14

  “Get in!”

  At the same moment Beald’s booting shout slammed into the youths’ backs, rifle muzzles swung toward the massive shape and spat leaden arrows.

  The crisis turned into screams from refugees clawing for safety above them—wails of grief and pleas hurled at the gate. People tried desperately to force their way into the spaceport. Behind them, others abandoned any hope of escape into space and turned back toward the bridge, back toward that hellish city.

  Everyone understood the truth. There was nowhere left to run.

  A young soldier shoved the youths through the access corridor toward the artificial island. Then the sky seemed to darken. The air burned, and a grotesque mass—its surface studded with suction cups like fangs—plunged toward the bridge, spewing a stench of decay.

  No matter how strong titanium might be, it could not withstand such weight and acceleration. The bridge collapsed, plunging into the sea.

  “Mariaaa!”

  Machina’s half-mad scream tore toward the writhing tentacles. What looked like a wall of flesh did not fall so much as withdraw, slowly slipping beneath the waves like a giant serpent disappearing into the undergrowth.

  As if satisfied, the colossal body churned the sea into a vortex, sent up white spray, and sank into the depths.

  When the Devil’s Children vanished, the people who had filled the bridge were left drifting on the waves. Their backs were hunched, heads barely breaking the surface, their bodies slack. There was no pulse of life in them.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Ninora scanned the corridor. Messiah, Maria, the priest, and the soldier Bull were nowhere to be seen.

  Lives were scattering like bubbles, bursting and vanishing as if they had no value at all. Faced with this nauseating reality, Ninora murmured as though delirious—there was no salvation anywhere.

  “Let’s run. Staying here won’t solve anything.”

  Machina shook her small head violently, again and again, rejecting the suggestion.

  “We have to save Maria. We can’t just leave her—”

  A thick, pale hand of an East Asian man clamped down on her shoulder. No explanation was needed. Yi Vance showed her with a single look that it was pointless.

  “Let’s get out of here quickly. This place gives me the creeps.”

  People had died. True to her creed of placing her own thoughts above all else, Jamie said it coolly and started forward without hesitation.

  She shoved past the East Asian man, brushed aside Ninora’s outstretched arm meant to calm her, and stomped on the titanium floor.

  Irritation at Jamie’s every word finally boiled over in Ilart. He darted behind her and hurled his anger straight at her back.

  “What kind of ice-cold blood do you have? People just died!”

  Like an angry boy, Ilart clenched her small shoulder.

  “That hurts!”

  The instant Jamie shook off the fingers digging into her skin, the impact loosened bolts already strained in the floor. A large drainage hole for seawater yawned open. Ilart and Jamie dropped with the collapsing floor—and Jamie’s reflexive grip on Ninora’s ankle dragged him down as well.

  Ninora reached out to Yi Vance.

  An arm like a thick tree trunk caught the Black man’s wrist. But it wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of three people. He, too, was pulled down into the abyss.

  Elizabeth stared wide-eyed into the hole where her siblings had fallen, then instantly turned a blade-like glare on Fan. She understood at once that the floor fittings hadn’t failed from age or wear—and she knew exactly whose doing it was.

  The long-faced man standing before her.

  Lightning flickered in Elizabeth’s glare. It wasn’t imagination or mere killing intent. Real electricity ran through her eyes.

  To be continued in Episode 15.