Page 100 of Heart of the Deep

The door opened silently at the touch of a button. Dracchus narrowed his eyes against the bright corridor lights.

“Good, you’re awake,” Randall said.

“Damnit, Randall, what the hell?” Larkin appeared next to Dracchus, fully clothed in a shirt and pants. She shielded her eyes with a hand as she scowled at her brother. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Dracchus looked over Randall. He wore only a pair of pants, his hair was tousled, and his cheeks and jaw were darkened by a short growth of hair. He clutched a pistol in one hand. Ikaros was beside him, staring down the hallway, whiskers and spine fin raised.

Dracchus frowned.

“Ikaros was acting up,” Randall said, turning his head from side to side to glance down the corridor. “I thought he wanted to go out at first, but I think this is more. I think someone’s prowling these halls.”

Larkin moved away from Dracchus.

“Did you find anyone?” Dracchus asked.

Randall ran his free hand through his hair. “No. But something doesn’t feel right.”

Having donned her boots and belt, Larkin returned. She drew back the slide of her pistol to confirm the round in its chamber. “Let’s check it out.”

Before either Dracchus or Larkin had exited the room, Ikaros growled, sinking to bunch his shoulders defensively, attention on something down the hallway.

Randall turned his head in the same direction. “Oh, shit.”

Dracchus moved through the doorway and halted abruptly when he saw what the two were focused on.

Kronus stood in the center of the corridor, four doors away.

Larkin stopped beside Dracchus, aiming her pistol at Kronus. “What are you doing here?”

Kronus lifted his hands, displaying empty palms.

“You accepted the terms,” Dracchus said, advancing toward Kronus. “You know what it means to have returned.”

“I did, and I do,” Kronus replied. He met Dracchus’s gaze. “The warning I must give you is worth the risk.”

Dracchus stopped a body’s length away from Kronus. Randall, Larkin, and Ikaros fell into place on Dracchus’s sides.

“Here for more threats?” Dracchus asked.

“No. I cannot allow the past to repeat itself.” Kronus’s expression was strained. “I will not remain idle while more innocents are harmed.”

“So you sneak into the place we sleep in the middle of the night?” Randall demanded. “That’s a bit too similar to shit your supporters have pulled on me for my liking.”

“What are you talking about, Kronus?” Larkin asked.

“The others have rejected their banishment,” Kronus replied. “They are coming now to reclaim the Facility.”

The words didn’t sound right, couldn’t be true, but there was no deception in Kronus’s haunted eyes. Dracchus had known something like this was inevitable, that a movement birthed of hatred could only end in violence.Thisis what he’d sensed coming over the last few weeks. It was oddly relieving to have something to justify the dread that had been burning in his gut, low and steady, since the banishment.

“All of them?” Dracchus asked.

Kronus nodded. “Their time in the wilds has made them bold. Successful hunts have made them believe they are the superior group, that they can best you and take this place back.”

“Don’t they remember thateveryonestood against them?” Larkin asked.

“Their belief seems to be that killing all of you will turn the rest back to the proper way.”

Dracchus clenched his jaw. “How long?”

---