Something shot through the air and she reached out with her other hand, her rifle already dropped, and then something hit her and she had a hand around Kade’s wrist, keeping him from being sucked down the hungry shaft.

Something slammed into her, tried to break her hold, bounced off, and a body soared through the air, sucked into the vortex, slamming into the far wall of the elevator shaft, and then disappearing. A chair followed it, another body. Another. Someone screamed, she thought. Maybe. There was so much roaring in her ears. She couldn’t hear herself think.

She held on. Held on. Held on.

Then there was a crash, far away, like the sound of an avalanche.

And it was over.

Sam collapsed to the ground, sweat covering her, her body aching.

Kade was trembling, panting.

She looked over. That was Feng, in the deactivated Indian chameleonware. His face… There was another Fist next to him.

Where was the third?

“Feng?”

He looked over at her.

“He saved me…” Feng said, his eyes wide. “We collided. He… he pushed me away, down, away from the elevator… pushing himself…” Feng shook his head, a look of shock on his face. “Bai!”

Oh god.

They unpacked the gear. Sam kept an eye on Feng. She saw him and Kade have a moment. But the Fist shook it off, shook it off with the attitude she knew so well.

The attitude that said the mission must go on.

Harnesses. Check.

Lights. Check.

Friction-based descenders. Check.

Powered ascenders with extra-large power packs. Check.

Guns. Ammo. Explosives. Check.

Knives. Check.

1.3 kilometer-long reel of micro-jacketed ultra-high-quality fiber optic cable, with broad spectrum, high-bandwidth, Nexus-linked, satellite-capable, internal fuel-cell-powered network access points at each end.

Check.

She checked Feng’s harness.

Feng checked hers.

They both checked Kade’s.

And he checked the networking gear.

“Good to go,” Sam said.

Liwei saluted them. “Stop the madness.”

Then he headed off, with one of the network access points, and one end of the cable.

It was for the best. He was vulnerable. Vulnerable in a way Sam wasn’t.

In a way they hoped Kade and Feng weren’t. Or at least were less so.

They slid down into the darkness, their harnesses holding them to the elevator cable, their descenders gripping just tight enough to slow their fall, their chameleonware active, their radios silent, their light-augmenting visors barely illuminating the enormous smooth-walled pit that descended straight down, down, down into the earth.

It grew colder. The dim light above receded until it was nothing more than a faint, barely seen point, dimmer than a star at night.

Network data was gone. GPS was gone. All contact with the outside world was gone, until Kade fired up that network access point sometime in the future.

Sam looked down.

The bottom could not be seen.

The pit could be infinite for all she knew. It could drop forever.