The air had been powdered. With each breath Ken took, it was a small death, a mouthful of rocky dust, vaporized electronics, and fine particulate ash of incinerated dreams. It rolled on the tongue, covered the throat, and caused black tears to fall from the eyes. The great cistern was a tomb, and this was the dust of the dead.The stench was worse. Beneath the acrid cloud of smoke, the sickly sweetness of charred protein from the ruined algae tanks and beneath that, something blacker, coppier, which everyone kept thinking about but no one spoke of. It was the scent of the network's dying gasp.Ken stumbled through the wreckage in a daze, his body following some ancient, residual script that had outlasted his spirit. His broken arm dangled useless in an improvised sling made from a torn lab coat, but his other hand was ferociously effective. He straightened a burned worktable in one relatively intact corner, sheltered from the main chamber by a fallen archway. He wiped the surface clea

The lull in their sector of the ruins was a thick, vibrant presence. It was not quiet, but taut, the gasping hush of a confessional. The swinging beam of the lamp cast its quivering shadows, and in the lopsided, unstable gleam, Sophia sat on a turned-over crate, her little fists set upon her knees. She was pale, the bones of her face sharp against her face, but her eyes were set, her gaze fixed on her father.Ken knelt before her, the ritual spread out on a white sheet between them. An alcohol swab, its pungent fresh odor a fiction in the poisonous atmosphere. A tourniquet. A vacuum-sealed hypodermic needle, its sterility a poor defense against the decay that surrounded them. It was the same equipment he'd used to take samples a hundred times before. But this wasn't the same. This wasn't to analyze. This was to harvest.We don't have to do this, Soph," he breathed quietly, his voice sounding like dry-graveled gravel. "We can still run. We can take the last vial and run."He was giving

The effluent pipe was a stone gullet, swallowing them whole. The air was thick with the reek of rot and standing water, a tangible presence that coated the tongue and lungs. Ken felt his way and by memory, one hand tracing the cold, slimy wall, the other wrapped around Sophia to hold her close against his chest. Her breathing was a shallow flutter against the side of his neck, a discordant counterpoint to the wild pound of his own heart.They could not just run. De Vries was a bloodhound. A trail, however faint, was a confession. In order to escape, they cannot be. They are ghosts, and ghosts do not leave traces. They left only the trace of their devastation.He found what he was looking for a hundred meters along: a smaller, drier side tunnel, a deserted artery to a chamber that at one time had contained a pumping station for a deserted canal. It was a dead end. An ideal tomb.Cautiously, he laid Sophia down on a relatively dry patch of stone. "Just remain here. Do not move. Do not m

The world was a box of white pain and silence. Time no longer mattered to Elara Veyne, only in the interval between interrogation and the slow numbness of the icy walls of her compartment. De Vries's questions were needles, pricking at vulnerabilities in the cistern's defenses, in the mind-set of its commander. She had given them nothing but name, rank, and stubborn silence for which she had earned a bruised face and cracked ribs.And then the world exploded.It started with a distant, muffled crump, and then another. Alarms, in contrast to the regular drills, howled in a wild, frantic rhythm. Shouting resounded, curt and confused, followed by the familiar, drum-like beat of machine guns. It was not the measured, cadenced fire of government troops. It was raw, wild, and coming from inside the dry dock.Her container rattled as heavy something slammed into the wall beyond. She protected her head and curled up into a ball, expecting the door to be blown open, expecting the final, libera

The universe had been condensed to a single, shuddering tunnel. The air, thick with powdered rock and the acrid sting of expended explosives, was a mass that must be hacked through. Ken's lungs burned with every spastic breath. Sophia clung astride his shoulders, thin arms wrapped loosely around his neck, head folded forward against him. She was dead weight, unconscious or too exhausted to cling. The precious case, the fruits of his terrible, feverish labor, was strapped to his chest, rigid, accusatory swell above his heart.He had pushed too hard. The handful of shots were still intact, neatly stuffed into their foam holders, a slender arsenal of hope. But it had cost him what little strength he had left. Bleeding from his shoulder, a slow steady trickle, leeched the warmth and clarity from the world. The edge of his vision grayed, and a shriek of high whine had taken up residence in his ears.They stood in the ancient freight tunnel, a route he had determined as their greatest chanc