They took the stairwell down in a single file, rope through harness points, gloves to the rail where the frost let them have it.
The air changed by the second landing down. Up in the penthouse the cold bit clean; here it lay on the tongue like a film. Wet carpet. Old coffee gone sour. Rust.
"Spacing," Zubair clipped out above her.
They widened to the length he wanted, a quiet fan in a narrow place: Zubair in front, palm to wall when the concrete changed note; Sera behind him; Alexei drifting right whenever the corridor allowed; Lachlan left; Elias rear guard, counting under his breath the way he did when he didn't trust his heart to keep its own cadence.
The emergency lights were long dead.
The stairwell's glow came from the smear of day through a wire-reinforced pane. Frost cobwebbed the glass. On the landing door someone had once taped plastic. It hung in a torn skirt now, rimed to uselessness.
