Before love Lies
I tilted my head back, searching the sky—no helicopters, no drones, nothing to suggest we’d been tracked from above.
For a split second, there was silence.
Too much silence.
My legs finally gave out. I dropped to my knees, my hands sinking into the forest floor. My fingers closed around a stick half-buried in the dirt—nothing unusual about it. Just another broken branch.
I pulled.
The ground shifted beneath us with a low, mechanical groan.
Before Michelle could speak, the earth split open. The forest floor dropped away as if it had never been solid at all. We fell forward, the world tilting violently, air rushing past us as the hidden hatch snapped fully open.