Page 91 of My Tiny Giant

Chapter 19

A GAN

He sensed Emma’s stare on his back as he was swimming away from her. The feeling lingered even after he could no longer see her. It gave him strength, knowing that she waited for him. The thin, red rope was not the only thing that tethered him to her. An invisible but much stronger string stretched from his heart to hers, the connection that no distance could break.

He needed to succeed in this mission, if only so he could return to her.

Weaving through the mesh of the ancient bone, using nothing but the Ravils’ inherent sense of direction and his instincts, he moved forward, toward the center and the fescods’ Mind.

The blinding light grew even stronger, making him squint against it. Bursts of color shot through it, past him. Peering through the narrow slits between his eyelids, he kept going...until there suddenly was nowhere to go.

His hands pressed against a solid mass, though there was absolutely no visual change in the light in front of him, impossibly bright and blinding.

Patting around, he made sure this was not a narrowing in the tunnel. The mass under the gloves of his suit gave in when he pressed harder—tough and thick, but softer than the bone of the shell skeleton. Similar to fescods’ skin.

He drew his long cutting tool out again. Almost as long as his leg, the narrow blade was still a little shorter than the knives he had used for weapons against the fescods before. His old knives would be way too heavy for him now, though.

Gripping the narrow handle with both hands, he thrust the blade forward. It was impossible to build a good momentum for a blow under water. Instead, he braced his feet into the walls of the tunnel, slowly pushing the blade into the mass ahead of him with his entire body.

A blood-red lightning zigzagged through the sterile whiteness of the surrounding light. Was the Mind sending out a distress signal? An alarm? Was it a sign of pain?

He didn’t care. Ignoring the red, pulsing shots of energy around him, he kept sinking his weapon deeper into the mass in front of him. The blade went in, all the way to the hilt. Laying on the handle, he moved it down, slicing the mass open.

The red light vibrated along the edges of the cut, marking the wound he’d made. It was large enough for him to fit through. He reached into it, his hand encountering the firm muscle, no cavity where he could search for hearts. That was if the Mind even had any hearts. All that had showed up on the scans was one round shape inside it—the Mind’s core. Getting to it, the Voranians believed, was the only way to kill the Mind.

Shoving his head and shoulders through the cut, he kept slicing at the muscle underneath the outer membrane. As he made the wound deeper, he moved farther in, cutting his way forward.

The fescods’ Mind was just as bright inside as it was outside. The tissue of the muscles and the membrane emitted light as if saturated in it.

With another thrust, his blade suddenly sank in, encountering no more tough resistance of the muscle.

A blob of shimmering pink gel seeped from the gash.

The Mind’s blood?

He made the cut longer, then inserted his entire arm up to his shoulder inside, rummaging for anything round and solid that would be the core.

His hand came back empty.

Clipping the blade back to his thigh, he slipped through the gash, diving into the shimmering pink goo of the Mind’s insides.

Floating though it was like moving through a thick fog. He could see nothing in front of his helmet other than the milky, pink shimmer with red lightnings charging through it sporadically.

The direction of the red bursts caught his attention—they shot out like rays of sun, all coming from the same central source.

Following the direction of where the red strikes were coming from, he tried to swim faster. Moving proved even more difficult in the thick shimmering substance. Still, after a while, a brilliant round flash of light cut through it. A small sphere pulsed pink shooting out the red streaks in all directions, like lightning bolts of energy.

The Mind’s core! It must be.

He reached for it with both hands, scooping the core from the pink gel it was floating in. Twisting around, he moved back, following the red string that had stretched behind him. It would lead him all the way back to Emma now.

The slit he had cut in the layer of muscle and outer membrane of the Mind was easy enough to spot as he approached—an angry red line among the milky-pink.

Clutching the Mind’s Core in his hands, he shoved his head and shoulders into the slash, eager to get out of this pink murderous mess.

The healing process of the wound had already begun. The thick layers of muscle undulated around him, the tissues straining to press together.