nod, he let me go, turning to push his way through the cluster
of auxiliary team members toward the front, where Colter was shouting orders over the wind
and rotors.
As I picked up my bag from where it had been unceremoniously tossed and joined the
queue, he gestured at Seth, Fintan, and Rhea. From here, the roar of the carrier engines
drowned out the command, but the three selected ardents lined up at the edge of the
gangway that connected the two receiving platforms. I watched Seth shake out his hands
and stretch his neck. At a shout from Rhea, he plunged into the golden light. Another trio
replaced Seth's in seconds, two lines stretching down the gangway.
I shuffled my way to the left-hand ramp, ahead of the other boneforgers, and found myself
beside a man I didn't recognize. Runic tattoos peeked above his armored vest, running up
his neck. He had a well-trimmed beard, aquiline nose, and thickly corded arm muscles, but
his paunchy stomach made him stand out from the ardents. He wasn't wearing the
Conglomerate's logo on his under-armor either. A freelancer?
He glanced over at me and frowned. "A Red boneforger? This really is all hands on deck,
isn't it? No offense."
I gritted my teeth and pressed my lips into a thin, not-quite smile. "Uh, yeah. No worries." We
moved forward several steps. "You're a runesmith, aren't you?"
He raised a brow and hiked his heavy pack higher up on his shoulder. "Yup. Like I said, all
hands on deck."
I shrugged. With each step forward, my stomach was rising higher into my throat. Only a few
rows of ardents remained ahead of us, and they vanished three by three until no one was in
front of me, the runesmith, and a hooded man in the clean white and yellow uniform, the
cross on his chest marking him as a medic. There was no time to second-guess anything. As
if on autopilot, I stepped forward into the rift.
There was a strong sense of resistance, like the golden light was pushing me back. As
always, my ears popped, eliciting a shrill ring that put my teeth on edge. Then I was through,
stepping out onto… nothing.
My stomach finished its ascent into my throat as I fell several inches. My feet landed on a
hard, sloped surface, and my legs buckled as I pitched forward. Stars exploded in front of my
eyes, blinding me.
Truncated shouts tore through the rift interior only to be cut off again.
I was falling, end over end in a red-tinged darkness.
An amber-wreathed figure flew through my spinning vision and slammed into me, driving the
air from my lungs, cutting off my pitched scream.
"Torrin!"
I wheezed, head swimming, and blinked through concussive black spots eating at my vision
like fire to a photograph. My groan became a scream, and I kicked my dangling legs.
Below my hovering body, an angry red slash cut diagonally through the air, slicing through a
raised steel-mesh floor in a jagged cut, several feet below the golden portal we'd walked
through. I could see places where desks, containment units, and other equipment had been
half devoured.
It was a second rift. A rift inside a rift.
"Torrin, keep your head. Look at me."
I twisted, looking over my shoulder. Seth had one arm wrapped around my middle, the other
outstretched, holding onto a railing bolted into the cavern wall. The ramp or staircase it had
belonged to was missing. Beyond him, three more figures appeared from the golden mouth
of the Lightbridge rift, only to fall off the ruined entrance platform and plunge headfirst into
the gaping red maw of the second rift.
I could see a couple other ardents clinging onto whatever handholds or stable patches of
floor they could find, dangling over the second rift, trying to reach out and catch the tumbling
auxiliary staffers.
"Torrin, you have to go back!" Seth said. "Get to Hawthorne, tell him what happened."
I blinked at him, struggling to find my voice.
Seth's jaw clenched and unclenched. "You can do this. I know you can."
My breath finally caught, and I sucked in a lungful of air, clearing my head. All I could do was
nod. Seth adjusted his grip, and my stomach leaped to my throat as I dropped a few inches
before he grabbed the back of my jacket. I understood his plan the moment before he
launched me.
Just as three more boneforgers fell screaming out of the golden portal and through the red,
Seth tossed me skyward. I soared as if I were a stuffed doll. His throw was good, and I
careened straight for the wavering golden gap.
I'm going too fast!
If I shot out the other side and flew over the railing, I'd—
Taj's face floated in the pool of the rift's inner light, then his shoulders, torso, and one leg,
which stretched out over emptiness. We collided even as he started to fall.
I fell with him in a tangle of limbs and screams. We bounced off the collapsed mesh platform,
and I felt myself twisting, unable to tell up from down. Taj was my only handhold, and I
gripped his shoulders and pack, trying to find purchase with my feet. Something sharp ripped
through both protective layers over my leg and into my calf.A thousand claws of crimson light pierced my eyes as we passed into the inner rift, ears
popping. Our screams garbled, then rang clear when the rift resistance snapped away and a
dark forest floor rose up to meet us.