He woke in the dark.

His thoughts were slow and confused; he couldn’t recall immediately what had happened and why he was lying on his back. His entire body hurt. He let out a soft groan and tried to lift his right hand to his face.

The pain in his arm exploded in intensity; he had thought he was in pain before, but that had been a mild ache compared to what he was currently experiencing. He gritted his teeth and held completely still until the pain gradually subsided.

Next he tried his left hand, but it was no better than his right. Even worse, he didn’t seem to be able to move his legs; they were completely numb and trapped under something impossibly heavy. To finish things off, he almost certainly had cracked ribs, and could only manage the shallowest of breaths.

The pain helped clear some of the fogginess from his mind. He remembered the fight with George, and smashing the charged-up sledgehammer into the cliff face. He remembered details of the fight from a distance, though; almost as if they had happened to someone else.

Vince had run away. That stung more now than it had at the time. Logically, it made sense, and Hudson even agreed with it. But it still felt like a betrayal for some reason; maybe because Cor and Clara had made a different choice.

He wondered about Cor and Clara. Hopefully they had gotten away and had not been caught in the blast.

His thoughts avoided the pain in his chest, the numbness in his legs, and shifted to that last attack of his. That sledgehammer – which on the surface, looked just like a normal, everyday sledgehammer with a wooden handle and steel head – was obviously anything but normal. It had collected the energy and the strength that his Engine Breath technique drew into his body and focused it to a single point – a very dangerous and destructive point.

He wondered idly at the nature of this mysterious energy. He knew so little, and everything was happening so fast. He assumed that this mysterious energy was ‘qi’, or ‘ki.’ Like the ‘ki’ in a kiai from karate, or the ‘qi’ in qigong. Both the S.E.C.T. primer and Clara had mentioned the word qigong, but Hudson only knew it from a historical context and what he had learned in school about the Boxer Rebellion.

Knowing what he knew now about S.E.C.T., Hudson had doubts about the completeness of the details he had learned in his history classes. Had the grass-roots rebellion in China at the turn of the 20th century actually been something more? He remembered wondering how any one could think that they could practice some martial art, swallow an amulet, and then become immune to bullets.

Was he immune to bullets now? Judging by the pain in his body, likely not… but that silvery light that George had been able to wrap around his fist, or another part of his body – that was definitely a qigong technique, and it almost certainly could stop bullets.

Cor had been right – he was playing with fire, and he’d burned himself. He just hoped he hadn’t also burned his new friends while he was at it.

It felt good to think of friends. He hadn’t known his fellow participants in the trial for longer than a few days, and he felt closer to them than he had to anyone else in years.

It felt bad to think that he was going to die here. He was trying very hard not to think of his current circumstances: buried under tons of stone, trapped and unable to move, isolated on an alien planet with two, maybe three people that might help him. If they weren’t in the same situation he was in.

He tried to pull in a deeper breath and failed. If he could only start his breathing technique; if he could cultivate, and draw that mysterious energy into his body, maybe he would be strong enough to pull his legs out from where they were trapped. Maybe he would be able to dig himself out of the rubble he was buried under.

Foolish thoughts… but even more foolish was the seed of hope that maybe Cor had gotten away. Maybe he and Clara were searching for him even now. Or maybe Vince had gone back, convinced others to come into the rift to save him. Or maybe even George – he’d said that he had special plans for him. A strange comment, and very creepy to be honest, but if those plans pushed George to find him and dig him out…

Hudson was grasping for straws.

They only had six hours to dig him out, and he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. Time stretched out, and that faint bit of hope that someone would come rescue him began to fade.

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Lost in his thoughts and a haze of pain, Hudson drifted in and out of consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time. Hope that someone would dig him out of the pile of rubble gradually faded and was replaced by a growing thirst. He hadn’t died from shock, or from blood loss, but now he was facing a potentially worse fate: death by dehydration, buried under tons of rubble.

When he first heard a faint scratching sound, he thought it was his imagination playing tricks on him. As it gradually grew louder, he couldn’t deny it any more, and a crushing hope grabbed him again.

“Hello!” he managed to squeak out, his cracked ribs protesting. “Is anyone there? Help!”

There was no response, but the scratching sound didn’t stop. He didn’t know who it was, but someone was coming for him, and digging through the rubble.

As the scratching grew louder and louder, Hudson started to worry slightly. It didn’t sound like a sledgehammer or pickaxe. It was a low, continuous growl; similar to the sound of a drill or, oddly enough, a garbage disposal unit. And it wasn’t come through the rubble; it was coming from underneath of him, through the solid rock ground.

Maybe his unknown rescuers had gotten a specialized drill or tool from the trial director, to dig through the stone?

The vibrating sound grew louder and louder. He could tell the direction now, and it was coming from behind his head.

“Hello? Who’s there?” Hudson tried to yell over the sound of the grinding drill, but he got no response.

Suddenly the deep grinding noise changed pitch to a high whine, and there was a small clatter of rocks behind his head. One tiny pebble hit Hudson in the head. At the same time, a very soft, silver glow shone into the enclosed space Hudson was trapped in.

Hudson tried to crane his neck, but he couldn’t see the source of the sound or who had drilled into the space where he was trapped. He could see now that his upper body was lying down in a slight depression in the ground, with rubble piled all around him. Several very large pieces butted against each other, creating the very small open pocket, three to four feet tall, that Hudson’s upper body was lying in. One of those large boulders was also resting on his two legs, right above the knees. Smaller rocks were crushed under this giant slab, helping to support the weight of the large rock so that not all of it was on his legs.

There was a slight skittering sound, and the silvery glow dimmed, but didn’t completely disappear. Then a vision straight out of a nightmare appeared over Hudson’s head.

Chitinous blades with serrated edges, curving down like the hands of a praying mantis, and glowing with a silvery sheen. They connected to short, segmented arms on a thin thorax, and perched atop the thorax was a shrimp-like head, with rows of three tiny, beady eyes on each side, next to articulating antennae.

Hudson held his breath in terror, trying not to make a sound. What had Clara said about the silverines? They hated bright light? He didn’t have a flashlight or anything of the sort. They were supposed to be territorial as well, but this shouldn’t be their territory.

The two glowing forearms moved away, to Hudson’s right, and the silverine skittered over to the other side of the small open space. The antennae on its forehead waved slightly, and its bladed forearms began to vibrate and twist, speeding up until they were a silvery blur, and the silverine began drilling into the rubble.

Given a brief reprieve, Hudson scrambled for something to defend himself with if the silverine came back for him. His left arm was still broken, and he didn’t have enough of a grip to do anything, but he grabbed a rock the size of his fist in his right hand, gritting his teeth against the pain.

The silverine didn’t drill very long or very far before it came back into Hudson’s small chamber, moving backwards and dragging something caught in its forearms. The centipede-like body backed out of the hole it had made, the skittering back legs coming close to Hudson’s face, before he saw what the silverine was dragging: his rucksack.

Why would the silverine be interested in his rucksack, when it wasn’t interested in him? Clara had told him they were attracted to maseki, which he supposed was what they considered food. He didn’t have any maseki in his rucksack. With a jolt, Hudson remembered what he did have in his rucksack: a water bottle, some preserved food, his armor, and a medical kit.

He could really, really use that water bottle right now. And the med kit!

The med kit also had those healing pills in them. If he had to bet, those pills had maseki in them, and that was what had attracted the silverine, somehow able to detect those bits of maseki with its antennae.

The silverine likely didn’t see Hudson as a threat, or even as food. It might just leave him alone. So Hudson had a choice: he could play dead, wait for the silverine to leave, and hope that his friends (or enemies) were coming to rescue him, and would find him before he died of thirst. Or he could fight the silverine for his food, water and medicine… while pinned under tons of rock, unable to activate his breathing technique, and armed only with a single rock.

He had to make a decision, and make it fast. The silverine had backed completely in his little chamber, and was starting to turn into the entrance tunnel it had dug. If he was going to strike, the best time was now, when its head was within reach.

The silverine awkwardly pulled the canvas rucksack, ripped and shredded in places but still mostly intact, into the corner next to Hudson’s right leg and positioned its back legs to retreat backwards. It had pierced the rucksack with its sharp claws, and was awkwardly pulling it along.

Hudson was out of time, and he made a desperate decision. Just as the silverine started to retreat back down its tunnel, Hudson raised the rock in his hand and brought it down as hard as he could on the silverine’s shrimp-like head.