Gaylen reached the top corner and carefully poked an eye out. Then he darted back, and retreated. The others copied him, and he held his tongue until they were back on the twenty-seventh.

“Stragglers,” he said. “Eating. A whole bunch of them, spread around.”

“Can we get around them in the dark?” Jaquan asked.

“I didn’t see any clear route,” Gaylen said.

“The comm trick again?” Kiris suggested.

Gaylen pointed upwards.

“That might bring the whole mess down. I… we…”

He sighed. He hated just standing still. There were times when it was the right call, but sandwiched between two hordes of cannibalistic maniacs didn’t feel like it.

“Let’s go down one step, and see if we find a better route there. Maybe we’ll have to risk the emergency stairwell again. Or the elevator shafts. We’re hardly Oleg’s main focus.”

“We might be, once he runs out of rich people to sic his monsters on, but alright,” Jaquan said.

They did head back down to the twenty-sixth. Gaylen hadn’t paid it any heed on the earlier passing, but then there was little to see. There were a few lights, but they were little more than marks for people to follow during an emergency, when all other illumination had failed. Perhaps Oleg, wherever the bastard was, had been able to shut everything else down.

Jaquan activated his light again, and attached it to a guard on his shoulder, as if he were working inside a popped-out panel on the Addax. He kept it soft, but it sufficed to show them the nearest doorway.

There was something on it, about a third of the door’s size, and it left Gaylen with little hope of actually getting in, but he had to try. He stepped up to it and searched for a doorhandle. But it was covered by the metal plate, and Gaylen realised it was a detachable lock. Some sort of company logo, along with text he couldn’t read, drove the point home.

“Can you cut it?” he asked Jaquan.

“Don’t have much of a charge left,” his friend told him, with the cutter in his hand. “And this looks fairly heavy-duty. I probably can, but is what’s on the other side worth it?”

“Let’s look a little further before we waste the plasma, then,” Gaylen said. “Or have Kiris take the time to break in.”

They walked along the wall, and he started regretting his words as the noise of the marbozi started growing. It sounded like the ones down below were on the move again, having lost interest in the disembodied voice. Or maybe it was above. It was hard to be sure.

At least they had darkness to hide in. Provided the floor wasn’t hit with a full-blown swarm.

They found another door, and it had another one of those locks.

“Well, damn it,” Gaylen said. “Let’s just cut through and hope for the best.”

Gaylen was fast learning how to tell different marbozi screams apart. What he heard now, near enough to cut through all the ambient din, was of ones who had an actual target in their sights.

But it wasn’t the three of them. The screaming was still too far away, and too muted, coming either up or down the stairwell. Someone else was alive around here, though it didn’t seem like that would last long.

“Not finished,” Kiris mumbled, still focused on her task.

The sounds got louder and louder, and Gaylen was about to call for them to just run into the darkness when they came into view.

A man ran up from down below. It was too dark to really make him out, but he clearly wasn’t a marbozi. He was exhausted, and letting out desperate gasps, and had been in view for all of two seconds before they tackled him from behind.

There were three of them: Two men and a woman, and they bore the man to the floor. He landed face-down, and stayed that way as the monsters fell on him. He tried to shield his head from blows that started raining down, but only had one free arm for the job. The other one was pinned by one of the men, who then sank his teeth into it. The woman turned her attention on his legs, and the victim let out shrieks of pain as the marbozi started tearing in.

The ones up above started screaming as well, and the ones below were already moving.

Gaylen stood still for one second. One second during which all the reasons to just run coursed through his mind. Then he charged.

“Gaylen!” Jaquan shouted.

He had the knife out, and the marbozi were too focused on their victim to notice his coming. He drove the weapon down with both hands and buried the blade in the woman’s skull. Now the others did notice, but he punched a lanky man square on the chin before they could act.

Then the third got up and tried to get a grip on him. Gaylen dodged the wild assault and stabbed out. He got the snarling beast in the throat. It reacted by grabbing his arm. Gaylen twisted his arm, avoiding a direct contest of strength but regaining some freedom, and pulled the knife to the side in the wound.

The lanky one swung at him, and since the other had a grip on his sleeve, Gaylen could only partly dodge, but shook off the hit and kicked him in the knee. The one he was grappling with now got a firmer grip on the arm, with both hands. Gaylen let the knife fall from his hand and into his other one, and put it up into the marbozi’s armpit. It severed enough tissue to render the arm limp, and a blow to the face allowed Gaylen to break free.

Kiris came and swung her cane at the lanky one, hitting him in the back of the knee. It brought the marbozi down, and left its skull vulnerable to Jaquan’s wrench.

Gaylen tripped up his opponent, slashed at the hand he tried to bat at him with, then got him in the other side of the neck. The marbozi’s regeneration seemed to have been pushed beyond its limits, and its attempt to keep the fight going just resulted in a weak flop.

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Jaquan gave the lanky one its fourth blow, and Kiris landed the fifth one. That seemed to do it.

Jaquan’s light shone on the one the marbozi had been after. It was a man in early middle age, with a scraggly beard, clad in an unglamorous working jumpsuit. It had done nothing to protect his right arm or left leg, both of which were bleeding heavily.

And the marbozi masses were coming, from two directions.

“We need to go!” Kiris said harshly.

Gaylen looked down at the wounded man and did a quick estimate of his weight.

“I have access!” the man said, and waved his uninjured arm towards the door they’d been dealing with. “I have access! Please!”

Gaylen pocketed the knife, then reached down and took hold of the man. He ignored the cry of pain as he swung the bleeding man up over his shoulder, then headed to the sealed door as fast as he could. Which, considering the growing noise of marbozi, didn’t feel very fast at all.

“T… turn!” the man said as they arrived, and Gaylen did. He heard a beep, and a clunk, and then Jaquan flung the door open. They all went inside, and Kiris shut it.

The majority of the floor, it turned out, was being renovated. Jaquan’s light shone on neat piles of tools, machinery and building materials. Walls were bare, and it seemed some were being removed.

“Is there a way for them to get in?” Gaylen asked. “Is there an opening that isn’t locked?”

“No,” the man on his shoulder groaned. “The whole thing was… was closed off. Expensive… equipment around.”

“Well, is there a way out?!” Kiris asked.

“Elevator,” the man said, and seemed to motion. Gaylen couldn’t see it, but Jaquan pointed further into the space and Gaylen started walking.

“But he… he shut the power down,” the man continued. “The voice on the intercom. Said something about it… being more fun.”

“That sounds like him,” Gaylen said.

The marbozi started hammering at the door. Gaylen had come to hate the sound very much very quickly.

“What’s your name?” he asked, for the sake of a distraction, as he walked further into the gloomy, half-destroyed floor.

“Manvis. Look, what is happening??”

“You weren’t downstairs?” Kiris asked.

“No. I am a janitor. I was… I was taking a rest between shifts.”

Gaylen suspected he had, in fact, been sleeping it off. But who was he to look down his nose at bad life decisions?

“Oleg, the boss of Undertown, decided to cut the head off the Trade Leagues. And he didn’t have the decency to use a plain old bomb.”

They passed through an empty doorway, and found both the elevator shafts and a whole lot of construction equipment. Perhaps this was some sort of storage area for the project, what with being at the middle of the floor.

Gaylen put Manvis down, up against a stack of printer materials.

“Kiris,” he said firmly, and pointed at the man.

The Chanei went into action and took out a tiny emergency medkit. Herdis, the soldier turned emergency responder turned freelancer, had taught her first aid. Anyone could spray gel into a bleeding wound, but Kiris now knew how to actually do it well.

She went to work with ruthless efficiency, working to stop the bleeding without any concern for being gentle about it. Of course, the guy knew better than to complain.

Jaquan brought out the tool he’d talked about earlier, something that looked a bit like it belonged in the kitchen, and jammed it into the crack of the elevator door. He forced it to open a bit with the press of a button, then the two of them pulled it all the way by hand. Inside was an elevator car. With no hatch on top.

Well, that’s just great, Gaylen thought. But he didn’t say it out loud. That wasn’t a leader’s place, was it?

“How about you stand on something, and cut a hole in the roof?” he asked instead. “And we can try to climb all the way to the top.”

Behind them, Manvis the janitor worked hard to keep his voice down as Kiris worked on his injuries. He would not be doing any climbing, and Gaylen sure wouldn’t be carrying him all that distance.

“I think I might do you one better,” Jaquan said, and hurried away from the doors.

Gaylen recognised a certain bounciness in his friend’s uneven gait. It appeared when he had an interesting technical challenge to work on.

Drones were resting in their stations, moving platforms were stacked up, printers were shut down, wall sections stood in neatly packed formations, and the various items needed for this sort of work were locked away in cases of various sizes.

Jaquan went up to a particular one, cut through the lock with his cutter, and swung it open. From it he took a large battery, gave it a brief lookover, then turned to Gaylen.

“I can hook this up to the electrical panel.”

He pointed to a closed panel that was just barely within the light.

“I can give power to the elevator.”

“Do you have what you need?” Gaylen asked.

“I have the tools,” Jaquan said, and touched his belt. “I just need some wires, and… yes, here they are.”

He removed a spool from the case.

“How long will it take?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“They are going to get in,” Kiris warned, without looking away from her task. “And it sounds like they’re now trying in multiple spots.”

It did, now that Gaylen gave the din a moment’s attention.

“Are you sure there’s no easy way in?” he asked Manvis.

“Yes!” the janitor said, through gritted teeth.

“I’ll need proper light…” Jaquan said absent-mindedly, and started taking out small glowsticks and tossing them about. It provided Gaylen with enough illumination to dash around and take in their immediate area, and its entryways.

“Do you think it’ll take them a whole twenty minutes to bust in?” Kiris asked.

“Probably not,” Gaylen said. “We might have to hold out.”

Jaquan had cut open one of the tool cases, and took out a sledgehammer.

“Always a call for the primitive methods, now and then,” the engineer said.

Gaylen happily took the long-handled hammer. It was heavy, and the head was flat on one side, and slightly pointy on the other. It was a welcome upgrade.

“I’m done,” Kiris announced, and stood up smartly. “He’ll live, for now.”

“Th… thank you,” Manvis said, and cradled his injured arm against his torso.

Kiris ignored him and joined Gaylen and Jaquan. The latter was busy with a plasma cutter, much bigger than the one in his belt, and connected to a tank. He was working with very quick movements, screwing away small bits from the centre of the hand-held part.

Gaylen knew perfectly well that Jaquan wasn’t stupid. But damn if he didn’t want to ask why he wasn’t already working on giving power to the elevator. He distracted himself by taking in the surrounding building materials, and making plans.

“There,” Jaquan said, after a few more precious seconds of work. He released the safety on the cutter and clutched the trigger. A cutting flame spewed out, much bigger than Gaylen was used to seeing. It only lasted a second before Jaquan released the trigger.

“I removed some of the stoppers,” he said. “To give it length. It’s more of a weapon now.”

“Kiris, take it,” Gaylen said. “I’ll stick with the sledge.”

The Chanei quickly strapped the tank to herself, and went over the handle.

“Now, these usually turn off when the spigot turns towards the wielder, but I had to take that out as well,” Jaquan told her. “So be careful. Also, the plasma won’t last long, so only hit the trigger when you’re about to strike something with it.”

“Alright.”

“And now the power,” Jaquan said, and hurried over to the electrical panel.

Gaylen and Kiris looked at one another.

“Is… is there a plan?” Manvis asked.

“Stay alive for twenty minutes,” Gaylen told him.