I was going to feel really dumb about this if Sage had the teleport beacon in her inventory. I took a deep breath, my Ruger in one hand, and reached out with my other to touch the beacon Colin was holding out to me.

A moment later, I was in a mine tunnel. There was a lot of screaming and shouting. I heard Sage shout my name. I was facing toward a bunch more of these alien conquistador assholes. I fired as fast as I could, spraying them with Barrage. It staggered them back.

A section of the wall to their left broke open, rocks tumbling outward. Then there was another orc in front of me, this one not dressed as a conquistador. I realized just in time it was one of Sage's classmates and didn't fill him full of lead.

I tried to get a grasp on the situation. "Sit rep!" I yelled to Sage.

"Three friendlies in the tunnel up ahead, one wounded. NPC prisoners, beyond that. At least three conquistador assholes still alive."

"Right." I rushed forward using Call ‘em Out and then engaged Fastest Gun in the West to dart right through the group of conquistadors. They turned, leaving them open from behind. I pivoted and pumped shot after shot into them as Sage's classmates struck them with their own weapons. In seconds, the aliens lay dead.

I checked my timer. Eight minutes left. I swore. "You need to get that totem to Colin right now."

"I don't know if we'll respawn if we die," she said breathlessly. “My team and I came in through a back door. Don't know if Kronos has us backed up.”

“How many of you are there?"

"Eight, counting me. The others are up ahead trying a tunnel.”

“I’ll get them out," I promised. "Get that totem to Colin now."

She nodded and vanished. I breathed a sigh of relief. If she was right and there was any danger of death being permanent, at least she ought to have a better chance with Colin than trapped in a mine tunnel with a flood coming in.

I hurried over to her friends. The orc kid, Rok'gar, I'd met once before, and of course, I knew his father. I gave him a curt nod.

"Brian is injured," Rok'gar said.

I looked the blanched boy over. "Broken leg? Right. You two, help him," I told Rok'gar and the girl with them. "Carry him out of here."

"What about the other prisoners?"

"They're NPCs," I snapped. "If the fragment cares about them, he can reconstitute them himself. Let's get clear."

I urged them forward in the direction Sage had indicated. A minute later, we came to a confluence of tunnels with an elevator shaft leading upward.

"Up there?"

"There's another way out," Rok'gar said, pointing.

I could see the marks in the dust of a dozen or more confused feet, some bare, some shod. I pulled up my mini-map. There were no more red dots, at least, but we were down to just six minutes before this whole place started to fill with water.

We hurried down the corridor as fast as we could, the wounded kid hobbling as Rok'gar and the girl supported his weight on their shoulders. I holstered my pistol, knowing that it would answer me when I wanted it, just as long as the fragment didn't decide to be an asshole again.

There were a bunch of empty mine carts blocking this tunnel, and a rail laid down it. It must be an alternate route to get ore out of the mine.

I could hear shouts and angry voices from up ahead. "Let me past," I told the kids, squeezed through the tunnel around them, then raced upward until I came up against a crowded mass of people. My own team, the rest of Sage's kids, and a bunch of NPC prisoners, all shouting and yelling. "What's going on?" I said, and then, "Quiet!"

That mostly worked. From the front of the crowd, Hester yelled, "Shad! Is that you?"

"Yep."

"There's an exit here, but there's a grate, and I think we're a good thirty feet up.”

I squeezed through the crowd, pushing and shoving, dodging past more mine carts. Some of the NPCs had climbed inside to be out of the way. It started to tickle an idea in the back of my brain. I fetched up against the grate at the front. Hester was there, shaking the big, heavy, metal grate set deep into the stone around it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Looks like we need something to blast it free."

"There's dynamite further back in the mine," Private Johnson volunteered. “I saw a cache room back there. I could go for it.”

"No time," I said, shaking my head. "In about a minute and a half, this whole place is going to fill with water."

I thought about my options as I peered out. It appeared that the hole was carved in the side of the mountain, at least 30 feet up. I could see the tiny trickle of the river below us. It didn't make sense to have mine carts like this, with rail leading to a hole leading nowhere. Not unless the Conquistadors had an airship that they regularly backed up against the mountain, which they might. I wouldn't put anything past the AI. But I had a suspicion here.

"I've got an idea. I'm not sure it's going to work," I said. "Everybody, get back from the grate. I want you climbing into those ore carts. Make sure that the brakes aren't set. Move the chocks if you have to. I'm going to blow this."

Far off, I heard a rumbling sound, like distant thunder. I knew the dam had broken. I carefully pulled explosives from my inventory. I didn't have any skills for this, but being around Mitch and the Mongoose Squad had taught me a few tricks. I attached the explosives, then connected wires to each of them, forcing myself to take my time, even as I heard the flood-noise grow.

"What's that?" someone called.

"That's the flood coming," I said. “Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to blow this. The flood's going to hit us. It's going to launch these carts forward, and we're going to ride it out of here, just like we were in that crappy Indiana Jones movie."

"He was in a fridge, not a mine cart!" one of the kids yelled, and I reminded myself to make sure Sage had a proper education in the classics.

"Never mind. We've all seen movies like this, and it's a trope in the kind of cheesy western this fragment seems to be drawing on."

I finished setting the explosives, then reeled out the wire as I sprinted back to the closest mine cart.

"Budge over," I told the NPCs, one of them who I suspected was the chief, based on his age and grumpy mannerism. He grunted at me before making room. I climbed in. "Everyone cover your ears!"

I pressed the igniter. The explosives went off in a deafening boom and a cloud of smoke, just as the noise of roaring water became overpoweringly loud.

A wall of water filled the tunnel behind us. It smashed against our carts, lifting them off the track and propelling them forward. At the front of the line, my car was the first to shoot out of the tunnel. I clung to the side as we hung in midair before dropping toward the river below.

It had swollen from a thin silvery trickle to an enormous roaring flood that filled the canyon from wall to wall. It had to be at least 20 feet deep by now, maybe more. The debris of the conquistadors' camp and bits of lumber from the mine bobbed along in the current.

I hoped that Sage had gotten to Colin safely. I hoped they'd be able to summon Coyote, but right now I just clung on to the mine cart for dear life as we hit the water with a bone-shaking crash.

My cart went completely underwater. Seconds later, it bobbed upward. I was drenched from head to toe, but my hat was still on my head and my gun belt was at my side, so it was alright. I glanced back over my shoulder. The other carts bobbed along in the current like so much debris, but I thought everyone was here. I counted all my team.

"What do we do now?" Hester shouted.

I dove into my inventory. We'd had a couple of paddles in Grandpa's shed from a kayak I had destroyed when I was Sage's age. I tossed one to the nearest mine cart behind me and used the other to start steering mine toward the banks, but it was no use. There were no banks here. The entire canyon was filled with the river. All I could do was try to avoid rocks and the edges of the canyon. I grabbed rope from my inventory.

We had four mine carts full of people. Two of us had paddles. Two didn't. I grabbed rope from my inventory and tossed it back to the cart behind me.

"Just try to hold on," I urged them, giving the rope to the NPCs in mine. "Don't let them go, whatever you do," I told them. I used the paddle almost as a rudder, trying to steer us into the middle of the stream. It more or less worked. Glancing behind I saw that Hester had managed the same, and stabilized the fourth cart. We weren’t in a good spot, but we weren’t completely screwed.

“Oh shit!” Private Johnson, in the cart behind mine, shouted, and pointed. I turned back around as we whipped round a bed in the river and saw it. Boiling water, a rage of rapids, and then a wall of white steam rising upward as the river vanished down.

We were on the brink of a waterfall.

I backpaddled furiously. Some of the npcs in the cart with me leapt into the water, disappearing immediately in the rapids. My cart was caught by the whirling water and spun about, leaving me facing the wrong way.

And then the sky and the water changed places as we tipped over the edge. The cart upended. I dropped out and down, down, down.

Splash! I hit the water hard, knocking the wind from me. My coat dragged me down. My hat was lost. I kicked and struggled upward as my boots weighed on my legs and just as my lungs gave out, broke the surface of the water. I treaded water for a moment, catching my breath, before turning in place.

The waterfall behind me roared thunderously, but the pool beneath was curiously tranquil, a deep turquoise shade. The red walls of the canyon were grown over with vines and bushes. Sandy banks to the side were shaded by trees. It reminded me of Hauvusupi Falls.

Someone was struggling in the water near me, one of Sage’s kids. I grabbed her by the collar and dragged her to shore, then stripped of my coat and waded back into the water. One-by-one I pulled as many as I could do the shore. Hester floundered out onto the beach as I was retrieving the Grignarian kid, saw what I was doing, and, with a sigh, came to help.

We pulled them all out. The human boy and some of the NPCs were unconscious, the rest of the kids in various stages of drowned rat, but nobody was dead.

At last I collapsed onto the beach and lay there, staring up, trying to catch my breath. Someone was asking me about a perimeter and someone else about an exit, but I was just done. I needed a break. “Give me a minute,” I begged, and closed my eyes.