“You know what we need?” Trigg asks.

I look up at him intensely. “Justice?”

“A cold beer.”

A laugh explodes out of my mouth. Too loud. Scaring me.

“Shit,” Holiday murmurs, hands flying over the controls. “Shit. Shit. Shit…”

“What?” I ask.

We’re stuck between the 24th and 25th. She punches buttons but suddenly the lift jerks upward. “They’ve overridden the controls. We’re not going to make it to the hangar. They’re redirecting us….” She lets out a long breath as she looks up at me. “To the first level. Shit. Shit. Shit. They’ll be waiting with lurchers, maybe Obsidians…maybe Golds.” She pauses. “They know you’re in here.”

I fight back the despair that rushes up from my belly. I won’t go back. Whatever happens. I’ll kill Victra, kill myself before I let them take us.

Trigg is hunched over his sister. “Can you hack the system?”

“When the hell do you think I learned how to do that?”

“I wish Ephraim was here. He could.”

“Well, I’m not Ephraim.”

“What about climbing out?”

“If you want to be a skid mark.”

“Guess that leaves one option. Eh?” He reaches into his pocket. “Plan C.”

“I hate Plan C.”

“Yeah, well. Time to embrace the suck, babydoll. Unpack the heathen.

“What’s Plan C?” I ask quietly.

“Escalation.” Trigg activates his comlink. Codes flash over his screen as he connects to a secure frequency. “Outrider to Wrathbone, do you register? Outrider to—”

“Wrathbone registers,” a ghostly voice echoes. “Request clearance code Echo. Over.”

Trigg references his datapad. “13439283. Over.”

“Code is green.”

“We need secondary extraction in five. Got the princess plus one at stage two.”

There’s a pause on the other line, the relief in the voice palpable even through the static. “Late notice.”

“Murder ain’t exactly punctual.”

“Be there in ten. Keep him alive.” The link goes dead.

“Goddamn amateurs,” Trigg mutters.

“Ten minutes,” Holiday repeats.

“We’ve been in worse shit.”

“When?” He doesn’t answer her. “Should have just gone to the goddamn hangar.”

“What can I do?” I ask, sensing their fear. “Can I help?”

“Don’t die,” Holiday says as she slides off her backpack. “Then this is all for shit.”

“You gotta drag your friend,” Trigg says as he starts picking tech off his body except his armor. He pulls two more antique weapons from his pack—two pistols to complement the high-powered gas ambi-rifle. He hands me a pistol. My hand shakes. I haven’t held a gunpowder weapon since I was sixteen training with the Sons. They’re vastly inefficient and heavy, and their recoil makes them wildly inaccurate.

Holiday pulls a large plastic box from her pack. Her fingers pause over the latches.

She opens the plastic box to reveal a metal cylinder with a spinning ball of mercury at its center. I stare at the device. If the Society caught her carrying it, she’d never see daylight again. Vastly illegal. I eye the gravLift’s display on the wall. Ten levels to go. Holiday grips a remote control for the cylinder. Eight levels.

Will Cassius be waiting? Aja? The Jackal? No. They would be on their ship, preparing for dinner. The Jackal would be living his life. They won’t know the alarm is for me. And even when they do, they’ll be delayed. But there’s enough to fear even without one of them coming. An Obsidian could rip these two apart with his bare hands. Trigg knows. He closes his eyes, touching his chest at four points to make a cross. A wedding band glints softly in the low light. Holiday minds the gesture, but doesn’t do the same.

“This is our profession,” she says quietly to me. “So swallow your pride. Stay behind us and let Trigg and I work.”

Trigg cracks his neck and kisses his gloved left ring finger. “Stay close. Nut to butt, sir. Don’t be shy.”

Three levels to go.

Holiday readies a gas rifle in her right hand and chews intensely on her gum, left thumb on the remote control. One level to go. We’re slowing. Watching the double doors. I loop Victra’s legs in my armpits.

“Love you, kiddo,” Holiday says.

“Love you too, babydoll,” Trigg murmurs back, voice tight and mechanical now.

I feel more afraid than I did when I lay encased in a starShell in the chamber of a spitTube before my rain. Not just afraid for me, but for Victra, for these two siblings. I want them to live. I want to know about South Pacifica. I want to know what pranks they pulled on their mother. If they had a dog, a home in the city, the country…

The gravLift wheezes to a halt.

The door light flashes. And the thick metal doors that separate us from a platoon of the Jackal’s elite hiss open. Two glowing stunGrenades zip in and clamp to the walls. Beep. Beep. And Holiday pushes the device’s button. A deep implosion of sound ruptures the elevator’s quiet as an invisible electromagnetic pulse ripples out from the spherical EMP at our feet. The grenades fizzle dead. Lights go black in the elevator, outside it. And all the Grays waiting beyond the door with their hi-tech pulse weapons, and all the Obsidians in their heavy armor with their electronic joints and helmets and air filtration units, are slapped in the face with the Middle Ages.

But Holiday and Trigg’s antiques still work. They stalk forward out of the elevator into the stone hall, hunched over their weapons like evil gargoyles. It’s slaughter. Two expert marksmen firing short bursts of archaic slugs at point-blank range into squads of defenseless Grays in wide halls. There is no cover to take. Flashes in the corridor. Gigantic sounds of high-powered rifles. Rattling my teeth. I freeze in the elevator till Holiday shouts at me, and I rush after Trigg, hauling Victra behind me.

Three Obsidians go down as Holiday lobs an antique grenade. Whooomph. A hole opens in the ceiling. Plaster rains. Dust. Chairs and Coppers fall through the hole from the room above, crashing down into the fray. I hyperventilate. A man’s head kicks back. Body spins to the ground. A Gray flees for cover down a stone hall. Holiday shoots her in the spine. She sprawls like a child slipping on ice. Movement everywhere. An Obsidian charges from the side.