(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Marasi accepts that they have run out of route — the climb back up to the sewer would take far too long with the gang on their tails, and she wants the Cycle alive. So much for protocol. They are going to do this Wayne's way.

The pair burst into the main tunnel as the remaining card-table guard swings up his weapon. Wayne throws up a speed bubble long enough for them to flank; the guard fires into empty space the moment the bubble drops, and Wayne is on him with dueling canes a heartbeat later. Marasi leaves him to it and picks her spot: kneels in the mouth of the tunnel that leads into the main cavern, raises her new semiautomatic Bastion rifle, steadies herself, and drops the first two gangsters who try to charge through one after the other — a discipline her range work has bought her, since her hand had wanted to cycle the bolt out of long habit. After the second body the rest of the room thinks better of charging.

Wayne asks for the magic boxes. *Allomantic technology,* she corrects, *not magic.* *Magic boxes from your boyfriend,* he insists. She has three Allomantic grenades and two flash-bangs; Wax charged one of the grenades for her before they left. The plan: she runs back to the overlook above the cavern to snipe and toss grenades, Wayne holds the tunnel until she's done, then he moves in. He fires a borrowed pistol into the cavern to put heads down — not to hit, just to suppress — and tosses it the moment it's empty. His hand still wobbles when he holds a gun. He doesn't need to be more deadly than he already is.

At the overlook she tops up the first grenade by burning cadmium — the energy goes into the box now, on the new design, instead of into a bubble around her — and tosses it underhand into the middle of a knot of gangsters crouched behind crates. Ten of them are caught when the slowness bubble pops up. She tops up the second and lands it on a second cluster, eight more. The cavern echoes with shouts of *Metalborn!* as half the room realises they are pinned in turgid air with no way to escape before the ten-minute charge runs out. She drops her rifle off her shoulder, picks off two more of the still-mobile ones with cover fire, and Wayne slips into the chamber under her shots — a blur, then a leap, then dueling canes coming down on the next group from above.

She scrambles down to the cavern floor in a low crouch, avoiding the shimmer of the grenade perimeters (she of all people knows what it feels like to be on the slow side of one), finds cover behind a crate-nailing machine, and weathers a storm of returning fire. The world slows again around her — Wayne dropping his own bubble onto her position — and he slumps in beside her with a bloody shoulder. She teases him for the wound. He grins; sometimes you get shot, especially if you're running through a gunfight with sticks. He still has *plenty* of bendalloy, he reports, and Marasi is genuinely proud — early in their partnership he used to burn through his allotment on pranks and costume changes inside a single shift.

Eleven enemies left, Wayne reports. He has spotted the well-dressed Cycle slipping away through a reinforced back door. They split: she goes after the Cycle (who will vanish forever if she lets him), he stays to clean up the rest. He boasts of his new trick — overlapping his bubbles with hers to pluck a single slowed prisoner out at a time — and promises to take some alive. She hands him one of the two flash-bangs, kisses the situation goodbye, and they pop out from cover in opposite directions. She lights her fuse, throws, and runs for the back door; he runs for the last group of gangsters and, as she glances back, settles in behind a crate marked EXPLOSIVES with his own flash-bang in his hand and a wink for her.

*Delightful.* She picks the lock on the back door and slips through, the entire cavern complex shaking behind her a few moments later. Wayne's healing is extraordinary, but it is not infinite — any blast that separates his metalminds from his body would kill him outright, the way it killed the Lord Ruler when he lost his Bands centuries before. She can't watch him; she can certainly not survive an explosion of her own; and the Cycle, of every soul in that room, is the one most likely to have answers for her. She turns into the dark tunnel and runs after him.