Werth rolls his eyes. “Of course it is. What about us? Are we going to be liquidated? Is that their plan for us? Jesus Christ, look what they did to Spall and Lutkevich. They’re not even… them anymore. Just Snakeface fuckfaces in disguise.”

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense. We’re still here.”

“We are, at that.”

“Maybe we’re the new regime.”

Werth’s gut tightens. His body hurts. His mind hurts, too. “I hope so, Haversham. I really fucking hope so.”

Every part of her is electric with fear and aversion. Skelly’s brain has to work overtime to convince her body to cooperate, to barrel forward on a pair of roller skates through what may very well be the bowels of hell. This is the act of racing toward a cliff, of walking into a punch, of springing headlong into certain doom.

But she has no choice. Skate forward or die standing.

Only problem: she hasn’t skated in years. Skelly used to do derby. A lot of her girls still do. It’s part of their look. But that’s the thing. For her, these days it’s just aesthetic. The skates are hers, sure, but she’s been running a gang, not rollin’ around a flat track.

She’s out of practice.

And this ain’t no flat track. She doesn’t have her girl-pack with her. No jammers, no blockers, no pivot. She’s fresh meat here.

Soon as she starts to skate forward – toward the onrushing gobbos – the wheels bounce over a lip, a lip she realizes too late is part of the floor carvings, the massive stone etchings of monstrous worms and snakes winding around each mound of death. It jars her; she almost falls forward, but she twists her hips and leans into it, getting her skates beneath her–

And that’s when she realizes, those carvings are just what she needs.

They’re a smooth track.

Yes. Yes. As the goblins rush toward her, she reaches out her hand–

And catches the flickering green torch.

Soon as she meets the rushing goblins, she skates by them in an arc, swiping the torch across their faces and into their field of vision. They squeal and shriek. One launches himself at her with a rattling bike chain in hand but she ducks, feels the skate wheels hop the lip and land in the track of the carved floor–

Another twist and she stays in the track.

She rides the shape of the monster, winding around one heap and then another, the serpent tracks forming massive coils and knots around each–

There. There. The way out. An archway. Fire-lit. The arch a carving of eyeless worms whose flesh is marked with strange symbols.

Ahead, through the arch, the darkness shifts–

She thinks it’s just her eyes. Skate, goddamnit, just skate.