Page 119 of Katya and the Young God

A quick glimpse, Beatriz flattening herself against the wall, making herself small, edging towards the door. Pieter slams into the wall next to her, and she recoils away.

A gun goes off, deafening in the room, and Katya can’t see, can’t do anything, scrambling to make sense of it all and keep her hand yanking on the garrote and —

Selene screams, high pitched and scared, and Katya barely catches a glimpse of a guard swinging her up in his arms to take her away before Selene reaches up with her open hand, smacking into his face.

He crumbles to the ground, Selene going over him and hitting the ground hard, her head smacking onto the tile.

Katya tries to pull herself up, tries to crawl towards her, and all she can see is Selene, lying there.

Pieter rushes to Selene, pulling her up, keeping her behind him and —

A sudden silence.

Iakov drops the body of the remaining guard, his neck clearly snapped, his eyes lifeless. Beatriz gapes at him, gapes at them all, like she’s an innocent woman in all this, like she can fake her way out of it.

Feketer’s on the ground, hands frozen in claws around the garrote, but his eyes are open and unblinking. Dead.

And Katya killed him. Just like how she thought she killed Vincente. Another person, dead at her hands.

She pushes herself up with the chair, her leg screaming at her.

“Get her out of here,” she rasps out, but instead of disappearing, instead of getting to safety, Pieter reaches a hand towards her, desperate.

Another shot, a smoking small gun in Beatriz’s hand and —

It punches into Katya, right in her middle, right into her stomach. Like fire followed immediately by a burning numbness, and...and she falls, sagging to the floor between two of the flimsy cold metal chairs, her breath not moving, her throat not swallowing, her skin suddenly clammy.

She gasps out, and she can’t see, she can’t move, she can’t breathe.

A flash of motion, and Pieter’s panicked eyes, and he’s yelling. She can’t hear it, she can’t tell, but he’s yelling, and his face is contorted and —

He falls to the side, Selene shoving him away, her small eyes wide.

“Don’t run away!” Selene begs, then —

With both hands she grabs Katya by her face, and Katya rockets into black.

20

Katya climbs to her feet, and she’s under the mountain again.

The floor is the carving of veins, the entire nervous system, the ceiling so far above her, so far she can’t see. A mist swirls above her, the glittering black crystals in the eyes of the skulls, and —

Her body jerks, recoils, tries to twist away.

The coffin, the box they found Selene in, is at the top of the room, a blood red mist spilling over from the open lid, roiling over the lip and blowing towards Katya.

As if prying herself out, a half-rotten, bony hand appears over the lip, then Selene pushes herself up, swinging her legs over the lip.

But it’s not like the Selene Katya knows. Her left eye socket is rotted out, dull bone showing beneath, and her rib cage flexes with every breath.

Terror chokes up, and Katya stumbles back.

“Katya,” Selene says, and she reaches her hand out, in the way she always does. “Katya, please?”

It’s her voice, but it’s the voice of hundreds of thousands of people beneath it. Of Rory’s voice. Of the cavers. Of that guard with a limp. All in one voice.

And she had asked her to not run away.

---