“Rinsed him off?” I asked.

I felt the nod. “He’s over there in the corner, pulling himself together.”

“The B team is okay. Where’s the A team?”

“Downstairs.”

Downstairs wasn’t good.

“He covered the ceiling so he was dripping down on top of us. I saw it at the last second,” Sveta said. “I took the bullet, and tried to put myself where I would at least get in their way. Thane had to work remotely.”

“You did good.”

“I don’t feel good.”

I wanted to reply to that, but I knew the feeling one hundred percent.

One hundred and ten percent.

“Bricklayer’s mantra,” I said.

I felt her nod, her forehead against mine. “I’ve got me. You go get Swansong and Crystal.”

“And Ratcatcher?” I asked, turning around in the doorway I was already flying through.

She shook her head. “Ran. Get the other two.”

I nodded.

The light from the flashlight wasn’t quite sufficient for this kind of oppressive darkness. A single beam of light weighed against corridor after corridor, room after room of only darkness. I found the stairwell, and beyond the first flight, everything was obscured by the receding water, the level steadily decreasing.

I could hear something below. The terrible noise I’d noted earlier, a roar or great grinding.

As good a cue as anything.

The debris and the degree of the churn at the top level of the water made entry by flight difficult, with an obstacle catching my shoulder on one entry and a lack of forward movement stalling the second.

Then I was beneath, and the already small beam of light from the flashlight halved in size, diffused into dark, grimy waters. My skin and clothing were soaked through and gripped with the cold water.

The roaring I’d heard earlier was louder here.

Louder still as I flew deeper through the water, through a maze of things that threatened to catch at my armor and clothing, scraping at my arms. It was a morass of debris, old construction material left in the tunnel, where it could sit forever, and I couldn’t use the Wretch because doing so threatened to make things harder to get through. I’d only end up tearing things down and compacting stuff into barriers. I’d run out of breath before I got through.

I exhaled a bit, letting bubbles rise to the surface. I’d always found that trying to hold two full lungfuls of breath ended up being counter-intuitive. A steady release helped.

The current of the water became stronger as I got closer to the bottom, and the amount of sediment increased.

I found the source of the roar. Ashley, her back against the edge of a doorframe, stood knee deep in water. Her power was directed at the hallway, a steady, continuous blast, that bucked, kicked, and forced her to retain her control.

I thought of fighting the shield as the Wretch tugged at it.