The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) by Rick Jones Page A

for Alyssa, missed, the tremors of the temple shifting and driving them farther apart from one another. Another wall cropped up. Another part of the floor angled. The temple was alive and angry, picking and choosing who would live and who would die.
    People sought the purchase of solid footing that wasn’t there as the floor’s angle became too steep, the slopes too difficult to manage as arms began to pinwheel for balance. Eyes flared the moment their feet gave way beneath them, people falling, then sliding, their hands clawing against the slick floor to anchor them firmly, but failing, the men crying out in terror as they slipped into the hole, one right after the other.  
    Hillary was the first to go, his face a semblance of a man knowing that his mortality was about to come to a swift and horrible end. The faces of others weren’t much different as they slipped over the edge, the looks of impotence knowing that there was nothing they could do to stop the freefall.
    A part of the floor lifted, an even plane, rising along the edge of the funnel where footing remained solid. Demir, half his team, two ministers, and Alyssa were rising above the funnel, the landing rising like an elevator toward a stationary ceiling that was coming dangerously close like the walls of a vise. 
    Savage fought for traction, his feet giving beneath him as he reached for Alyssa’s extended hand, their fingertips grazing, a glancing touch, and then his feet gave way, the floor too steep. And his eyes said it all, the sudden flash of hopelessness telling her that it was all right, that life was just a temporary stay and that he loved her with all his heart. 
    Then he slid away from her with his hand held out in her direction, a final gesture of his longing to touch her one last time.
    But then he was gone.
    John Savage had fallen into the abyss.
     
    #
    The elevator-like landing was closing in on the ceiling, offering them the decision to either jump to the funnel-shaped room below, or to become the mortar between the joining seams upon impact.
    . . . Twenty feet . . .
    The landing continued to rise.
    . . . Fifteen feet . . .
    Demir’s men seriously considered jumping, accepting the fall into the abyss as the lesser of the two evils.
    But then the landing stopped, allowing a ten-foot gap between floor and ceiling.
    Alyssa continued to look down to the room below, at the hole, believing that John Savage was so much larger than life that he would simply crawl from its opening.
    But he didn’t.
    And she broke, feeling incredibly hollow inside, the wound far more excruciating than anything she could ever imagine.
    Demir moved to a bended knee beside her and placed a gentle hand upon her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Moore. Savage was a good man.” But he wasn’t sure if she heard him or not since she never gave any indication or acknowledgement that he was trying to provide her with aid and comfort. 
    It wasn’t until a moment later when she finally reached her hand out and placed it on his, and then patted it with appreciation. All the while she continued to look into the abyss, all hope draining.
    Then it was gone as reality set in like a hammer blow to the chest, the air knocked out of her as she lay herself down onto the landing, and grieved.
    Demir allowed her the moment.
     In the meantime Demir grieved his own losses, another three men lost to the abyss, leaving him with four soldiers under his command.
    He looked at his MP5K and tossed it harshly aside, sensing its worthlessness in the temple of Mintaka, but not far enough where he couldn’t pick it up at a moment’s notice. His action was conducted more out of frustration and anger than it was out of a sense of the weapon’s futility.
    He then leaned against a wall and slid down along its length until he was seated, his eyes staring at nothing in particular as the light of his shoulder lamp gave off a strong beam that settled against the opposite wall.
    His men stood idle and