Page 94 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

This one takes more effort, scraping at the frozen ground, before Chloe can grasp it in the palm of her hand and rip it apart.

This one clatters out with a snap, unraveling, ripping up from the frozen ground in a perfect circle around the entirety of the base.

“Someone will notice that,” Killian murmurs.

“If they know what they’re looking at,” Chloe says, standing again. The next ward is the alarm system, the most tricky one to release without them noticing, the most complicated out of the three.

The one after that is in the tunnel, under the mountain itself, buried deep between the foundation and the tracks.

And that’s the one that will unleash Killian.

And whatever else is in the cages.

Alette’s packet didn’t contain a roster of creatures currently there, and Chloe has to believe that at least one of them would be hostile to her, if only for the fact that she’s a human in a facility run by humans hurting others.

Chloe stills herself, but any wind disguises any words of alarm they might be able to catch.

With a soft hand to her elbow, Killian guides her forward, like he’s worried she’ll stand there forever.

Before they’re right in front of the tunnel, hewn smoothly from dark stone, and a voice calls out.

The ward is written into the stone before the tunnel, solidified by the very structure they’re built into, and Chloe presses her palm against the cold rock.

“Who’s there?”

Chloe freezes, but Killian smiles.

“How long will it take you to break this one?” he murmurs softly, like he’s confessing love instead of battle plans.

“Without anyone knowing?” Chloe breathes, and he nods. “Ten minutes.”

“Did you hear anything?” the voice says from inside the tunnel, echoing slightly, and Chloe flattens herself against the stone, as if that would do anything to stop someone from spotting her if they poked their head out.

“Dude, I think it was the wind,” a second voice says, slow and deeply uninterested.

“Start,” Killian says, low, even though Chloe’s instincts are to run, to hide into the forest until the danger has passed.

There’s a beep of a walkie talkie, closer to the mouth of the tunnel, and Chloe squeezes her eyes shut.

Before she reaches with her palm to the ward and starts piecing it apart.

It’s a complicated one, one created by several people all at once, etched into the very crystalline nature of the stone, and all at once Chloe knows why they chose to build the base here.

The stone, Quartzite buried deep into Granite, lays in the same pattern as the wards, reinforcing and buttressing it.

Chloe would bet that all further wards are tied into the same structure.

Her eyes pop open, staring up at the giant mountain of granite, at the structure ahead of her.

The entire thing was built to contain.

Killian watches her, his eyes reflecting back the dimming light at her. “Chloe…” he trails off, tilting his head at her.

She nods instead, twisting her mind deeper into the structure.

There are alarms built into it if the stones crack. There are alarms built in if someone removes a piece of the ward, even an animal carrying it away. Even the smallest of pebbles would be noticed if it disappeared.

It’s a redundancy of a redundancy.

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