“Atticus!” Cade hissed. “There’s something coming.”

Atticus shook his head, as if the fact did not matter; he instead pressed his face to the slim gap in the swinging doors and then tested his blade between, sliding it carefully through.

He withdrew it and turned, a scowl upon his face. To Cade’s relief, he padded back to them.

“Chained,” he growled.

The noise from the jungle was growing louder. Almost as one, the men turned to meet it, already huddling together, shields twitching up into a makeshift shield wall.

Cade’s eyes widened. There were flames flickering in the trees, but farther away than the source of the sounds. Bobbing up and down, as if those carrying them were running.

Yet whatever was coming was almost on top of them. Footsteps, and the hoarse panting of ragged breaths.

“Ready, men,” Atticus called. “We stand here.”

A dark figure emerged from the darkness. Her face, even in its terrified expression, still set Cade’s heart on fire.

Amber.

“Wh—” Cade began, but she stumbled into him, reeling from exhaustion. Behind her, Quintus staggered into view, a pair of torches held in his hands.

Amber choked out a single word.

“Slavers.”

CHAPTER

44

They ran. Ran with wild abandon, all fear of the flora and fauna of the jungles gone.

Quintus led the way, the pair of torches in hand, and the rest followed, ripping through the thorns and tangled branches like beasts in the night.

By the time they stopped, their faces were bloodied, bodies bruised and filthy from their falls and collisions with trees in the darkness. It seemed to Cade they had reached some miraculous clearing, until he spotted the hole in the canopy above, and the crumpled remains of the plane at its center.

They had arrived at the nuclear bomb. Or rather, the plane that it was contained in. Regardless, Cade muttered a question to the Codex. He had to be sure.

“What is it?”

“Remnant is an A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft, loaded with a B43 nuclear weapon, that fell from the deck of the USS Ticonderoga in 1965. Pilot, plane, and weapon were never found.”

Cade looked back, but men were still catching up, emerging through the trees. He’d seen Amber and Quintus just moments ago, so he knew at least they were safe.

He staggered toward the plane, his legs giving way as he did so. He was beyond exhausted, yet he crawled through the mulch and tangled vines upon the ground until he came to its side.

It was, to Cade’s relief, not the rusted, ruined hulk he had feared. Rather, the plane was virtually intact, with hardly any rust at all. However long it had sat in this forest, it hadn’t been here for half a century. More likely, Abaddon had removed it from stasis more recently.

As Cade took in the aircraft, running his hands along its pitted hull, he realized the bomb was attached to its undercarriage, and it was as enormous as the Codex had described it.