“None,” Gyre said. “That was all Lynnia had on hand. I’ve got some smaller crackers, but—”

“Then,” Kit interrupted, “I think it’s time to run.”

Gyre looked down. His numbed ears couldn’t hear much, but he felt a buzz through the soles of his feet. On the floor, tiny pebbles rattled and jumped to the echoing tread of many oncoming footsteps.

*

They ran, down into the dark.

To this point, Gyre had been doing his best to keep track of the route in his mind, so that they could backtrack at least a little ways if they ran into a dead end. Now any hope of that was abandoned. He sprinted down one curving corridor after another, Kit just behind him. When he came to a branching, he chose whichever tunnel wasn’t already thick with the rumbling tread of constructs.

“They’re herding us,” Kit gasped out between breaths.

Gyre nodded, too winded to speak. Not that there’s anything we can do about it.

A stitch stabbed in his side like a dagger, and his pack dragged at his shoulders. Light-patches blinked on ahead of them and went out once they’d passed, corridor after corridor, the endless web of tunnels stretching down and down. His knees screamed with every step.

They came to a four-way junction, a pool of light with darkness all around. Ahead and to the right, distant shapes moved, and footsteps were still closing in from behind.

Left it is, then. Gyre ran down another curving corridor and skidded to a halt in a small circular room. A light-patch on the ceiling flickered on, revealing no other exits. Except—

There was an opening on the rear wall. Not a passageway, just a hole in the rock, barely big enough for Gyre to crawl through. It was lined, not with stone, but with something soft and wet that glistened in the faint light. It looked distressingly alive, and as he watched, the edges of the aperture contracted in a fit of peristaltic motion, the wave running down the narrow chute and out of sight.

“Yuck,” Kit said.

“No idea what that is?” Gyre said. They approached the strange opening, the pounding of footsteps behind getting louder.

“Nothing I saw the last time I was here,” Kit said. “On the other hand, I was unconscious when they brought me into the city.”

“You think this might be an entrance?” Gyre said. “It looks like …” Words failed him.

“It looks like the inside of someone’s throat, after you cut their head off,” Kit said.

“Thank you for that image,” Gyre muttered. “So what are the odds it leads to a stomach?”

Two constructs appeared in the doorway. They looked more dangerous than the one Gyre had destroyed, their carapaces spiked and gleaming with sharp metal tines.

“Does it really matter?” Kit said. She took a deep breath.

“You’re not seriously—” Gyre began.