Adam and Ellen.

They’d somehow blown the ceiling into the reactor with nearly perfect precision. Mitzi squinted through the billowing dust clouds to see Adam raise an arm and wave to her. She felt frozen with shock, but her mind was galloping, digging through plans, grasping at straws.

They couldn’t get through the door behind them. They couldn’t go down. That left—

Mitzi glanced at the hole in the ceiling, which gave her a glimpse of blue sky. “Nic, where’s your ship?”

“Not far from the reactor, doll.”

“Get as close as you can.” Mitzi grabbed Eoin’s and Mir’s arms and began dragging them left, towards the remainder of the metal bridge, ushering Skye ahead. The concrete lid Adam and Ellen had dropped wouldn’t keep the Cymics down for long, but she had a plan—a crazy, stupid, recklessly dangerous plan that even she couldn’t believe she was about to try.

The falling roof had sliced through the middle of the metal walkway, but the edges were still functional, if a little twisted. Shuffling, rolling, and pushing, Mitzi urged her companions across the horrifically steep incline and towards the bridge. “Get on. Get on!” she yelled.

The block of concrete was still pushing the Cymics downwards, but it was slowing. Any second, they would be rising again.

“Climb!”

The floor had risen so steeply that that the steps leading up to the walkway were nearly sideways. Mitzi struggled up them on her hands and knees, gripping the metal slats so tightly that her suit’s gloves crushed the metal, to prevent the lurching, rocking motion of the room from throwing her off. She reached the top of the stairs, where the remainder of the walkway, all twenty feet of it, stretched downwards like a slide before it warped and broke off.

“Follow me,” she barked to the three team members behind her. Then she threw her legs onto the walkway and let gravity drag her down it. Her gloves ground against the rails as she sought to keep herself from being knocked off, and shudders ran up her body, sending her teeth chattering. Her heart was in her throat, and eyes were wide as she faced the end of the walkway. As she’d guessed, the Cymics were rising again, pushing the concrete up with them, but there was still a ten-foot drop from the end of the walkway into the pit. She couldn’t even see if there was an intact piece of concrete where she was going to land.

She shot off the end of the walkway and stretched out her feet, bracing for impact, praying that she would land on solid ground rather than the sucking flesh of the Cymics. She heard a gasp but didn’t dare look back. Concrete rose to meet her boots, and she hit it with such force that the metal suit groaned, and a spike of pain ran up the leg that had been damaged. Barely a foot behind her, the concrete ended, and the black flesh rippled, still struggling to come to terms with having a hundred tons of concrete dropped on it.