Ears ringing, I lie on the wavering top of the elevator car, palms resting against the cool metal, blinking up at the faint swing of flashlight beams cutting through the dusty shaft. Kai works fast, jerking the harness from my legs and cutting me free of the rope. “Get up. We have to go.”

My head feels foggy, disconnected from the rest of me. I cry out, pain ripping through my arm as she latches on to it and hauls me up. She hefts open the access hatch. It falls against the elevator car with a rattling smash. Fragments of stone and dust shower around me, and a bullet plinks down beside my foot.

“Come on,” she urges, shoving me toward the hatch as another bullet pings beside us. I drop into the elevator car, hitting the floor with a thud. The compartment shakes as Kai drops in beside me and the hatch slams closed.

The darkness inside the elevator car is disorienting. My arm’s wet, the sleeve of my jacket sticky and warm. I reach out to steady myself as Kai shuffles away from me.

Her hands slide over the walls. With a grunt, she pries open the elevator doors. Dim red light from an emergency exit sign spills into the car. Broken glass glitters like rubies in the hall. The floor is littered with plaster and debris, and the air is thin and heavy with dust.

Kai crouches beside me. “You okay?”

I manage a shallow nod. She slings my good arm over her shoulder, easing me upright. My head pounds as I follow her to a set of double doors at the end of the hall.

“Spooky down here, isn’t it?” she says in a hushed voice. Hairline cracks branch like spiderwebs over the walls, and the steel doors are bent in their gnarled frame. It looks like we parachuted into a war zone.

“Did Fleur do this?” I ask.

“Gaia,” Kai says, testing the latch on the door. “When Doug killed her, her magic went apeshit. I was certain it would bring the entire place down. The Observatory was still quaking when I left.” She throws her shoulder into the door, but it doesn’t budge.

“How’d you get out?”

“Through the catacombs.”

“Wait.” I take her arm, steadying myself against a wave of vertigo. “You know your way through the catacombs? All of them?”

Kai nods, her eyes reflecting the eerie light from the exit sign above us. There’s no power in the catacombs. No cameras. No Guards. If there’s a way to pass from wing to wing through the tunnels, we can move through the Observatory undetected.

“Can you show me?”

Kai stiffens. Her head cocks toward a muffled noise on the other side of the broken door. Our eyes catch as the voices grow louder.