"Are we really trusting her?" Maddie asked, her voice echoing faintly across the dark surface of the Leviathan lake.
Elizabeth stepped into the ambient blue light of the base, and the bioluminescent moss lining the nearest wall immediately dimmed — the soft blue draining to grey and dead as the Abyssal Mantle tasted the air. The shadow-tentacles moved with slow, deliberate hunger, sipping the ambient life out of the cave just to sustain their physical form. It wasn't aggressive. It was metabolic. Which somehow made it worse.
Will clocked it. Filed it. They were already running out of time.
He looked at the Warlord's Builder, then back at Elizabeth. "I'm not asking you to trust her, Maddie. I'm asking you to trust the math. She burned her only bridge. If we fail, P.A.C.I.F.I.C. dissects her first."
"The math works," a new voice echoed from the tunnel entrance.
