He bid farewell to the sun-kissed terrain while holding the lump of metal he’d found inside the machine. The golden glow revealed the path to eyes newly reacquainted with the world of light. He pressed his body into a burst of speed, racing deeper into the darkness ahead, sprinting toward her voice with everything that he had.
Nick raced down the blue stone passageway, following the sound of Sophia’s voice. Her cries were accompanied by the rap of boot leather striking stone and the rhythmic pounding of his heart.
Although he’d hoped to escape the event without getting into another fight, he found himself heading back underground. Into the heart of the flesh-renders’ lair, ready to face overwhelming danger once again.
He burned some stamina, forcing his body to sprint faster still. He knew that her situation must be dire, filling his chest with molten dread. Sophia wouldn’t risk crying out, revealing her position to every beast living in the mine, if her life wasn’t in imminent peril. He had to make it to her side before it was too late.
Nick tried to concentrate on the path ahead, but he couldn’t stop images of her plight from dancing across his mind. Her lifeless body, bleeding into the sand.
With a surge of will, he summoned his arctic clarity. Frigid focus answered his call, battling with electric adrenaline and a rising sense of dread. It wasn’t enough to erase his fear completely, but it helped Nick shut out all such distractions and turn his mind to the task at hand.
He needed to prepare himself as best he could in the little time he had. Worst case scenario, she ran into the matriarch already. If it backed her into a corner, my priority is to distract the beast long enough to help her escape. Then we can make a break for the surface.
Straining his ears to filter out the sound of his own movements, he skidded to a stop after shooting past a passageway on his left. He held his breath long enough to reorient on his partner’s voice, turned back, then darted down the steep and winding passageway, which felt more like a shaft than a proper tunnel. Every step carried him deeper into the bowels of planet Drezen. Where a lethal threat was waiting with open jaws.
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Five breathless minutes later, Nick heard Sophia’s voice rise in pitch and abruptly cut off, just as he burst into a narrow chamber that was home to a three-way junction. He danced from one foot to the other, consumed by the need to rush to her aid, but unable to tell which way he should turn. Waiting was pure torture, but he knew it was his best chance of arriving in time.
If he darted down the wrong passage, he would never find her down here. With the aid of his arctic clarity, he ruthlessly suppressed the urge to panic. Banished visions of his friend, besieged and mortally wounded, from the theater of his mind’s eye to a dark corner of his subconscious.
The frigid fountain of focus soothed his raging emotions, and Nick did everything he could to hasten the process. If he wanted to help Sophia, he had to keep a level head. Freaking out would only make things worse.
A few minutes later, he still hadn’t heard anything. He reluctantly came to the decision that unless he heard her call out again, he was going to have to choose a branch at random and pray that luck was on their side.
Half a heartbeat before Nick entered the opening on his left, he heard the clamor of battle echoing up from the passage on his right. Not a voice, but the sound of something heavy scraping against the bedrock.
He took off at a dead sprint, following the fading echoes deeper into the mine. He put his new light back into his pouch. By now, his eyes had adjusted enough for him to make his way through the turquoise gloom unaided. He prayed that this tunnel was a straight shot, leading to wherever his partner was holed up. The last intersection had cost him far too many precious seconds.
In this one small manner, fortune chose to smile upon the pair. Less than two minutes later, Nick burst free from the narrow confines of the passage and stepped into the largest underground space that he’d ever seen. An enclosure the size of an Olympic stadium met his probing gaze.
With no time to admire the view, he pulled out his spyglass and started scanning the area as quickly as he could, cataloging only those details that had tactical significance and filtering out the rest.