Page 5 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

I was sitting in my office staring at the knife and trying to figure out the right approach, when the blade turned pale pink.

The glow refused to fade, and when I focused on it, something in my brain clicked.

The weight, the density, the structure of the metal somehow popped into my mind and combined into a specific … profile was the best word.

I drove to the ER. I thought I was dying.

Twenty-four hours later the DDC came calling with a contract and a patriotic sales pitch.

Assessors like me were rare, and the government hoarded us, to the point of making it illegal for guilds to hire their own private assessors.

The guilds had poured an obscene amount of money into lobbying against that law but got nowhere.

The invasion wrecked my life. I’d looked at that contract and realized I could do something about it. Every time I went into the breach, I found something to make us safer. Today it was adamantite. A drop in the bucket, but it was my drop.

I finished tracing the deposit and set the can on a rock.

Elena peered at the dark passageways, turned, her face sour, and called, “Stella!”

Stella, who was on the other shore watching the miners, didn’t move.

“STELLA!” Elena roared.

The dog handler spun around.

The scout waved her over. “Bring the dog!”

Stella splashed through the stream, Bear on a leash, and trekked over the ridges to us.

“I need you to check the tunnels!” Elena yelled over the drilling noise.

“Which tunnel?”

“Start with the left!”

Bear yanked at her leash, jerking Stella backward, toward the stream. Stella said some command I didn’t catch.

Bear yanked on the leash and erupted into barks.

Elena waved her arms. “Control your dog –"

Something burst out of the middle tunnel. It swept past Aaron, a vaguely humanoid shape in pale blue garments, so fast it was a blur. Four other blurs chased it, wrapped in dark grey. They tore past the bastion in a flash.

Aaron’s top half - shield, armor, and body - slid to the side and fell to the ground.

For a horrifying moment, I stared straight at the stump of his torso, still standing upright. It was standing upright .

The blurs wrapped around us. I froze. They spun about me like a whirlwind, the four grey beings striking and slicing, while the creature in blue parried with impossible speed.

I caught a glimpse of arms in dark armor gripping silver blades and inhuman faces with fangs bared.

A second, and they tore across the cavern toward the wall and the mining crew.

Untouched. I was somehow uninjured.

I turned to Stella on my right.

Her head was missing. There was her torso in indigo Magnaprene, her neck, but no head.

The headless body crumpled to the ground.

A gasp came from the side. I turned on autopilot, still trying to process Stella’s missing head. Elena’s guts spilled out of her stomach. The scout clutched at herself. Dark blood poured out of her mouth. She made a horrible gurgling noise and fell.

This couldn’t be happening. It was a weird, horrible nightmare. I was dreaming that I found the magic motherlode of adamantite and then monsters came and killed everyone.

The air smelled like blood and bile. To the left four inhuman creatures tore at their prey in the blue robe, running on the walls and leaping in for the kill only to be knocked aside. Two miners floated in the stream, face down, and the water was red, so red…

Oh God. It’s real. It’s all real.

Panic smashed into me like an icy hammer. I had to get out of here. Now.

The only safe exit was on the other side of the stream. I sprinted across the ridges to the water.

To the left, the fight swung back and forth along the lake’s shore.

I slid over the first rimstone dam, tore through the pool, climbed over the other side, and landed into the stream. Water came up to my thighs and I waded through it, squeezing every drop of speed out of my body.

Half of the mining crew was still drilling.

“Run!” I screamed, waving my arms. “Run!”

Sanders turned, plucking the headphones off his left ear. He saw my face, whipped around, saw the creatures, hurled the drill aside, howled, and ran. The line of miners broke as people charged to the exit.

The world shrank. There was only me and the water trying to stop me. I just had to make it across the stream.

At the cave entrance, Melissa was scrambling up the slope, toward London. The blade warden stared straight at me. Our gazes met.

Help me…

A door slammed shut in London’s eyes.

No. No!

Melissa shoved Anja Presa out of her way. The slender woman slid on the rocks and fell, rolling down to the stream.

I can’t die here. I have to get home to my kids!

I was running so fast. Faster than I’d ever run in my life, and I wasted precious breath on a scream. “Wait! Wait for me!”

London yanked something off his belt. A grenade. He carried aetherium concussive grenades to be used as a last resort.

“Throw it!” Melissa howled and ran past him.

London looked straight at me. His face was cold like ice.

Alex! No!

He dropped the grenade. It rolled toward the stream, bouncing over the limestone. The blue forcefield of his warden talent flared into life, wrapping around London. He turned and fled into the tunnel.

The world exploded.

The blast slammed into Sanders ten yards ahead of me.

Water punched me off my feet. I flew like a rag doll and smashed against solid rock.

My right leg snapped like a toothpick. My spine crunched.

Agony splashed across my side and bit into my ribs.

My ears rang, my head swam, and the air in my lungs turned to fire.

I tried to breathe and couldn’t. There was water on my face. I was in the stream face down. I had to get upright, or I would drown.

I wrenched myself up.

Bright white aetherium smoke filled the cave. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t breathe. I could only hold still as the pain drowned me.

“Mom! Don’t die!”

I won’t. I promise.

I forced myself to take a tiny breath. It felt like jagged glass cutting its way through my throat. I coughed through it and willed myself to take another. And another, swimming through the pain, one tiny sip of air at a time.

The smoke drifted up. My vision cleared. I was sitting in one of the pools by the shore, with the water up to my armpits, my back pressed against the rimstone wall. Next to me a severed human head rested on the pool’s bottom. The dark curly hair swirled with the current. Stella.

It should’ve hit me like a semi, but instead I simply noted it, the same way I noted the blood spreading from my right leg and the broken glass that ground in my lungs with every breath.

I pulled the leg of my coveralls up, out of the boot. A jagged bone cut through the skin of my calf. A compound fracture. Okay. I tugged my pant leg over it.

I had to get the hell out of here. Out of this cavern. Out of the breach.

The exit was no more, blocked by a wall of rubble. London’s grenade collapsed the ceiling of the tunnel. He and Melissa left me to die.

The clump of alien creatures passed along the opposite wall, all but floating over the debris that had sealed the exit. I didn’t hear any gunfire. Our escorts were dead.

The aliens darted to the right, absorbed in their fight. They weren’t targeting the humans. Aaron, Stella, Elena, they were simply in the way, cut down in passing as the four creatures in grey tried to kill the being in blue. And if their fight swung this way, I would be in the way, too.

I had to get out of the line of fire.

The wall in front of me, where the exit used to be, was at least forty yards away and sheer.

I looked over my shoulder. There was a niche in the wall behind me, next to my yellow paint marks, a natural depression in the rock. A place to hide.

I turned around. My right leg screamed. Standing was a no go. I would have to crawl on all fours.

I clenched my teeth and crawled out of the pool.

My right leg burned, sending stabs of hot pain through my knee. I could do it. Stay low, move slowly, don’t present a threat. It was only pain. I could endure pain.

Twenty yards to the wall.

Fifteen.

I hit my knee against a sharp rock, and my weight landed on my injured leg. The world went white for a second. I sucked in a small breath and kept moving.

Ten yards. Almost there.

Almost.

My fingers touched the stone. I turned around and tucked myself into the niche, pressing my back against the wall. There was a trail of my blood across the cave floor.

The creature in blue was still moving, but only two grey blurs remained. The third lay on the rocks, a smudge of dark fabric that shifted whenever the fight drew closer, stretching toward it like a living thing. I couldn’t see the fourth.

To the right something moved by the rock.

I sat very still.

A furry head with big ears poked out from behind an outcropping.

Bear.

I licked my lips, trying to get my mouth to work. “Bear.” I could only manage a whisper. “Come.”

The German Shepherd crawled toward me, pressed against my thigh, and let out a soft whine.

“They left you, too.”

I hugged the dog to me. We sat by the wall and watched the fight tear across the cave. The blurs were so fast. How could anyone move that quickly? It should’ve been biologically impossible.

One of the remaining grey blurs collapsed.

The last grey attacker shot toward us. It took me half a second to realize it wasn’t a coincidence. It was aiming for me.

There was no time to run, no time to do anything. I threw my arm in front of Bear on pure instinct. The grey blur loomed above us… and stopped.

I finally saw it clearly, a tall creature with four arms, wrapped in a tattered grey cloak.

Its hands had too many fingers, long and clawed, and each hand clenched a sword.

It stared at me with terrifying eyes, huge and round, and its mouth, on the face of white pearlescent skin, was a wide, dark slash filled with nightmarish teeth. A blue blade protruded from its chest.

This is also real.

The grey cloak stretched toward my face, like some strange amoeba, its strands long and viscous.

The blue blade twisted.

The creature spat purple blood and went limp.

The sword slid backward, disappearing into the creature’s body as whoever wielded it pulled it out. The cloaked being fell to the side and slid a few feet down the slope.

A tall figure stood behind it, clad in a shimmering, ice-blue robe.

The silhouette looked chillingly human, too tall, with limbs that were too long, but unmistakably familiar.

The head was a solid chunk of metal, twisted into a sleek horned shape.

The same metal, blue with gold filigree, sheathed their body under the robe.

No visible skin. Even the fingers of their right hand, gripping the blue sword, were coated in metal.

Their left arm was missing, cut off just below the biceps, and bright red blood spurted from the cut.

None of my briefings had ever mentioned a being that appeared this human. Animals, monsters, inhuman sentients with strange anatomy, vaguely humanoid beings, yes. But never this.

The figure touched their helmet. It split apart and retracted into itself.

An older woman looked at me. Her skin was a muted pastel pink in the center of the face, darkening to a vivid turquoise near the hairline.

A straight nose with a blunt tip, a narrow-lipped mouth with the same pink lips, and upturned eyes with blue-green irises, slightly too large for an Earth native, but not enough to alarm anyone.

Aside from the skin color, she looked so human, it was terrifying. There were crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and laugh lines by her mouth. Either the DDC did not know, or they knew and kept it a secret at the highest level.

The woman stared at me. Her eyes were sad and mournful.

I stared back.

She swayed and fell.

What the fuck do I do now?

The sound of hoarse breathing echoed through the cavern.

She saved me. If she hadn’t stabbed the grey attacker, I would be dead.

Another hoarse breath. Another.

Fuck it.

I shifted on all fours and crawled the few feet to the woman.

Her arm was sheared off as if by a razor blade, the cut so precise, it was like an anatomy slide. I could see the bones among the bloody muscle. Blood shot out with every breath.

“We’ll need a tourniquet. Hold on.”

I dug in the pocket of my coveralls, extracted the paracord I always carried, and pulled it loose.

Paracord was a shitty way to make a tourniquet, but she was bleeding out and I had nothing else.

I folded the paracord lengthwise until I had about a three-foot stretch of cord, wrapped it around what was left of her arm, and pulled it into a knot. The blood was still spurting.

I patted myself. I needed… Here. I pulled a slim flashlight out of my pocket. I always brought one as a backup to the light in my hard hat. I pressed the flashlight into the knot and tied another knot over it.

“This will hurt, and you’ll lose what’s left of the arm. I’m sorry. We have to stop the bleeding.”

I twisted the flashlight, tightening the knot. Once, twice, three times.

The woman reached out with her right arm and touched my hand. Her fingers were cool, their touch feather-light.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

The blood stopped spurting. Now I just had to secure this…

The woman touched her own forehead. Her fingers dipped into the skin, sinking into a seemingly solid skull.

It had to be a hallucination. I was losing it from blood loss and pain.

The woman pulled something out of her head. It was round and glowing, like a brilliant jewel lit from within. It was so beautiful. The colors swirled and danced, a stunning, mesmerizing gemfire.

I had to look away, move, run, do something, but I had no will to move. The gemstone was too beautiful to resist. It was coming toward me, held in the woman’s long fingers. Closer. Closer.

The gem touched my forehead.

The Universe unfurled with light and color. A soft voice whispered inside my head.

“Treasure your inheritance, my kind daughter.”

Everything went dark.