Raine grunted and pushed himself forward. He had been a beefy man once. Now he was mostly sagging brown skin over knobby bones. He still had a bit of a paunch, but the rest of him was so thin he seemed terribly disproportioned, like he’d fall over. Nyx really didn’t want to help him get up.

“Come on, Raine. We have a long way to go.”

Raine was unsteady on his feet. Pressed a hand on the wall to hold his balance. “Let’s go then, bel dame.”

She was going to have to carry him. Fuck.

Nyx hauled Raine down the twisting corridors, half-dragging him along. He was in no shape to walk, let alone run, but it was hurry up or die now, and she had a long way to go yet. Raine sucked in breath hard and fast. After a time, he started to wheeze, but she did not stop. The flickering skin of the corridor began to change again, and she feared what it was trying to communicate now. Was it telling the guards about them? Was this place really sentient? It wasn’t the night she wanted to find out.

“Didn’t think it would be you,” Raine wheezed.

Nyx was sighting her way along the corridor, searching for the opening Safiyah had made in the skin, the one she’d told both Safiyah and Ahmed to wait for her at. It should be any time now. She heard a soft stirring of voices behind them. Tried to pick up the pace. There weren’t supposed to be people in these tunnels, Rhys said. But Raine was lagging now. Tripping over his feet. She’d have to carry him soon. Fuck, where was that goddamn entrance?

“Thought they’d send… my mother.”

“Fuck your mother,” Nyx muttered.

Raine grunted.

They came to the soft pulsing opening in the skin. Nyx let herself slow down half a step. “In here,” she said. She unhooked Raine from her and pushed him toward the opening.

He gulped air as he tottered toward the opening. He paused in the hall. Nyx heard more voices. She turned, drew her gun.

“Nyx,” Raine said. “You should know… you should know I’m infected.”

“What?” Nyx said.

He gripped one edge of the seam. “They want you to bring me home. I’m infected.”

“Who wants it?”

“You wouldn’t have gotten this far unless they wanted it.”

“Just go,” Nyx said. “Save the drama for a safer space, all right? Bloody fuck. You have no idea what fucking shit we’ve been through to get you.”

Raine stumbled through the opening.

Nyx jumped through after him.