Kip’s fingers found Jom’s wrist and the boy heaved, Kip grabbing the banister with the other hand to steady himself.

Behind him, the Quarren they had found wandering the corridors alone wheezed wretchedly. Kip looked back, worried about the old guy. He was going downhill fast, the nasty gash across his left eye still bleeding. Kip had spotted him with a woman back on the viewing platform, but now he was alone, and there was no mistaking the tears in the Quarren’s eyes. The only thing they knew about him was his name and the fact he was finding it hard to breathe.

“You okay, Nwo?” Jom called down. “Do you need a hand?”

“He doesn’t speak Basic,” Kip reminded the mayor’s son, climbing back the way he’d come to help. Luckily for all of them, Quarrenese was just one of the many languages his mom had insisted that he learned.

“Not far now,” he said to the old-timer, only for the Quarren to shake his head bleakly.

“Leave me.”

“No way. We stick together.”

It wouldn’t be difficult. There were only four of them, after all; just Kip, Jom, Nwo, and Leesa, the human fair attendant who had gotten them off the platform when the Nihil attacked.

“Let me get behind you,” Kip said, maneuvering himself around the Quarren. “Give you a leg up.”

Still grumbling, Nwo allowed himself to be pushed up the stairwell, Jom grabbing the Quarren’s waterlogged robes.

“But where are we going?” Nwo burbled when they reached the top.

It was a good question. He turned to Leesa, who was consulting a cracked datapad.

“Where now?”

The woman dragged a finger across the map on the display, rotating the device to make sense of their location.

“This way,” she said in an accent that Kip didn’t recognize. She was pointing to a half-closed door that had stalled on its runners.

Jom pushed on ahead and tried to open it, muscles bunching under his wet shirt.

“It’s moving,” he reported through gritted teeth.

Leesa slipped the datapad in her waistband and went to help, pulling where Jom was pushing. Kip joined them while Nwo leaned heavily on the wall, catching his breath.

The door creaked on its runners. “That’s it,” Jom said. “It’s beginning to give.”

And give it did, in spectacular fashion, sliding suddenly back as if freshly oiled. Leesa let go, but Kip and Jom were carried forward by the sudden movement, landing in a heap on the floor, a mess of tangled arms and legs.