A metal-walled passage stretched off into the distance, studded with globes of light embedded into the ceiling. Empty for now. For a moment, Jett found herself frozen, every instinct in her body willing her not to take another step. In the end, the evolved portion of her brain reasserted itself, and she looked back.

"Come on," she whispered, beckoning Karno inside.

He slipped in behind her, and together they padded their way down the passage as quickly as they dared, even soft steps echoing faintly in the empty space. According to the schematic, halfway down this passage, they would find a vent to get up into the filtration system: a labyrinth of broad shafts that ran the length of the underground bunker system that ensured the inhabitants could breathe properly, buried as they were in the foundations of the city.

It didn't take long for them to reach the location marked by the schematic and sure enough, embedded above their heads was a thin metal grate. A shudder of relief passed through her as she looked at it—confirmation that their schematic accurately reflected the layout of the enforcer base. She exhaled a calming breath and nodded to Karno.

"Boost me," she murmured, reaching into her belt for a screwdriver. He cupped his paws together, and she stepped up, one footpaw in his grip, the other on his shoulder as he eased her up towards the vent.

"Hold still."

"Bloody Peace, what do you think I'm doing?" he hissed back irately. "Just get on with it."

Biting back a retort, Jett reached up, balancing precariously as she unscrewed the bolts, holding the grate in place with painstaking care. One by one, the screws dropped into her waiting paws until she was able to gently ease the grate from its housing. Passing it down to Karno, she reached up, grabbed the lip of the vent, and heaved herself inside.

The interior of the vent was wide and flat, icy cold and humming with the filtering mechanisms that festooned the walls. On all fours, Jett awkwardly contorted herself around until she could reach back down through the empty space. Karno handed her the grate, angling it so she could ease it inside before she dangled out again, bracing herself against the walls of the shaft as Karno gripped her paw.

She only needed to lift him for a moment. One good jump from his powerful hind legs and a solid yank from Jett was enough for him to latch onto the lip of the aperture. Clasping his forearms, Jett helped drag him up into the cramped confines of the filtration system. As she bundled him up into the shaft, she became acutely aware of his musk again, their bodies tangled together as they shuffled awkwardly into a sitting position on either side of the grate.

She extracted herself, cleared her throat, and swept her paws back through her headfur, taking a moment to catch a breath. Karno clasped his muzzle with both paws and breathed in deep through his nose. Only then did she notice the tremble in his shoulders, and the realisation hit her like a slap in the tail.

For all his breezy confidence, the wolfkin was scared.

And why in the Peace and Fire wouldn't he be? What they were doing could charitably be described as crazy (and if you were feeling uncharitable, you might justifiably call it suicide). These were the power-hungry murderers who'd purged his friends, wrecked his life, and forced him into exile in a district where you couldn't draw breath without being reminded of the fact.

Jett felt the tremble in her own paws and sat on them for a moment, trying to stifle the sensation and get a hold of her own nerves. A stab of sympathy shot through her as she examined her companion. The person she saw in front of her was not the person Karno had chosen to be. Just like her, a new version of him had been forced into existence by Hera and her machinations.

"Are you okay?" she whispered, catching his eye and forcing a wry smile.

He let his paws drop to his sides and nodded. "Ah, hellfangs, I will be. I'm just more used to dealing with problems from the other end of a computing rig, you know?"

"That certainly makes two of us."

"But not today, I think." Karno took two deep, steadying breaths, then flipped onto all fours and set off down the passage. "Today, I think I'm ready to cause a little trouble face-to-face."

"You remember where you're going?" she asked as he shuffled past her.

"Yup—just follow my lead," he assured her, powering himself along on his elbows and knees. Jett folded her slight frame up to turn around and follow him. Single file, they crawled their way meter by meter through the closed-off metal world. It was strange—in here, she could hear nothing of the thunderous life of Wildhearth that she knew existed beyond the walls.

She moved along in Karno's wake, having a slightly easier time being smaller than her companion. Gusts buffeted them at regular intervals as the system sucked in air from the outside world, scrubbed it and blasted it into the vents for the wolfkin enforcers to breathe. After a series of turns, she began to hear snatches of muffled conversation as they passed over rooms where enforcers manned their posts—a skeleton staff in these outer areas but still more than enough to deal with two unarmed intruders.

Which was where the next part of the plan came in.

"Okay, the server maintenance room should be two more passages down," Karno whispered as they moved. "There shouldn't be anyone there."

"Let's make sure, eh?"

As they drew closer to the server room, Jett could feel the heat beginning to rise from the coolant stacks, venting from the units themselves and being cycled through the filtration system to keep the room cool. She found herself panting lightly as filtration systems of the shaft shuffled hot swirls of air along, washing her with intermittent spikes of temperature. Her ears pricked at the crackling hum of machines. Not far now.

Karno slithered to a halt in front of an access grate, holding back an open paw indicating she should stop. Jett waited, trying to keep her breathing as shallow and quiet as possible. Seconds ticked by. Impatience got the better of her, and she tapped him on the ankle.

"Looks clear," he whispered. "Gimme that screwdriver."

Reaching into her belt, Jett tugged the tool free and placed it into his outstretched paw. Karno went to work, jimmying the grate free. There was a clunk, but he caught it before the sheet of holed metal could fall. He slipped the grate into the vent with excruciating slowness and then lowered himself down into the server room. Jett eased herself along, planting her paws on the far edge and hanging down. A jolt of surprise made her tail curl as she felt paws clasp her waist.

"Just let go," Karno instructed.

A little out of kilter from the sudden contact, she did as he said, releasing her grip and letting him take her weight. Once he'd eased her to the ground, his grip disappeared as quickly as it had come. When she turned around, he was already moving, examining the room. Shaking off the sensation, Jett refocused her mind and looked around.

A maze of towering computer stacks surrounded them, crackling with power, a blaze of LED lights glittering in a geometric pattern of reds and blues. The floor was warm under paw, absorbing some of the heat of the units placed upon it.

"Over here," Karno said urgently, jerking his head towards one of the narrow paths through the server towers. Then he disappeared down it, and Jett scrambled to join him.

Down the narrow path, she found a fat cuboid stack with a screen and keyboard embedded into it—a diagnostic station—currently powered down. Wordlessly she slipped past him, thumbing the start-up key. The screen sprang to life, bold white text on a black background searing her eyes with its brightness.

"Watch the door," Jett said.

He didn't argue, slipping away between the stacks as she opened up the internal systems of the enforcer compound. Then she exhaled, long and slow. This was not a system to be trifled with. One wrong step, and she might inadvertently bring every enforcer in the building right down on top of them. From the outside, the system would have been impregnable, and while they would never have expected an attack from within was possible, that didn't mean there weren't countermeasures in place.

She could see the emergency protocols easily enough. Like the rest of the city, the enforcer headquarters utilised a heavy water reactor, but they had their own closed-off power substation at the base of the complex. If she could send the right signals to fake a leak in the reactor, that would trigger the emergency alarms and clear out the wolfkin. At least those who didn't want to be killed by a lethal dose of radiation.

"I've got it," she said as loudly as she dared. "Just keep watch."

"I've got nowhere to be," Karno deadpanned from just out of her line of sight.

Jett rolled her eyes, shook the tension from her shoulders, and went back to work, moving through the layers of enforcer security piece by excruciating piece, covering her tracks at every turn. The system would show nothing but regularly scheduled diagnostic logs, behind which she hid her excursions into the depths of the reactor system.

At length, she dug her way into the safety monitoring part of the reactor's main system, ghosting past firewalled lines of hunter-code until she could access the sensors that monitored structural integrity, tied into a slew of rad-counters. All she needed to do was override the actual feed from the reactor—interrupt the flow with a spoof of her own to fool the machine and any workers monitoring those systems. If a reactor told you it was about to melt down, you didn't stand around and argue with it.

With nerves beginning to jangle in her chest, she made the necessary adjustments to the system, pushing the perceived radioactivity of the reactor chamber well past its acceptable safety limits. And then a bit further.

Nausea twisted in her gut when nothing seemed to happen. She gritted her teeth, jaw locked painfully tight as she waited.

"Come on." Not even a whisper. Just a breath of prayer.

"Did you do it?"

"Yes, I did it!" Jett shot him a furious glance. "What in the Fire do you think I'm doing over here?"

"Maybe they've re-specced the safeties. Ramp it a little higher."

She let out a frustrated snort but did as he asked. The sensor crept even further into the red. If any technicians were monitoring this thing, they ought to smash a manual alarm even if the automated one didn't trigger.

Her faked levels would be more than enough to kill with a lengthy exposure, but she dared not push the reading any further. Much higher, and she would be simulating a near-instant, lethal overload that (if real) would have sent the reactor straight into a meltdown. When that didn't happen, the wolfkin would instantly know someone else was messing with the system and coming hunting.

So she had to keep waiting.

Just when she was teetering towards the edge of outright panic, it finally happened.

She felt a shudder of triumph at the sound of the enforcer alarm system bursting into life. The lights plunged into a thick emergency blue, and a klaxon waxed and waned as though someone was slowly covering and uncovering an erupting volcano. For a second, she stood there, indecisive, before her mind jerked back into motion, and she punched in the shutdown command for the console.

"I take it that's our cue?" Karno said, reappearing around one of the cooling stacks.

Jett nodded. "Get out of sight. Give it a couple of minutes for them to clear out. Hopefully, they're as efficient as everyone gives them credit for."

Together they tucked themselves away at the back of the server room, the alarm continuing to thunder through the halls. She closed her eyes as the sound of running paws in the corridor outside briefly cut through the alarm. Then they were gone. Karno looked at her expectantly, but she held up a paw. Accidentally running into a group of evacuating wolfkin was the last thing they needed.

Another group passed the door a moment later, and then they were left with nothing but the alarm. She tapped Karno on the arm and slipped from their hiding place. With him right behind her, she poked her head out into the passage.

Nothing but empty halls and blue lights.

"Let's go."