Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

There was a sickening crunch and a wet tearing noise, as Bishop twisted its head completely around.

Only a few seconds had passed since the frankensteins began their final attack, and for those few seconds, Queen had felt completely useless. While she had stood by waiting for something to do, her teammates had seized the day and destroyed the enemy.

Not completely destroyed, though. One frankenstein remained. It had dodged Rook’s bullets and slipped past Bishop, even as the big man had torn its brother’s head off.

Knight brought the Barrett up, bracing it against his hip and firing point blank. The round punched a fist-sized hole clear through the creature’s abdomen. The frankenstein staggered back a step, but before Knight could fire again, it started forward, seizing the barrel of the rifle. There was an audible hiss as the thing’s skin blistered against the hot metal, but the frankenstein ignored the pain and pulled the gun, along with an unbalanced Knight, forward into its reach. The wounded beast seized Knight’s arms, stretching them out like a child preparing to rip the wings off a captured fly.

Queen ran at the creature, pummeling it with the butt of her carbine, but she was disdainfully swatted away. She sprang up, desperate to do something…anything…that might keep Knight alive long enough for one of the others to come to the rescue, but she’d lost her carbine in the fall. She groped for the knife sheathed to her combat vest, but her hand found something else instead, a hard cylindrical object.

Yes!

Knight’s cry of pain galvanized her. She leaped onto the frankenstein’s back, wrapping her right arm around its head as Bishop had done, and clawed the fingers of her free hand into its eyes.

Though virtually immune to pain, the frankenstein reacted instinctively to the threat to its eyesight. It let go of Knight and reached up to defend against this new attack. Queen dug deeper, driving a finger between the orb and the eye socket, eliciting a howl of rage.

That howl was just what she had been hoping for.

“Cover up!” she shouted.

She dropped her left hand, using it to hold herself in place, and then jammed the object she’d been holding with her right hand into the thing’s open mouth.

With a sharp hiss, the M14 incendiary grenade ignited and transformed the frankenstein’s head into a miniature sun.

She threw herself back, scrambling to put some distance between herself and the bloom of white hot fire. Shading her eyes, she circled around to check on Knight.

He had heeded her advice and gotten well clear of the creature before the grenade had ignited, but even though he was several meters away from the blazing pyre of flesh, he was rubbing at his skin.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He managed a wan smile as he looked up at her. “Weird thing though; I’ve got pins and needles all over.”

That was when Queen realized that she did too.





FIFTY-NINE


Two things saved King’s life.

The first was the shape of the fissure. The rift narrowed with depth, coming together at a seam so tight that a piece of paper could not have slipped into it. As he and Rainer fell, still locked together in combat, the shrinking gap between the walls caught them like friction brakes, slowing and ultimately halting their downward plunge.

The second factor that had made the difference between life and death was Kevin Rainer. Positioned as he was beneath King, Rainer’s body cushioned the eventual impact just enough to spare King from serious harm. King was bruised, battered and bloody, but none of his injuries were life-threatening.

The same could not be said for Rainer; King’s body drove into him like a hammer, forcing him deeper into the fissure than seemed possible, leaving him sandwiched between slabs of limestone about three inches apart. The pressure crushed the man’s ribcage, driving nails of bone through his lungs and into his vital organs.

King felt the walls pressing in on either side of him as well, and he started to panic. He was afraid to move, fearful that doing so might cause him to slide deeper into the crevasse, to a place where it would be impossible for him to get free. Then he felt the tingling in his skin, and he knew that being trapped in stone was the least of his worries.

His awareness of what was at stake did not make his task any easier, but Rainer’s body was a stable platform from which to begin clawing his way out of the abyss. With each inch he climbed, the press of stone against his chest diminished.

There was light now, bright but indirect, pouring down from high above to reveal his destination: the dark passage that led to the Prime.

Parker’s words came back to him.

If I can’t stop this, everyone dies.

Parker hadn’t been able to stop it, though.

King’s skin was burning, and the tingling was sinking deeper into his limbs. He wondered how much worse it would get before the end.