The tunnel was somehow exactly what Riot expected and worse. The ceiling was too low and forced him to stoop, the concrete walls sweated condensation, and there was an inch of standing water on the ground that smelled like mineral deposits and neglect. The emergency lighting was nothing but bare bulbs, spaced too far apart, casting pools of yellow that left long stretches of dark between them.
“Can you walk?” Riot asked Cass.
“I can walk.” Cass took a step. His foot splashed. He took another step. The walking was wrong—too loose, the joints not quite locking, his balance corrections coming a half-beat late. “My legs feel weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Like jelly. The fruit kind. Wobbly.”
“Okay. I’m going to carry—”
“I can walk.” Even with his mind in another territory, Cass’s stubborn need to be seen as independent was load-bearing, likethe last structural element standing. “I’m not—I can do it. Left foot. Right foot.”
“That is how you walk, generally.”
“Then I can do it.”
The spacing was practical between them as they moved: Matthias navigating, Sage controlling him, Honey in the middle where she could hear his directions and relay if needed, Riot and Cass bringing up the rear. It was the familiar formation Riot knew of people who didn’t trust each other, moving through a space none of them wanted to be in.
“Right at the junction,” Matthias said.
Riot wanted to break his jaw. The desire was so clean and specific it was almost beautiful. Just the angle of his fist and the angle of that jaw and the satisfying arithmetic of impact. The Berserker impulses offered this thought the way a waiter offered a dessert menu: casually, as if it didn’t matter either way, but with the confident expectation of acceptance.
Not now. Later.
They took the right passage. The ceiling got lower. Riot stooped further, his spine complaining, the top of his head brushing concrete. The water was deeper here—past his ankles, cold enough to feel even through the general numbness of sustained crisis. The bulbs were fewer and the darkness between them was longer.
Behind them—far behind, echoing and distorted— there was a sound. The tunnel carried something from its other end that could have been anything and Riot’s mods chose to interpret it as everything.
“Move faster,” he said.
“What—”
“Faster.”
Honey moved faster. Sage pushed Matthias forward. Cass—
Cass moved faster in the way a marionette moved faster when the strings were pulled harder. His legs tried, but he stumbled and Riot caught him by the arm.
“I can walk.”
“I know you can.”
“My legs are just—” Cass started.
“I know.”
“Don’t carry me.”
“I’m not carrying you. You’re walking. I’m just holding your arm,” Riot assured him.
“That’s different?”
“Completely different. Nothing alike. You’re doing all the work.”
“Okay.” Cass nodded a few more times than necessary, then paused. “...my legs really do feel like jelly.”
“I believe you.”
