Jett physically shuddered once the wolfkin guards withdrew safely behind the barrier. The scale of what was happening here hit her like a brick to the stomach, and she wanted to vomit. With the enforcers gone, the hubbub from the new arrivals rose in a panicked swell, rippling down the winding paths and echoing up through the cavern.

Looking down into the pit, she saw some of the kin already down her moving to meet the new arrivals, directing them to their living spaces and trying to calm them down. She wondered just how many of the poor souls trapped down her actually believed what the wolfkin were selling them. It was different for people like her. She'd always lived on the margins, keeping an arms-length relationship with any kind of authority. She'd never trusted the Conclave.

She trudged away from the door, out of the flow, and moved over to the cold, damp rock wall. There she leaned, trying to think.

"This is..." Bronco struggled for the words, shaking his head in disbelief. "I can't believe it."

"Well, what did ya expect to find?" Rapid laughed grimly. "All singing, dancing, happy families? This is what the wolves get up to when nobody keeps 'em leashed."

Jett closed her eyes, trying not to listen to her companions as the enormity of what was being done here slammed home. Looking through all the data, all the official orders and piecing this puzzle together had been one thing, but now she was staring at. Now she was in it. The thought was almost enough to overwhelm her.

Almost.

She sucked a steadying breath through clenched teeth and straightened up, glancing back at the heavy industrial doors that sealed them in. Her eyes narrowed, flicking their way across every bolt and plate along the interior control panels long since disabled by the wolfkin occupiers. More pieces of her plan began to coalesce as she mentally retraced her steps through the facility, along the route they'd taken and back to those security doors that led deeper. To the screams.

Nodding to herself, Jett turned her attention to the residents of this pit, examining the lines of citykin. She spotted some of those already down here moving to greet the new arrivals. A reassuring shake of paws as they directed them to the living areas not currently occupied. Other groups, however, looked far less docile.

She could see groups of younger kin gesturing furiously as they argued with some of their older companions, angry voices rising into the air. There were enough of them there to facilitate what she had in mind, and her eyes were drawn specifically to the young otterkin who'd attempted to stand up to the wolfkin earlier. He'd already found himself some sympathisers, hunkered down conversing urgently with a dozen other aggressive-looking spirits.

"Time to put the leash back on," Jett growled, her hackles rising. "C'mon, we're not staying here a second longer than we have to."

Rapid shot her a dubious look. "Y' got a plan, bright eyes?"

"You're damn right I do," she said as she walked past him. "I think it's time for a jailbreak."

Unsure of what else to do, the others quickly fell in behind her as she set off down one of the precarious sloping paths, striding purposefully towards the group of malcontents.

"How're you planning to break out of this place?" Bronco asked quietly as they walked.

Jett made a vague gesture over her shoulder with one paw. "I can pop those bulkheads from our side."

"That's not a plan," Karno interjected. "I could open those hulks with my eyes closed, but that doesn't do us much good with the wolfkin guarding every exit."

"Which is why we need a diversion."

"And how do you plan on..." The wolfkin's eyes widened as the solution dawned on him. "Oh. Oh, right. I guess that'll work."

"What'll work?" Gallant demanded.

Rapid let out a knowing chuckle. "Little Jett here wants to use some of our friends down here as wolf bait. Gotta say, girl, didn't think y'had it in ya."

"Shut up."

"What in the Peace does that mean? You're going to just use some of these poor kin as a distraction for us?"

Jett's lips curled in a snarl, and she looked back sharply. "If you have a better solution, I am all ears, but we can't fight every wolfkin guard in this place on our own. There are plenty of people here who will jump at the chance to escape, and we're going to give it to them. It's that or nobody leaves, and this just carries on."

"But they'll be killed!"

"Gallant, she's right," Bronco said, though his voice betrayed his unease. "We've got to get out of here and deeper into the facility. We need to get the evidence of what they are doing here so we can bring it to the Morairan. If we don't...who knows how long this could go on?"

Jett felt a surge of relief in her chest at the vulkin's words. She knew how difficult he would find such an act—ever the good watchguard, championing the citizens of Wildhearth—but he understood what they had to do here and now. Gallant lapsed into a sullen silence, realising she was in the minority. Jett knew well enough that this plan would probably get a lot of the kin who attempted to escape killed, but what choice did they have? Besides, she knew she'd rather die fighting than be carted off and lobotomized in the twisted wolfkin experiments.

They made their way down into one of the plateaus that emerged from the right-hand wall of the chamber where large groups of kin had coalesced. The mix of musks flowed over her senses in close proximity, mixing with the ever-present chemical sting of the plant itself. She saw the otterkin and his companions finally turn away in disgust from the group they had been arguing with, retreating into the shadow of one of the converted mining sheds to continue their fermenting in private. Jett walked straight over to them, not wanting to waste a precious second.

"Hey there," she said, loudly enough to cut over the conversation of the group and drag all eyes to her. The young otterkin whirled around, eyes narrowing in accusation.

"If you're here to tell us to sit on our tails and like it," the otterkin growled, "beat it. I don't care what you say. We're not just gonna sit here and let the wolves do this!"

"Wow, easy now." Jett raised her paws. "We're all on the same team here. As it happens, I couldn't agree with you more."

"And who might you be?" asked a tall, red-furred quillkin female, a little older than the otterkin and with a melodious, syrupy voice.

"Name's Jett."

"Well, Jett, we'll take what help we can get." She jerked a head towards the other citykin on this part of the plateau. "A lot of these newcomers don't get it. They haven't got a questioning bristle in their fur." She moved up to stand beside her companion and stuck out a paw. "I'm Liisu."

"And what's yer name, pup?" Rapid grated, inclining his head to the otterkin. "Showed some spine on you stickin' up to that wolf back there."

The otterkin shot him a petulant glare. "My name's Murro, and I'm not a pup."

"A'right, right." The albino shrugged. "Please yourse—OI!"

Jett dug an elbow into his ribs. "That's enough." Then she turned her attention to the otterkin. "Murro, how would you like to get out of here?"

Murro's expression grew desperate. "I'd do anything to get out of this hole. It's not right what they're doing here. I don't believe what they're saying."

"Good instincts." She thumped his shoulder with a clenched paw lightly. "It's worse than you know."

The otterkin scowled. "That don't surprise me. Wolfkin can't be trusted." His eyes flicked suspiciously towards Karno as he spoke.

"Well, we're here to put a stop to this," Jett said. "Him included. We didn't come on any relocation order. We came here deliberately. But we need to get out of this room first."

Liisu snorted, sweeping her lush locks of flame-red headfur back behind her ears. "If we knew how to do that, we'd be gone already. The wolfkin know there's no way out except through those doors of theirs. The other tunnels leading out of this place have either been collapsed or filled with toxic waste."

"How long have you been down here?" Gallant asked quietly.

"Me? Three days—longer than most. They cycle through us pretty quickly."

The deerkin's face fell. "So...no one's been here more than a few days?"

"Wouldn't bet on it." A shrug. "They know that if anyone's kept down here for too long, even the ones who are trying to go along with this sham will start getting restless. They come every few hours and take a score or more at a time."

Rapid frowned. "You ain't ever tried getting out on your own? If they're openin' those doors regular-like, you could rush 'em."

"If we felt like committing suicide, maybe." Liisu shot him a withering look. "They have view slots in those doors, so they'd see if we were massed in a group like that. And when they're opening those doors on their terms, there's always a full gang of wolfkin waiting, just in case we try. We'd get slaughtered doing something like that."

Jett nodded slowly as she listened. Liisu's description of events certainly suggested that body-to-body, the wolfkin were far outnumbered by their prisoners, but tight choke points and fear of reprisal kept them in line.

"It sounds like you need the element of surprise," Jett said. "Which is where we come in."

***

The big doors were old.

Clearly, the wolfkin had tried to repurpose large chunks of the disused plant when setting up out here, not wanting to draw undue attention to any major construction projects in a theoretically dead district. That meant that despite their imposing bulk, for someone who knew their tech, they were a relatively minor obstacle. The manual controls had been removed from their side, unsurprisingly, but she didn't need one to physically trigger the door release. A small, cube-shaped divot had been left behind where the panel had once been, and that would be all she required.

The bigger issue was the wolfkin guards beyond.

Her main concern was accomplishing this out of sight of the single viewport that had been installed above the door for the wolfkin to periodically check in on their cattle. They'd watched and waited for what felt like hours, and the enforcers appeared periodically at random entrances. Metal would grind, hydraulics would hiss, and suddenly a hallway would be open, walled with guards to prevent any kind of escape.

Just as Liisu described, they regularly extracted groups of citykin twenty or thirty at a time, quartets of enforcers striding in and picking out individuals with clinical precision. Sometimes they took mixed groups; other times, they chose a score or more of one breed. Whatever was being done to these poor souls, there was a method behind the madness.

Then they would withdraw, herding their charges along with them back into the halls of the facility, urging calm and reiterating that if everyone just played along, it would all be over soon. Some of the kin seemed content enough, believing they would soon be out of this prison. Luckily a small but significant number clearly felt otherwise.

As soon as she dared after the latest collection of kin, Jett positioned herself at the door on the far left of the entrance platform while Karno took the one on the far right. As inconspicuously as possible, Liisu and Murro had gathered as many willing citykin as they could to make a bid for freedom. Most of them were the younger, headstrong prisoners, and it gave her a small pang of hesitation as she watched them readying for the fight to come. The young would be doing the dying today.

But it would not be in vain. They would be saving Wildhearth from Hera's twisted ambitions. She'd done her best to impress upon them how dangerous this would be, but there were still a lot of brave souls willing to take their chances. Groups of them stood strung out in innocent-looking clumps of two or three, idly conversing and trying to look normal to any wolfkin that checked through the viewports. When the time came, they would surge into action, trying to rush and overwhelm any guards stationed nearby before they could raise the alarm.

Before any of that could happen, however, Jett and Karno had to hold up their side of the bargain. She slithered her way over to the empty space where the control panel had once been, keeping her lithe frame pressed tightly against the metal to stay out of sight of the viewport. Moving almost on all fours, she slid to her knees beneath the dark divot and eased herself up to peer inside.

It took a moment for her eyes to pierce the darkness, but she could see the frayed wire ends where some brute had simply ripped the control panel from its housing. A job that would be enough to stop most people, but not her. These big blast doors were reasonably commonplace in the industrial districts of Wildhearth, all following the same construction principles.

Vast hydraulic pistons held the toothed slabs of metal firmly in place, along with a series of locking gears along the top section. The emergency manual fail-safe built into such a door was normally meant to close it, instantly retracting the gears and triggering the much more powerful hydraulics to slam the door shut at lethal speeds in the event of a chemical or reactor leak. Jett was confident she could trigger the same reaction in reverse to yank the door open. Once that was done, it would take the wolfkin a long time to get them shut again.

Running her tongue around her teeth in anticipation, she rose higher and slid a paw gently into the aperture, groping half-blindly for the wires. She let out a whispered curse when she discovered that most of them had actually been clipped back, making them too short for her to actually press them together on their own.

Time to improvise a circuit. She bent the wires as close as she could get them, contorting her body to try and get a better grip. Once they were in place, she wrestled her longclaw free from its hiding place, strapped tight against her spine. Tugging her bodywrap back down again, she took a breath and looked over at Karno at the far door. As soon as she connected the circuit, the fail-safe would trigger, and they would have one shot at getting out of this room—the timing was everything.

Karno looked back, raising one paw clenched to indicate his readiness.

She returned the gesture, then looked back over her shoulder down the nearest pathway where Bronco, Rapid, and Gallant waiting amongst the other citykin preparing to make their bid for freedom. Many of them skulked in the shadows at Rapid's direction, tucking themselves up close to the walls to be as invisible as possible from prying eyes. She gave them a quick nod and then turned back to Karno. She raised her paw, extending three claws and mouthing a silent countdown.

Three.

Two.

One.

She reached in and placed the metal blade of the longclaw between the wires, connecting the circuit.

There was an instant of silence, like the gathering breath before a storm. Then spark flickered weakly in the dark space of the control panel, and Jett jerked her paw back. That little spark triggered the fail-safe, flooding the hydraulic cylinder at a rapid rate. The tell-tale clunk of retracting gears echoed through the empty space, and an instant later, the doors were yanked open.

Everything moved in a blur.

As they'd instructed, there were no yells from the charging citykin, just the heavy patter of dozens of footpaws as they raced up the ramps from both angles. Jett glanced across to find Karno already sprinting towards her, a gaping door open behind him and a hoard of prisoners surging towards it. She straightened up, knees bent and ready to spring, and her longclaw clutched tight in one paw.

Karno reached her just as the first group of citykin went thundering through the open door with Murro at their head. She twisted and followed them through, and then the screaming began.

There were only four wolfkin guards directly on the other side of the door, and they were so surprised by the sudden tide of citykin that came through the blast door that two of them barely had time to react before they were buried under a mound of flailing limbs. The others, standing slightly further back, let fly with their armbows, all semblance of gentle treatment abandoned in what they quickly realised was a fight to the death.

She saw Murro go down with a bolt in his thigh, but they couldn't stop to help the escapees now. All of this was simply to buy time. The clamour of fighting quickly drew other enforcers into sight at the far end of the passage, and Jett let out a short snarl of frustration as she jinked to the left, away from the main hallway. Armbow bolts began scything down the corridor into the packed bodies, maiming and killing indiscriminately with every shot, but the mob of citykin surged forward, their survival instincts roaring into life.

The low bass throb of an alarm thundered from the walls.

As mayhem spilled out into the wolfkin facility Jett and her companions slunk away, and she had to close her ears to the sounds of death that echoed after them.