Apocalypse Unseen. James Axler

as it was, felt stable again.

      Brigid let go of Kane and he let go of Mariah, while Grant pushed himself cautiously back to a standing position beside them.

      “Now, let’s just proceed with caution, okay?” Kane said. “No sudden moves.”

      Following his own advice, Kane took wary steps up the slope, testing the ground with his toe before he proceeded, guiding the group in a path that took them a little farther away from the dangerous chasm they were tracking.

      The slope continued to rise, taking the group forty or fifty feet above the tallest part of the distant fort where they had materialized. Throughout the climb, they saw no one else, though the sounds of gunfire continued to echo from the distance where two armies—one made up of blind men—fought their lunatic war.

      The Cerberus group reached the summit of the gentle slope unexpectedly. Unexpected, that is, because they had not foreseen that there would be an almost sheer drop on the other side. From above, it looked like a sinkhole, a perfectly circular maw in the earth, its sides so steep that they were almost vertical. A few scaffolds were dotted here and there with ladders leading down into the hole itself. There were figures wandering among the scaffolding, and they could see two simple, boxy buildings at different levels where the people here might take shelter. The nearest ladder down was sixty feet away, a quarter turn around the circular hole.

      “What the hell?” Grant muttered, gazing over the edge.

      Kane looked at his partners, his eyebrows raised. “Watch that first step, huh?” he said.

      “It’s a mine,” Mariah stated, looking at the formations all around them. They now saw that the slope of rock that they had climbed was waste that had been removed from the ground to create the mine shaft. The shaft itself was a perfectly vertical drop into the ground.

      “Not natural, then?” Kane checked.

      “No, not natural.”

      Brigid turned to Mariah, quizzical. “Could this be the cause of the quake?”

      Mariah shrugged. “Possibly,” she admitted. “I guess it depends on what they’re using to bore into the earth.”

      Kane eyed the figures on the scaffold, trying to detect a pattern that might indicate whether they were sentries. “Guess we’re going to have to take a look-see at what’s inside,” Kane told the others, reloading his Sin Eater.

      “I think I miss my workstation,” Mariah muttered as she followed the Cerberus field team around the lip of the mine.