Forty enforcers pour through the gates and we are fifty feet from the east tunnel and closing.
Not close enough.
I pull the Grave-Rot Epinephrine from my coat.
"What is that," the woman says, not quite a question, more like a statement about things going wrong.
"Don't touch me for about thirty seconds." I jam the needle into my thigh and push the plunger all the way down.
The Hepatic Bypass grabs the toxin before my liver can touch it and feeds it straight to the brain.
My heart slams up to something that feels like two hundred beats a minute and the world goes very, very sharp.
Everything slows.
The enforcers are moving through water. I can see the individual swings before they arrive. I can read a man's intention in the way his shoulder drops.
I move.
I'm not elegant about it. I'm efficient. I hit the first man with the LeMat butt and take his shotgun. I put the shotgun into the second man before the first one's knees have fully buckled.
I weave left, step over a swinging chain, grab the arm holding it, and redirect it into the face of the man beside him.
It's not a fight. It's problem-solving at speed.
"Oh," the woman says from behind me, and she swings her rebar into someone's knee and keeps running.
We hit the tunnel with enforcers still screaming behind us.
The stairs are steep and the walls are close and I take them three at a time, riding the last of the epinephrine, and then we burst through the iron door at the top into the cold chemical rain of the Lower Dregs.
* * *
And then the crash comes and it doesn't ask permission.
My legs stop working. Just stop.
I hit the cobblestones on my hands and knees, coughing hard, tasting blood. My heart is fighting itself, slamming in arrhythmic panic.
Myocardial strain. The price for borrowing that much adrenaline all at once.
She crouches next to me. She's not out of breath. She's watching the alley entrance.
"You need a hospital," she says.
"Can't afford the time." My voice comes out as gravel. "I'll be fine in two minutes."
"You don't look fine. You look like someone who decided death was optional and is now reconsidering."
I actually almost laugh at that.
"Emma," she says, and I realize she's introducing herself. On purpose. After everything.
"Arthur," I say.
"Is it always like this with you, Arthur?"
I think about the Blackwater Saloon. The cellar. The vanguard on the horizon. The timer ticking in my arm.
"Yeah," I say. "Pretty much."
She stands up.
She looks at the alley behind us, then at me, then back at the alley. Something moves across her face that I can't read.
"There's a gunsmith in the Gear-Works," she says. "Locke's Ballistics. She's the best in the city and she doesn't ask questions. You're going to need better ammunition than whatever's in that thing."
She starts walking before I can ask how she knows that.
"Don't get yourself killed," she says without turning around. "It'd be a waste of a decent plan."
I watch her go.
Then I get up and check the Ledger.
LEDGER BALANCE: 96 Hours, 03 Minutes.
One ingredient down. Two to go.
I head for the Gear-Works.