Close to the Covert Rains **Book One**

Chapter 34 (part 2)

Kwayo was too late. He came to a halt in the rain, well behind a group of shadowed figures waiting outside the only entrance--that he knew of--into the admin building. But...his heart fluttered. If they were still here, then Verspri must be too.

Kwayo shifted to a small wood frog and approached slowly, trying to figure out how to sneak inside. Could he distract them, and slip through the doors? Maybe there was a window he could break through. But as he glanced through the rain, he found the entire visible first floor had solid brick walls.

A figure came barreling through the doors, attracting Kwayo's attention. The person was beating flames from the back of their dark uniform, and in the flickering light they moved like Cassandra, but he shook his head. She was imprisoned. He grimaced. Right?

The flames didn't stop, and Kwayo's frog-eyes grew wide--the orange fire licked upward, into the rain.

"Get back inside, go after him!" a voice roared, and--arms flailing--the flaming person obeyed. "All of you!" the voice roared again, and silhouettes hurried into the building.

Well. At least Kwayo should be able to get into the building now.

He took a single, tiny step before fire alarms started blaring. No one ran out the doors though, so Kwayo changed to a faster, but still stealthy, animal--an ocelot--and darted forward. Then he paused. The ground below his feet vibrated. And a circle of dirt began glowing fierce red.

He leapt away, concealing himself in the bushes near the building. A pair of red lasers shot from the ground at an angle, hissing against the grass, and the beams slowly carved out a semi-circle. Semi in the sense that it wasn't very circular-like. The lasers winked out, and Kwayo waited. Then waited. Nothing happened, so he approached the spot. What was happening down beneath him?

The cut-out ground slid, and Kwayo stepped away. It slipped further into the ground, revealing the beginnings of a steep tunnel. It stopped moving, seemingly stuck in place. Kwayo pawed the ground, tail swishing. If it was the people hunting for Verspri, they could use the front door, surely. They wouldn't need a tunnel to get out.

Kwayo walked into the rough-cut circle; and shapeshifted to a hippopotamus.

The ground slumped under his weight, then stopped. Kwayo reverted to a human, then went back to a hippo, making the ground drop again. He barely fit at that point; the earth had collapsed several feet. Then the ground fell away completely, leaving Kwayo suspended by shoulders and belly. He flailed his legs weakly, thoughts petrified by sudden claustrophobia.

Wait, he could shapeshift. Duh. Changing to a human, he fell a few inches to the dirt. What he wasn't expecting was the layer of slick ice over the soil, so he slipped onto his back, getting the air knocked from his lungs and sliding down the tunnel. A pair of silhouettes, outlined by the interior's light, clambered into the shaft just before he slammed into them.

"Aah!" Kwayo's suspicions were confirmed; that was definitely Verspri's wail. "Wait, Kwayo?"

The three of them got to their feet, and Kwayo found himself in the large factory-office floor. Traces of smoke emerged from behind some of the cubicles--likely where the figure he'd seen outside must have caught on fire.

"You have laser eyes?" he asked the younger girl. He thought he recognized her, but wasn't sure where he'd met her.

"And frost beams," she nodded. "You saw me carve the tunnel?"

Kwayo nodded, turning to Verspri. He held a gray water gun looking thing, with a lens at the top, almost like the scope of a gun but much larger. The girl held one too, and another poked from one of her pockets.