CHAPTER 196
"Is everybody ok?" Dianna's voice sounded panicked.
"Yeah, we're still good," Kyra answered. She was crawling behind her, and Seth had taken up the rear.
Dianna got excited. "There's a light up ahead! I think I see a light."
Everybody kept crawling until they were all crowded around a junction point. The tunnel they were in kept going and there was another offshoot that went sharply left and then upward at a forty-five degree angle.
Dianna poked her head up into it. "Yes. It gets brighter. I think there's a way out." She turned to Kyra and Seth. They were both panting. "Is everybody still good?"
Kyra nodded, but Seth was looking nervous. "What if it's a trap?" He said. "They could be waiting for us right outside the mouth of that tube."
Dianna reached past Kyra and hugged Seth's shoulder. "We're not any better off in here, Seth, and we'll never get to that plane if we don't get out of this tunnel." She squeezed him. "Do you trust me?"
He nodded.
Dianna let go of him and smiled. In that moment there was a raptor screech, and Dianna's face pulled away from Seth and vanished up the side tunnel with a shrill scream.
Seth fell on his back and stared at the space where she once was. He didn't believe it. "No."
Kyra was staring as well. She was holding her breath and didn't realize it. When she let it out it was like she thought releasing the air would somehow bring Dianna back, like the dependability of swimming up for air and knowing that the sky would be there when you broke the surface.
She didn't come back. She was gone.
Kyra gasped. She looked at Seth. He was still staring. Kyra heard velociraptors cawing through the tunnel. Somehow she conjured the mental power to speak.
"Seth."
He didn't move. He didn't speak. He didn't even blink.
Kyra put a hand on his shoulder. "Seth."
"No!" He slapped it away. "No! No! No!" Seth clenched into a ball and started to wail, "it didn't happen! It didn't happen!" He slammed his fist on the side of the tunnel.
Kyra got a firm grip on him. "Seth we have to go!"
He turned away from her.
She gripped him tighter. "Seth we need to go now. It happened. It's done, but we're still alive, and we need to go."
He turned and looked at her. His eyes were soaked with tears that he didn't care to wipe away. No words came. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
"Come on," Kyra said. She took his hand.
There was a sound in the tunnel. It wasn't raptors. It was something else. The air rumbled. The walls of the cave shook, and everything grew in intensity. It was like an earthquake.
Seth's brain was literally shaken back to some state of being able to function, and he shouted, "what's happening?"
Pieces of rock began to crumble and fall from the ceiling.
"We have to get out of here!" Kyra yelled. She began to scurry down the tunnel on all fours. "Come on!"
Seth followed.