Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (5 page)

At the bottom, she dropped thigh deep into water frigid enough to paralyze her. Althea clamped her hands over her mouth and swallowed a shriek, fearful of attracting attention. Seconds later, she sucked in a breath through chattering teeth and forced herself to move. Ripples spread from her legs as she walked, jostling the floating junk. Her natural reaction to such cold water kept her motion slow enough not to make noise. A layer of clammy slime squished through her toes as it gave way to the coarse texture of old concrete below. Althea advanced without hesitation, pushing the flotsam aside; she had stepped in worse things than this before.

After several minutes, she jumped at a scream. The man, unable to see the ladder or the sudden end to the corridor, tripped over the first rung and came falling face-first into the water at the bottom. The wave of his impact sent frigidity up to the base of her ribs; she gulped back the urge to cry out. He broke the surface, slinging his head around with a series of wild cries at how cold it was.

Only one of them came this way; Althea figured they must have split at the junction. Debris clunked against the wall as his splashing increased.

“Where you goin?” he yelled.

She made the mistake of looking at him.

“Thar you is.” He looked right at her. “Ah chosed right.”

Althea jerked her head away, and shoved a floating wooden box out of her path. Splashing, crashing, and banging resonated through the tunnel as the man, blind in the pitch dark, walked into everything. She fought the desperate want to look back, knowing he would see the glow. Arms held up over the water, she advanced through the junk clogging the sewer. Her small size and ability to see in the dark allowed her to navigate the black and white world faster and quieter. The raider yelled curses each time a part of his body found a solid object. When he made a genuine yelp of pain, she stopped.

Her teeth chattered. “Are you hurt?”

“Naw, it’s just a… Yeah… dammit mah leg’s off.”

Sensing a ploy, she kept going. At the sound of her sloshing, he grumbled. “Damn, t’was too much, wadn’t it.”

“Yes.” She stopped again. “You should go back. You can’t see down here, you’ll get hurt for real.”

He did not reply, continuing to follow her.

Althea glanced up as she walked under a low hanging pipe, an inch or two over her head. She closed her eyes and faced to the rear. “There’s a pipe. Be careful, or it’ll hit you in the face.”

The splashing behind her lessened. She imagined him holding his hand out, but didn’t dare open her eyes and reveal the glow. A faint twinge of guilt at putting this man at risk faded as she heard Den’s voice in the air. The sound emanated from a round opening near the ceiling a short distance ahead. Her elation caused her to run carelessly forward. Something sharp caught the inside edge of her foot and she came to a hopping halt, gritting her teeth to muffle her yelp of pain.

The passage was just out of reach. A nearby box served as a convenient stepstool, and she got her fingers over the lip of a protruding pipe. With her uninjured foot scrabbling at the wall, she hauled herself up and into a tunnel too small for her to sit up in. A line of dried muck colored the bottom darker grey than the rest of the world. The other end appeared to lead to another underground passage. Satisfied it was not a dead end, she crawled, smiling as she heard the man outside continue right past her.

Twenty yards later, she peeked out of the other end, finding a huge round tunnel made of the same white stone as the first, with a tiny stream running along the bottom. Althea slithered forward, and slid hands-first down the curved wall, coming to rest at the bottom with a splash. With a moment to breathe, she sat cross-legged and pulled her right foot up to look at it before focusing her power into her body. The cut stood out as a clean black line through the red shape of her foot, tracing from below the ankle to the center of her sole.

A warm tingle spread through the area as the cut foamed. A sick had gotten into the wound, but it had not infiltrated her body enough to come out in the usual manner. An ill-scented ichor dribbled down over her heel, directly from the closing injury.

The dirty water had bad things in it. For a moment, she worried the man chasing her had found a sick as well; however, the pipe she crawled through was twice her height away at the midpoint of an immense round shaft. She could not climb the wall to go back, no matter how guilty she felt. Raiders with guns had come for her; now she knew what caused the dream.

The Seekers must be warned.

mid several inches of frigid water, she sat and rubbed her foot to chase away the phantom pain. No light pierced the gloom of this subterranean tunnel; it was hard to tell which dark smudges were blood and which were dirt when everything looked grey. Althea stood, feeling with tentative fingers on the sloped wall. The slosh of the disturbed water as she walked made her cringe as it echoed in both directions. Drops, falling from her skirt, reverberated like a herd of tiny buffalo, thundering as if to tell the man right where she was.

The flowing water left the molded concrete free of slime, and offered sure footing as she crept ahead. Despite chattering teeth, she kept her feet underwater, lifting them just enough to slide forward without breaking the surface, so she did not splash louder. After about a hundred yards, the giant tunnel ended at a square chamber many times the size of Den’s hut. A spot of color caught her eye, glimmering from within a pipe protruding from the distant wall at the top of a ladder. The water in the space ahead was at the same level as the few inches she stood in. Grinning at the promise of daylight, she ran forward.

Unfortunately, the chamber’s floor lurked much lower than the bottom of the tunnel. She closed her eyes and clamped her mouth shut as she submerged in old rainwater that had no business being anything but ice. A shriek filled several bubbles as she sank, paralyzed by the bone-chilling liquid for a few seconds before collecting the presence of mind to start swimming. She broke the surface with gasping breaths and wiped a hand over her face. The room looked different from that angle, but after three rotations, she oriented herself and paddled to the base of a ladder.

She gripped the rusted metal and probed with a hesitant toe until she found the nearest rung. Althea climbed with great care, easing her weight down on each step, careful not to cut herself again. Two stories above the water, she sat shivering at the edge of another molded concrete tunnel, running her hands through the scraps of leather and squeegeeing the water out to make the burdensome thing lighter. Sluices of cold trickled down her legs, and for a fleeting moment, she wanted to be back inside the green beast where it was warm.

She froze as Nalu’s voice broke the serenade of droplets rejoining the pool below. He yelled at someone to be careful. Hope filled her heart and she clambered to her feet, sprinting through the open pipe until she reached the source of the sound―another well like the one she had entered, illuminated in beautiful color by a narrow slot of sunlight. Althea leaned her face into the warm, reveling in its caress.

She cupped her hands about her mouth and shouted, tiny voice echoing into the sky. “Den? Nalu? Help! I’m down here. Nalu!”

A shrill squealing cry from outside was followed by the unmistakable clank of metal on pavement. She knew the hissing; immense roaches as long as she was tall. Nalu’s war cry made her shudder and back away from the opening. A squishing crunch brought the shrieking to an end.

“Den?” She jumped up and down, waving her arms. “Nalu?”

Jake’s face appeared in the gap. He blinked in astonishment. He ducked out and shifted to yell behind him. “Glow-eye got away!”

The faces of Nalu and Den appeared next, looking down with anger and worry respectively.

“No!” Althea stomped her foot. “Someone tried to steal me. I am running
to
you, not away.”

The anxiety around Den grew more obvious as Nalu calmed. His anger at her non-escape shifted to concern about other threats. They backed off out of sight. She waited in the damp space, shivering, wondering what they muttered about.

Jake appeared again, sliding through headfirst. The others had him by the legs, and the look on his face would have been appropriate had they been shoving him into a grinder. He reached with reluctant hands, turning away as they grabbed each other’s forearms. Unfortunately for Jake, he was the only one of the Seekers small enough to fit through the gap.

His reaction frightened her, reminding her of how most people reacted to Scrag Mystics. They were often feared, as few people had any ability to defend themselves against their powers. However, Mystics did not have glowing eyes, nor had any of them been known to heal―only inflict pain and enslave the minds of others. Althea was known throughout the Badlands for her ability to heal and unwillingness to cause harm. Even she understood she could not be a simple Mystic. Whatever she was had been the cause for adoration, greed, and as with this trembling boy, terror.

Her toes clawed the moss from the wall as she tried to help them pull her up. As soon as her arms were in reach, two older hunters each grabbed a wrist. Jake clamored away as they lifted her out and onto her feet. She offered a pleading look as she realized they were not going to let go. When they gathered rope, she stared down at two large insects lying dead and offered no resistance as they forced her wrists together and bound her.

“Hold.” Nalu held up a hand at them. “I believe her. She did not run away.”

“She came seeking us,” Den snapped at the man holding the rope.

Hearing Den object, Althea squirmed in their grip. “Two men came to the driving machine. They knew I was in it, and they chased me into the underground.”

When they released her, she ran to Den’s side.

He patted her on the back, drawing her into a hug as he gave the man with the rope a possessive glare. “You’re safe now.”

She looked at him, then up at Nalu. “We should go home… now.” After a glance at the bugs, she examined everyone in turn. “Are any hurt?”

“None are harmed.” Nalu gestured to the south. “We will leave soon, but there is a place of interest there.” He pointed at a white door in the side of a smaller building.

Althea tugged at Den’s arm, her voice a desperate whine. “No. We mustn’t wait. We have to leave now.”

“Quiet, girl. If they stalk us, you will help them.” Nalu sent a mild glare at her, hand signals at the others directing them into formation.

She clung to Den as they went to the end of this path of flat black stone. The men gathered at the side of an old structure with a grey-painted door. Nalu approached it with the second eldest, Palik, the keeper of the bag that held the sacred relics of opening. The boys, even Den, gasped in reverence as he removed a long metal object from the bag and held it up to the sky as a tribute. One end curved, the other straight, both ended in flat wedges. She took the opportunity of a stop to remove her sopping wet shirt and wring it out. Palik held the
great opener
to the skies, murmuring chants under his breath.

Althea smirked, and leaned up to whisper in Den’s ear. “It’s just a pry bar. It’s not magic.”