The staff passage provided distance, though not necessarily safety
Running alongside the main corridors in a thin pale line of storage doors, narrow siderooms and old rank conduits which hummed faintly along the walls. The noise of the kill junction faded, replaced by the thinner sounds of lockdown still working out through the outer ring: distant horns, boots on upper levels, doors sequencing in turn. Rhel pushed them to keep going at a hard pace; slowing it in a straight passage was only another way of waiting to be found
Sera managed the first stretch better than Lucian expected. Standing, blade in hand, jaw locked against whatever the wound might yet be doing under the binding. Every few turns she pressed harder her palm to her side, and each time she drew it away there was more blood than the last.
Istra noted it first. "Your wrap is failing."
"I can feel it failing." Sera said. "Keep walking."
