Chapter 117: The Rope
We walk deeper into the tunnels.
The Turtarex’s impacts on the collapsed entrance fade behind us, beat by beat. A drum losing its player. Just a reminder not to turn around.
What worries me is the sound ahead.
It’s not the same chuff as before. It’s more of it. Overlapping.
And we don’t have anywhere else to go.
A few minutes in, the tunnels open up.
The walls peel back and the ceiling lifts and we step into a gallery wide enough to swallow a two-story building. Stalagmites the size of trees push up from the floor. Stalactites hang from the roof. And in the middle of all of it, running the length of the chamber, is a chasm.
A big one.
Wide enough that I can see the far edge and know immediately we’re not going around it.
I don’t need to give the order.
Oliver is already moving. Rope coming out of his inventory, climbing harness next, a coil of thin wire with a grappling hook on the end. He’s laying it all out in the order he’ll use it. He’s done this before.
"You’re reliable, Oliver."
I give him a thumbs up.
He half-grins without looking up from his gear. "You’re the man who pulled me out of that hole after a year, boss. Covering your back is the minimum I owe."
I watch him work for a second.
I wonder, briefly, what this squad would have looked like in my first life. If I’d had Oliver at my side when everything went to hell.
Then I shut the thought down. Rae looked reliable too.
I walk to the edge of the chasm and pick up a rock. Roundish, fist-sized. I toss it out into the dark and start counting.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
A sharp thud echoes up from below—cracked, wet at the edges.
I do the math. Eleven seconds is the rock falling and the sound of the impact coming back up to me. Take a second off for the sound on the return trip. Ten seconds of fall. Terminal velocity for a rock that size, kicking in around three seconds. Rough.
"Between 1350 and 1410 feet," I say it without turning around. "You’d better do your job right, Oliver. We hit the bottom and we’re paste."
Oliver laughs. Short, sharp, no humor in it at all, just anxiety.
Then he focuses.
He swings the grappling hook in a slow tight circle above his head, judges the distance, and throws.
The hook sails out across the chasm and lands past the base of a massive stalagmite on the far side. He tugs. The hook skids, catches, bites. He puts both hands on the rope and leans back with all his weight.
The rope holds.
He keeps leaning. Pulls harder.
The rope still holds.
But Oliver is staring at it with something I don’t like in his eyes. His head is tilted slightly. Listening.
"Something wrong?"
He doesn’t answer right away. A long few seconds.
"No, boss. We can cross."
Maybe it’s just the weight of knowing he’s the one who set the line we’re about to hang our lives from.
He drives an iron stake into the stone floor with three hard hits of his hammer.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound bounces the length of the gallery.
And the chuffing ahead of us responds.
It gets louder. Faster. Layered thicker than before. Whatever’s on the other side of this chasm just heard us, and it’s awake now.
Oliver and I exchange a look.
Nothing needs to be said.
"I like King Kong," Lola announces from behind us. "He goes pop with loud things."
"This King Kong isn’t making friendly sounds, little bear."
I check the tension on the rope. It looks right.
"I go first. Behind us is the safer direction. I want to test the line."
I put my weight on the rope, flip into a Tyrolean traverse—one leg hooked over the line, both hands gripping underneath—and start pulling myself across. Seventy feet of nothing below me and a long wet echo waiting at the bottom.
I shut my thoughts out and keep moving.
I reach the far side. Drop down to the stone. The sound of what’s waiting for us in the deeper tunnels is more distinct over here—thicker, closer, moving.
[OXI: 1,348 / 1,600]
"Rhayne. Your turn."
She ties her hair back with a strip of leather. Crouches in front of Lola. Kisses her on the forehead.
Was that a kiss? I look surprised.
"I’ll be waiting on the other side, okay?"
Lola nods without speaking.
Rhayne turns to the rope, and the next thirty seconds are a kind of movement I have no frame of reference for. She flows across the line—hand, grip, pull, glide, hand, grip, pull, glide—every motion feeding into the next with no wasted inch and no hesitation at any grip. No bouncing. No swing. The line doesn’t even wobble.
She lands on my side without breathing hard.
I feel my pulse pick up—not from danger. Pure, stupid admiration. I still don’t know how she does any of the things she does.
"Your turn, little bear."
Lola tightens the clasps on Lullaby’s case until they snap hard, adjusts the straps, and climbs onto the rope. She’s copying what Rhayne did. She’s trying to be careful.
She gets maybe halfway.
The problem isn’t her. The problem is the cannon case. Lullaby weighs as much as she does and it’s hanging off her back, and with every motion she makes, the case swings out and pulls the rope sideways. Each pull is a shock load.
The line takes the first three shocks fine.
On the fourth, I hear it.
A small dry crack from the stalagmite on my side of the chasm. A piece of old mineral skin breaking where the hook has been biting in.
I look at Lola in the middle of the rope.
My instincts come up so fast they’re ahead of my thoughts.
A loud snap.
The rope goes slack.
And I’m already moving—launching off the edge of the stone, diving, throwing my whole body forward into the open space, hands stretched for a line that isn’t there anymore.