They waited until the afternoon rains set in, smartly using the last vestiges of the rainy season to hide their passage through the woods. Victor led Local Team as they darted from tree to tree, moving quickly and silently. The wounds on his arm had almost healed, although they were going to leave some pretty cool scarring across his skin. Proof that he could handle himself in a fight.

The rest of the militia was out there somewhere, moving toward their own objectives. Part of Victor wished he could join them. He even knew the basic plan: They were going to form an invisible ring around the excavation site, drawing in tighter and tighter, picking the Covenant off one by one, until they were close enough to snatch the artifact up with the collapsible grav-pull drone ONI had included in the drop. It almost sounded like something from a holo-film, it was that cool. He knew he shouldn’t think that way, but he just couldn’t help himself.

Still, he had to hand it to Dorian. Without his little plan, they’d be back at the new campsite, just … sitting there.

Thunder rumbled through the clouds, bringing with it another surge of rain. Owen’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Have you reached the entrance, Local Team?”

“Almost,” Victor replied, looking at the map emblazoned across his HUD. The lens was blurred from the rain, but he could still make out the path. “ETA five minutes.”

“Copy.” Owen’s line fell quiet. Victor glanced over his shoulder at Saskia, who was following up his lead. He could barely make out Evie and Dorian behind her.

And then he stepped out of the woods, onto the smooth flat surface of a road. Rue Pin.

Even with the rain he felt exposed. Naked. The road stretched in both directions, dark and empty and disappearing into the rain’s thick haze. Across the way were the blocks of buildings. Warehouses and shipping containers. Whatever they once contained was abandoned now.

“All right, team,” he said. “Stick to the underbrush. Let’s go.”

He stayed right on the edge of the forest, where they could afford a little cover and where they could keep an eye on the road. It remained empty, no sign of Covenant scouts. But Victor didn’t let his guard down.

“Come in, Local Team.” Owen again.

“Not there yet,” Victor said.

“I want you underground before the op starts.”

“I know.” Victor shoved aside a tangle of vines, revealing the turn off to Rue Flot a few paces away. “I’ve got eyes on it.”

“Good.”

Victor gestured at the others to stop, still scanning the street. Rain pounded over the landscape, turning to mist when it hit the ground. Victor wiped at his shooting glasses, trying to clear away the steam and rivulets of water. In the haze, every building looked like a hulking Covenant ship, every shadow a creeping Covenant scout.

“What are you seeing?” Victor asked.

“Looks clear to me,” Evie said.

“Same,” said Dorian.

Saskia stepped forward, swinging her rifle around with her gaze. “Seems too quiet,” she said.

“Maybe we just got lucky.” Dorian hoisted up his gun. “I say we make a break for it.”

Victor gave one last look around the street. “Agree,” he said. Then, pressing the integrated comm on his helmet: “Spartan, we’re going in.”

“Happy hunting,” Owen said grimly.

Victor nodded at the others. Then he sprinted out into the road, legs pumping. The rain pelted him. He could hear the others behind him: the pounding of their footsteps against the road, the puffs of their breaths. And the rain, of course, roaring all around them.

He swerved around the corner onto Rue Flot, and the entrance waited up ahead, a metal cylinder jutting out of the soaked ground. He ducked his head, pushed himself forward. The entrance was so close—

A shriek cut through the static noise of the rain. Behind him, one of the girls shouted and then opened fire. Victor whirled around, momentarily blinded by the rain.

A green bolt soared past him.

“A Grunt!” Saskia hollered, still firing.

“Spotted!” Dorian yelled.

Victor couldn’t see anything in the rain. He fired in the direction of the plasma bolts, eager to cut off the Grunt before it could call for backup. The creature shrieked again and then materialized in the mist, loping toward them. It shot off another round from its plasma pistol. Missed.

It can’t see either, Victor realized.

He lifted up his rifle, aiming for the methane mask all the Grunts wore. Water sluiced into his eyes. His fingers were slippery. He couldn’t see anything.

And then he thought about the holo-films he used to make, how he’d shoot sloppy and the footage never came out. He had finally realized he had to calm down. He had to breathe.

And that was what he did. Took a deep breath. Wiped at his shooting glasses.

The Grunt swiveled its oversized head toward him, the mask like a target.

Victor squeezed the trigger.

The mask shattered; the alien flew backward. “Got him!” Victor said, and then he took off again, his heart pounding. The tunnel entrance seemed to pull away from him. He let out a shout of frustration and then he was slamming up against the entrance, yanking hard on the door. He dove into the stairwell, the drip drip drip of the rainwater echoing against the metal walls. Evie plunged in after him, then Dorian, and then finally Saskia, who pulled the door shut, immersing them in a sudden and impenetrable darkness.

Dorian cursed. “The explosion must have knocked out the emergency lights.”

And they hadn’t been able to bring a flashlight. Supplies were limited, and all three of the militia’s flashlights had gone to the primary mission.

“I got it,” Evie said. Then she went silent, and all Victor could hear was the dripping rainwater, the scrape of canvas. He felt unmoored, like he was buried in nothingness.

Then there was a paltry flare of light. The map projector. It cast everything in a thin blue glow. Victor could barely make out the faces of the others.

“This’ll have to do,” Dorian sighed.

“It’ll be fine,” Victor said, burying his fear. He tapped on his helmet. “Spartan, we’re in.”

The connection crackled. “Good. Proceed as planned. Keep me updated.”

“Understood.” Victor nodded at the others. “All right,” he said. “Dorian, take it from here.”

Evie handed Dorian the projector, and Dorian descended the stairs, sweeping the map from side to side. The light flickered over the walls, making every corner and angle of the stairwell seem to move.

“Could you hold that still, please?” Victor asked.

“How else am I going to see anything?” Dorian shot back. “It’s going to be worse when we get closer to the explosion site.” He paused. “Wish Salome would have mentioned the freaking lights were out. If I’d known, we could have insisted on one of those flashlights.”

“Well, you kept telling her you weren’t going down here,” Evie said. “So that probably had something to do with it.”

Saskia laughed, and Dorian made an irritated noise under his breath.

They walked single file through the dark, dripping tunnel, the flickering map light guiding their way. It threw strange shapes on the walls, illuminating the splotches of mold that crawled like some Covenant poison over the metal.

“How do you think the others are doing?” Evie said suddenly.

No one answered. Victor figured they just didn’t want to think about it. Hell, he didn’t really want to think about it, even though he did anyway: They’d just be falling into formation now, approaching the excavation site in teams of three or four, preparing to strike—

A clatter ripped through the tunnel, loud as an explosion.

“Sorry!” Dorian shouted. “That was me. Sorry.” The light swung around. “I told you, I can barely see anything.”

“What was it?” Saskia asked, peering over Victor’s shoulder. Victor couldn’t see anything but the formless shadows of Dorian and Evie up ahead.

“Chunk of metal,” Dorian said. Then he kicked it again, and the clatter rebounded off the walls.

“Stop,” Evie said. “You want to call the Covenant down here?”

“I’m just trying to get it out of your way.” Another scrape of metal against metal. “There. We must be getting close, though.”

“You have the map up,” Victor said. “You mean you don’t know where we are?”

Victor could feel Dorian glaring at him.

“Yeah, I know where we are,” he snapped. “What I don’t know, exactly, is where the artifact is. Exactly,” he added, before Victor could say anything.

“Fighting isn’t going to help any of us,” Saskia said. “And you know that the faster we secure this thing”—a pause, and Victor knew she was thinking if we can secure this thing—“the sooner we can get everyone else out of a firefight. So let’s keep moving.”

Her words left them sobered and quiet.

On they walked, this time without speaking, even when Dorian kicked debris out of the way. Victor resisted the urge to check in with Owen—he’d been given strict orders only to make contact if they had the artifact secured.

After a time, the air in the tunnel shifted, turning acrid and stale. Victor’s boots squelched in thick patches of mud, and when he reached out to steady himself, his hand touched wet clay, not the smooth cold metal he was expecting. He jerked his arm back to his chest. “We’re close, aren’t we?”

“We’re getting into the unstable area, yeah.” Dorian’s voice sounded far away. “There’s a turn up ahead that’s going to be the real trick. Then we should be there. At least we don’t have all that dust like before.”

Their pace slowed. More than once Victor scraped his head against the peeling strips of ceiling dangling overhead. The debris piles grew big enough to see even in the thin light of the map, and they rose up out of the mud and the grating like lopsided, crumbling mountains. Victor found himself thinking of Owen as they made their way through the destruction—Owen, having been defeated up above, lying dead at the base of the excavation site.

Could Spartans even die?

“Stop,” Dorian said. “We’re at the turnoff.”

He had set the map projector on the ground in the entrance. There was no door, and the entrance itself was much too big anyway, a jagged, charred hole where the true entrance used to be. Victor slowed and peered in, his shoulder brushing against the edge, crumbling it into black ash.

In the quiet of their stillness, he could hear the distant thud of weapons firing.

“Let’s hope we can do this fast,” Evie said softly. “Give the other teams their best chance.”

Victor nodded, but really he felt a vague guilt emanating from somewhere deep inside his chest. This was the second time he’d gone creeping underground while other soldiers were putting their lives on the line. Soldiers like his sisters. Soldiers like Dubois and Caird and even Valois.

Dorian knelt beside the map and turned it, light-shapes flashing over the destruction in the tunnel. Lining up the map to the actual tunnel.

“Here,” Dorian said. “This is where the artifact should be. We’re here.” He pointed to a deceptively close place on the map.

“It’s a straight shot,” Saskia said.

“Yes, but according to the images Salome sent me, it’s not a clear shot. You thought the debris was bad out here?” Dorian lifted the map, keeping it lined up, and stepped through the entrance. Immediately, Victor could see what he meant; rather than being swallowed up by the negative space, as it had for the duration of their walk, the light shone across a wall of blackened metal.

“We have to get through that,” Dorian said.

Victor stared at the blockage. Thought about how the edges of the entrance had crumbled at his touch.

“Hold on,” he said.

He picked up a chunk of metal from one of the debris piles; it had melted into something vaguely ball-shaped. Then he flung it into the blockage.

It tore through the debris with a cloud of ash and dirt. At first, nothing happened. Then there was a low, angry grinding. Dorian cursed and scrambled backward just as the debris pile collapsed, sending out an explosion of ash that clung to Victor’s skin and coated the back of his throat.

“Nice job,” Dorian choked out. “Now we’re filthy.”

“There’s a path through, though.” Evie grinned at Victor. “Nice job.”

He shrugged. “Hey, you remember that scene from Triple Retreat ? Just stealing the idea.”

Evie laughed.

“Okay, that’s great,” Saskia said, edging closer to the entrance. “But is it safe for us to go in there?”

“Probably not,” Dorian said. “But it’s safer than being up there.”

Victor glanced up at the ceiling. It was quiet enough again to hear the fighting overhead. Gunfire, the shuddery explosions of artillery. “We’ve got to do this fast,” he said. He hoped they were able to do it at all.

“Agreed,” Evie said, brushing past him. “Dorian, hold up the light. Let’s see how much of a path Victor cleared.”

Dorian did as she asked, lifting the map. Blue lines of light bounced over the wreckage inside the tunnel. Evie crept forward, twisting around the collapsed debris. Then she stopped.

“Closer,” she said.

Dorian moved in after her, and after a moment’s pause and a quick exchanged glance, so did Victor and Saskia.

Evie stood with her hands on her hips, gazing up at the debris. “I’m going to have to climb it,” she announced.

“Be careful,” Dorian said, edging closer with the light.

She pressed one foot against the debris. Shifted her weight. The pile held. She hoisted herself up, moving slowly, cautiously. It reminded Victor suddenly of the first time they had climbed a banyan tree together when they were children.

Her foot slipped, sending a twisted sheet of metal flying into the mud. “I’m fine!” she called out. Pulled herself up again. Victor found himself edging closer, his muscles tensed, ready to catch her if she fell.

But she didn’t fall. A few second later, she vanished over the top of the debris.

“Light!” she shouted. “I can’t see anything.”

Dorian glanced at the others. “I’m not going over,” he said. “Just up.”

Victor nodded. Dorian crept cautiously up the side of the pile, holding the map in one hand. Victor held his breath, wondering if the debris could hold Dorian’s weight.

“Can you see yet?” Dorian yelled, hoisting the map over his head.

“A little!” Evie’s voice was plaintive, far away. “Can you get any more?”

Dorian’s shoulder hitched, but he kept going, pushing himself up higher. Saskia made a worried noise. Blue light splayed across the top half of the tunnel, revealing the shredded ceiling, the bare spots of dirt and clay.

“I can see!” Evie said. “It’s not bad, actually! And I think I see the—”

An immense clap of thunder rolled through the tunnel. The world jolted, clumps of mud raining down on Saskia and Victor. The debris pile scattered, all the metal glinting in the map light for one shuddering second before Dorian hollered and the light blinked out.

“Damn it!” Victor said. “That can’t be good.”

The sound of gunfire echoed overhead.

“Dorian!” Saskia called. “Evie! Can you hear us?”

The tunnel shuddered again. More rain of mud and, this time, the shredded remains of the ceiling, the sharp edges slicing open Victor’s skin. He fumbled in the dark for Saskia. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Those explosions, they’re going to bring this whole place down—”

Suddenly, Owen’s voice flared in his ear. “Local Team! Come in, Local Team!”

Victor activated the comm. “Owen?” he said, all his memorized protocol forgotten in the darkness. “What’s going on?”

The ground shuddered again, throwing Victor sideways. He slammed up against something warm and yielding. Saskia screeched in surprise, then grabbed his arm. “Victor?”

“Have you found the object?” Owen said. Victor could hear the rattle of gunfire over the communicator.

“No.” He gritted his teeth; Saskia was still gripping hard onto his arm, her nails digging into his skin. Where were Dorian and Evie? The light was still out. “We’re almost the—”

“Things are not going well up here,” Owen said. “We have no way of approaching the artifact. I can’t—”

And then he cut out, and Victor heard the same gunfire, muffled now, spilling down from up above.

“What did he say?” Saskia’s voice drifted out of the darkness.

“They can’t get to the artifact.” Victor swept his arm out, trying to feel for the debris pile. Something kept dusting across his head: dirt. “It sounds—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it directly. “It sounds bad up there.”

“Oh no,” Saskia whispered.

“Dorian!” Victor yelled, his heart hammering in his throat. “Evie? Can you hear us? We need the light!”

More dirt showered down over them. Victor reached out in the dark for Saskia, wanting the comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone. His hand graced against her arm, and she grabbed it, squeezing it tight.

“I hear you!” Evie shouted back. Victor let out a long sigh of relief. “I’m bringing the light over.”

“Go,” Saskia said in a shaky voice. “I’m fine. Get the light.”

Victor moved toward the sound of Evie’s voice. More dirt and mud and debris rained down on them.

“This tunnel is going to collapse,” Saskia breathed. “We have to get out of here.”

“As soon as we get the artifact,” Victor responded into the darkness.

“The extraction team will never make it in time!”

A thin beam of blue light spilled over the top of the debris pile.

“Oh, thank god,” Saskia said, dropping Victor’s hand. She scurried over the pile, sending dirt and scrap metal sliding down. In the light, the dirt falling out of the ceiling looked like rain.

“Victor!” Evie called out as she helped Saskia over the mound. “Hurry! We’ve got to find a way out of here. Dorian says there’s a closer exit at the end of this tunnel, but we have to hope it’s not blocked.”

“That’s a relief.” Victor heaved himself up onto the debris pile. It trembled beneath his weight. “But we’ve got to grab the artifact. The fighting’s too bad up there. It’s all on us.”

Evie frowned, her face carved into strange shapes by the light. “The artifact? There’s no way. Owen made it clear we weren’t to touch it ourselves. And I know he would want us to put our safety first—”

Victor scrambled up beside her, panting a little. He looked down at the other side of the pile. What little of it he could see was clear. “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “We’re going to have to risk it.”

Evie stared at him with big shining eyes. Dirt crumbled around them.

“Are you serious?” she said.

He nodded.

Together, they scrambled off the top of the pile. Evie swept the map around until she found Dorian and Saskia.

“We have to get the artifact,” Evie said to Dorian. “Without the extraction team.” Victor braced himself for Dorian to protest, but Dorian just closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

“Owen’s going to kill us,” he said.

“We don’t have a choice,” Victor said. “We’re the only ones who can do it.”

“Do you even know where it is?” Saskia said. “Your map wasn’t exactly … exact. I mean, I don’t know if this tunnel is going to—”

Another explosion. Victor felt this one in the marrow of his bones.

“Yes!” Dorian shouted. “Look, we don’t have time to stand around discussing it. I’m in!”

Evie tossed the map to him, and he bolted forward, lifting it high, shining it along the right-hand wall—what was left of it. Something deep inside the earth groaned, a sound like a giant waking.

For a paralyzing moment, there was nothing but darkness and blue light. And then something caught. A flash, like a fire flickering in the distance.

Dorian slid to a stop, swinging the light around. Another flash, brighter this time. It refracted the weak blue light of the map, throwing it in strange, iridescent shards around the tunnel. For the first time, Victor felt like he really saw where he was. He saw the destruction wrought by the explosions. Saw the deep gouges in the clay walls. Saw the constant, showering dirt.

“That’s got to be it,” Dorian said. “Victor, get over here and help me.”

Dorian handed off the light to Evie, and she held it up. The refractions shimmered everywhere, dancing like butterflies. The artifact jutted out of the wall. It looked like a glass cylinder, maybe twenty-five centimeters in diameter.

All this trouble for a tube of glass.

“Let’s hope this thing won’t kill us,” Dorian muttered.

The ground shuddered, sending with it a surge of dirt. Victor wiped it away from his eyes. “I’m willing to risk it.”

“I guess I am too,” Dorian said as the tunnel trembled again.

Victor stared at the artifact, his eyes stinging from the dirt. He took a deep breath, conjured up all his bravery.

Then ran over and grabbed hold of it.

He was prepared for it to burn his skin down to the bone. Instead, the artifact just felt cool and satiny to the touch. He pulled.

Nothing happened.

Dorian grabbed ahold of it too, then muttered, “We’re in this together.” Then: “Pull!”

They pulled.

“We can do this,” Victor said. “Count of three.”

Victor pulled with all his strength, his fingers pressing hard against the artifact’s smooth shell. Beside him, Dorian groaned in exertion and then let out a string of profanity when the artifact remained in place. Victor released his grip and stumbled backward.

From deep inside the tunnel came a low, harsh creaking.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Evie said. “We’ve got to get out of here. If we can’t even pull it out, we’re never going to be able to carry—”

A sound like an explosion tore through the tunnel, and the ceiling shoved downward in an explosion of dust. Victor ducked, hitting the ground hard, his ears ringing. He lifted his gaze, panic squeezing his chest tight. Evie was right. They had to get out of here before the whole tunnel collapsed.

Dorian was the first one up, scooping out the dirt around the artifact with his hands. “Come on!” he said. “I bet it’s just wedged in there.”

“He’s right,” Victor said, getting shakily to his feet. He peered up at the ceiling, pressing dangerously low. “We don’t have any other choice.”

“Digging is going to take too long.” Saskia brushed past him and walked over to Dorian. She put one hand on his arm, and he stopped and looked at her. In the aftermath of the explosion, everything was too quiet.

“What do you suggest, then?” he said bitterly.

Saskia pulled her rifle around on its strap. “If it’s wedged in there,” she said, “we need a lever to help pry it out.”

“You’re going to shoot it out?” Dorian said icily.

Saskia released the rifle’s magazine, dumping her ammo to the ground.

“No,” she said.

“You need a fulcrum,” Evie said, suddenly understanding Saskia’s plan. “Victor, help find a rock. Something to balance the gun on.”

“It needs to be the same height as the artifact.” Saskia was field-stripping her rifle, sliding the barrel away from the stock. Victor whipped his head around, following the path of the light from Evie’s projection. She stopped it on a particular triangular-shaped rock a meter away from the artifact.

“How about that one?” she asked, just as Victor said, “That’ll work.”

They glanced at each other. Evie smiled at him, remembering all those hours spent combing over the rocks on the beach, making miniature mountains for his holo-films.

“Well, let’s move it into place,” Dorian said. The three of them circled around the rock and shoved. Unlike the artifact, it scraped easily across the debris.

The ceiling shrieked, sank a few centimeters lower.

“Hurry!” Evie called out to Saskia, who was balancing a loose piece of the tunnel’s metal reinforcement on top of the rifle stock.

“I’ve got it.” She darted over to the rock just as Dorian and Victor shoved it into place. Dirt fell down around them as the ceiling dropped even lower. Gunfire rang out on the surface.

Saskia jammed the piece of metal under the artifact, her face twisted in concentration. Sweat gleamed in blue drops on her forehead as Evie directed the light toward her work. Then Saskia picked up her rifle and wedged it under the metal, the two pieces balanced like a child’s toy on top of the rock.

“Okay,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Here goes nothing.”

Another shower of dirt. Another creak of the ceiling.

She pushed down on the makeshift lever, and the artifact jumped in the wet dirt. Evie let out a whoop of celebration, but Saskia was still pressing down on the lever, wiggling it back and forth.

“Here, let me help,” Dorian said, and he added his strength to Saskia’s. Once again the artifact jumped, this time sliding forward from its place in the wall. Clumps of mud showered down around it. Saskia pressed on the lever with her foot, and the artifact tilted downward.

“We’ve got it!” Dorian said.

“Victor, don’t let it fall!” Saskia added, and Victor darted forward just as the artifact finally slid loose on the back of a mudslide. It landed easily in the crook of his arms, not heavy at all. He was also relieved that it didn’t burn through his clothes or otherwise seem to immediately poison him.

“Good thinking.” He glanced up at Saskia, but she was staring at the wall, her eyes wide.

“We’ve got to go now,” she said.

And then Victor saw it. The crack where the artifact had been. And in the blue light, it was deepening.

“Straight ahead!” Dorian shouted. “If it’s blocked, we’re screwed, but we’re not getting out otherwise. Evie!”

But she was already in front, running with the map hoisted over her head. Victor cradled the artifact against his chest as his feet pounded through the mud, his head tilted down to avoid the constant cascade of dirt.

“The shelter tunnels are better reinforced!” Dorian called out. “We get to them and we should be fine. But we’ve got to run!”

Everything was rumbling. Clumps of dirt exploded around Victor. One landed on his head, showering him in dust. He spit it out, kept running.

“I see it!” Evie screamed. “The exit!”

And then Victor saw it too. A door. This one hadn’t been blasted away, although it hung open, revealing a sliver of light on the other side. The emergency lights were still up.

The earth groaned again, then roared. Dirt was piling up around them.

Evie flung the door open, flooding the collapsing tunnel with eerie white light.

Victor dove forward, the artifact pressed to his heart, eyes shut in a wish for safety.