“The hell he did!” Rona shouted. Her gun was in her hand, and she was going for the ladder. Amos jumped down and got in her way, his hands spread wide. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t get crazy here. We need that guy.”

“Coming up on level four,” Konecheck said. “Starting to see light up top. Hear the wind. Almost there.”

Sullivan lay in the muck, his leg folded unnaturally under him, and limp as a rag. He still had the gun in his fist. A yellow indicator on the side said he was out of ammunition. Sullivan had lived just long enough to stop being useful, then Konecheck had murdered him.

Asshole couldn’t have waited until they were all the way up.

“He slipped,” Amos said. “Shit like that happens. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Rona’s teeth were chattering with rage and fear. Amos smiled and nodded at her because it seemed like the kind of thing people did to reassure folks. He couldn’t tell if it was doing any good.

“Someone going to come help?” Konecheck called. “Or am I doing all this on my own?”

“Take Morris,” Clarissa said. “Two guns. One for the metal, one to guard him. It was a mistake. It won’t happen twice.”

“And leave you unguarded?” Morris said behind her. “Not a chance. No one goes without a guard.”

“I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Amos said, but the guards didn’t seem to hear him.

“Everyone up,” Rona said. “Everyone. And if anybody does something even a little bit threatening, I swear to God I’ll kill all of you.”

“I’m a civilian,” Amos said.

Rona pointed toward the rungs with her chin. “Get climbing.”

So they climbed up into the darkness, hand over hand. Ten meters up, maybe twelve. Morris first, then Clarissa, then Amos, with Rona coming up last, her flashlight stuck in her belt and her gun in her hand. Konecheck wrestled the next length of ladder open, clanging and cursing and roaring in the effort. The black muck kept dripping down from above, making everything slick. Amos wondered if maybe Sullivan really had slipped, and chuckled to himself quietly enough that no one heard him. Konecheck, at the upper end of the ladder, swung to one side, letting Morris pass next to him. Then two more shots and the two men switched places again. Amos wondered if the rungs had been designed to carry the weight of two men at once. But they didn’t bend, so that was one good thing. He spent a lot of time looking at Clarissa’s ankles, since that was pretty much what there was to look at. They were thin from atrophy, the skin pale and dusty. He noticed when they started to tremble. If her busted hand bothered her, she didn’t say so.

“You all right, Peaches?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just getting tired is all.”