The world went white, then black, then an alarming shade of migraine purple.

  Thimble’s vision returned with a lovely view of the ugly red sky. She blinked her eyes and tried to sit up. Her head felt like it had been used to hammer loose rivets. The taste in her mouth wasn’t blood, but she almost wished it were—metallic, yes, but with the faint afterglow of burnt mana.

  She got a foot under herself and peered around. The others were scattered across the ground like poorly thrown dice. Siva lay sprawled on her face, unmoving. The captain was already upright, cursing under his breath. Ben was—Ben was gone.

  Behind them, the portal was nothing. Not closed, not dormant, but erased—like the universe had run an undo command. Not so much as an afterimage, not even static in the air. Thimble stood up, nearly fell over, and stared at the spot where it had been, as if she could brute force a different reality by glaring. Didn’t take.

  The reek of burnt mana lingered, sharp enough to sting her nostrils. If she squinted, she could see the faint soot shadow of the portal’s frame, a negative on the ground. She knelt and scraped at it with a finger. The residue crackled under her touch, hostile, like it wanted to get under her skin.

  She looked up at the captain, who was flexing his left hand and watching the air like it might try to bite him. She’d seen him pissed before, but this was something else. He looked like he’d just bitten into a hand grenade.

  “Status?” she croaked, hating how thin her voice sounded.

  He grunted. “You’re standing. Legionnaire’s not.”

  “Ben?”

  His mouth worked for a second. “Not here.”

  She tasted the wordless dread rising in her throat and forced it down. If Ben was in the labyrinth, and the portal was gone…no, don’t think about that yet. Intel first, panic later.

  She stumbled over to Siva, who was snoring into the dirt—an ugly, wet sound that meant her faceplate was probably full of blood and snot. Thimble rolled her over, removed her helm, checked pupils, pulse, airway. Everything functioning, even if the human inside was clearly defective. She slapped Siva’s cheek once, twice, and got a groan for her trouble. Good enough.

  Nearby, the captain cracked his knuckles. “You see what happened? You were closest to the gate.”

  She replayed the last moments in her head before ejection. “Wasn’t a mana surge,” she said. “Different resonance. Like it was… cannibalized.”

  The captain spat. “Run that by me again.”

  She fished in her mind for the right word. “It was as if the gate was devoured. Not collapsed. Consumed.”

  The captain looked at her, really looked at her, eyes squinted into vertical slits. “Could he finish the labyrinth solo?”

  “If he can, it'll be a miracle. You know there will be a guardian covering the exit portal,” she said worriedly.

  Siva coughed, sat up, and squinted at them. “What’d I miss?”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Portal’s gone, Ben’s in the wind,” the captain said.

  Siva shook her head, either in disbelief or to reset the jelly in her skull. “I saw it. The gate didn’t fail. It inverted.”

  The pantheran frowned. “Explain.”

  Siva dragged herself up the side of a boulder and pressed a hand to her temple, like she might extract a memory with brute force. “There was a second layer. Underneath the gate’s main structure. It hooked into the portal’s frequency and… ate the rest.”

  “Trap?” the captain asked.

  Siva shrugged. “Design flaw, more likely, but anything's possible. If Ben’s still in there, he’s locked in. Exit portal’s his only hope.”

  Thimble felt the first real prickle of panic. “If we can’t re-open the portal, he’ll be killed. Or he’ll be stuck in there forever. It’s not like he needs to eat anymore.”

  The captain’s tail lashed in irritation. “We’re not letting him rot in there.”

  Siva snorted. “You got a plan? Or just going to flex until the universe gives up?”

  For a second, Thimble thought the captain might actually try that. Instead, he jerked a bean in the direction of the hangar. “We regroup. Assess. Find an angle and pry it open.”

  The grav-sled wasn't far away, but the walk took twice as long with three people limping and one refusing to admit he needed help. Thimble kept her eyes peeled for hostiles, paranoia settling in. By the time they reached the sled, Siva had stopped bleeding, and the captain’s mood had deteriorated from “primal rage” to “cold, homicidal focus.”

  They loaded up, and Thimble took the controls, mostly because she didn’t trust the others not to drive it off a cliff out of spite. The ride was bumpy, but the battered machine responded to her touch with a grudging competence. She could almost pretend it was grateful.

  The hangar bay was right where they left it. Thimble half expected it to be gone. It would fit right in with the rest of the events that had occurred.

  She guided the sled into its charging dock and killed the engine. The captain hopped off and prowled around the hangar, sniffing the air. Siva headed over to Legion’s cargo and started checking the manifest.

  Thimble sat for a moment, hands on the wheel, staring at nothing. The silence pressed in, thick as oil. She hated waiting, hated being useless. She pulled up her holo and ran a diagnostic on her own systems, just for something to do.

  She checked the time: two hours since the portal disappeared. Not knowing all of the facts of the situation rattled her. She needed details and variables if they were going to come out of this mess in one piece.

  They regrouped at the shuttle. Siva had cast a minor faith heal, and her eyes were already less glassy. “The troop carriers are all loaded,” she told the captain, “If you want, I can recommend you all for the next contract.”

  Captain Ironbelly clasped forearms with Siva. “Keep us in mind, but I have feeling we're gonna be busy for a while.”

  She nodded without another word in true Siva fashion and headed for the troop carrier.

  Thimble was about to ask what the captain meant when a panicked voice yelled, “HELP!”

  She turned, ready to punch, and saw nothing. Then, a shimmering distortion, and Thorn ran out of the air, looking like he’d been run through a blender and then steam cleaned.

  “Humans! Benjamin is dying!” Thorn screamed at them.

  Thimble leapt backward, her gauntlets snapping toward him with mechanical precision as they powered up with an escalating whine.

  “Don't kill me! I'm with Ben!”

  The captain blinked. “He’s alive?”

  “Barely,” said Thorn, and for once the panic was not as frantic. “But not for long if we just stand here.”

  They followed him out of the hangar, down a maintenance tunnel lit by emergency strobes. The air smelled like copper and sweat. Thorn led them through a series of hatches and down a ladder. The last door was open. Inside was a maintenance closet, and on the floor—propped against the wall, blood all over him—was Ben.

  He looked like hell. His skin was ashen, lips blue. His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps. There was a mound of bloody overalls across his midsection.

  The captain knelt beside him, and for a second, Thimble thought she saw something like concern in his face. Claws retracted fully with his tail still. He pressed a bean to Ben’s neck and the pad of his other paw to his forehead.

  “Pulse is weak,” the captain declared softer than normal, without his usual edge. “He’s burning up. Let me see what I can do.”

  Then, barely audible, Thimble could swear she heard him whisper, “…don't you…on…not again…”