Operation Honey Trap vs The Emperor of the Apocalypse-Chapter 211: On the Lam

[Suggested song for this Chapter – Survivor by 2WEI, Edda Hayes]

Delphi dropped everything and ran.

She flew down the slope towards the harbour, taking the route she had already decided on.

She was extremely grateful for Rachel’s sneakers. The medical tech clearly liked to be prepared for all terrain eventualities in her work day, the woman’s shoes gripped the dry rocky slope like Delphi was running a cross country race, allowing her to run as fast as she could push herself.

She prayed that the next part of the anonymous author’s escape plan was ready to go.

Stage one, the door had been unlocked. All she had to go on now for stage two of the plan was ’run for the water’.

Let’s hope whoever the insider was had had the same idea as she did, the most direct route to the water from the medical pavilion.

She could faintly hear the shouts of the guards she had disabled. She hoped there weren’t too many other guards within earshot of the relatively isolated standalone pavilions.

She hadn’t seen many guards on the path from the palace to the exam room, but there were regular patrols all over the palace island, and she might be lucky or unlucky dependant on how far off the nearest patrol was to the giantesses.

Branches whipped her in the face and scratched her arms as she pelted down the slope, her breath high-pitched as she sucked in air. But it was good to finally be able to put all of that adrenaline to use instead of having it pumping anxiously through her veins.

She emerged out of the scrub to stand poised on the water’s edge.

She looked frantically left and right. No sign of any watercraft, or people...

Her heart started racing even faster, if that was possible...

Deep breaths, Delphi, stay calm, she told herself.

She thought about taking her chances with the tubiàn and swimming, but she would almost certainly be picked up by a boat before she could get any distance between her and the palace, assuming she wasn’t eaten alive first.

She had seen the tubiàn crocs and orcas first-hand, and without a weapon she had absolutely no hope of fighting one off...

She listened hard and she thought she could hear the sounds of heavy footsteps hitting the rocky slope above her.

Shit, shit, shit Delphi, time for a decision girl!

Stay and run off across the royal island and try and find somewhere to hide? Then try again for the water rescue later, assuming the dogs didn’t sniff her out first. Or take her chances and swim across the harbour.

Last chance! Better to do something than nothing!

She decided to swim.

There was a chance they wouldn’t immediately spot her if she swam underwater and only popped up for air after she had gained some ground.

If she was really, really lucky, any tubiàn that tried to munch on her would be one programmed by her ancestor General Chastain to obey her when it tasted her blood.

If she survived the first crunch...

That seemed to be the likely reason no other Chastain descendant had discovered this secret of their blood. They didn’t survive the tubiàn attack for long enough to discover they could control the beast that had attacked them...

She took a deep breath and dived into the water.

It was a shock as she hit the saltwater, though it was a warm enough day, the water was bracingly cold. She kicked her arms and legs into motion, swimming breast stroke underwater as far as she could manage in one breath before bobbing to the surface for a quick breath and ducking back under.

The water was clear enough that she could see about a foot or two in front of her while she was underwater. Each time she surfaced she didn’t dare look behind her in case she made it easier to spot her in the water.

She couldn’t hear a thing. Under the choppy water was nothing but blessed silence and when her head was above the water for her brief snatches of air, she could only hear the lapping of waves slapping against her ears.

She had stroked for only a few minutes when she saw a huge beast move into her line of sight, it’s long body flicking past her eyes under the salty water. Its body was long enough to take a few seconds to pass by in front of her.

She thought she would be more frightened, but now that it came to this, she felt strangely calm.

She had done everything she possibly could to survive, but whether she lived or died was in the lap of the gods now.

She held her hands forward in the probably vain hope that a bite from the beast might cause it to taste her blood before consuming her whole.

Soon she ran out of air and had to surface where she couldn’t see the beast under the water at all.

She looked about below her in the deep water for any signs of it and spotted a dark shape threading its way towards her rapidly, just below the surface.

She ducked under the waves again and stuck her hands out in front of her face.

The beast stopped an inch from her hands.

She stared hard through the murky water, her heart beating triple time now that she was face-to-face with her end.

Being eaten alive was not a good death! her brain screamed at her. A good clean death in a sword fight would be infinitely preferable.

Too late, she wished she had stayed onshore and fought instead!

Maybe she would have a heart attack before it ate her alive? It certainly felt like that was a real possibility.

She blinked underwater, staring at the beast that was hovering in front of her. It was clearly a dragon. Was it possible it was controlled by Miro and his tribe?

She popped back up to the surface, and the beast mirrored her actions.

There in the harbour, just offshore from the palace, she came face-to-face with Miro!

"Miro! Thank the Lord," she let out a sob of relief, risking a quick look behind her.

Guards were now swarming the shoreline.

She had no idea if they had seen her yet.

They probably wouldn’t guess she’d be crazy enough to enter the water. If she was going to do that she could have done it years ago...

"Let’s go Miro," she whispered, quickly grabbing him around the neck. "Travel underwater until I tap you to go up for air, then quickly surface and go back under again. We need to stay out of sight," she ordered him.

The Komodo dragon looked unblinkingly back at her with his expressionless face, then disappeared under the water with a swirl of his tail, Delphi clinging to his neck for dear life as he powered through the water at breakneck speed.