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The bridge carrying us slows.

Anita rises carefully with Sira still leaning against her shoulder. “This place is routing traffic.”

“That sentence should not apply underground,” Brakk mutters.

My tactical lens flickers and dies entirely.

Wonderful.

The chamber lighting shifts from silver to deep amber.

Then I hear it.

Metal on stone.

Choir boots.

“Down!” I bark.

Anita ducks instinctively as plasma fire tears across the bridge behind us. The shots strike the moving platform and explode chunks of black material into the air. Brakk rolls behind a raised ridge while fumbling for another smoke capsule.

Three Choir soldiers emerge from an upper bridge, firing downward.

Another team appears below us.

“They’re herding us!” Anita shouts.

I shove Sira toward Brakk. “Keep her low.”

Brakk grabs her carefully. “I preferred salvage jobs where the cargo didn’t scream back.”

I rise into the incoming fire before another shot reaches Anita.

The first plasma bolt burns across my shoulder. The second glances off the bridge railing. I fire back, dropping one soldier from the upper bridge. His body vanishes into the abyss below before it finishes falling.

Anita crawls toward the bridge controls with the scanner.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“Trying not to die creatively!”

The scanner interfaces with the transit platform. Symbols race across the display too quickly for me to follow. Anita’s face tightens with concentration while the chamber around us shifts again.

Then the Choir changes tactics.

A soldier on the lower bridge launches a breaching charge directly toward the transit track ahead of us.

I see it before anyone else does.

Time narrows.

The charge strikes the bridge support three meters from Anita.

“Get down!” I roar.

I move before the explosion fully blooms.

The blast tears through the transit bridge in a storm of black shards and silver fire. The force lifts Anita off her feet. I catch her around the waist and turn, taking the explosion across my back.