The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

Carving a hole through the earth is voluntary. Something I need to focus on to achieve.

So I take a deep breath, clear my mind and imagine the earth opening. I see myself stretching out into the stone, comingling atoms. The ground starts to shake. My heart races as I exert a kind of force I never have before. I slide my hands apart. A loud crack echoes in the chamber. The shaking grows more intense.

I scream as muscles in my arms burn. My head pounds with every heartbeat. And then, when I can’t take any more, I fall to the ground gasping like I’ve just nearly drowned. My vision goes black for a moment, but three deep breaths clear my eyes and I see it. A tunnel, barely big enough to squeeze through has been opened in the stone wall.

But is it deep enough? Does it reach through two hundred feet of stone?

Too exhausted to stand, I drag myself toward the mouth of the tunnel and smell the air. It is dank and old. Like the pit. I have failed and lack the energy to try again. I’ll have to face another feeder, and—

My hair twitches, tickling the side of my face. A breeze blows across my face, carrying the scents of snow and a hint of salt water. The smells of the surface!

Invigorated by the odor of freedom, I pull myself to my feet, but find my legs wobbly beneath my weight. Using Whipsnap as a cane, I hobble into the tunnel, and lean against the wall, scraping my shoulder with each step.

When I get ten feet into the tunnel, Gaia must sense I’m no longer in the pit because she starts shrieking. Ninnis will know I’ve escaped somehow, but it will take him time to clear the debris from the entrance. Then again, maybe he’ll drop down from the ceiling where Gaia is hiding. I do my best to ignore the pain and exhaustion wracking my body, and focus on the remaining one hundred and ninety feet.

Each step feels like a knife in my stomach, and I’m fighting the urge to vomit, not because I need what little food is in there or because it would be gross, but because the scent would be easy to track. And I don’t want Ninnis to know where I’ve gone.

I stumble out of my escape route and into the larger tunnel that leads to the surface. I’ve nearly reached my goal, but now must cover my tracks. If Ninnis finds and follows my new tunnel here, he’ll know where I’ve gone. If he found me now, I would be in real danger. If he finds me after I close this tunnel, I would be defenseless.

I place my hands on the sides of the tunnel, close my eyes and grit my teeth. With the last of my energy, I bring my hands together and feel the stone closing. But not all of it. More than half the tunnel remains open, and Ninnis will follow it. But he will not find me. It will be as though I disappeared.

I slide to my knees. Sweat pours from my forehead. My body shivers. It will soon shut down.

After wrapping Whipsnap around my waist, I crawl on my hands and knees, following the tunnel up. The pain and physical trauma take me back to my past. I was eight. It was winter. I had dug a fort in the snow pile across the street from our house. My mother called me in for lunch and on my way back, I decided to pole vault a puddle with my shovel. Little did I know the sidewalk was sheer ice. When I landed, my feet shot out from under me and I fell flat on my back. The air exploded from my lungs and my whole back tensed with pain. Eight years old and I thought I was dying. I pulled myself, using just my arms, past two houses, and then up the stairs to my house, where I remained in bed for three days.

I’m repeating that memory now, crawling to safety while my body reels from a sudden and horrible punishment. While I know I’m not dying this time, I know I might if I linger. I reach the top of the tunnel fifteen minutes later and slide out onto the snow covered mountainside. Clark Station Two is just a mile away; most of the trip is downhill.

I can make it, I tell myself. Just push harder.

So I push.

I emerge from the tunnel and onto the snow like a new born seal. Gravity does the rest. The snow is packed tight and I slip over it, gaining speed with each passing second. I lie on my back, watching the clouds pass through the dark blue sky.

I see a bunny, I think, blinking my eyes at a rabbit shaped cloud. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a bunny.

I blink again. My head lolls to the side. Cruising down the mountainside like a bobsled freed from the track, I blink one last time, seeing stones whizzing past.

And then I fall asleep.





16



I wake to a world of glowing white light. It wraps around me, holding me tight. I can’t move my head. Or my limbs. But I can feel my eyes shifting, so I know I’m actually seeing the white light. It’s not in my head. I flex my arms with a grunt, but am still stuck. The sound of my voice is muffled. Contained.

I’m trapped, I think, and I fight my bonds with all my strength. A crack forms in the white. It’s close to my eyes, so I have to strain to focus on it. When I do, the reality of my current predicament slams home.

I’m not only trapped, I’m frozen—in ice!