Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Thorne and Shadow stalk Masovich deeper into the mine, where dynamite stores and a radio transmission reveal the colonel has ordered the full destruction of Derkach. Thorne cuts the radio's external antenna to sever Masovich's command link. A cave-in triggered by old charges separates Shadow from Thorne, leaving the wolf behind rubble while Thorne presses forward alone into a chamber where Masovich waits with a detonator and a grim ultimatum.
The voice was wrong. It didn't echo, didn't bounce; it was too close, too flat, as if Masovich were speaking directly into an object at his side. A field radio, Thorne realized with a sickening lurch in his gut. Short-range. He pressed himself lower, his breath catching in his throat, striving to mimic the absolute stillness of the wolf ahead. Shadow, usually a low rumble of warning at the slightest hint of danger, was now a statue of coiled tension, ears flattened against her skull, her powerful body pressed flat against the slick, cold stone. Her silence was more terrifying than any growl. Shadow only fell silent when the threat was immediate, when the enemy was close enough to discern the faint rustle of fabric, the subtle shift of weight, the very thrum of a heartbeat.
The air grew heavy, thick with the cloying, acrid stench of dynamite. It was the smell of old nitrate, sweat-sour and unstable, a scent that bloomed when the casings began to degrade, oozing a slow, insidious volatility. This cache had been here long before the Greys arrived, a forgotten relic from a forgotten conflict. Masovich had found it, and a chilling certainty settled over Thorne: the colonel had grasped its catastrophic potential the moment he laid eyes on it.
"Begin clearance. Level the village. All of it."
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