“Shit,” Ava said, trying and failing to remember the mandatory first aid classes she’d sat through six months before. They’d just been another series of instructional videos, which were apparently LitenVärld’s answer to everything. She yanked off her own shawl and tied it around the wounds. Pressure, right? To stop bleeding? It would have to do for now.

“Okay, we have to get out of here,” Ava said, fumbling for the FINNA. “Fuck this fucking place and all the fucking monsters and this fucking job—!”

She finally got the stupid thing out of Ursula’s giant granny purse right as the wheel slid underneath Jules’ hands. With a shout of effort, they stopped its movement. “I can’t hold it for long!” they shouted. “Get my belt off!”

Ava looked back at them. “What?”

“Use my belt to tie the hatch closed. It’ll stop them for a while!”

Ava stumbled over, yanked Jules’s shirt up, and managed to pull their belt through the loops. She slid it through the rim of the wheel, looped it around a metal handhold, and then cinched the whole thing shut. She could feel minute shudders coming through the door as the Danas and Marks slammed against it. It was, what, four inches of solid metal? Christ.

Finally, it was done. Jules relaxed minutely; their knuckles, pale with strain, flushed as blood flowed back into them. Then the wheel gave a short, aborted turn. The leather belt creaked ominously against the sudden strain, and the buckle started to bend.

“Fuck!” Jules shouted, and grabbed hold of it again. “Get the FINNA!”

Ava scrabbled for it again, finally getting the unwieldy thing into her hands. “Home, home, how do I make it take us home?”

“This is why you should read the instructions!”

“Really, Jules?!” Ava screamed. “Because I might need to escape from a swarm of cannibal drones?”

Jules took a precious second to pull the instructional booklet out of their back pocket and throw it at Ava. She snatched it out of the air and opened it. The diagrams swam before her eyes like an alien script. “How can anyone make any sense of this shit?” she hissed.

Jules said, “Check page twelve, that’s where I found the other instructions.”

Ava flipped to page twelve and found the diagrams, right where Jules said they were: a happy cartoon person flipping the dial on the side from the compass to a house. Intuitive design. A house for home. Sure. She turned the dial on the side of the FINNA; there was a musical beep, and a new blue arrow popped up on the console, directing them down through another hallway. “Okay, I think I got it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She began the process of hauling Nouresh up, trying not to think the word deadweight. “Can you help me with her?”