The air in the submarine tunnels was freezing, a brutal contrast to the burning, smoky hell of the barracks they left behind.
Jamir ran rear-guard, his boots splashing through pools of stagnant water. Behind him, Marcos carried a silent, shock-ridden Hibis, while nineteen terrified children followed in a frantic, disorganized pack. Two more had been left behind with non-fatal wounds, unable to keep up, forced to hide in the bunker's air ducts. The weight of Toby and Maya’s deaths hung over the group like a suffocating shroud.
They reached the catwalk overlooking the underground submarine pen just in time to hear the heavy steel doors echo with a mechanical whine.
Below them, the sleek, black hull of the escape sub was already humming to life. Standing on the loading dock, Johar was frantically typing coordinates into the dock's control panel. The three kids he had forced to come with him stood shivering behind him, looking back up at the catwalk with pleading eyes.
"Johar!" Marcos’s voice echoed through the cavernous pen, dripping with pure fury. He stepped to the railing, his rifle aimed directly down at Johar’s head. "You left them to die. You killed Toby and Maya."
Johar didn't flinch. He looked up, his face smudged with soot and the blood of his own fallen loyalists. "I didn't kill them, Marcos. Your stubbornness did! I told you the cage was failing. If I hadn't opened these doors, the government would have cornered all twenty-five of us in that room."
"There are only twenty-three of us left," Jamir growled, stepping up beside his brother, his finger tightening on his trigger.
The island trembled again. A massive explosion from above sent a shock wave down into the pen, causing the water to violently ripple and pieces of the ceiling to plunge into the dark depths below. The government was digging their way down. Time had completely run out.
"There's only room on this sub for half of us, Marcos," Johar yelled over the roaring water and machinery. He gestured to the three kids beside him. "The coordinates are locked. I’m taking the future of the underground with me. You can stay here and die with your ideals."
Johar slammed his hand onto the final launch sequence button. The submarine's heavy hatch began to hiss shut.
The hatch’s locking teeth clacked, inching toward seal.
A small voice cut through the machinery. “Marcos! Code Canary.”
Marcos’s aim twitched. Only six people were supposed to know that phrase.
One of the three kids on the dock—skinny, buzz-cut, jacket two sizes too big—stepped out from behind Johar. He wasn’t crying; he was vibrating, eyes too wide, jaw set in that brittle way of someone who’d broken past fear and found something sharper. He lifted his left hand, palm out. Two faint Xs were scratched into the meat between thumb and forefinger. Old field mark. Marcos had carved that mark into six palms the night the cages first went live.
“Repeating,” the boy shouted, voice cracking but steady. “Code Canary. Blackbird fallback. Johar doesn’t have the last segment.”
Johar’s head snapped toward him. “Lio—”
The boy moved first.
He launched sideways, not at Johar, but past him—shoulder-checking into the red mushroom cap on the console. The emergency stop slammed down with a thunk that echoed off the water. Alarms keened. The hatch shuddered, reversed, and cracked back open a hand’s breadth; a hiss of cold air knifed out.
Johar cursed and grabbed for the boy’s collar.
Lio twisted, sloughed the jacket, left it in Johar’s fist like a shed skin. He sprinted for the ladder bolted to the dock stanchion.
“Marcos!” he yelled again, already jumping. His hands caught the lowest rung; the impact ripped a yelp out of him, feet skidding against wet steel. He swung, found purchase, and started climbing like a terrified animal, water and grit spattering his face.
Jamir’s rifle tracked Johar. Marcos’s didn’t. He swung up, past Johar’s skull, and put a burst into the control panel. The top row of keys detonated into sparks; the screen went black with a crackle. The sub’s hum hiccuped.
“Idiot!” Johar snarled, diving for a manual lever under the console.
“Back off,” Jamir barked. A single shot pinged the deck by Johar’s boot, sending a fan of steel splinters into the air.
Above, the catwalk vibrated as another explosion rolled the rock. A fissure opened along the far wall; a thin blade of seawater hissed in, swelling to a stream, then a spray. The pen’s waterline ticked higher against the hull’s paint.
Lio’s head popped level with the catwalk grating, eyes shining with sweat and salt. He didn’t stop. He hooked an elbow through the railing, then threw his other hand toward Marcos like he could pass a message skin-to-skin across the distance.
Blackbird two-seven-nine—” he panted. “You gave it to us in the dark. You said if they ever made you choose, you’d pick the ones who knew how to make it hurt.”
Every sound in the cavern seemed to pull back, leaving just the boy’s words and the wet rasp of air in Marcos’s lungs.
Johar went for the lever.
Jamir’s second shot took the handle off it.
“Move!” Marcos shouted, voice shredding. “Everyone to the south stairs! Pair up the youngest! Jamir—cover the dock. Johar, step away from the boat or I end this.”
Johar’s eyes flicked from the ruined console to the rising water to Marcos’s face. For a heartbeat, the old calculus skittered behind his pupils—weight, distance, ballast, oxygen, sin. Then his mouth flattened.
“You just doomed them,” he said softly. “All of them.”
Lio, still clinging to the catwalk, shook his head. “No. We learned the nets. We can split the ballast if we dump the fore cells. There’s time if you stop talking.”
Another chunk of ceiling tore loose and vanished, the splash sending cold spray up to the catwalk. The water surged a full step up the painted draft marks.
Marcos snapped a glance at Jamir. A whole argument moved between them in half a second—everything they’d buried under orders and jokes and stubbornness. Jamir nodded once, hard.
Marcos lowered his rifle a fraction, enough to shift his stance, not enough to invite a charge.
“Then we make two boats where there’s one,” he said. “Or we ride this one like thieves and ghosts.” He jabbed a finger at Johar. “But no one leaves while that kid is down a rung.”
Johar’s lip curled. He released the shredded jacket and stepped back a pace, hands visible, shoulders tight as cables.
Lio hauled himself fully onto the grating. He lay there for a second, chest sawing, then rolled to his knees and looked straight at Marcos.
“The last segment,” he said, voice raw. “Say it so they know you’re still you.”
Marcos’s throat worked. Smoke. Cold. Twenty-three pairs of eyes. He closed his, just for a blink, and saw Toby laughing in a corridor jammed with crates, saw Maya’s braid snapped short by shrapnel and her hand still reaching.
“Blackbird,” he said. “Two-seven-nine. Canary sings, we cut the feed.”
Lio smiled, small and fierce. “Then let’s cut it.” He staggered to his feet, turned, and shouted down at the dock kids, “On me! Dump fore cells on my mark!”
Johar’s fingers twitched.
Jamir’s rifle didn’t.