“She’s dead, we lost the dust girl and now we are all going to die too!” Alexander’s voice was high and keening. His breath came fast, interrupting his words.
Lissie’s eyes flickered open. She saw nothing. She closed them and said, “I am okay, I’m fine.” She felt the tiles of the floor pressed against her ear.
“Your heart stopped.” Cora’s voice was hollow. “For at least two minutes.”
Lissie took a deep breath. She felt the box in her hand. It was closed.
She slipped it into her pocket.
Lissie heard soft sobbing. “Hey, I’m okay.” Riley was crying harder now.
She felt Riley fall on top of her and Riley said, “I keep losing you. And there is nothing I can do.”
Lissie said with a waver in her voice, “Roll call?”
“Riley.” She whispered it in her ear.
“Alexander. Probably dead. This is definitely hell.”
“Cora is here.”
Silence. Lissie’s heart caught and she asked, “Where is Niko?”
Nothing. Darkness. Riley climbed off of her, with a promise to find him.
“Niko!”
“Nikolai!”
“Giant! Friendly giant!”
There was no reverberation. They heard the sound of something being dragged. Lissie gasped and leapt to her feet.
“The hatch is in the center of the room!” Lissie ran into the blackness. “It’s the only real tunnel.” She fell to her knees, feeling with both hands. Her body was blind to the pain.
Her hand went down on nothing. She fell forward. Her face smacked into the edge of a stair. She called back, so the others would know where she had gone.
Lissie got to her feet, sliding them, feeling her way down the stairs. The floor rose on both sides, her hands leaving tile and moving to stone blocks. Walls. Rough walls with uneven stonework that scratched at her hands.
The stone beneath her feet became uneven dirt. Then it was a slope. The masonry went to bare hewn rock and then she felt dripping clay.
She heard a growl and then a scream.
Is that Niko?
Lissie ran, and nearly tripped when she saw a glow. It was real, intricate, and shimmering. She ran faster. Just that little hint of aqua blue gave her a sense of presence, a sense of balance. A solidity of place that had been missing from the halls above.
More screams. Then silence. Lissie glared and shouted, “Niko?”
She stepped over blood. The ramp evened out into a straight tunnel. The glow was brighter, she could see filaments, threads, like roots crawling over the walls etched in blue. The blood at her feet was glistening black in the light.
A curve ahead. She rounded it at a sprint.
Her mouth filled with the taste of bright copper blood. She took a deep breath and felt frost in her lungs, on her lips. The luminescence glittered blackly off the snowy flurry. Her vision tinted red and her eyes stung. Lissie coughed and kept running.
She saw Niko. The creeping light reflected off of him, making his skin look aqua with violet streaks.
No, frost.
He turned to her. “I did not want to hurt them.” He swept a hand out to the hall and she looked down.
The floor was littered with pieces of things once alive. There was a claw, a half a head, shattered bones. Everything was caked with deep red ice.
She took a step closer to him. She wanted to hug him. To know he was alive, and that she was alive. The air grew colder as she approached. She forced another step, and shivered.
“Do not touch me.” The words hung between them in the crimson snow.
She took another step. The blood on her lips and face cracked and fell. She looked at her hand. The blood on her fingertips had frozen. Lissie felt the tip of a finger with her thumb. There was no wound.
“I need a moment.” Niko stepped back from her. “To regain control. I did not want to hurt them.”
Lissie could hear the jingling of Alexander’s packs. Riley’s boots hard and fast on the earth. Lissie said, “Remember the rabbits.”
Riley’s footsteps echoed closer. Lissie turned, and dodged Riley’s drawn sword. The sword lowered, and she watched Riley’s face fall too.
Cora was next, panting. Her eyes on the ground, watching her feet. She stopped next to Riley and looked up. Her mouth hung open and Lissie watched the flakes of blood rush in with her breath.
Neither spoke.
Alexander’s jingling packs grew closer. He shouted ahead, “Is it safe up there?”
Niko’s voice was a rumble. “We are safe.”
Riley and Cora stared at each other. Cora was pointing at the head on the floor. She did not look at it.
Alexander’s head peeked around the corner. “Holy hells! This isn’t safe at all!”