Page 93 of In Too Deep
Maybe more.
“Teague!”Liam was at the second helicopter and practically carried Meg now.Her head lolled against his shoulder.“We need to go!”
“Thirty seconds!”Teague called back, already spraying a large orangeXon the ground near the shaft opening.The paint hissed.Chemical smell cut through the aviation fuel and dust.
His hands moved fast.He paced off twelve feet—long strides—and marked anotherX.He calculated the depth based on the shaft measurements and spray-painted the number in large digits.
He just needed to?—
The ground trembled and shifted beneath his boots.Subtle at first.As if the world were clearing its throat.
Then stronger.
“Teague!”Liam’s voice was raw with panic.“Now!”
Teague dropped the paint can—heard it clatter on stone—and broke into a sprint toward the chopper, not even pausing to grab his pack.
Forty feet away.
The roar started deep underground—a bass note that vibrated through his bones, through his teeth, through the rocky ground beneath him.The sound of the earth’s foundation failing.Of millions of tons of rock losing the battle with gravity.
Thirty feet.
The sound of structural failure on a massive scale—amplified and catastrophic.His boots pounded the rocky ground, the dust from the chopper sandblasting his skin.Lungs burned.
Twenty feet.
The first helicopter was already lifting off with Noah and Alex and banked hard away from the plateau.Nose dipping.Gaining speed and altitude.Getting clear.
The second helicopter’s rotors increased pitch—that distinctive whine of maximum power.The skids lifted off the ground.One foot.Two.
He was just ten feet away.
Behind him, the rumble became a roar.Not sound anymore.Force.The earth was collapsing and falling into the void below.The vibrations shook the ground—rattled up through his boots, his legs, his spine.The defining sound of cracking rock and stone filled the air.Ancient limestone gave way.Centuries-old formations failed in seconds.
The helicopter was rising.
Three feet off the ground.
Four.
Liam was hanging out the open door with both hands extended and his face stark white.Eyes wide.Mouth moving.But Teague couldn’t hear the words over the roar.
“JUMP!”
The word cut through somehow—clear and desperate.
Teague launched himself forward as the ground beneath his last step disappeared and literally fell away.Just gone.
Empty air where solid rock had been.
His hands found the skid—cold metal, solid, real—and his fingers locked around it as his body swung wildly beneath the rising helicopter.His full weight suddenly hung from his grip.The pilot banked hard and gained altitude fast, and Teague’s legs kicked at empty air.
Below him, the shaft opening had disappeared, swallowed by the sinkhole now expanding in a perfect circle—geometry born from destruction.Fifty feet across, seventy-five, a hundred.Rock and brush and ancient stone tumbled into the void and cascaded down.The roar was deafening and overwhelming.The sound of apocalypse.
The sound of the earth consuming itself.
Liam’s hands clamped around Teague’s wrist, his grip like a vise and his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.Another set of hands—a paramedic in a flight suit—grabbed Teague’s other arm.They hauled together and dragged him up as his boots scraped against the skid.His shoulders screamed.
