Tolya’s voice came from behind the wall of fallen rock blocking the tunnel, but it was strong and clear. I pressed my head to my knees in relief.

“Where’s my brother?” yelled Nadia.

“He’s here with me and Tamar,” Tolya replied.

“Sergei and Stigg?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Saints.

We waited for another boom, for the rest of the tunnel to come down on top of us. When nothing happened, we started scrabbling toward Tolya’s voice as he and Tamar dug from the other side. In a matter of moments, we saw their hands, then their dirty faces staring back at us. They scooted into our section of the tunnel. As soon as Adrik dropped his hands, the ceiling above where he and the twins had been standing collapsed in a billow of dust and rock. He was shaking badly.

“You held the cave?” Zoya asked.

Tolya nodded. “He made a bubble as soon as we heard that last boom.”

“Huh,” Zoya said to Adrik. “I’m impressed.”

At the elation that burst over his face, she groaned. “Never mind. I’m downgrading that to grudging approval.”

“Sergei?” I called. “Stigg?”

Silence, the shift of gravel.

“Let me try something,” said Zoya. She raised her hands. I heard a crackling in my ears, and the air seemed to grow damp. “Sergei?” she said. Her voice sounded weirdly distant.

Then I heard Sergei’s voice, weak and trembling, but clear, as if he were speaking right beside me. “Here,” he panted.

Zoya flexed her fingers, making adjustments, and called to Sergei again.

This time, when he replied, David said, “It sounds like it’s coming from below us.”

“Maybe not,” Zoya replied. “The acoustics can be misleading.”

Mal moved farther down the passage. “No, he’s right. The floor in their segment of the tunnel must have collapsed.”

It took us nearly two hours to find them and dig them out—Tolya hefting soil, Mal calling directions, the Squallers stabilizing the sides of the tunnel with air as I maintained a dim illumination, the others forming a line to move rocks and sand.

When we found Stigg and Sergei, they were covered in mud and nearly comatose.

“Lowered our pulses,” Sergei mumbled groggily. “Slow respiration. Use less air.”

Tolya and Tamar brought them back, raising their heart rates and flushing their lungs with oxygen.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” slurred a still-bleary Stigg.

“Why?” cried Genya, gently brushing the dirt from around his eyes.

“He wasn’t sure that you’d care,” said Harshaw from behind me.

There were mumbled protests and some guilty looks. I did think of Stigg and Harshaw as outsiders. And Sergei … well … Sergei had been lost for a while now. None of us had done a very good job of reaching out to them.

When Sergei and Stigg could walk, we headed back to the more intact part of the tunnel. One by one, the Squallers released their power, as we waited to see if the ceiling would hold so they could rest. We brushed the dust and grime off one another’s faces and clothes as best we could, then passed a flask of kvas around. Stigg clung to it like a baby with a bottle.