Hattie tilted her head, listening to the silence below like it was having a whole conversation with her.
"Mm," she said. "This is the part where humans usually decide they don't want to know, stick their heads in the sand and pretend that the world is just fine and everything will be better in the morning."
Lachlan's lightning flickered once along his fingers, a small crackle of impatience.
"We're not human," he said.
Hattie beamed as if she'd been waiting for that line.
"Exactly," she replied. "So let's go."
They started down.
The stairs were slick.
Not from water. Not from some leaking pipe. From a thin film of bodily fluid that clung to the metal steps and made every footfall sound damp. The walls were marked with smears where people had slid down instead of walking.
