Jordan picked her up as the rig shook ever more violently.
Steel groaned through the walls. A tall, thin display cabinet toppled with a crash of glass. Jordan rushed her to the others.
“We have to get off this rig!” he yelled above the low roar.
Seemingly oblivious, Bernard’s gaze remained fixed on the tall windows. Erin turned to see what so captured his attention. Off to the east, the horizon had brightened with the new day, rising in a steam of pinks and oranges. But the beauty was marred by a black cloud pushing through it, churning high and spreading outward, as if trying to eat away the day.
“A volcanic eruption,” Jordan said.
Erin pictured the direction in which Iscariot had flown with Tommy. Her fingers crumpled the one sheet of paper in her hand, holding an old drawing. She had come out here to show it to Rhun and Bernard.
Were they too late?
As if punctuating this worry, a loud shake rose through the rig, throwing them to the floor. The lights went out. Crack! The deafening sound of stressed rock echoed up from below. The entire deck began a slow tilt.
She pictured one of the platform’s concrete legs shattering at the knee.
“Move!” Jordan bellowed. “Now!”
He grabbed her arm. Rhun and Bernard slung Christian between them.
They fled out of the salon and down the central passageway. The shaking continued, throwing them against the wood-paneled walls. The darkness amplified her terror. They finally reached the exterior doors and fled into a world of swaying steel and crumbling concrete. An arm of a crane swung past overhead, unmoored and unmanned.
“The hydrofoil!” Jordan said, pointing to the stairs as they tumbled forward. “We need to get down to it! Get as far from this heap as possible.”
Christian broke free from the others. “I’ll . . . I’ll see to it.”
Even in his weakened state, he was fast, vanishing in a blur of black down the stairs. Bernard followed at his heels, while Rhun kept with Erin and Jordan.
The trio hit the staircase at a dead run, hurdling steps, sometimes tossed. Debris rained around them, crashing to the water below. Erin saw the surrounding seas had gone strangely flat, no waves, just a trembling surface like a pot about to boil. That more than anything drove her faster. She hit the next landing hard, slamming her belly against the far railing and bouncing away.
Around and around they fled as the platform above continued its slow tilt, crushing down upon the pillar on that side, compressing concrete with loud blasts of rock.
Another violent quake tossed her high, throwing her toward the rail. Her fingers scrambled to grab hold before her body heaved over the side—then Rhun’s iron fingers grabbed her leather jacket and jerked her back to the steps, back to her feet.
“Thanks,” she said, huddling for a breath.
Then they rushed onward again as the world crashed around them. Another pillar on the far side exploded with cracks, skittering upward.
But a new noise intruded through the chaos: the high-pitched rumble of an engine. A final turn around the pillar, and they reached the dock. Several sections of its length had been blasted away by falling debris. They hopped across the open gaps as the hydrofoil slipped backward out of its berth. The ship had not escaped unscathed: a length of catwalk had slammed across its stern deck and still rested there.
Suddenly an arm scooped around her waist and yanked her forward across the last of the dock. A length of twisted strut fell like a spear and pierced cleanly through the section of dock where she had been standing.
Rhun again.
Jordan hopscotched around the length of deadly steel to join them.
The hydrofoil backed next to the dock, allowing them to scramble aboard, ducking under the catwalk.
“Go!” Jordan screamed toward the cabin ahead.
The engines roared, thrusting the ship forward, knocking Erin back into Jordan’s arms. They both looked upward as the craft fled from beneath the toppling platform. Giant steel pieces of shrapnel rained around them, but they finally escaped the deadly onslaught and made it to open water.
“Don’t slow!” Jordan yelled. “Give it everything!”
Erin failed to understand his urgency, until a glance back showed the entire platform falling toward them, ready to crush them. Christian heeded Jordan’s warning, racing ahead, lifting the ship up on its twin foils, skimming across the water.
She watched in horror and awe as the platform struck the sea, casting up a huge wave, sending that wall of water chasing after them. But by now their speed was such that they easily outran it. The tidal wave faded behind, sinking back into the sea.
Erin finally allowed herself to breathe, gasping, wiping a tear from one eye.
“C’mon,” Jordan said. “Let’s join Christian and Bernard.”