Free The Desolate Guardians by Matt Dymerski Page B

thirty seconds left, but… even in my
panic, for some reason, I trusted her.
    Lifting the claw in staggering jolts, I moved
her up alongside the central pillar, and up above the platform with
the bomb on it… only to find that it was spinning fastest of
all.
    There was absolutely no way she would be able
to jump down and stay on - not with both hands around the awkward
metal object she carried.
    "Get me above it," she shouted, and I lowered
her down as close as I could while trying to ignore the scant
seconds left. Even as I moved the claw lower, though, the rapidly
spinning platform began to drop. I understood where it was going -
down into the center of the device, the nadir of the mechanical
vortex - but I also knew that meant we were almost out of time.
    Lowering the claw as smoothly as I could, I
brought her to just a foot or two above the sinking bomb, jolting
up and down a bit as I tried to get the dropping speed right. From
her camera perspective, the bomb was a whirling sphere of black and
chrome… and utterly impossible to interact with.
    She tried to lower the four rods into place
twice, but then judged against it. "Spin me!" she shouted at the
top of her lungs, still barely audible over the intense roar of
machinery.
    Could the claw do that? It could! Of course
it could… turning on the servos, I started giving her rotational
speed even as the bottom of the vortex dropped away. Chrome rings
melted into a vast well of purple light and waves of white. Through
her camera, I could see into eternity… and the platform was moving
down into it.
    We were far past out of time.
    Agonizingly slowly, the rotating bomb and
platform seemed to slow down… as her spinning grew to match. I
could hear her straining not to get sick or pass out… I knew her
spinning had to be subjecting her to painfully high g forces, but she remained ready despite the crushing intensity. The
purple below us imploded into bright white lines, and the
illusionary corridor widened… and the platform, from our
perspective, seemed to finally stop spinning.
    It even went the other direction a little
bit, but I edged off the slightest bit of servo power, and she came
back to even with it.
    "Open the claw," she shouted grimly, hardly
able to speak against the tremendous pressure.
    "What? But you'll -"
    "There's no choice."
    I knew she was right, and I had to listen to
her order, but… I still felt horrible and empty as I gave the final
command. The claw opened.
    Despite the chaos, she dropped eerily
straight down, and immediately fell across the top of the bomb to
keep herself from falling off. With a swift motion, she oriented
the four rods and shoved them down into interlocking access ports.
I saw all this through her headset camera, and I saw her descending
into an infinite tunnel from the crane camera… and I saw her heat
signature disappear from the base map.
    "What do I do?" I asked her, at the last, the
roaring crescendo reaching a final peak. "I can't get you with the
crane…"
    "You might be on your own now, friend," she
told me calmly, her strained and quiet voice oddly audible despite
the storm. "I needed to go there anyway. Maybe - just maybe - they
can help."
    "Who?" I cried.
    She sighed with worry, regret, and a dozen
other unidentifiable emotions, her hands gripping white on the bars
around the bomb. "I'm going home."
    In a flash, the tunnel compacted, swirled,
and was gone.
    The platform remained - with nothing on
it.
    Slowly, the entire configuration began
powering down and resetting position, and I lifted the crane's claw
lest I damage something. I did all this automatically, without
thinking, because I could not think.
    I sat and processed what had happened for
several minutes. I hadn't been there physically - I'd just been
watching video and listening to audio and rooting through files -
but I still felt as if I'd been through a life and death situation
and only barely survived.
    I hadn't even had time to anticipate it... it
had