A goblin hand touches her face. Skelly gasps, cries out – consciousness slamming back into her like the action on a pistol. Her hand feels on the ground, finds a rock–

Bam. Clocks it into the side of the monster.

“Ow, fuck!”

She staggers to her feet.

A long tunnel. Subway tile merged with porous stone. The only light comes from flecks of glowing blue stuck in the pores of the tunnel walls. Like fireflies crushed into the rock.

Burnsy is on the ground. Clutching his head.

“Oh, shit,” Skelly says, hurrying over. Helping him up.

“You brained me with a rock.”

“Sorry, daddy-o.”

“Daddy-o. Who does that? Who still uses that word?”

She shrugs. “Kind of our thing. The Get-Em-Girls.” Whatever’s left of us, anyway. “It’s a habit. I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Yeah. Well. A guy rescues you from a pack of goblins and nurses your cuts and he gets a rock to the dome to pay for it. That should teach me.”

A wave of guilt washes over her. “I thought you were… one of them.”

“I’m ugly, but I’m not that ugly. Anyway, if you’re up, it’s time to move. I haven’t heard any of those fuckers for a while, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still out there, searching. They’ll give up eventually – they have the patience of a twitchy cricket – but I still don’t want to take my chances.” As Burnsy talks, he starts packing up gear into an old 80s-era Jansport backpack.

Her wounds suddenly flare with fresh pain – a slow sting that transitions to a hot throb. She lifts her hand to her face, where the bones cut her, and feels her palm is sticky. And it smells like a dead animal.

Burnsy must see her face because he says, “It’s gopher grease.”

“Do I wanna know?”

“Not really.”

She blanches. Sniffs it again. “I think I wanna know.”

“There’s an animal down here. It’s like a gopher, but it’s all white, has eight legs, and is blind as my mother–”

“So, nothing like a gopher.”

“We call ’em gophers, all right? You know, just for being a smartass I’m gonna tell you the whole thing. That grease on your hand is from their anal glands.”

“Oh, god!” She gags, turns, tries to wipe her hand on the wall.

“Whoa, whoa, don’t do that. That stuff is at a premium. It heals cuts like you wouldn’t believe. Keep that goop on you, goddamnit.”

She winces. Lets her hand hang so she doesn’t have to smell it.

Backpack slung over his blistered shoulder, he waves her on. “Let’s go, let’s go. We gotta move. I got a lead on the dead Zoladski kid.”

“Change of subject,” she says, hurrying after him. “How’d you find me?”

“Luck, mostly.”

“You just… stumbled upon me.”