Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
it, then it won't matter what happens in here.” A measuring look had replaced the
wonder.
Avoiding looking at any one spot too long, Rit tried to sort out what he could of
the shapes. Almost to the focus of the disturbance, he found a slit-like area, not
so different in appearance, but holding different kinds of potential past the
surface than he sensed with the rest. The much larger size of the bay had moved
it further away. To Ulanda he said, “Can you tell if that’s it?”
She shook her head. “I can't feel the exit at all.”
“It’s our best bet then.” He set one bead and rolled it out a few yards in front
of them, then two more to make a triangle, and linked them. They rose to float at
waist level. “Stay out from the walls as long as possible, and keep the warding
fields between us and the...” His eyes followed the lead of Alicia's rifle. The
shapes in the wall were more solid. More real if Alicia was seeing them.
Alicia fell to one knee and almost instantly, Rit felt the buzz as their warding
synchronized with the rifle setting, and saw the flare of blue erupt across the
flitter bay. The shapes split apart and in the afterglow, took form. The gray had to
be Rilla. Then Heana. A ti'Linn, but pale in color. Ge'on'ni, then. The three didn't
fire back but a pushing field hit their warding like a storm wind.
Rit strengthened their field, cutting the sound if not the light: the interface
where the systems fought crackled like sheet lightening. Standard Temple
warding, and their own, Zimmer based.
“Try to take us back out of here,” he said to Ulanda from over his shoulder,
most of his attention on the warding.
“Would the flitter bay be safer?” Alicia asked, sounding icily calm as she set a
different color bar into the rifle. “Can't we do something here?” She looked at
Ulanda. “Can you change the pull?”
“I told you I couldn't.”
Their plan had been all or nothing; there hadn't been time for more. This could
fall through their fingers like dry sand, leaving them where they started. “Then
we'll do what we can to reach the others,” Rit said.
He tried one more time to “see” the exit more clearly, and suddenly, was
standing at the edge of a drop, the wall patterns below him. Solid crystal was still
under his feet, but black and white showed under that and still twisting out of his
focus.
He backed away from the edge, and tried to see the dome as it had been. The
slick surface under his shoes, how the leather soles couldn't grip. The texture of
cloth rubbing on his skin as he crossed his arms. Air in his lungs, the lingering
taste of acrid dust in his throat.
He was on the floor, Alicia standing over him, firing burst points through their
warding. The flitter bay was back as it was but inevitability swelled all around
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca