The world was coming to an end around them.
A huge part of the ceiling fell onto the floor, making series of cracks spreading very fast at them. Jonah quickly held Vanessa's hand and pulled her back just as the ground beneath them collapsed into a dark pit.
"This way!" Jonah shouted over the roaring chaos. His mind was filled with fear and failure, but his instincts, the survival skills he had learned in the Undercroft, were screaming at him to move.
He sent a desperate command to Trace, his scout that was still somewhere in the facility. He needed a path. An escape route.
An image suddenly appeared in his mind. It was a map of twisting service tunnels, one of which led upwards, towards the outer side of the volcano. "There's a maintenance shaft!" he shouted to Vanessa. "Just past that fallen pillar! We need to get up there!"
They ran, their feet sliding on the broken, moving floor. They climbed over piles of wreckage and dodged falling pieces of metal. The flashing emergency, red lights made moving shadows that made the collapsing chamber look like a nightmare.
They reached the huge pillar that had fallen down, creating a way to a higher level. They quickly climbed over the fallen pillar, their hands finding places to grip on it's cracked surface. Below them, the rest of the Chamber dropped into a fiery hole as the floor fully broke.
They made it to the next level just in time, breathing hard from effort. They found the opening to the maintenance shaft, which looked like a dark, square hole in the wall. Follow current novels on novel-fire.net
"I don't think we are going to fit that place," Vanessa said, eyeing the narrow opening.
"We have to," Jonah said, his voice serious.
Suddenly, a familiar voice cut through the noise. "Need a hand?"
They quickly turned. At the far end of the collapsing corridor, two figures were running towards them. It was Seraph, and she was helping to carry Draven, whose golden armor was gone, his uniform torn and dark.
"Seraph!" Jonah cried out, feeling a big rush of relief.
Draven smiled, with blood on his chin. "Took you long enough," he said in a low voice. "I was getting bored."
"The reactor blew faster than we expected," Seraph explained, her voice serious as she helped Draven lean against the wall. "This whole mountain is coming down. We need to get to the western cliff face. That's our extraction point."
"This shaft leads that way," Jonah confirmed, his mind still linked with Trace.
Another big RUMBLE shook the fortress all the way down to its base. The floor groaned beneath them.
"Then let's move!" Seraph ordered.
Their urgent escape began. The four of them rushed into the dark, narrow tunnels. They ran through hallways full of fire and smoke, jumped over big holes that opened in the floor, and moved to avoid falling poles that fell like angry powers.
As they neared one of the containment levels, they faced something new and terrible. The explosion from the reactor had broken the stasis pods. The failed experiments, the ugly monsters Jonah had seen earlier, were now free. They moving wildly in the corridors, attacking anything that moved.
An ugly beast, which looked like a mix of wolf and crab, jumped at them from the shadows. Draven, despite his injuries, met it with an angry roar, smashing it aside with his huge fist. "Ugly bastard!" he yelled.
They couldn't stop to fight. They just kept going, trying to get out of the worst place imaginable.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, they saw a dim, gray light at the end of a long tunnel.
"The outside!" Vanessa gasped.
They rushed from the tunnel onto a breaking cliff edge. They were high on the volcano's side. The wind was a strong blast, hitting them with cold rain and hot ash. The whole mountain was rumbling and shaking, ready to fall.
"Where's our ride?" Draven shouted over the wind.
Suddenly, they began to hear a powerful thump-thump-thump sound coming through the bad weather.
A smooth, black military VTOL came down from the sky, its powerful engines struggled against the violent winds. It was the General's best bird, and it was one of the most beautiful thing Jonah had ever seen.
The side door was already open, and a soldier was waving fast at them. The VTOL couldn't land on the breaking cliff. It stayed in the air, about few feet away. The wind from its engines almost blew them right off the edge.
"We have to jump!" Seraph yelled.
One by one, they took a running leap of faith. Seraph went first, landing gracefully inside the open door. Jonah and Vanessa jumped together, their hands held together tightly, and were pulled inside by the waiting soldiers.
Draven was the one left. He gave the collapsing mountain one last angry look, then made the jump, landing with a heavy THUD that made the whole aircraft shake.
The door closed, sealing them out the storm. The VTOL turned sharply, its engines making a loud noise as it moved away from the volcano that was blowing up.
The team collapsed onto the floor of the transport, completely worn out. They were bruised and bleeding, but they were alive. They had lived through it.
Jonah pushed himself up and looked out the reinforced window.
They had escaped the collapsing fortress.
The entire volcano blew up. A huge line of fire and rock shot up to the sky. It was the blast that took away Thorne's fortress from the face of the earth.
The team sat in the back of the VTOL, silent, watching the destruction.
But Thorne's last words stayed in Jonah's mind, louder than any blast.
The age of mass production has begun.
He looked away from the fire to the dark horizon, towards a world that did not yet know what was coming.
The Genesis War was over.
And a new, more terrible war had just begun.