Stanislav fell, tripping on a raised concrete plinth that jutted out into the corridor. Dalip was past him before he realised, and came back.

Words were impossible. Every breath was like being stabbed. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to drag him, let alone lift him. All he could do was tug urgently at the man’s sleeve and shine a light in his face.

Stanislav’s already flattened nose dripped blood, running over his top lip and into the corners of his mouth. He spat, and spat again, and dragged himself up. Their faces were very close together and, despite their situation, the one thing that struck Dalip at that moment was the look of utter, snarling determination on the other man’s face.

Stanislav roared at the fire, giving it his pain and anger and frustration, and it was enough to carry them both to the next door. They threw themselves through, heaving it shut behind them.

A stairwell. They were in a stairwell, with a narrow caged lift running up the middle of a metal spiral staircase. The air was thick with dust, and it was blessedly cool.

Now they were no longer running, no longer living from one heartbeat to the next, they both stopped. Dalip knelt on the ground in amongst the dirt and debris and pressed his turbaned head against the gritty floor. He could still feel the intermittent vibrations, dulled by the thickness of the cloth, and hear the drawn-out groans of tortured rock and iron.

Stanislav patted his shoulder. ‘Come. We must make a report. To someone.’

Dalip ached. Everything that wasn’t red raw was bruised. ‘Okay.’

‘You did not need to come back for me.’

‘I – I did. You looked after me more than I did you.’ Dalip sat up and used the end of the stairs to stand. With their torches dangling from their wrists, expressions were unreadable.

‘You are just a boy. You have the rest of your life. And I … I. Ah well. What does it matter?’ Stanislav slapped him on the back again. ‘Come. We must climb.’

‘What do you think’s happened?’

‘I do not know. It is big, whatever it is.’ He started slowly up the stairs, and Dalip’s torch caught the other man’s boots. The soles were baked black like the bottom of an oven.

3

3

Mary looked behind her. She could hear the metallic pinging of footsteps on the stairs they’d just climbed themselves.

‘There’s someone coming.’

There were five of them. Four left from her own group, just one stray from another. How could they have been reduced in number so quickly? The darkness and confusion and, above all, the burning heat simply seemed to have swallowed them up, one by one – this one falling, that one trying to pull them back up, another just faltering to a stop, exhausted, and letting the oncoming tide of destruction take them.