I dropped into the hole, and immediately noticed the extreme shift in temperature when my breath crystallized in the frigid air. The entire tube was lined in frost, and the chill that the liquid nitrogen had left seemed to seep in through the gaps of my uniform. I hesitated, the knowledge that the chemical could instantly freeze any organic matter that came in contact with it making me worry about my ungloved hands, and then quickly touched a pinky to the wall for a second, knowing it was faster than just asking. It was cold, but there was no sign of crystallization, and the skin was still pliable. I immediately hunkered down and began to crawl.

The pipe was only three feet in circumference on the outside, but it was even tighter on the inside, making it difficult to go forward in any way other than a belly crawl, which was intolerably slow. The tunnel stretched on, the darkness inside only pushed back by my light, and I felt each second keenly as I continued to shove myself forward, ever conscious of the time. Quess had said three minutes, and it already felt like I had been in here for an hour.

I used that feeling, funneling some of the frantic energy to my motions and redoubling my efforts. Inches turned to feet, which turned into more as I pressed forward, keeping my mind on the goal.

I paused when my light cut across a panel in the top of the pipe, the glittering lights of it hidden under some of the melting frost. I crawled toward it, and the light on my arm revealed a seam. It was one of the pressure valves—but not our exit. Quess had said the third one.

“Time?” I called behind me, hoping that someone would hear me. I knew that Tony could tell me, but I wanted to communicate with my team, so that we were all aware of how much time we had left. The confines of the pipe made it difficult for sounds to carry past where our bodies were stuffed in.

At first there was no answer, and I worried no one had heard me. But then I heard a muffled, “Two minutes,” from behind me, in Eric’s voice.

I wasn’t sure if making it to the first pressure valve in only a minute was a good or bad sign, but knowing we only had two minutes left added additional fire to my movements. I pulled forward, hyperaware of every scrape my uniform made on the inside of the pipe, the sound of my own breathing, and the thundering of my heart.

In order to cope with the tight confines, I began to focus on what would happen next: climbing out of the pipe, sealing it behind us so as not to raise the alarm, then sneaking into the integration room where Sage was hiding. All I had to do was shoot him, trigger the New Day protocol in Leo, and rescue Grey, and it would be over.

I knew it wouldn’t be that simple, but at the very least, it gave me something to preoccupy myself with during the crawl. When we got to the second glowing panel and exit, I felt confident that it had taken less time than it took for us to reach the first one.

“Time?” I asked, hope curling my voice upward.

There was another long pause behind me, and then Eric replied with, “One minute, fifteen seconds. Quess says it’s the next hatch. All you have to do is press the green button and it will open.”

“Excellent,” I breathed, my entire attention focused on the pipe ahead and the final remaining crawl, my eyes searching for the glowing lights that would mean our escape. My hands were burning from the cold, and while I could still move all ten digits, they were hurting and beginning to lose sensation.

Time marched past us while we continued to move forward, the seconds bleeding away with each heartbeat, and I began to count them, growing concerned when thirty had gone by without any sign of the glowing lights. At forty, panic began to set in. Had I missed it? Was the frost over it making it impossible to see? If we were trapped down here when the liquid nitrogen turned back on, we were going to die, so I couldn’t afford to make a single mistake.

I trusted that the others would’ve signaled if I had passed it, and continued to scan the ceiling. A few seconds later, I was rewarded when my light caught another panel and seam, just a few feet ahead.

I raced for it, as best as I was able, knowing that three more people were behind me and needed to get out. As soon as I was within arm’s length of it, I reached up, scraped off the frost, and hit the green button. The door overhead emitted a sharp hiss, then rose up, letting in the light from the room outside.

I didn’t need a second invitation and rolled to my back so I could grab the edges of the opening and pull myself up until I was standing in the pipe, my head and shoulders inside a small room with a catwalk leading from the hatch to another catwalk pressed between what looked like two tanks—storage areas for the liquid nitrogen, according to their markings.

I quickly looked around and found a wall in one direction, and a metal platform in the other. I climbed hastily to the platform to let Eric out. My boots hit the metal floor, and the structure rattled under my weight. Not enough to be overly concerning, but loudly enough to attract attention. I peered down the steep steps leading down from the platform to a walkway. Massive fans in the floor and ceiling spun lazily on either side of it, while the walkway turned into a hall after it ran between the two silver canisters marked as liquid nitrogen. There was no sign of movement anywhere in the room, or the passageway beyond, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be.

I looked over my shoulder to check on Eric, saw that he was helping Maddox out, and quickly took a few steps down the stairs to make room for them. Then I returned my attention to the passageway, searching for any sign of movement. But there was nothing.

I took several more steps down, keeping my light on the metal catwalk, then paused when I heard Quess’s sharp curse, instantly on guard.

“Quess?” I called, turning back toward the pipe and where Eric and Maddox were hovering over the hole to help him out. “You didn’t get stuck, did you?”

“Hardee har har,” Quess said from inside the pipe. “With a physique like this? Perish the thought.”

I frowned at his quip, noting how forced it was, and immediately started back, knowing something wasn’t right. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” he replied in the same tone. “Just… the panel in here got smashed is all. Nothing to worry about, except if I can’t fix it, the door won’t close, causing an alarm to go off, and liquid nitrogen will spray everywhere. But I got it. Really. Nothing to worry about.”

That wasn’t good. He was repeating himself. That meant there was something to worry about. “Quess, get out,” I ordered. “We’ll force it closed from this side.”

“In thirty-nine seconds? I don’t think so. The force it would take is far more than all of us could generate together. Besides, I’ve almost got it. Just a few more seconds.”

He was lying. I could tell. My heart skipped a beat as I mounted the steps, and I almost stumbled.

“Quess,” Maddox said, her voice nervous. “I really think you should get out now.”

“Dammit, babe, I can’t. If I do, the valve won’t close, and Sage will know someone is back here. I’ve seen the blueprints, and that room is a deathtrap. And c’mon, it’s me. I’m amazing at everything I do.”

I reached the top of the steps and stepped between Maddox and Eric. “Quess, give me your hand. We’ll worry about the—”

“Just a—” There was a sharp pop of electricity, illuminating Quess’s face, and he gave a surprised cry, his hand going to his eyes.

“Quess!” Maddox cried, diving toward the opening to try to reach him. I threw my arm across her chest to prevent her from diving back in, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to get him out if she was in the way.

“Calm down,” I ordered her. “Quess, are you okay?”

“Totally fine,” he said back. “I just might have accidently shorted out something important, but that’s okay. I can just reroute power to here, and then crosswire this… Almost there.”

“That’s enough,” I snapped. “Get. Out. Now. Eric, will you help me—”

A sharp bzzt cut me off before I could finish my thought, and the lights overhead flickered and went out. There was a hiss of air a moment later, coming from right next to us, and all three of us scrambled away from the noise just as the lights flickered back on.

My eyes frantically searched for the source—only to find the pressure valve swinging closed.

Fast.

“Oh no!” Maddox cried, her voice breaking, but I was already moving.

“Quess, the door’s closing!” I cried, slapping my hands against the door and pushing, trying to hold it open. The damn thing was already halfway shut, the gap barely wide enough for Quess to squeeze through, but if I could just hold it open long enough, he might be able to escape. I grunted as the force of it continued to bear down, but I might as well have been an ant trying to fight the impending force and pressure of a boot stepping on it. “GET OUT!” I screamed to him.

Hands appeared next to mine, and within seconds Maddox and Eric were wedged on either side of me, trying to help me stop the steady movement of the valve hatch. But even with their help, the hatch continued to bear down, resisting our herculean effort. The door was now three quarters of the way closed, and still going. I strained against it, trying to find a way to leverage more strength into my hold, but we were failing.

Suddenly I caught a flash of something coming through the gap—but knew it couldn’t be Quess. It was moving too quickly. Which meant he had just tossed something up. Something that could help us with the door, maybe? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to let go of the valve long enough to find out.

“Doxy!” Quess shouted. “I tossed up the pad! Don’t be upset, but I fixed the door. I…” He paused, his voice growing hoarse with sorrow. “You have to let go now. You’re not strong enough to stop it, and you’ll hurt your fingers if you keep holding on.”

“No!” Maddox cried, and it sounded like Quess was ripping the beating heart from her chest.

Hell, it felt like he was doing that to mine. “Quess, stop it,” I ordered, the hatch now inches from closing. “Press the button—”

“I can’t,” he replied, his voice tight with panic and remorse. “I fixed the door, but I had to short out the controls to do it. I’m sorry.” His voice broke, and then he took a deep, shuddering breath. “Maddox, baby, I need to tell you that I love you. I’ve always loved you. Ever since Cali took me in and you kicked my ass that first time we met. Do you remember, Doxy? You threw me to the floor and just sashayed away, and I fell for you then and there.” His voice was growing frantic, as the gap between the valve and the pipe dwindled down to centimeters, but still he spoke, trying to reassure Maddox. “Please don’t be sad about this, Doxy. I hate it when you’re sad.”

“Quess!” Maddox sobbed, tears spilling from her green eyes, her fingers still clamped around the lid. “No!”

I had to pull her hands away from the hatch to prevent her fingers from being crushed when the massive weight of it slammed down. The red light next to the door suddenly lit up green, and Eric murmured a sickened, “The liquid nitrogen just turned back on.”

“Noooooooo!” Maddox cried, struggling against my hold. “Quess!”

And though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I held her in place as she tried to push past me to the hatch. Tears were leaking from my own eyes, but I kept myself firmly in her way, knowing that it was too late for us to do anything. Quess was gone. He’d sacrificed himself trying to get us in safely, and he’d succeeded. Maddox wouldn’t be able to open it back up even if she wanted to, and she definitely wouldn’t be able to see anything. If anything, she’d break something that would trigger an alarm.

Maddox’s struggles eventually weakened as reality set in, subsiding into rough sobs of sorrow and tragedy that I understood all too well. Maddox had just lost her mother, learned her father was Devon Alexander, then lost him too. And now Quess. It wasn’t right. She was a good person—she didn’t deserve to know that loss.

I glanced over at Eric, to see his own eyes filled with tears, as he undoubtedly thought about Zoe, and I almost broke down. None of us had done anything to deserve this, but we had all lost people we cared about anyway. It wasn’t fair.

On impulse, I wrapped my arms around Maddox, hugging her tight to me as she cried her anguish out against my shoulder, and fought back my own heartbreak. Quess and the others were more than just friends to me. They were my family. Our bond had been forged in the most unorthodox of ways, but they were all I had left, and I was losing them.

Which made the ones still with me all the more precious. It was just too bad that where we were going, none of us were guaranteed to survive.

The thought grounded me, helping me to realize we didn’t have time to stand around crying, and I smoothed my hand over Maddox’s back, hating myself for how harsh I had to be with her. “Doxy, I’m sorry about Quess,” I said, my voice thick due to the constricted nature of my throat. “But we have to move. I don’t know how much longer Grey and Leo have, if they haven’t broken already, and—”

“I know,” she said, jerking away from me and turning around to scrub at her face. “Let’s just…” She sucked in a shuddering breath and exhaled slowly, and I could tell she was fighting for calm. “Let’s go,” she finally said, turning around.

Her eyes were filled with a myriad of emotions: pain, anguish, sorrow, denial, fear, anger, and most importantly, determination. I knew how hard it had to be for her to push the pain of her loss back for even a heartbeat, but Maddox and I were more alike than I cared to admit sometimes, and knowing her, she’d put her pain in a box, lock it up tight, and embrace the void.

Just like I had.

“Eric, grab that pad,” I told my friend, breaking from Maddox’s gaze to face him. “And let’s hope your Cog training has really paid off.”

“I can read a schematic,” he said quietly, bending over to pick up the pad Quess had thrown out. “Just give me a second.”

I turned back to Maddox to find her gazing at the pressure valve, her green eyes threatening to overflow again. “I think we can give you that,” I murmured, wanting to give Maddox a few more moments to mourn. It wasn’t much, and we had to move, but we could all be dead soon, and she deserved a moment alone with her pain. “I’ll help you,” I added, realizing that she didn’t need me watching it, either.