The assault against the titanium fire wall was somehow weaker, slower, than it had been before. And Connor understood suddenly that the beast was finally tiring. Destroying vault after vault and sustaining the wounds inflicted on it had clearly claimed a measure of the Dragon's strength. Now it needed more food – needed it badly. But it had already consumed all that could be consumed in the cavern.
Everything but the last of them …
Connor frowned, staggering back.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Wear yourself out ...”
Turning, Connor ran into the middle of a cavern, still holding Jordan solidly in his arms. He didn't know which cavern it was and realized instantly how the encircling walls ascended, red and solidly sloping into a towering dark. He searched left and right, seeking an exit. But he found none. A heightened adrenaline-fear quickened his heartbeat even more. Connor stopped in place, turning, spinning in every direction, searching for an exit door.
Walls, walls ...
“Oh, no,” he whispered, not looking again at the vault. “There's got to be a way out of here. There's got to be ...”
Leviathan smashed again and again against the last portal but the savage victory was taking three times as long; an indication of its starvation, its weakness. Then Connor noticed from the absence of a thundering heat-blast that it was no longer using flame. Only strength, strength that Connor knew would be exhausted even faster in its singular intent to defeat the titanium wall.
Connor realized that if he could only put two or maybe three more vaults between them, he would be safe. But there was no exit, he realized, as he glared in every direction. He had reached a dead end.
Breathless, clutching Jordan to his chest, Connor turned toward the vault, watching and backing up as Leviathan maniacally attacked the portal, roaring and slamming forelegs and its injured form against the wall again and again. But it finally, slowly, overcame the fire door, slamming the portal down and collapsing on top of it in exhaustion. But fueled by the molten core of its heart, the Dragon rose again, glaring and hating.
Connor gently lowered Jordan to the ground, quickly un-slung the M-203. He backed up a step, centering the grenade launcher on the beast as it took a slow step toward him.
Eyes gleaming, Leviathan growled.
Jordan was screamed hysterically, clinging to his leg. Connor felt his sweat-soaked skin freeze at the thunderous cave-growl. His blood congealed, cold with fear as he stiffly backed up slow step by slow step, unable to catch his breath.
With great, distended fangs, the Dragon came forward.
“God help us,” Connor whispered.
His hand tightened on the rifle.
* * *
Chapter 29
“Seven minutes until detonation...”
A dazed black moment of spiraling light and Beth almost fell off the platform before she realized she was flying, flying with blinding speed through a verging of machine and white strobe light and she looked down instinctively to see a vaguely human form.
Frank.
Immersed in Cyberspace, the scientist had already begun flying forward, racing through the computer toward the wide, gaping hallway of light that loomed before them. Utterly, utterly amazed, Beth stared.
This was unreal.
Frank was larger than life, his solid black body glistening in sharply angled sections that held an uncanny resemblance to his human form. But his hands were larger, his shoulders and chest also accented. His head was a polished black mask, a narrow-slitted mouth with no hair or ears. But his rounded eyes were a cosmic bright-blue, glowing like beams and fixed dead ahead as he flew through the computer.
Almost against her will, Beth shouted to him.
Frank didn't turn. His face was fixed before him, staring, and then Beth saw an expression of angry concentration on his glistening countenance and glanced up to see the wide white wall approaching with breathtaking speed as ...
Light!
Whiteness streamed past them like flowing, glowing fog.
Beth staggered, almost feeling the invisible wind rushing over her and she realized that they had entered the light cylinder, speeding toward the Logic Core.
Like a human torpedo the scientist streamed forward, narrowly avoiding the slashing, flashing beams that blazed at him from the sides. Beth shouted in alarm at the simultaneous attacks, knowing somehow that Frank could not hear her but shouting anyway as she extended her fists to send a blast of light out from herself toward the flare.
But she was too slow, her blast wide, and Frank somehow defeated the attack himself, twisting violently down and upward again like a jet diving under incoming missiles. Then as he rose he gathered speed, threading a frantic path through a sea of gathering, spiraling tentacle-flame.
Descending in a bolt of black lightning the scientist flew forward, deeper and deeper into the converging conscious world of man-of-machine where science verged with life. Then from both sides of the cylinder, in a coordinated and simultaneous attack, two streaks of phosphorescence came together, joining in a solid wall of white to block Frank's headlong plunge. The scientist wildly threw out his arms, angling desperately to readjust his descent, but there was no room to escape. He spun out of control, hurtling into an amazing holocaust of artificial fire.