No time to mourn, even as I spend whole minutes on my back, sniffling at the ceiling. Our chaos has set off an alarm somewhere. All its blaring can't take my mind off've the dreadful sights I just witnessed.

I think myself into iron. One by one my muscles clench; the tears dry on my cheeks. There are pounding footsteps approaching the door and I need to find strength.

I stand, throw the fripperies of human disguise on the floor. I'll be all coblyn if I die here now.

I have the weight of families pressing down on my shoulders. I shall carry them like a strong oak beam lifting up a mine shaft. I shall bring the ruin of earth and fire upon those what done this.

The door opens. People in black uniforms pile in. Shocked, they are, at the devastation. Then they spy me.

I feel so violently full of rage I should be shaking, but I am still as a dead thing, surrounded by sparkling debris.

One of them inches round. They have called for backup into their radios. I sneer. Their nametags say 'Security' but all I see is monsters. They have blocked the path to the door, but I do not care.

I bend and scrape my hands through the glass. One fistful of glittering pain, and one large sliver of evil sharpness.

I roar a thunder of grief at them and charge. I fling the glass shards into the eyes of the first man that tries to grab me. The second gets a deep slice across the thigh. Another slashes his own hand as he tries to seize my wrist, and my teeth ensure he loses at least one finger.

Then my body sizzles and spasms – a great shock of pain from head to toe – and I'm left motionless on the floor. Another shock and I helplessly spasm again.

'Enough,' one of them pants. 'Don't kill it.'

'Did you see what it did to my fucking hand?'

'Sure. But do you see all this lost product? They'll want this one, mark my words.'

The world is swimming in my eyes. I can't tell what's up or down. My last thoughts are of my mam before darkness closes in.

* * *

When I wakes up, it's on hard metal bars. There's a single towel layered between me and the steel, but it don't give any real reflief. Sore all over, I am, and feel I've slept crooked. I was dumped in here, I realise, in an untidy heap, knees and elbows akimbo.

I groan low and ease my throbbing neck into a stretch. Gradually I sits upright, hazy on the size and shape of the cage I'm in. Only just enough room to sit up with my legs out – my boots press against the front bars. There's horrid bright light overhead, reflecting off every surface. It's all blurs, but I can hear breathin'.

'Ye damn . . . evil . . . cythreuliaid. Devils, all. I hopes ye . . . I hopes ye burn . . .'

Me voice is parched for water, lips feel puffy and cracked. But an equally hoarse voice answers, 'Hush, lass. Rest.'

I fix my eyes in its direction. The outline is next to me, separated by another wall of bars. 'Are ye coblyn?'

'Knocker,' it replies. 'But the Welsh ones are down there.'

My vision is strengthening, and I force my head to turn where his finger points. There be cages all around the room. Some of them are empty.

Near the floor, there are familiar faces.

I shoot forward, press my face into the bars. 'Adda! Lowri! Huw! Hark at me!'

Eyes turned upward, but with grief rather than hope. 'Angharad! Not you, too.'

'What vile purpose is this?' I says, drawing on the fires that still smoulder in me. I gather the embers and will them to burn. 'Where are the others?' I say louder.

A few more voices I recognise pipe up, but still there are some missing. Their explanation is the most wretched I've ever heard. 'It's terrible,' they says.

'Terrible.'

'Loathsome!'

'Unspeakable!'

'They wants us for our bluecaps,' continues the first coblyn.

'The bluecaps!' As one, all coblynau and knockers wail with shared grief.

'Some awful magic they wants to wrought wi' 'em.'

'Evil sorcery.'

'Black magicks.'

'Pharmaceuticals.'

'We hears them talk of chemical compounds, an' cures an' medicine. But it ain't, it ain't. It's death.'

'Death,' the rest echo hollowly.

The key speaker goes on. 'They took our bluecaps off us first. Felt their essences break apart, we did. Then when they ran out, they started to come fer us.'

'Then they came fer us.'

Soft keens rise around us as the collective grief rears again. I join the lament. So many souls lost, old and young.

'Why are ye here, Angharad?' said the first, sorrowfully. 'Have they captured more of us?'

'No,' I says. 'I came to rescue ye.'

The response is only sadness. They would rather not see another join their fate.

'We'll find a way out,' I says firmly. 'There'll be a way.'

'There is no way, Angharad.'

'Let me think on it. There's always a way.'

Pragmatist, I am. But, as I sits trying to work out a plan in this hopeless place, I realise I'm also more optimist than I ever used to be. That's what comes of spendin' too much time with a man who keeps his head in the clouds – oftentimes too high up to see the danger under his feet, yet somehow high enough to see a way forward. Or, at the very least, to imagine one, where none existed before.

They haven't gone through my pockets, I realise. They threw me in a cage like an animal, with no expectation o' my faculties.

I roll my fingers over the smooth surface of the phoenix egg in my waistcoat. There's also two safety pins, already bent for lockpicking, and the crust of yesterday's – or is it the day before's? – Cornish pasty. It ain't quite the tricks of Hansard's pockets, but it's more than nothing.

I stare at the locked cage. It looks like a simple little padlock.

I start chewin' on the pasty, and get to work with the pins.

Pales faces stare up at me forlornly. Why should a coblyn know how to pick a padlock? It ain't our kind of work. My coblynau kin forgot how to be creative when we locked ourselves inside our home.

Some o' the knockers start getting excited, though. They egg me on in whispers. One of them has a Ma who constructs magical locks, an' she tries offerin' advice.

Soon even my folks are jittering with energy. One of them stares at a thick iron nail he'd had about him. 'Hammer it!' someone calls. 'Wedge it on the lock and hammer it!'

'With what?' he says helpless.

'Your boots got steel in them, don't they?' I says.

He blinks. And takes off his boots. Carefully he places the nail, and hammers the toe against it like a chisel on the padlock.

'Harder!'

'Keep goin'!'

'Yes yes yes!'

My lock clicks just a little before his clatters to the floor. I urgently hush them all, for fret of them cheering – but they don't. They're just watchin' me expectantly.

I turns to the chap with the boot. 'You take that side. I'll take this'un.'

We work silently together. It takes a long time, but we aren't disturbed. I guess that it's the middle of the night. Knockers tell me the lights stay on in this room all the time, making them delirious for lack of sleep.

But the humans definitely sleep. Even security guards sleep.

I haven't missed the camera that's pointing down on this room. I haven't mentioned it to the others, for fear of alarming them. We may only have minutes more, if someone is watching.

I work faster, and pray tonight's watcher is too lazy to actually watch.

Clink. Another lock falls to the ground.

Soon we are many. Maybe two dozen knockers, and my handful of coblynau. The knockers is from different corners of the country – most know Goron and are his kin. A few say they'd left Cornwall many years ago and travelled around north, until recently when The Woman came, offerin' them work with Baines and Grayle.

'The Woman,' many hiss with venom.

We are at the last cage when we hear the alarms.

'Smash it!' I cry. Three of us raise our feet and stomp down together on lock and latch. The bars bend but don't break, and the padlock is still uselessly intact, wedged between them. The coblyn inside chitters in panic.

'You lot, get up high,' I tell the others. 'Be ready to jump on 'em!'

I kneel at the lock with my pins. Sweat beads on my forehead. Knockers and coblynau are silent, and we hears the low chatter behind the door. They ain't rushin' in this time. They're talking on their radios, askin' for our positions.

A knocker climbs on his friend and wallops the camera off the ceiling.

It goes dead quiet on the other side.

'Clever bastards,' is all I hears.

Then the door swings open a crack and a smoking canister is rolled inside.

'Quick quick!' knockers cry.

'Get out get out!' coblynau shriek.

'Go,' pleads the one in the cage.

The smoke stings awful in my eyes and lungs; others are spluttering. I tear away and bellow, 'Open the door!'

They fling it open, and I boot the canister out into the waiting crowd of guards. 'Shut it!'

We are red-eyed and still struggling to breathe, but they does me proud. Soon the sounds on the other side match our own.

I see weak smiles. 'They runs away!'

I round the healthiest up for another try at the cage. No coblyn left behind.

We smash and smash at it, until finally we break it off the hinges. The coblyn climbs out and picks up the broken cage door like a shield.

'Y'all ready to run?' I shout.

A chorus of 'Aye!'s meet me.

I'm wheezing, but I grin. 'Let's go.'

We cover our noses with our shirts – some have even taken off other bits of clothing to wrap round their face, so we look a motley gang of thieves in a mix of neon and brown tweed masks. The door opens and out we rush.

The rotten gas is nearly dispersed and we spy our enemy congregated at the end of the hall. Callin' for more back-up they are. They're a handful, at most.

'As one, lads!' I call.

We charge.

They shoots at us with hooks attached to wires, which drop my companions when they strike and cause them to spasm painfully on the ground. But they've only got one shooter per man and we are two dozen, and when we reach them we bite and kick and wrestle the horrid things out of their hands.

We pull the probes out of our prone friends, and use the long copper wires to tie the hands and feet of the men. I finger the trigger on one of the devices and their eyes widen in fear. 'Don't,' says one, in a strangled voice.

'I ain't like you,' I say, and pull the wires clean away from their housing. I disables the other devices the same, and we quickly scour their pockets. We finds some multi-tools, torches, and keys.

I clap each man round the head as we leave, 'Yer mam would be ashamed.'

It's a maze to find a way out. The main lights in the next corridors are off, leaving only green strips of emergency lighting to see by. Low light wouldn't normally be a problem for a coblyn, but right now I'd take total darkness over this disorienting electric glow.

The knockers we're carrying eventually come to, and we take a minute to let them test their knees, and the rest of us to catch our breath. We've passed many doors all labelled with codes. Sound erupts behind the nearest one we're restin' by. The noises are animal, though I can't figure which kind.

I grabs a knocker, whose name is Jago. 'D'ye know what else they keep in here? Have they more've our kin stowed elsewhere?'

He shakes his head to both questions. 'I don't rightly know. Seems they kept knockers and coblyns all together – didn't see a difference between us at all – and all the groups that arrived professed to be whole. If they have more of us, I wouldn't know how many or where.'

'Aye. Then we get these folks out first. Number one job; no others.'

As we move onward, I feel a familiar, tell-tale fizzing in my ears again. I excitedly nudge Jago and explain we're close to where I came in.

'Best hasten then,' he says, 'for they're on us.'

They were. Another group of men at the far end of the hall, and these look far more serious than the others. Two of them hold a net, which looks like a living thing – it reaches out as though grasping for us.

Between us and them is a junction in the corridor, the place where Biolabs and Containment divide.

'Lead 'em all that way!' I tell Jago. 'Don't stop runnin'!'

'They'll be on us from behind!'

'No, they won't.'

I plants meself in the middle of the crossroads as knockers and coblynau stream past me. The ugly net is creeping forward, looks like it's being held back by the men. One of them holds a gas canister and pulls back his arm . . .

I mirror the movement, with the phoenix egg clutched in my fist.

The motion gives him pause, and the egg hits the ground before he finishes the act.

It cracks.

Light blinds me, and an earthquake knocks me off my feet. I spits dust from my mouth and look up from the floor, and am struck by the sight of a god.

* * *

Author's Note

This is the end of Episode 8. I expect to add in just a little more detail to Ang's exploration of the facility and to extend her time in the cage, but otherwise I'm happy with how this one hangs together. Is there anything that doesn't sit right for you? Any holes that need filling or details that didn't work? Do you understand what's being done to the knockers?