Sinkholes Nornir Chest Novels & Stories

He landed heavily on the riverbed, the sheer celestial mass he was channeling kicking up a massive cloud of underwater silt. He saw the pitch-black chassis sinking in the dark. Torin lunged. His massive, crystalline claws gripped the heavy, featureless shoulder plates of my dead armor. He didn't waste time trying to pry the helmet off or find a release latch. He just looked up at the two-mile vertical shaft above us.

So if Chester was here, Corey was definitely here too. 'So that's Corey? Damn, this ability is annoying. I haven't even done anything yet, and I'm already exposed. If I try to make a move later, it'll be over before I even start. 'In any fight, the first step is to cut off the enemy's intel. I need to take this guy out. 'Should I use spatial swap to pull him out? No. Too far. 'This hive—whoever dug it—goes down 300 meters underground. The fact that it's not flooded is a miracle. Susan and her crew are roughly 200 meters down, way beyond the range of a direct spatial swap.

My void shield was fading, my hands shaking from the cellular tax of the siphon. Before I could even speak, Dominic lunged forward. He didn't grab Nora's body. He grabbed me by the waist, lifting me off my feet, and sprinted toward a heavy, reinforced steel ventilation shaft on the northern wall. With a single, brutal kick, he shattered the iron grate, exposing a deep, narrow chute that slid straight down into the subterranean drainage systems outside the sector. "Dominic, no! We can't leave her!" I screamed, tearing at his shoulders.

A high-frequency scream tore through the mountain air, cutting off the wind's roar. Above the tree line, a sleek, razor-thin interceptor drone plummeted through the clouds, its silver chassis reflecting the white of the ice below. It hovered like a metal hornet, fifty paces from the edge of the platform. Its chin-turret—a heavy, twin-barrel optical disruptor—whirled in a silent, motorized orbit, its purple lenses seeking the unique electromagnetic signature of Noah’s chest-mounted core terminal.

The air in the narrow drainage conduit is damp, cool, and blessedly free of toxic smoke, allowing my scorched lungs to expand as I crawl frantically toward the faint glimmer of moonlight at the far end. The adrenaline still pumps furiously through my veins, masking the throbbing pain in my neck and the raw burns along my arms as I drag myself through the claustrophobic passage. I reach the outer exit and drag my weary body out of the dark masonry pipe, collapsing onto the damp earth to catch my breath in the open air. I crawl out into the cool night air of the lower cliffside, only to realize that the glowing recording stone in my tunic has cracked and is leaking a strange, corrupted black f

Her heart sped up a little. "Exactly," Sofia said, removing her t-shirt. Her breasts dangled freely, and Lisa saw that her nipples were indeed dark, almost black, about the size of store-bought chocolate cookies. She also had a belly button ring, and a small scar on her left abdomen. It looked surgical.

He ended the call. He looked at me. "Gregor reports significant ground shifts in the northern section of Ashwood territory over the past two weeks," he said. "Three sinkholes. Two areas of ground subsidence that have affected the forest above the descent entry point." He paused. "The descent entry point itself is currently blocked by a collapse that happened six days ago." The room absorbed that. "The descent route is closed," I said. "Yes," he said. "The channel maintenance requires a descent route," I said.

Arkyn growled. The light from Norris’s eyes began to flicker. Arkyn attempted to move away but couldn't. He could see Norris was moving his hand unsure of what else he was trying to do. He heard something fall to the ground as Norris used his last bit of strength to try to pour the silver into Arkyn’s wound. Arkyn tried to pull his claws out of Norris' chest but because Norris’s claw was through his shoulder, he couldn't move without him letting go. He braced himself for the poison.

The address on his driver’s license is false; his dive-master identification card is a fake. Eventually, as the rescue divers search the sinkhole, explore the long caves and narrow passages looking for our bodies, they’ll recover a fin, top of the line and brand-new, matching the type I bought from a local dive shop a few weeks ago. Shortly after this they will call off the search.

The engine of the SUV ticked as it cooled, the only sound in the vast, empty silence of the northern ridge. Ophelia stood at the edge of the dirt track, her breath hitching in the thin, cold air. Below her, the North Mine looked like a jagged wound in the side of the mountain. It wasn’t the gleaming, high-tech facility of the Blue Core... it was a skeletal ruin of rusted iron and rotting timber, long abandoned by everyone except the shadows.