Page 11 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

The DDC would oblige, because Cold Chaos was a major guild and it had built up a lot of goodwill.

As much as I hated them right now, if you asked me this morning which guilds I preferred to work with, Cold Chaos would’ve been in my top three.

Having a top guild crumble wouldn’t be in the interest of national security, so the DDC would likely delay the press release, at least for a few days, to give Cold Chaos a chance to get their shit together.

But my kids would be notified, probably within twenty-four hours.

This gate was local to Chicago. I didn’t fly here, I drove for twenty minutes.

Elmwood was less than five miles from my house in Portage Park.

Even if the mining session ran overtime, by now I should be heading home.

My children would be calling my phone, and when I didn’t answer, they would know that something went very wrong.

The DDC wasn’t oblivious. In the morning, an agent would show up at our house and tell Tia and Noah that I was missing in the breach.

They wouldn’t tell them I was dead until they recovered my body or the gate was closed.

There would be nobody to cushion the blow. Roger wouldn’t lift a finger to help. Roger’s father and stepmother basically disowned him in favor of his younger brother and never showed any interest in their grandchildren.

My mother was unreachable. After my father died a decade ago of a heart attack, she moved back to her native UK, and I didn’t even have her phone number.

She viewed having children as a duty she had to fulfill.

She had me, she provided food and shelter until I reached adulthood, and that was the end of her obligation to me and society in general.

I was an only child, and I didn’t have any friends, at least none who would step in.I did have a will and a law firm appointed as an executor, but the kids would need warmth, kindness, and guidance.

I had left a death folder both with physical copies of the documents and with scanned PDFs on my laptop. There were things in there I didn’t want my kids to find unless I was truly gone, but there was also a plan of action. I had gone over it with them several times. They knew what would happen.

The moment the DDC released the news of my death, the other major guilds would scream bloody murder and keep screaming across every media channel that would give them airtime. They wouldn’t be doing it for my sake. They would do it to take out their competition.

Everything about the guilds was political.

They were constantly fighting over who got which gates and how many of them.

Closing dangerous gates raised the guild’s prestige, which in turn led to more high-profile gate assignments and boosted the guild’s Talent recruitment.

It also brought in a staggering amount of money.

Each gate was both a potential death trap and a treasure trove of resources.

The higher the danger, the better the haul.

An average guild miner made twice my annual wage.

Melissa pulled in over three-hundred thousand per year before bonuses, which could easily double her salary.

London likely cleared two to three million per year.

And all of those earnings hinged on the guild’s ability to secure the gates and the assessors’ talent.

Without someone like me, the miners would just blunder around, testing random rocks. I made everyone a lot of money.

The DDC was sensitive to public opinion.

The department was seen as the main defense against the invasion, much like the CDC was the main defense against an epidemic.

Maintaining the public’s trust was crucial.

If the rival guilds managed to whip up enough outrage, the DDC would eventually bow to that pressure and Cold Chaos would lose their top billing.

It would take them a long time to recover.

If I was missing or presumed dead, the other guilds and the media would pounce on my children like sharks. I’d seen it time and time again. They would drag them from one show to the next, exploiting their fear and grief and making them into a target for scammers.

Look at these grieving orphans! We must hold Cold Chaos accountable for their suffering. Your father abandoned you. Your mother was torn apart in the breach by monsters. Tell us how that made you feel. Cry for us. Cry louder.

Tia and Noah both knew to refuse all interviews, but they were only kids. They would be so scared and vulnerable…

I had to make it home.

Sixty feet. Almost halfway there. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast . I would make Melissa eat those words when I got out.

Bear must’ve been a shoulder cat in another life because she sat steady like a rock. Come to think of it, carrying her should’ve been a lot harder. Maybe it was the adrenaline…

Bear stiffened under my hand. A low growl rumbled from her mouth. She craned her neck, looking at something in the tunnel behind me. I didn’t have room to turn around and check what was happening.

Ninety feet.

Another growl.

Running would get us killed. I wove my way through the ridges. Whatever was coming up behind us would have to deal with the Grasping Hand as well. It would be fine.

Growl.

One hundred and twenty feet.

Fine. Just fine.

A dry skittering noise came from behind me. It sounded insectoid, as if a giant cockroach was scrambling through the tunnel at top speed.

Bear snarled, trying to lunge off my shoulders. I wobbled, careened, caught myself at the last moment and kept going, feverishly trying to keep from slicing my legs to ribbons.

Bear erupted into barks, jerking me to and fro.

“Stay! Limp! Stay!”

The chittering chased us.

Almost there. Almost through. Just a little longer. Just a little bit…

Bear threw herself to the left. I spun in place, my boot catching on the nearest clump of thorns, shied the other way, and jumped over the last ridge. My boots hit the clear ground. Alive. I was alive somehow. The thorns didn’t penetrate through the boot.

I dropped Bear to the ground and spun around.

The awful chittering sound filled the tunnel behind us. I flexed and saw the dark outline of four-foot-long chitinous legs.

“Run!” I turned and sprinted down the tunnel. The dog dashed ahead, pulling me forward with the leash.

It wouldn’t get through the Grasping Hand. Surely, it wouldn’t.

I glanced back, flexing . A massive insectoid thing tore out of the tunnel. It sampled the red field and plowed right into it. Shit!

I flew across the cave floor, drawing even with Bear. No turnoffs, no branching hallways, just a death trap with the thing behind us charging full speed ahead.

The tunnel veered right, curving. We took the curve at breakneck speed. I slid, caught myself, and dashed forward. Ahead the mouth of a tunnel opened to something lighter, glowing with eerie purple. We raced to it and sprinted into the open.

I flexed . Time stretched. It was the strangest thing. The world slowed down as if throttled to half speed. My enhanced vision thrust the feedback at me and I saw everything instantly.

A huge cave lay in front of us, its jagged walls rising high up.

You could fit a ten-story office tower into this chamber.

Natural stone bridges crossed high above, a waterfall spilled from a fissure in the wall far in the distance, and straight ahead, in front of us, a small lake lay placid, its color a deep blue.

Short shrubs grew along the shore, about a foot high, with leaves the color of purple oxalis , dotted with glowing mauve flowers.

Two stalker corpses lay in the flowers, torn apart, and in the lake itself, a large shape waited, hidden in the water. It flared with bright yellow. Danger. Chances of survival: nil.

The world restarted with my next breath. I didn’t have the luxury to freak out about it. We had to run. Now.

I pulled Bear to the left, where a chunk of the wall protruded in a miniature plateau. We couldn’t crawl onto it, but there were boulders around it. It was the only cover we had. Anything else would bring us too close to the lake.

We dashed through the flowers. My heart was beating a thousand beats per minute.

A screech erupted from the tunnel.

We reached the ledge, and I ducked behind a large boulder and pulled Bear close. She squatted by me, and I hugged her, my hand on her muzzle, and whispered, “Quiet.”

The shepherd stared at me with big brown eyes.

A monster burst out of the passageway. Its front end resembled a silverfish that had somehow grown to the size of a rhino, with razor-sharp, terrifying mandibles. Its tail was scorpion like, curving over its head, and armed with another set of flat pinchers, studded with sharp protrusions.

The monster paused. Its tail blades sliced the air like two huge shears.

I held my breath.

The creature skittered forward, straight for the stalker corpses on the shore.

The thing in the lake waited, still and silent.

The bug monster reached the closest stalker corpse. The mandibles sliced like two sets of shears, cutting the body into chunks, dissecting it. The first shreds of flesh made it into the creature’s mouth.

The thing in the lake struck. A blur erupted out of the water, lunging onto the shore. Somehow the bug monster dodged and scampered back, out of reach.