Noticing she’d frozen in place, Ryuu tapped her shoulder. “Are you okay? I can do it instead.”

“I’m fine,” she said in a slightly high-pitched voice.

In her memories, she heard her father’s gruff voice as he told her to be strong, that the lightning flashing across a gray sky was hope in darkness, that there was no need to hide from a coming storm because the harder it raged, the closer it was to moving away.

She’d faced plenty of dark places before, and she would face all of them at once if it meant saving Teo.

Ryuu handed her the dynamite and Raurie gave her a short length of rope. She gritted her teeth and climbed up, using the handholds and footholds cut into the wall.

With one hand, she slipped the rope through the openings in the metal grate, then fastened the ends of the rope tightly around the pack of the explosives.

Once she reached the ground again, she and Raurie stepped back while Ryuu struck a match. The flame glowed bright orange in the dimly lit tunnel. He placed the flame to the end of the string. It sizzled and crackled, traveling fast up the string toward the dynamite. They ran back down the hall and around a corner.

As soon as they took cover, the dynamite exploded. The sound crashed through the corridor like thunder. She winced and clenched her hand around the edge of the wall, expecting someone to come running at any moment. But the sound of the explosion blended so well with the ever-present thrum of drills in the tunnels beyond that no one else listening would be able to differentiate them.

When silence fell once more, they walked back to the site of the explosion, ears ringing, and stared up into the ventilation shaft. The metal grate had been obliterated, bits and pieces of its shattered frame strewn across the floor. Some of its foundation was still lodged into the wall, but they’d be able to move around it.

“You know,” she said to Ryuu with a small smile, “when you said you would open doors for me, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

He smiled back at her. “Ready?”

She nodded and climbed first, with Ryuu and Raurie following at a steady pace. She brushed away a few cobwebs that got in the way, hoping no spiders would appear, or else she’d probably panic and fall right off the ladder. Thankfully, none did, and she reached the top of the ventilation shaft in one piece.

Once all three of them climbed over and into a new corridor, they proceeded with the light of one flickering white bulb halfway down. Fifty feet away, more light poured through a small window set near the top of a door. Aina placed a finger to her lips, then gestured for them to follow her to the door.

She’d heard how the Tower’s prison held ten stories of cells in the central pod, with only two of the floors above ground. It was rumored to be dark enough that after one day, you craved the sun, and after a week, you forgot what the sun felt like. It made her wonder once more how Kohl had managed to get out after his boss’s betrayal had landed him in prison. After all, no prisoner was allowed outside for even a minute unless General Bautix himself allowed it. Families scrounged together whatever kors they could, or took out loans from gangs, to try to bribe Bautix into releasing their loved one. Once a year, he freed a prisoner, just often enough to keep families’ hopes high and their wallets open.