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“Unfortunately, no!” Brakk yells back.

The scanner in Anita’s hand flashes wildly. “There’s another route intersecting in twelve meters!”

“Twelve meters where?” I ask.

She looks up.

I follow her gaze and see a maintenance bridge sliding through the upper shaft, moving slowly between the walls like part of a gigantic machine.

Brakk groans. “Oh, excellent. We’ve upgraded from murder hallway to death tram.”

The bridge passes overhead.

Anita grabs my arm before I can move. “You can jump that.”

I stare at her.

She stares right back.

Behind us, the sealed gallery detonates.

The blast wave punches through the corridor with brutal force, heat and debris roaring toward us in a cloud of shattered black stone. Choir charges. They are blasting through the lockdown barriers.

Brakk points upward wildly. “Conversation over! Giant man, do giant man thing!”

I shift Sira higher against my shoulders and leap.

The jump tears pain through my side so violently my vision flashes white, but my hands catch the underside of the moving bridge. Metal groans beneath my grip. Sira gasps softly as the motion jerks her body against my back.

“Go!” I roar.

Anita jumps next.

For one horrifying second, her fingers slip on the edge of the bridge as the corridor beneath us explodes apart. I catch her wrist before gravity can claim her. The force nearly tears my shoulder from its socket. She slams against the side of the bridge hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs, but she hangs on while Brakk launches himself after her with an impressive quantity of terrified profanity.

The bridge carries us upward through the shaft while the lower corridor collapses into silver-lit ruin beneath us.

Anita climbs onto the platform first and immediately turns back toward me. “Give me Sira.”

“You cannot carry her.”

“Try me.”

There is no time to argue.

I lift Sira carefully into Anita’s arms while Brakk hauls me onto the bridge beside them. The Fratvoyan collapses flat on his back, panting.

“I hate archaeology,” he wheezes. “I hate religion. I especially hate architecture designed by cosmic lunatics.”

The bridge enters another passage before the Choir can reach the shaft below us.

For several seconds, all we hear is our own breathing and the groan of ancient machinery carrying us deeper beneath the planet.

Sira stirs weakly in Anita’s arms.

The collar burns have left angry red marks along her throat. Anita brushes trembling fingers near the injury with astonishing gentleness. Every instinct in me softens at the sight even while the tactical part of my mind remains fixed on exits, cover, angles, ammunition, blood loss.

The passage ahead opens suddenly into a transit chamber shaped like the inside of a gigantic black crystal. Faceted walls tower overhead, threaded with silver veins that pulse in sync with the archive case. Suspended bridges crisscross the chamber at impossible angles. Some move. Some dissolve into light halfway across open air. Others appear only when the silver pulses brighten.