The ground beneath Blake rumbled with fresh vibrations, and a low, deep explosion quickly followed. She braced, crouching like a runner at the starting line. But the origins of the explosion were evident. A piece of equipment in Tech Room Two had caught fire, sending an orange glow over Seder and the struggling carapace. Fingers of smoke snaked down around the scene.
Blake got to her feet, and her knees buckled. Eron caught her arm.
‘Blake?’
‘I’m fine.’ She pushed away from his gentle grasp, fighting her own body’s reluctance to allow her to stay on her feet. Soaked to the skin, her clothes clinging tightly, her hair like a sodden wig. The temperature had plummeted. ‘What the hell just happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
The crane that had almost crushed her, jerked, the carapace trapped beneath it bucking and writhing.
‘Eron.’ Bel raced out of the shroud of smoke. ‘I’ll deal with this one, go to Gren. We’ve lost contact. Technician, get those inhibitors up and running. Now.’
Eron gave her a short nod and disappeared into the haze.
Blake thought she heard the captain’s voice over the calamitous noise still bubbling through the chamber. The smoke from the tech room continued to spread, and the figures around her blurred into shadowy, flitting shapes. Blake coughed, her throat irritated by the hazy air. A high screech rang out through the chamber. Shouts came from somewhere beyond the tech rooms. Blake scoured the ground around her, dizzy at the movement. She could run. Use the chaos to leave the chamber. The Facility. Tempting. But what if she’d been wrong? What if Tamas hadn’t been lying, and Kira was here? Somewhere underground, in a Facility that had just been compromised. Rossiter was definitely here. Strapped with Tasers because of her. Blake pressed a hand to her chest. The odd fluttering of her heart was irritating more than anything. As if someone had let birds loose in her chest. She heaved in a breath and held it. Her knees buckled and Blake dropped, throwing her hands out to stop herself from face-planting the concrete.
‘Shit.’ Blake grimaced. Blood ran from a deep cut at the heart of her left palm. She tugged at the twisted screw embedded there and flung it away.
And that was when she saw him. Tamas. As broken as everything else around her.
She should have raced to him, gone to his side as quickly as Eron had come to hers. Blake remained crouched on the ground, surrounded by the smells and sounds of chaos. A chaos as much her making as his.
It would be right to see if Tamas was still alive. No grey area.
And she should do something definitively right.
Blake staggered to Tamas’s body. There was blood – a lot of it – running from a deep gash just below his collarbone. The scalp at his right temple had been ripped back, a hole the size of a stamp leaving bone exposed. Blood glistened on his eyelashes and stained his cheeks. The whites of his eyes showed through the tiny slit of half-open eyelids. Though the bone had not actually pierced through the skin, his left wrist was unequivocally broken. Blake pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, gagging at the memories that rose. Christ, was this how it was going to be? Was Karma was that much of a bitch it would see her argue with everyone she gave a shit about before they died? Left to stare down at the sorry mess she’d made.
Blake jerked her head to one side, just in time for her stomach contents to lurch free. As she retched, guttural cries erupted around her. Shouts and shrieks in English, and sharper calls in the Syranian tongue.
‘Blake, Jesus. Are you all right?’ Rossiter emerged out of the haze, a piece of cloth pressed to his mouth, muffling his words.
She wiped her mouth. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Rossiter tried to touch her hand, but she pulled it out of reach.
‘I’ll live. Is Kira here?’
Kneeling beside Tamas, Rossiter cursed under his breath, touching his fingers to Tamas’s bloody neck. ‘I don’t know. They had me locked up on level two. But the boys aren’t assholes. Let me go the minute all the alarms went berserk. He’s got a pulse.’
Blake’s cloudy mind took a second for his words to register. ‘Tamas? He’s not dead?’
‘Not yet.’
The captain burst through the smoke haze like a willowy giant, towering over them. ‘On your feet, Technician.’
He didn’t give her an option to comply, or disobey. Nex hauled her to her feet with none of the gentleness of Eron’s grasp. Blake struggled against him. Rossiter rose alongside her. His height didn’t compare to the Syranian’s, but his bulk still made it a formidable move.
‘Take it easy,’ he said.
‘There’s no time to take it easy,’ Nex spat. ‘We are losing control of the Four. Cym is injured and requires your assistance. The system, what’s left of it, is unresponsive. Now move.’
Nex shoved her forward, and a joint in her neck clicked with the force.
‘Tamas is dying, how is your god going to like that?’ Blake fought against him. ‘Losing the precious Messenger can’t be a good thing, right?’
Captain Nex released her arm, twisting to look back. When his eyes settled on Tamas, a muscle in his jaw twitched.
‘I need two minutes to get him stabilised.’ She took a cautious step away. ‘Rossiter will get him to medical, but I need to strap his wrist. We’re not god-soldiers, not even Tamas. He needs help. Two minutes –’
‘Get on with it,’ the captain growled. He didn’t leave, but he did give them space.
Rossiter frowned as she knelt beside him. ‘I could do this,’ he muttered.
Reaching for Tamas’s broken wrist, Blake breathed against
