Dragon's Isolation - Miranda Martin Page 0,46
instantly.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s fine. I was scared, that’s all.”
I rest a hand on his back trying to get my breath back. My heart is pitter-pattering as I try to stop the shaking that comes with too much adrenaline too fast. Shidan looks over his shoulder then turns around.
“Scared,” I say again. “It’s nothing. It’s okay.”
I don’t know what I saw in there. It looked like a desiccated husk of… something. It shouldn’t have scared me so much, but I didn’t expect those glassy, empty eyes to be looking back at me. I push my hair out of my face and steel my resolve.
“Up,” I say.
Shidan’s eyes narrow and he frowns. The moment he does, my heart shatters and I can’t catch my breath.
“Shidan?” I ask, touching his face. “My love?”
Something flickers in his eyes, a hint of the old him. The him of not so long ago, the man I love more than life itself. His mouth works, and on an impulse, I lift up on the balls of my feet and kiss him.
“A-ma-ra,” he says, sounding my name out as if it’s hard to say.
“Yes, my love,” I say. “Fight it, you hear me? Fight it. You stay with me.”
“Stay. Love. Treasure,” he says.
“That’s right,” I assure him. “Your treasure. Stay here, with me. Now lift me up there again. WE have to find something for Addison to cure you.”
He takes me by my waist and lifts me back onto the cylinder. This time I’m not going to be taken by surprise. I plant the torch where it hangs over the broken window so I can see, then get a sample kit out of my pack.
This is disgusting, but for Shidan I’ll do anything. Including taking samples of desiccated, dead flesh. I scrape the samples into the tube and seal it, then carefully replace it. I don’t know if this is what we’re looking for or not, and there’s still a lot of space to explore.
“I’m coming down,” I say, grabbing the torch.
When I scoot to the side of the cylinder, Shidan has his arms outstretched waiting for me. I slide down into his arms, and he squeezes me tight before he puts me down. The next cylinder is still sealed, but through the dirty window I see what looks like a Zmaj.
We go from cylinder to cylinder with Shidan lifting me up onto each one, making our way slowly to the wall. Something keeps bugging me. It’s tugging at my awareness, something I should notice or have noticed but haven’t put together yet. It hits me, and I stumble to a stop.
“Do you hear that?” I ask.
“A-ma-ra,” Shidan answers. “No.”
I close my eyes and listen. There, it’s soft, so soft I didn’t notice it. A background noise, a low hum. Turning in a circle, I try to locate a source, but it’s everywhere. I step over to the next cylinder and rest my hands on it, closing my eyes again.
“These things are on!” I exclaim.
“On…?” Shidan drags out the single syllable then makes it a question.
“On! They’re running! What in the hell is this place?”
Looking in the windows of these tubes isn’t giving the answers I need, so it’s time to take a different tack. I grab Shidan’s hand and run down the row. When we reach the wall, the torch shows that there’s a painted line running down the middle point of it stretching off in both directions.
I choose left, because all true adventurers always go left, or so I heard somewhere at some point. Mostly I don’t have a better direction to go as they both look the same. Dark and creepy. I keep pulling Shidan along with me as I run. I’m onto something and I know it. I don’t know what, but this is big. Super big. Now to figure out what ‘this’ is.
The further we go, the more the hugeness of the area hits me. If this was a military base, then this was a giant space. It’s impossible to grasp the size fully with the small pool of light cast by my torch. A large, Zmaj-sized door appears in the wall. A sign on it reads, Laboratory.
Shidan touches the sign, running his fingers over it but he doesn’t say anything. Emotions hit me like a jet fighter, punching straight into my guts. My throat closes and tears fall before I know what’s happening. Seeing him like this makes me panic, I want to shut down, curl into a