His face said eloquently that there was no way in hell any of them could be ready for this, but he just nodded tersely. He answered his phone as the whole mob of them headed through the fire exit door. “Kier? Yes, I…Christ. Get out, get your people out, just…clear everyone away from the building, as far as you can. I don’t know, Royce. All goddamned bets are off.” For a moment he sounded on the point of tears, and Lee felt an unwanted stab of sympathy: the man of authority whose writ has run translucently thin. “Do not engage, just clear out and watch the bloody fireworks from a safe distance.” Lee was mounting the stairs, like a sheepdog behind a moving carpet of rat-creatures. Mal and Khan were already around the turn of the next landing. Sabreur was on her heels, and she heard him close with, “Kier, if this goes south, it’s been a pleasure,” with such desperate English stiff-upper-lippery that she almost liked him.

“How many floors to this fucking place?” Khan called from above.

“I think ninety-five,” Sabreur shouted back, jostling Lee to go faster even though she was practically treading on tails.

“Fuck me!”

Sabreur was on his phone again. “Yes, helicopters, as many as you can find. I need immediate air evacuation from the roof. Leslie Hind will give you all the authority you need, but get things in motion now. I don’t know what sort of time we have—”

The air flexed around them. Lee thought it was an artefact of her own labouring breath, but everyone had stuttered to a halt. The rats clustered into a single mutually supportive mass, the translator at their head.

“Earthquake?” Lee asked, but the shudder hadn’t touched the building, hadn’t touched anything except the fabric of reality.

“They are coming!” the Nissa woman shouted, actually shouted, real alarm breaking through. “Move! Move!”

And they moved, but even as they did, Lee realized it was too late. Somewhere below them, rodent soldiers would be funnelling up the stairwells, a tide of matted hair, black uniforms and murderous weapons. But that wasn’t the only place they could come from. The colossal airship must have been packed to the gills with rodent stormtroopers. It had a bomb bay. It was plainly intended for some serious pacification when needed.

“Keep going, Kay!” Sabreur shouted. “Just…up. Oh Christ.”

The flex happened again even as Lee reached the next landing, something fundamental about the world abruptly straining to breaking point. She remembered the tunnels beneath Mount Pleasant and turned hastily, so that Sabreur almost slammed into her.

“They’re forcing a breach! Do your thing, the reality-bomb thing!”

The Nissa woman already had a device in her hands. She was shaking her head, though. “Too wide, too much.” And then some exclamation of disbelief in her own language.