"Yeah, yeah," Plunger muttered. "It takes longer if I make it wider."
"Well we have time, we're still waiting for Rosa," I said firmly and Plunger waved his ass in answer to that but started widening the tunnel again as we moved.
A faint tremor sounded somewhere off in the ground and I frowned up at the ceiling of mud above me, praying it wasn't going to cave in on our heads.
The tremor grew louder and I swallowed the ball rising in my throat.
"You sure this tunnel's safe?" I hissed at Plunger.
"Safe?" he tsked. "Of course it's safe."
"Then what's that noise?" I growled as another tremor ran through the earth beneath me.
Plunger stopped moving, turning his head left and right, up and down, his mole nose twitching as he tried to locate the source of the noise.
Another tremor ran through the wall on my left and I swear there was something moving through the ground. But that couldn't be right.
"Oh bless my balls," Plunger breathed, sounding fearful and my pulse quickened.
"What is it?" I demanded.
A noise like an explosion ripped through the tunnel behind me and I swung my head around as dirt was thrown over me. Beyond Gustard, a huge, slithering, snake-like body was slicing through our tunnel, tearing its own path through the middle of us with its gaping, toothy mouth wide. A shout of fear got lodged in my throat as I took in the monstrous creature and suddenly realised the wetness coating my skin wasn't dirt. It was blood.
"Move!" Gustard roared and the worm creature disappeared back into the ground, its tail flicking out behind it so that I could see the other members of our team again through a fog of debris. One of Gustard's men was missing and the other two were screaming, trying to turn back as panic lit their eyes. My breaths came heavily as I tried to figure out what to do. The only thing we could do.
"Plunger! Go!" I bellowed and the Mole Shifter dove forward, starting to dig faster than he ever had in his life.
I crawled along behind him at a quick pace and someone managed to get Gustard's men moving after us too. There was nowhere else to go but forward. We had to get out of here.
Another tremor made my heart judder and Plunger suddenly leapt backwards just before a huge worm sliced across the path in front of him, tearing a huge tunnel into the ground.
Plunger scrambled out into the large space it had left behind, able to get to his feet, then he ran off in the direction it had come from with a wail of fright, leaving us all in the total, impenetrable dark.
I woke on the floor, groaning as I came to, released from a nightmare of my past as everything slowly drew back together in my mind. There was a more important nightmare I needed to return to, one where I was a man and not a boy with bloody hands and an aching heart. I pushed myself up to my knees with a grunt, the pain in my arm from the curse mark ebbing away, but still needling at me. It felt different this time though, like it was urging me to move.
I got to my feet, growling at the sight of the barrier still barring my way to the elevator and my ears rang with the faraway sound of a whirring alarm. Everything swept back to me at once.
The Incubus.
The riot.
The fucking Order Suppressant.
I twisted around, tearing down the corridor toward the warden's office and throwing my shoulder against it, breaking the lock as I forced my way inside. She wasn't working tonight, which meant I was officially in charge and I wasn't going to remain stuck up here unable to help. I needed to get down to the maintenance level to find out what had happened to the Order Suppressing gas and there was only one way to do that now.
I hurried over to the warden's perfectly organised desk and tapped the panel on one side of it, bringing up the emergency code entry. I clicked on the button for the escape tunnel. It was a well kept secret by the guards and a failsafe in case of this exact sort of situation.
I typed in the code and a clunk sounded behind me somewhere in the wall, but before I turned to face the open hatch, my eyes snagged on a handwritten note