Page 29 of Twins for the Barbarians

My heart is beating madly, struggling against my rib cage. My stomach is the size of a pea, and my backpack feels heavier than usual. But I persist; I forge ahead, following Kharo and Helios closely as we go, our eyes scanning every inch, searching for hints of trouble.

“Yeah, they’re definitely hiding something,” Helios says at one point. He stops and points at the wall to his right, where a ridge has become visible. The closer his hand gets, the more the ridge protrudes.

“It’s a mechanism,” Kharo replies. “Motion-activated. There’s technology hidden within these walls.”

“I don’t think I want to find out what it does,” Kingo mumbles.

But the ridge sticks out another inch, and tiny holes open up.

“Move back!” Helios snaps just as a strange white substance shoots out from each hole.

Drops of it hit his sleeve, and it quickly becomes evident that it’s some kind of powerfully corrosive acid. He curses under his breath as he tears the sleeve off and tosses it onto the ground.

The rest of us are untouched.

“Are you okay?” I ask Helios.

He nods once. “That was a close call.”

They check the ridge from a safer distance, determining it doesn’t go all the way down to the ground. They also throw a few pebbles in front of it to test the motion sensors, prompting more ridges to emerge and trigger the jets to emit the horrific acid. The sound the spray makes when it hits the opposing wall is the sound of acid eating through the black stone. It’s enough to make my blood curdle. But once the jets have released all their venom, we crouch down and crawl along the ground, making sure no more ridges are activated.

“It’s a veritable obstacle course,” Helios says when we take another break.

“Chances are it will get a lot worse the farther we go,” Kharo replies. “What do we do?”

For the first time, all three are looking at me. I’m the one who brought us out here, who insisted we should keep going until we get to the truth. Will we stop now? I can’t fathom that idea. The more traps we come across, the more curious I am as to what we’ll find at the end—assuming we survive.

But if I’m pregnant, do I want to risk it?

Our only other option is to go back and keep fighting the same fight until we’re all dead or until Cynthia manages to synthesize a proper cure for the plague. She needs more time for that, though, and something tells me we don’t have much time left. Too much is happening up north. There are too many things we need to do in order to put an end to the war. If we get the truth out of this place, however, it could bring everything to a halt.

If we find out that the Sky Tribe and the Fire Tribe were played from the very beginning, it may render the entire territorial dispute moot.

I take a deep breath and check Kingo’s device again. “We should keep going,” I say with a trembling voice, “as far as we can.”

“We’ve made it this far, right?” Kharo chuckles nervously. “Damn, Alicia, you’ve got more courage in you than an entire fleet of us.”

“I doubt I’d be as bold if I didn’t have you with me.”

Helios glances ahead. “Fine. We’ll keep going, then. There’s another opening there.”

We go deeper and deeper. We move slow, painfully slow. The deeper we go, however, the more troubling it gets.

“Apparently, we’re not the only ones who have tried to get in,” Kharo exclaims at the sight of a skeleton.

It’s a young male, by the looks of it. He must’ve died a decade ago, at least, judging by the state of decomposition his body is in. There’s barely anything left except his clothes, now tattered and dusty, his bones, and some dried skin here and there. Shivers trickle down my spine as I notice the darts resting along his legs.

“Don’t move. Wait,” Helios warns as Kharo is about to take another step forward. “There…” He points to several openings in the ground, each the size of a coin.

Kharo glances back at the skeleton and the darts. “They shot those darts straight from the dirt,” he says. “They must have punctured his vital arteries.”

“He fell backward and bled to death here,” Kingo concludes, studying the old blood stains along the tibial bones.

“That’s not going to be the case for us,” Helios replies. “Move along the wall again.”

We follow him and make it to another opening. But here, in this inner layer, we find even more corpses, fresher ones, by the looks of them. They are desiccated by the heat and the dry air, but definitely not as old as their predecessor. Kingo cautiously approaches one of them, his crimson gaze wandering up and down and gathering information.

“They were shot,” he says. “Laser…see the burns here…and here?” he adds, pointing to the young man’s rib cage and shoulders. We all see the black burns and the holes in the red fabric of his jacket. “You may want to check the walls again, Helios.”

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