In her senior year of high school, Natalie Hope reunites with her friends, Adam and Barbara, at the funeral of the fourth member of their once-close gang, Jake. They remember the made-up superhero game they played as kids called "the Astronites," wh...
To the average dog, what Ador had endured thus far with the Astronites was ludicrous to imagine. But falling hundreds of feet past skyscrapers and rows of warplane traffic? That was barking mad.
In the explosion that blasted the Astronites' truck, Ador flipped into the air, his tongue whipped saliva onto his face, and his eyes were pried open by the rush of wind. One skyline in the Heltest Eye grew distant, and the other extended its sharp spires towards him. Ador saw Natalie roll around in the air beneath him, unconscious. Her arms and legs flailed about like tree branches in a squall. Her battlesuit's backjet was consumed by flames and couldn't save her.
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Ador tucked his paws in and nosedived down. He had to carefully time the rescue. Natalie's arms swung around too quickly for him to latch onto, and one of her hands still clung to the pennar. When her free hand passed by, Ador grabbed the cuff of her battlesuit between his teeth. With his two forepaws, he felt for a handle that dangled on the straps of his backpack. He pulled on it with all his might and felt a zipper race up his back.
FWOOOP!
A black parachute ejected out of Ador's backpack with a brilliant gust of air. Ador squeezed harder on Natalie's arm now that her whole body hung from his mouth. His parachute was designed to carry only his weight, not that of a fully-grown human. With the Heltest Eye's artificial wind wafting the flames on Natalie's body into his face, he had difficulty seeing where exactly they were going.
It was only with great luck that Ador spotted the lowest level he could land on, far beyond the reach of the buzzing warplanes.
And where there is ground, there is always underground, Ador thought.
He dropped Natalie when they still had twenty feet to go. Her battlesuit gasped one last time to slow her fall, but her body violently folded in on itself when she smacked into the street. Ador landed by her side and yanked on the handle to retract his parachute into the backpack. He ran up to Natalie's body and stamped out the fire with his paws. She smelled like burnt barbeque, but still breathed.
Ador's keen ears perked up. He sensed incoming bodies from the south. Without a moment to lose, he searched for a hook attached to his backpack. When he found it, he used his teeth to extend its and secure it to Natalie's utility belt. After testing its durability, Ador surged forward and dragged Natalie across the street's hard asphalt. Her smoldering battlesuit fell apart as he ran below a nearby bridge that served as the base for Atlas-like pillars holding up the skyscrapers.
The wind pointed him in the direction of a locked door. With the strength of his twin hearts, Ador kicked the door open and revealed unlit staircase sank into an infinite trench of darkness. He pulled Natalie into the narrow staircase and closed the door.
The flickering blue light emanating from the point of singularity barely lit the way forward, but Ador welcomed the darkness if it hid him and Natalie from whoever was chasing them. Ador descended at an awkward pace so that Natalie didn't flip over and bounce down the entire staircase. Even though that forced Ador to place greater stress on his muscles, he knew his hardship wasn't as bad as the back and neck pain he was causing Natalie.
