We heard the shooting through the pipe, echoing in the metal. Pak, pak, pa-pak. Single shot rapid fire, or many slow-firing rifles.

  Like a large group of men with bolt-action rifles, who didn't know how to handle them properly.

  "Hurry," I said, but Aian was already struggling forward. The sludge splashed everywhere. I got some in the face, a stinking, cloying mud that left a slimy trace when I wiped my sleeve over it.

  The gunfire got louder and louder.

  Finally, there was light, a hatch in the top of the sludge pipe, with a locking bolt stuck into it.

  Which was locked. Aian reached up and knocked on the pipe, his hand jerking in some kind of code.

  No chance anyone up there would hear it over the gunfire. I yanked out my etching drill and cut a quick and crude push ward into the underside of the hatch. Then I focused, and took a deep breath.

  A harsh, burning stench flowed into my throat, causing me to retch and cough. Crudmunching meditation training. To the void with it. I hacked, spat, spent a heartbeat wishing for a cup of tea and conjured a thread of force on pure fear and adrenaline.

  It came, cold with the void, hot with fear, and I rammed it into my improvised ward, hoping that no-one was near.

  The hatch tore open. My ears popped. I stuck my head up, enough to see.

  I expected Downbelow-town to be in shambles. Instead, I got a view of people in orderly lines snaking toward the escape holes.

  Men, women, children, some holding small bags, or prized possessions, getting hooked into drop harnesses and disappearing over the edge of the hole.

  The wind tore at them, a howling cyclone of pressure that flowed down into the next level. Somewhere in Rimont station security, someone was likely having a fit at the breech alarms all going off.

  The Kylians were going to be hunted now, for sure.

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  But they had other problems. Near the narrow, winding trail that Riina had taken us through was a group of men, young men, pressing forward with long pipes, trying to shove them into the tunnel.

  From the tunnel came the flashes and bangs of gunfire. A Kylian fell, his shoulder blowing open, the man behind him jerking back and grabbing his face. Hit through his friend. Two new men took their places, pressing more metal into the tunnel.

  A rearguard. Giving everyone else time to flee.

  And secs in the tunnel, firing to clear it.

  I pulled myself out of the sludge pipe, started running toward the tunnel entrance, pushing through the lines of people waiting to flee.

  Then I stopped. It would take minutes to reach the tunnel. Another Kylian collapsed, his jaw nearly severed by a bullet. I could see the flashes of the guns. They couldn't be more than a meter or two behind the improvised barricade.

  A long arm shoved past me, pushing aside Kylians.

  "Run," Hao yelled in my ear, the button on her jacket scraping my scalp.

  Jacket. The magejacket I'd made for her.

  "Take it off," I yelled at her. "Your jacket." Her eyebrows shot up, her eyes went icy-cold. The hand pushing Kylians aside for me turned into a fist.

  "I need the wards," I shouted. "The ones in your jacket."

  I kept staring up at her. Her fist trembled in the corner of my vision.

  "Please, Hao," I said. "I need the wards."

  She pressed herself backward, away from me. Without a word, she pulled off her jacket and swung it toward me with a look burning as a malfunctioning rocket engine. I expected her to follow through on the swing, to punch the jacket through my head.

  Instead, she released it. It hit me in the chest, and I caught it. Conjuring another thread of force was like being stabbed in the brain. Grey spots floated and flashed before my eyes. I ignored them, and shoved the thread into a pair of wards in my own jacket, then bounced their force against Hao's wards.

  Her jacket tore from my hands, the pale leather flapping as it flew through the dome, up, and up, then down. With a final poke of my force thread, I positioned it against the opening.

  Bullets cracked against the wards in the jacket, shattering some, but not making it through. I used my thread to slash a heat ward on the inside of the jacket, making it flash three times, pause, then three times again, then two.

  Warning sign. Danger. Get away.

  The Kylians nearest my jacket backed away in a hurry. Well trained, or obedient, or plain scared.

  I ripped a final thread of force from the void. It crawled through me like an ice-cold rat, constricting my throat, choking me and rising the bile in my stomach all at once.

  My legs went wobbly, my entire body going weak, about to collapse. I shoved the force into Hao's jacket, suspended in the entrance of the tunnel.

  It shattered every remaining ward at once, while I up-tuned them.

  A bang. A blast. Light. Heat that flowed over my cheeks a hundred meters away.

  The tunnel entrance collapsed, melted slag and steel dripping from it.

  Somewhere, someone was screaming, a high-pitched wail of pain.

  My legs finally bent. Darkness claimed me.