Seven’s first feeling was nausea. Her second was pain, and the weight of something sitting on her chest. Dazed, she tried to open her eyes, the grit of fallen rocks making her vision blurry. She blinked, trying to clear it, fighting for each breath.

  It took her several labored seconds of breathing to remember what had happened. Why she sat buried under several feet of rubble, struggling to breathe at all. Worse than the pain in her chest, though, was the searing, throbbing pain in her arm.

  Her vision finally cleared, but she found herself in still further darkness. Weak, glowing light filtered in from a break in the gloom—a crack between the rocks? Was it Pocket, come to save her?

  The very thought sent a pang through her gut. She’d caused this cave-in, and if Pocket and Luca hadn’t made it out…

  She squinted her eyes shut against the thought and instead focused on getting out from beneath the rubble. One thing at a time, she told herself. She tried to pry her arms loose, but her hands only found purchase on sharp rocks. She pushed, but whatever strength she’d had before the collapse was obviously gone. She vaguely remembered a flash of light as she’d fallen—perhaps the last vestiges of that power leaving her body. Maybe it was the only reason she was still alive.

  So much for that, she thought. Then she froze, a stab of panic in her gut. What if she was well and truly buried alive?

  Panicking, she squirmed, and rocks shifted ever so slightly. She thought she even heard voices on the other side. And yet, the weight on her chest grew, and she swore softly, freezing again, wary of making it worse.

  She’d never particularly had a problem with closed spaces; Veilhome was filled with tiny alleys and even smaller rooms and speakeasies, tucked behind buildings proper. They had been places to explore, places to escape the cloying sense of expectations that plagued her with each step. Now, though, that closed space felt too real, and far too fatal if she couldn’t escape.

  I can’t panic, she thought, trying to calm her heart rate. Surely she hadn’t fallen that far. Surely Luca and Pocket were somewhere nearby, looking for her. And, barring that, there had to be a way out—even if she’d drained her strength entirely with the fall. She pushed aside her panic and the nearly unavoidable urge to throw up, trying to focus on the situation at hand.

  She needed to stay still—or at least move carefully, in case she was more injured than she thought. I really need to test the limits of whatever this is, she thought. Knowing how fast her strength could drain and just how many dice she needed to get it back might just save her life.

  If she could survive this.

  If she moved too rapidly, the rocks might shift, cutting off her airflow entirely. But she wasn’t sure how much longer she could endure the shallow, gasping breaths she’d been forced into.

  She’d have to do something, at least. Another gamble, she thought grimly. Risk-taker though she was, she enjoyed the risks at a controlled table far more than the ones which involved her life.

  Still, she had to get out—if not for her own sake, then for Pocket and Luca. She didn’t want to think of either of them at all, frankly. All she’d meant to do was blast a hole in the wall to give them an escape path—not bury the three of them alive.

  She wiggled a few fingers, hoping to loosen some of the rocks. A few inches opened up under her fingers, and she was able to move her hand into the gap. The pile shifted, but held. So far, so good, she thought grimly. With that done, she tore her arm from the vice grip of the rocks. They gave way around her face, and Seven felt some of the air rush back into her lungs. She expected light to flood in, but instead she came face to face with a glowing Pocket.

  “Pocket,” she gasped, her voice coming out raw and broken. Pocket flashed several colors all at once, then seemed to settle on a sort of panicked mauve.

  “Alive. The pancake purveyor is alive!” He bounded up and down on the ground in front of her, looking no worse for wear, and Seven felt some of her tension melt away at his levity. “I’m filing a workplace compensation claim,” he went on. “Emotional damages. Existential trauma. The works.”

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  “Pocket,” she said, trying to laugh and devolving into a sort of choked coughing fit, “you’re fine. And I’m the one still trapped under the rubble.”

  “I am not fine. Do you know how falling feels to a slime? Everything jiggling everywhere and not a single bit of gravity to hold it all in.”

  “Where’s Luca?” Seven asked, afraid to move further. With Pocket’s light, it was easy to see the size of the pile she was trapped beneath—and how it had nowhere else to go. If she moved poorly, she might bring the whole thing down on top of her and Pocket both.

  “He went to look for you,” Pocket said matter-of-factly. “On the other side of the—“

  “Seven.” Luca’s voice rang out down the hallway, and he limped into Pocket’s faint light, looking bruised and battered, but no worse for wear. “Thirteen take me, are you…”

  “Not dead yet,” she ground out, then jerked her head at the pile. “Help me out, but be careful—I’m not sure how stable that pile is.”

  “Not very,” he commented, looking apprehensively at it. Still, he knelt and helped her slowly and painstakingly pull herself from the rocks, little by little. The process was excruciatingly painful, and each time Seven thought she was free, the pile would further shift, burying her in the rubble all over again.

  Eventually, with a grunt, Luca finally pulled her free. Above, the rocks rumbled, and a few errant ones tumbled to the ground. Seven gritted her teeth, watching the pile, afraid to say anything, afraid to even move for fear of jostling the pile. Even Pocket was quiet, watching with an alarmed red that lit the tunnel in a crimson light.

  Finally, when Seven decided she wasn’t about to be buried by more of her bad decisions, she let out a long, shaking sigh and took inventory. Pocket and Luca were in one piece. She wasn’t sure how, exactly, given that she was fairly certain she would have sustained much worse injuries without those powers protecting her in some way. In fact…She twisted around, searching for the bag at her hip, and mercifully found it there.

  “Don’t you think we have bigger things to worry about than whether we got away with the shards or not?” Luca demanded, clearly annoyed. “If you’d just have let Bert have them, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  “No,” Seven agreed, untying her bag. “But he’d also keep doing it over and over again. At least now he knows better than to mess with either of us.”

  “Which doesn’t matter if we’re dead,” Luca snapped, his voice cracking. “Why are you checking your loot?”

  Seven peered inside the bag and frowned. Well, that certainly explained why she was alive. And her weakness to boot. She tossed the bag at Luca.

  “No loot to speak of,” she said, checking her torso for bruises. She was fairly certain she’d cracked a rib. “They’re all dull.”

  “They weren’t before,” Luca said, his voice having lost some of its fire to the interesting problem in front of him. And yet, if he put two and two together, he didn’t say anything. It can’t hurt anything, Seven thought, wincing as she poked her ribs. It’s not like he knows enough to do any damage.

  “Well they are now,” she said. “We can find something else on the way out.”

  “If there even is a way out,” Luca muttered. “Remind me to never make friends with anyone ever again—particularly when they offer me shards. It was a bad omen.”

  “Look, would you have rather I left you at the mercy of a schoolyard bully?” She snapped, pushing herself to her feet. The room spun, and she had to steady herself on the rock pile nearby. Well that’s not good. Was it her strength waning from a lack of dice shards? Or worse, was it the dice she’d palmed the day before? Surely her injuries wouldn’t affect her that strongly.

  “I’d rather you stay out of my business if it’s all the same to you,” Luca said. “I know my odds, and I know when to play it safe. Maybe you want to make a statement, but I’ve survived as long as I have down here because I don’t piss off people like Bert.”

  “Survival isn’t good enough,” Seven snapped. “Survival is just another way to die.”

  “This seems like an excellent way to die, if I do say so myself,” Luca said, storming off down the tunnel. Seven followed him, suddenly annoyed.

  “You don’t even have a light,” she said. “If you drop down a hole, how is it my fault? And anyway, it’s not all bad. We can get some high-level ore down here, find our way back to the surface. It’s just a tunnel. We can—“ She stopped when she realized she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face anymore. “Pocket, a little help?”

  Pocket, who’d been sitting on her shoulder making little explosion noises, decided he’d live up to his sign from her first day at LMC. He blasted the tunnel into stark relief, so bright and so strong that Seven had to shield her eyes for a moment.

  There was only one problem.

  It wasn’t a tunnel at all.

  It was a cathedral.

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  Sight will probably, definitely, change the fate of worlds.

  Witness the rise of the little rex who will one day bite the stars.

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  Monster Evolution: Watch a T. rex cub ascend into a berserker powerhouse!

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