Gyre couldn’t see her expression, but there was certainly no fear in her voice, no more than there had been in their fights in the deep tunnels. Danger simply didn’t seem to matter to her. What did I expect from the Doomseeker?

“We could try to jump them,” she said. “Cut our way through and get back to the meeting room. It might work if we catch them by surprise.”

“They’re playing this safe,” Gyre said. “And they’ve got blasters. We’d never make it.”

“Then we’d better hurry.” He would have bet good money she was grinning again as she took his hand.

They backtracked a few hundred meters, until a change in the echoes told him they’d reached a junction. Farther on, tiny reflected gleams of torchlight showed on the walls, and he could hear the sound of quiet voices.

“Left or right?” Kit said.

Gyre struggled to remember Lynnia’s map and where they were in relation to the inhabited tunnels. In the end, he shrugged and pulled Kit to the left. They followed the tunnel around a long, descending curve, like a spiral ramp. The farther down they went, the more Gyre’s spirits sank. This is not going to end in a way out. He wasn’t sure if heading into the deep tunnels in total darkness would be more or less suicidal than simply trying to fight his way through dozens of Auxies.

Ultimately, however, the point was moot. Kit pulled up short, her hands groping sideways along another blank wall. Dead end.

“Well,” she said. “Ideas?”

Gyre flicked his firelighter again, throwing sparks across the stone, looking desperately for a way out that wasn’t there. The murmur of approaching voices echoed off the rock.

“How many shots left in that blaster?”

Cloth rustled as she shrugged. “Maybe half a dozen.”

“That might get us back to the junction. After that …”

“Hang on,” she said. “Let me have the firelighter.”

He found her hand, pushed the little device into it. Reflected torchlight was growing behind them as she flicked sparks into the air.

“There’s a room,” she hissed.

“What?”

“Come on.” She grabbed his hand and yanked him forward. “In here.”

Blind again, he felt rock close on both sides. Kit, ahead of him, turned and pulled him forward, sliding into a niche just across from her. The space didn’t qualify as a room, or even a closet—it was just a sideways cut in the rock, about as deep as a man and taller than Gyre, but so narrow that he and Kit were wedged practically in one another’s faces.

“Can they see us?” Gyre said, as quietly as he could.

“I fucking hope not,” Kit said. “Because if they catch us in here, we’re not exactly going to be able to fight our way out.”