"Hey!" More collectors were shouting at us now. "What's going on?"
Behind us, the lines faltered.
"Can you mesh our suits together, the way you did with Lad?" Kichlan asked.
"Don't see why not." Except I had no idea how I'd done that, and less of an idea if I could do it again.
"Let's try, then."
Together, Kichlan and I raised our hands and spread our suits out like a shield. The edges of silver touched at first with a screeching, metal scraping against metal. But then they softened, grew pliable, and sank into each other.
A strange shiver rattled through Kichlan as the same thing passed through me. I remembered Lad's hand on my arm, the connection between us, the whispers I had heard. Kichlan felt entirely different. Where Lad had been open, too open perhaps, Kichlan was closed. His suit became mine, but there were no whispers, no hints of the voices in his head. Did I feel the same, or could he hear my doubts clear as if I was shouting them?
"Lower!"
I glanced down. Debris was oozing from a gap between our suits and the ground. We grew them until only a trickle remained.
"They can collect that." Kichlan clenched his teeth; his eyes were hard and focused. "Let's start moving."
Feeling oddly light compared to the weight Kichlan seemed to be carrying, I walked beside him and helped force the debris back into the factory. It pushed against us as we advanced, but had none of the energy of last time. It did not crash like lightning against us, but merely tried to ease itself past us, like cupping a gentle trickle of water.
"Come on," I thought to it, I whispered in my own head and hoped Kichlan truly couldn't hear. I was wet, already tired, and shaken. All I wanted was for the debris to move easily, to retreat to its source and wait for us to collect it.
Murmurs behind us.
We came to the rolled-up door and were forced to pinch our suits in to fit through. I waited for the explosion, for the debris to roll through the gaps we made, for it to surge to sudden life as it sensed weakness, and carry us along with it.
Nothing happened.
"What's going on?" I whispered to Kichlan.
"Kichlan!" a voice called, echoing.
With a quick glance between us, Kichlan and I lowered the shield so we could see over the top. The factory was almost empty. Debris lay in patches of the floor, puddles after a storm. But of the fountain that had spewed forth from the doors, windows and cracks, there was no sign.
"What did you do?" Uzdal was clambering in through a window. He clung to the steel bones of the building and peered down at us. "Where did it go?"
Kichlan was just as shocked. "I have no idea."
Uzdal surveyed the cement walls and steel structures around him and began gradually climbing down. "I just got up here, was about to try and squeeze the debris and-" he mimed an explosion motion with his free hand. His right arm was wrapped tightly around a thick, loadbearing shaft "-it was gone."
"We walked inside…" Kichlan raised his eyebrows at me.
I replied, "Don't ask me. I've got less idea than you do."
"Kichlan? Tanyana?" Sofia called from the other end of the factory. She was crouched behind another wooden door, only rolled a few feet up. "What happened?" With a wince, she crawled her way through.
"Trying to work that out." Uzdal finally made it to the factory floor. He patted rust and dirt from the front of his jacket. They turned to mud on his wet clothes and hands.
Gradually, the other team members appeared. Lad and Mizra came together, descending from the second floor on metal stairs that rang loudly in the empty, cavernous room. Natasha ambled in through the front door.
"The teams outside are looking spooked," she drawled. "They really want to know what you've done, and why it worked so well."
Kichlan, apparently sick of the same question, rounded on her. "For the last, the final, the absolutely I will not repeat myself ever again time, I do not know!"
Her face set into a sullen cloud, the same colour as the sky outside. "First time you told me, you know."
I approached one of the larger debris puddles. It bubbled as I crouched beside it. How long before it started growing again?
"You might as well tell them to come and collect this mess up," Kichlan said.
"Your messenger now, am I?" Natasha grumbled, but still turned to leave the building.
Gingerly, I extended a thin dirk of my sharpened suit toward a particularly large bubble.
"Still need to find where all the debris came from," Kichlan said.
I popped the bubble.
Are you pleased?
I snatched my suit back so quickly it slammed into my wrist and pushed me to the floor.
"Watch yourself." Mizra chuckled.
But I didn't respond. Instead, I turned my head until I could see Lad. He was smiling, a happy, contented smile that widened when he caught my eye.
"Likes you," he said. "Listens to you."
I gaped at him.
"That's lovely, Lad." Kichlan dismissed his brother's rambling. "Now where do you think we should go?"
His younger brother pointed to the floor. "Down."
I returned to the bubbles. Underground made sense, yes. It was all bubbling up from underneath.
"Right, down we go. Anyone see some stairs on their way here?"
I sat up. Again, I carefully extended my suit, this time as the usual tweezers. My hand shook as I pried a slightly more solid selection of debris from the puddle. I brought it close to my face, frowned at it.
It remained quiet.
A breath I hadn't realised I was holding eased from me in a sigh. The debris rippled.
"Come on, Tanyana!" Kichlan called. He was helping Lad squeeze under the door Sofia had come through by holding it further from the ground. "Sofia's found our way down."
I stood, holding the debris, and hurried to his side. I slipped beneath the door – with far greater ease than Lad – and helped Kichlan do the same. The debris sagged from my suit. It felt warm, wet, and wiggled weakly.
"Where to?" I asked Sofia, once Kichlan was through.
But I didn't hear her reply.
Are you coming to see me?
I nearly dropped the debris. Sofia had already started leading the way and no one seemed to notice me standing there, white by the bloodless feeling in my cheeks, staring at a small, wiggly piece of debris.
No one, apart from Lad.
Still smiling, he nodded. "We should go," he said. "He is waiting."
"He?" I whispered.
I am.
Lad turned, and I caught up to him. "You can hear him, can't you?"
Lad followed the team into a narrow, dark hallway. Without the pion systems in place to keep the lights working, the way downstairs was perilous. I clung to a railing with my free hand and sought each step with a fumbling foot.
"Can you smell that?" Uzdal's voice echoed up from the darkness below.
"Smells like a sewer," Mizra answered. "I knew we'd end up in a sewer today, somehow."
I ran into Lad's back as the stairs ended and the ground levelled out. He steadied me with a large hand in the dark.
"This is no good," Kichlan whispered. "I can't see a thing."
I agreed with him, silently, and the light from my suit strengthened, deepened into a stark, silvery blue. The symbols rolled, pressed together, and became a thickened mess of colour and shape.
"Tanyana?" Kichlan turned, shocked. "What-?" He looked down at his own suit, glowing only the usual soft light. "How are you doing that?"
I shook my head. "I don't know," I whispered. Somehow, it felt right to whisper at the bottom of these dark stairs. "I really don't know."
"We should use it while we have it," Sofia said, ever practical.
"Yes. Tanyana, could you?" Still frowning, Kichlan stepped aside so I could lead the way.