“New plan,” the escort said. “We’re evacuating these prisoners and the civilian to the surface.”

The guard who’d helped pull the door open – Suliman? Sullivan? Something like that – was a thick-necked bull of a man with a single black eyebrow running across his forehead. Morris, the one with the gun, was thinner, older, with bad teeth and missing the last knuckle on his left pinky finger.

“Sure you don’t want to put the prisoners in a closet before we go?” Morris asked. “I’d feel a lot better getting out of here if we didn’t have these fucking psychos at our back.”

“Peaches comes with me,” Amos said with a loose shrug. “That’s just a thing.”

“Might need some help clearing debris,” Konecheck said. He’d been the one that laughed before. The words, innocuous as they were, held just as much threat but the others didn’t seem to hear it. Amos wondered why that was.

“Elevators are disabled, so we’ll get to the stairs,” the escort said. “That’ll get us out of here. Once we’re up top, we can secure the prisoners.”

“What about fallout?” the thick guard – Amos was almost sure the name was Sullivan – said.

“That’s nukes, asshole,” Konecheck growled.

“Rona? Shouldn’t you query the captain before we do this?” Morris asked. His eyes hadn’t shifted off Konecheck’s back. Competent, Amos thought, and filed the information away for later.

“Captain’s not answering,” the escort, Rona, said. Her voice was tight, too controlled to let the panic out. From the way the other two went quiet, Amos guessed they hadn’t known that. “Let’s head for the stairs. Morris, you take lead, then the prisoners, then me and Sully. You’ll need to follow behind, sir.”

“I’ll walk with them,” Amos said.

“Don’t trust me with your girlfriend?” Konecheck growled.

Amos grinned. “Nope.”

“Let’s get moving,” Rona said. “Before there’s a fucking aftershock.”

Fear was an interesting thing. Amos could see it in all the guards without quite being able to point to what it was. The way Morris kept looking over his shoulder, maybe. Or the way Rona and Sullivan walked exactly in step behind them, like they were trying to agree with each other just by the length of their stride. Peaches seemed focused and empty, but that was kind of just her. Konecheck, on Amos’ left, was jutting out his beard and making a big show of what a badass he was, which would have been funnier if he didn’t have a nervous system redesigned for violence. Guys like that were either scared all the time anyway or so broken they didn’t count. Amos wondered whether he was scared. He didn’t know how he’d tell. He also wondered if there were going to be more rocks falling, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he had any say over.