Nerida Quickwave's Arc

Chapter 4 of 12

Nerida turned from the slit in the hatch and let her eyes adjust to the dim inside the bunker. The walls were metal, streaked with rust, and bright fungi clung to deep scratches in the plating. The grooves were not random. Someone had cut them on purpose, low to the floor, where a person might hide and work in the dark. She crawled closer and pushed the glowing growths aside. Letters. Whole words, scraped raw into the metal. Her hands went cold. She knew the slant of those marks. She had read his journal forty times. In the corner sat a battered locker, its lock broken open, his initials scratched beside the number on the door. Inside lay a jagged bone shard with a sharpened tip, its edge still dark with metal dust. He had used it to carve. She lifted it, then made herself read what he had left behind. Do not follow it. It is not alone. If you are reading this, turn back. The council wants us all down here. Nerida sat with the shard in her hand and the warning glowing faintly above her. He had reached this bunker. He had known. He had written for her, and he had still gone out and died. She tucked the shard into her belt and looked again at the slit in the door. Turning back was no longer a path that existed. The metal thing and the beast stood between her and the open sea, and now she carried proof that her mentor had begged her not to come.