Not hard edges. Look, Victoria! Look! Where are they!? Look for human shapes, for the lines of the human body!

Motion caught my attention, almost invisible in a swirl of computer chips and boards. I moved to intercept before I’d fully verified who it was. Rain, swimming through the water.

I flew to him, grabbing him, helping him along. I saw his head turn, his eyes wide.

I could fly, and flying was better than swimming. Holding him, I flew us both toward the door, toward the tunnel where someone would have to swim further than the length of a swimming pool to get to the hole we’d made. They would then have to get up through that hole.

Tristan drew outlines, and made dense material that fit within those outlines. Byron drew outlines, but the condensed material was something that uncondensed, expanding out to fill space, vastly disproportionate to the outlines made.

Rain slipped from my grip. He’d stopped abruptly. I turned myself around.

He pointed.

Hair, floating free in the water, and a form that wasn’t really trying to swim.

I nodded confirmation, and Rain kicked, propelling himself toward the door, the eddies and flows in the water flipping him belly-up. Leaving me to it, even as my pulse joined the dull roar of water in my ears, each beat a delivery of a swiftly dwindling oxygen reserve.

More blue lights surrounded Rain, surrounded us. It still felt like two shades of blue and black, but the blue was lighter, the black filling less space.

I grabbed him and gave him a tug to help him on his way, and I saw a glimpse of Byron at the door. He was drawing out motes. Behind him, Damsel was already heading through the tunnel, visible more by the froth behind her, the water and debris turbulent.

Bubbles slipped through my lips. How long had it been? Twenty seconds? Forty? A minute? Two minutes?

I was ready to get to a place I could breathe now, and I still had too much to do. I pushed urgency out of mind, with a growing feeling that if I did start to panic, I’d be less able to handle it because I’d put it off.

The hair, as I flew to intercept, was Monokeros’s. She wasn’t really trying to swim.

I saw flashing, and for a moment, I thought it was the server somehow still alive. Then I saw the shape. The side of someone illuminated by the flash, a line with slight curves that could have been someone’s leg or back. A human kind of shape.

I flew past Monokeros to the other shape. The flashing continued—Lookout’s flash gun, aimed at the wall. A signal. It was a steady series of flashes, until the gun ceased to work. I saw her smack the gun a few times.