Blink: Leviathan (Book 2)

13

Amber hauled herself up hand over hand up the seemingly bottomless elevator shaft, utilising the serrated servo-assisted gauntlets to grip the stonework. Ahead of her Brannigan was making good progress. She tried not to think about the staggering drop behind her. The bulky pack of extra Blink equipment didn't help either, adding an additional thirty pounds of ballast to her own body weight.

Clamping another ledge, Amber gritted her teeth and heaved, simultaneously moving her right leg up in conjunction to find the next rectangular projection. Why the little ledges jutted out from the walls she didn't know. At first she thought they were the alien equivalent of some kind of emergency ladder, but now that she'd gotten up close to them they seemed to have definite mechanisms built into their outer edges. The face of each ledge bore a series of silver discs arranged in a manner that she suspected was for more than aesthetics – perhaps something to do with the operation of the elevator itself.

Conjecture at this point would get her no-where, however, so she just kept climbing. Luckily growing up in the spires and floating suburbs of Iluvari had driven out any fear of heights she might have had. She closed her mind off to nothing more than the next hand hold; the next platform, moving with the ease of an expert. She'd always excelled at physical activity, even before her enlistment with Blink. The specialised training had honed an already impressive skill set that left her nimbly scampering up the walls.

At least, she scampered until she heard another ominous rumble from below and stopped dead, clamping both gauntlets down against the stone. Within the elevator shaft no-one needed to be warned about the impending shock wave and Amber could see the others above her hugging the walls as tightly as they could. Sure enough, a moment later the whole tower shook. She closed her eyes and clung on.

Clamped to the walls as she was, Amber felt the vibrations shake her to the bones and her teeth rattled inside her skull. The tether around her waist flapped and shook, but she stayed stuck to the wall and waited. Eventually the shaking stopped and she looked up. Lights speared down through the shaft from the head of the group.

"Everybody okay?" she heard Darien call, his voice reverberating around the confined space.

"All good," she shouted back. "But I'd like to get out of here before another quake if that's alright with you."

He didn't answer directly. Instead she heard his voice in her ear piece. "Hammerhead Squad to Manitta-Vanna. Come in please."

"Go ahead, Hammerhead," crackled the reply.

"We've experienced two more tremors since last check in," Darien said, and she could hear the frustration in his voice. "It would be nice if you had some more information as to what the hell is causing them."

"Ah, well," answered Churchwood. "We are still unsure as to what is causing the tremors, but we have zeroed in on the epicentre. There's still no seismic activity, but whatever is causing the quakes seems to be slap bang at the base of the city itself."

Amber stopped sharply at that.

"Wait, it's within the city?" Darien's surprise echoed in her own mind.

"From what we can tell, it would seem so. The epicentre of the forces is not deep enough to be within the crust itself. It's still within our deep readings of the city structure."

"What the hell?" Amber murmured to herself, and she let herself glance down into the bottomless depths of the shaft.

"Roger that," Darien said. "Keep us appraised of any more developments. Hammerhead out." Then he closed the channel and his voice returned to its steely tone of command as he barked an order down the chain of climbers. "Alright, let's keep it moving. Idas, pick up the pace."