"It's me," she repeated. She had no idea how much of the blood was his. "Are you—"

"—dogs?" His breath hissed fast and panicky through clenched teeth, the breath of a terrified little boy.

She looked at her escort. They looked back.

"Holding back, for now. Someone called them off."

His hand steadied. His breathing slowed. Discipline reimposed itself from the top down, the old familiar Lubin rebooting himself through sheer force of will.

"Told you," he coughed.

"Are you—"

"Functional..." He got slowly to his feet, tensing and grimacing a half-dozen times. "—barely." His right thigh had been gored. A gash split the side of his face, running from jaw to hairline. It tore straight through the shattered socket of his right eye.

Clarke gasped. "Jesus, your eye…"

He reached up to touch his face. "Wasn't doing me much good anyway." The deformity of his hand, barely glimpsed before, was obvious now: two of the fingers were gone.

"And your hand—Ken, it—"

He flexed the remaining digits. Fresh membranous scabs tore open at the stumps; dark fluids seeped forth. "Not as bad as it looks," he said hoarsely.

"You'll bleed out, you'll—"

He shook his head, staggered slightly. "Enhanced clotting factors. Standard issue. I'm good to go."

The hell you are. But dogs crowded close on one side, fell back on the other. Staying put obviously wasn't an option either.

"Okay then." She took him by the elbow. "This way."

"We're not deviating." It wasn't a question.

"No. We don't have much choice."

He coughed again. Clotting fluid bubbled at the corner of his mouth. "They're herding us."

A great dark muzzle pushed her gently from behind.

"Think of it as an honor guard," she said.

A row of glass doors beneath a concrete awning, the official logo of the Entropy Patrol set into stone overhead. The dogs formed a semicircle around the entrance, pushing them forward.

"What do you see?" Lubin asked.

"Same outer doors. Vestibule behind, three meters deep. There's—there's a door in the center of the barrier. Just an outline, no knob or keypad or anything."

She could have sworn that hadn't been there before.

Lubin spat blood. "Let's go."

She tried one of the doors. It swung open. They stepped across the threshold.

"We're in the vestibule."

"Dogs?"

"Still outside." The pack was lined up against the glass now, staring in. "I guess they're not—oh. The inner door just opened."

"In or out?"

"Inwards. Dark inside. Can't see anything." She stepped forward; her eyecaps would adjust to that deeper darkness once they were in it.

If they got in it. Lubin had frozen at her side, the remaining fingers on his mauled hand clenched into an impoverished fist. The grenade pistol extended from his other hand, unwavering, pointing straight ahead. His ravaged face held an expression Clarke had never seen before, some smoldering picture of rage and humiliation that bordered on outright humanity.

"Ken. Door's open."

The thumbwheel clicked onto shipworm.