They stumbled into Rapid's safe house tired, bloodied, and bruised but in one piece.

The journey through the catacombs was still a blur in Jett's mind as she slumped into a sitting position against the wall, panting for breath and looking over the various scrapes and bruises she'd earned in the scuffle with the enforcers. Descending into the darkness, they'd been totally at the mercy of Rapid's sense of direction, but the sharp-minded foxkin steered them with ruthless ease through the network of subterranean tunnels sunk beneath the Gjornharr District. She had no idea where they'd ended up, and the odds of the wolfkin being able to trace them through the labyrinth seemed slim.

Her mind boiled with questions as to who'd built the passages, what for, and how Rapid had stumbled across them in the first place, but they would need to wait. Right now, she was just happy he knew about them. The knowledge had saved all their lives.

The entrance of the safehouse was barely wide enough to fit one body at a time, but once inside, it opened to a broad rectangle of a room with a low arched ceiling. The place smelled of damp stone, mud, and metal.

When the lights sprang on, Jett grimaced, turning her head away and shielding her eyes with one paw. Around her, the others reacted similarly, save for Rapid, who stalked out into the middle of the room, his face twisted with a malignant rage she'd never seen in him before. The blood from the fight had now dried into his fur, streaking him with gory smears of red-like barbaric tattoos.

The room itself resembled a kind of barracks, with a dozen racks of weapons bolted to the walls alongside equipment lockers. Thin, hard-surfaced bunks folded out from the walls, enough for twenty people to sleep in complete discomfort; wires hung from the ceiling, suspending dusty light bulbs to fill the room with a mucky glare.

Getting her breath back, Jett pushed herself upright again with a groan. "Is everybody okay?"

"I'm not sure 'okay' is the word I'd use," Gallant replied tartly. "But I'm alive."

"Nothing that can't be fixed." Karno eased himself into a sitting position on one of the bunks, wincing. Sucking a breath through his teeth, he examined the array of bloody scratches and bite marks that his brawl with the enforcer had left behind.

"Is there a medikit around here?" Jett asked.

Rapid didn't respond but stomped over to one of the lockers and twisted an access code into the old-style combination lock. From within, he pulled free a red satchel and tossed it to Gallant.

"Check everybody over," he grated.

Seeing the look on his face, the deerkin didn't argue, wordlessly taking the kit and moving to examine the members of their little band one by one. Jett looked around and felt a hollowness in her stomach at the pitiful display. Five of them—five ragtag, barely connected individuals—were all that now stood between the wolfkin and the completion of their plan. She sighed, gingerly touching the gashes left in her flank by the enforcer.

After checking Bronco over, Gallant approached her, bandages in hand, and her eyes quickly flickered down to the injury.

"I need to clean that," she said, her voice subdued, a faintly shell-shocked expression glazing over her features. Jett just nodded, her brain occupied elsewhere. She gritted her teeth at the sharp twist of pain that jolted up her side as Gallant daubed the gashes with antiseptic, but even that couldn't pull her away from the single, frightening thought: what now?

The deerkin worked quickly, and soon Jett had a string of fresh, crisp bandages holding her side together, leaving Gallant to look over Karno's crisscrossing patchwork of wounds. Part of her wanted to help, to ask him if he was alright, to hug him tightly in relief that he'd survived his brush with death.

But she wasn't a doctor. As Gallant worked, she looked to the others.

"Well, we're alive, and that's something," she said matter-of-factly.

Bronco snorted. "It's not much. We're fugitives now, all of us." His snout crunched into a frustrated snarl. "What are we supposed to do now? The five of us and this little collection against all the enforcers?"

"We've managed so far," Karno grunted between sharp gasps of pain.

Gallant looked up from her work and nodded. "I'm in. Whatever we're going to do, this is personal—I need to find my family."

"Oh, by Peace and bloody Fire, it's personal," Rapid growled with a coldness that sent a shiver up Jett's spine. When he continued, his voice was thick with venom. "Fifteen years, I've carved out my own little piece of this city, and those mongrel scum think they can rip out from under me in a night?" He shook his head, pacing back and forth with his teeth bared. "There's gonna be blood for this."

"This is about more than revenge," Bronco rumbled. "You all need to get a hold of yourselves."

The foxkin rounded on him with a wordless growl, crimson axe head flashing in the light. Bronco held his gaze unflinchingly, drawing himself up to his full height, looming over Rapid.

"Stop!" Jett shouted, stepping between them and glancing angrily back and forth. She raised a paw at Rapid, willing him to stay in place, and turned to look at the vulkin. "Bronco, he's right. This might not be personal for you, but it is for the rest of us." Then she looked back to Rapid. "But personal or not, we need to keep our heads. You want payback? Well, the only way we're going to get it is if we keep our eyes on the big picture."

The albino foxkin glowered at her for a moment, his body still tense and ready to spring, but after a moment, his shoulders relaxed. He let the axe drop back to his side and exhaled a long breath through his nose. Letting out a huff of breath, he crossed the room and laid his axe down on one of the worktops. Then he opened up another locker.

From inside it, he withdrew a thick glass bottle filled with a gleaming mercurial liquid and held it up to the light. Then he ripped the cork out with his teeth, spat it onto the floor and took a massive slug of the drink. His whole body shivered, and he let out a gasp, rocking his head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. When his face dropped again, he blinked several times, then crossed the room, stuffing the bottle into Bronco's paws.

"Reckon we could all use a drink before we do anything else," he grated.

No one argued with that. Wordlessly they passed the liquor around the room, and Jett didn't bother asking what it was made from. She didn't really want to know. Instead, she swallowed her misgivings along with a big gulp of the silver alcohol.

It hit the back of her throat like jet fuel, a burning sensation making her cough. She blinked furiously as the fearsome concoction plunged down her throat and into her stomach, the sensation making the fur on the back of her neck stand up. Shaking her head sharply from side to side, she whistled appreciatively.

"That'll put a shine in your coat," she coughed as she passed the bottle back to Rapid.

"My own blend," he said, a hint of pride in his voice as he took another smaller sip. He looked around. "Right then, now that we've all got a bit of fire burnin', let's see where we're at."

"We know what we've got to do," Jett told them flatly. "Belforra—we have to go there. We all agreed to it. This changes nothing."

"Steady, girl."

"We don't have a choice." She gestured to the room with a sweep of one arm. "This is all we've got, this little safe house, and how long do you really think it's going to take for the wolfkin to sniff this place out? The sooner we go, the better."

"She's right," Karno agreed, standing up with his body now sporting a series of crisp white bandages. "If we go now, we'll have the element of surprise while they're still hunting the catacombs for us."

"That's all well'n'good," Rapid said, his eyes flicking to Bronco. "But this all hinges on findin' your little turncoat traitor, pal."

Jett looked at him, willing the answers to come tumbling from Bronco's mouth. He straightened up, folding his brawny arms and nodding to himself as though ordering his thoughts.

"The tram carrier leaves from a station in the northern quarter of the Silk," Bronco began. "It's not linked to the rest of the network—it cuts right across the civilian tracks."

Rapid's expression darkened. "You got an actual address for this place? The Silk's a big place."

"As a matter of fact, I do," he retorted smoothly. "But that's not where we're going."

"Why the hell not?"

"Will you shut up and let him talk!" Karno snarled suddenly. "I know you're itching to swing that damned axe again, but if you don't muzzle yourself, we're never going to go anywhere!"

Rapid's jaw twitched as he glared at the wolfkin, but eventually, he looked back to Bronco and spread his arms wide.

Bronco nodded stiffly. "The station's too heavily guarded for us to just sneak onto the tram carrier in the way you might be thinking. We need to get in a step behind. The tram takes all kinds of supplies out to the facility in Belforra—food, drink, equipment, medicine, and anything they might need out there. That equipment has to be shipped to the tram from another location in a lot of good-sized crates."

"I see where this is going," Jett murmured.

He gave a knowing smile. "Yep. We don't sneak onto the tram. We sneak into the crates."

"Well now," Rapid chuckled. "This is startin' to sound like the makings of a plan."

"So glad you're on board."

"So, your contact," Gallant piped up. "They can get us into the cargo to get smuggled onto the tram carrier? Then what?"

"Then it's up to us. Getting onto that tram will get us to Belforra. Once we get there..." He shrugged fatalistically. "We'll just have to deal with what we find. We'll improvise."

"It's kept me alive this long," Jett said, shaking her head with a smirk. "So where does the cargo load up?"

"The supplies route through a canal-bank warehouse in the Thacktail District. Once they're loaded up, they're transferred to barges that run the canals through to the Silk. Once they arrive, there are cranes waiting to fish them up and load them onto freight haulers. Then they're taken to the station and loaded onto the tram carrier."

"Quite a rigmarole, eh?"

"They're very thorough."

"So, who is this...contact of yours anyway?" Karno asked.

Bronco shook his head. "The fewer of us that know names, the better. If this all goes to hell and the enforcers catch us, at least there'll be one person left on the outside who's trying to do something about this."

Gallant grimaced. "Isn't that comforting?"

"I'll take a little of this on faith," Jett told her. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the centre of the room, somehow feeling a responsibility to take control of the situation. After all, this whole mess had come whirling into their lives because of her.

"We know this train runs nightly, so we're going tonight. We all need to get some rest, and then we load up. I'm sure Rapid won't mind if we clear out some of this gear."

"Help yourselves, pups," he laughed.

"I know that one way or another, I've roped you all into this, but you know what's at stake now. They came after me, but they're coming after everyone, one way or another." Jett's paws clenched tight by her sides as she spoke.

"Time to show Hera what happens when you screw with the natural order of things."