Heat hit us like a wall when we crawled out of the crack in the rock. This was not the soft, filtered air of Skyterra. It was raw and heavy, full of rust, salt dust, and the sweet rot of something long dead under the sun. The sky was a torn bruise of copper and grey. High above, bright scars showed where pieces of the city were still falling. Some burned. Some dropped cold and hard. A few black, eight-legged things fell with them. They hit, twitched, spat green acid, and tried to stand on broken limbs.
My cuff buzzed against my wrist.
T-03:01:37
Orbital cleanse in a little over three hours. The strike zone would cover the whole belt where Skyterra was breaking apart. Survival now was depth, clay, and luck.
"We move," Danika said. Her tablet flickered, half-dead, but she still read the map. "Basalt ridge to the east. Joren?"
"Old geothermal intakes are cut into that wall," he answered. "Thirty meters in, a junction room. Then a narrow duct to Silt Basin Fourteen. Clay cap. It might hold."
Sister Mave wiped blood on her veil and raised her voice. "If you can walk, lift someone who cannot. Drop them and the stain stays with you. Argue later."
Ground people stepped out of broken shops, culverts, and the ribs of a fallen magway. Thin faces. Blistered lips. Eyes raw with dust. A boy with a cracked AC battery on his back stared at us like we were ghosts that bled.
"You are skyborn," he said, voice dry as chalk.
"Yes," I said.
"You broke our rain. Now the sky falls."
Naeva pulled a strip of cloth over her mouth. Her skirt was torn high on her thigh, pale skin streaked with ash. She still stood straight. "We did not choose this," she said. "We are trying to live too."
He looked at her, then at the burning sky. Bitterness flashed, then faded. "Everyone is trying," he said, and moved aside.
We made a sled from ore plates and chains. Tyven's exo-frame hissed as he pried couplers into shape. Lyss tied the lead rope like she had been born with it in her hands. Companions lifted burned children and hissed as hot clay scorched their own feet. A nobleman in a ruined emerald coat tried to keep his hands clean until a hybrid with a chrome jaw shoved a bleeding toddler into his arms. He carried the child without a word after that.
Temperature sat above forty degrees. Humidity around twelve percent. Wind drove grit into teeth and eyes. Sky-born slipped on rubble, lungs shocked by unfiltered air. Grounders kept a steady pace, measuring shade and distance without thinking.
Shards kept falling. A drone cluster hit a collapsed road and burst into white sparks. One spider crashed thirty meters away, legs shattered. It hissed and spat. Lyss fired her coil pulse. The beam burned a seam through its shell. Acid poured out and smoked in the dust.
We reached the ridge. Basalt pillars rose like black ribs. Shade cut the heat. Half the group sighed without meaning to. Joren found the intake grate half-buried under slag. Tyven locked his actuators and tore. Metal screamed, then gave. Naeva slipped inside first, braced her feet, and pulled while we shoved bodies through. Children first. The worst bleeding. Companions who would not let go. When the chamber filled at about fifty people, more than forty were still outside.
Lyss pointed higher. "Small vents up there. Kids and Companions can squeeze through. Big frames here. There is a slit farther east that links back. If it is not collapsed."
"We do not have time to debate," Sister Mave snapped. "Move."
Danika hooked a foot and dropped the pearl-dress noblewoman when she tried to cut the line. No one helped her up until the end.
Inside, the tunnel tasted of iron and old heat. The walls sweated. Drops tapped stone like a slow clock. Rell's lamp painted faces blue. We pressed in shoulder to shoulder. Overflow curled into side ducts, knees to chests.
Five minutes of calm. Not more.
Someone cracked a valve. A trickle of lukewarm metallic water bled out. People cupped hands, shared drops, licked their palms. Naeva let two ground kids drink from her fingers, then wiped her hands with a cloth already black with grime. She hated it, but she did it. "Well begun is half done," she had said. Maybe this counted.
T-02:43:09
Danika rewired a portable emitter to blur our heat. "If guidance drifts, any hot spike cooks."
"Everything drifts," Rell muttered.
"We cannot stay," Naeva whispered into my neck. "This chamber will crack if a slab hits."
"Ten minutes," I said. "Then we take the east duct, drop to Basin Fourteen. Clay. No towers. Reasonable."
She exhaled through her teeth. "Te Quiero Más."
"God helps those that help themselves," I answered. "What is done is done. There is no turning back now."
The ceiling rattled. Grit dusted our hair. Outside, the sky growled. The first missile wave cut the air.
"Time," Tyven said. "Move."
We slid into the narrow branch. Heat punched, cooled, then punched again as we crossed dead vents. Pipes hummed under our palms. Paint flaked from old hazard signs. The smell shifted from mold to steam to stale oil.
Daylight stabbed ahead. We spilled into a shallow valley. Cracked clay. Dead scrub. Ribs of fallen power lines. Beyond lay Silt Basin Fourteen: a flat sheet of grey-tan earth, no tall structures, no power trunks. Only dust and a dry river scar that could bleed off blast waves instead of throwing them back.
Wind hit full in the face. Sky-born gagged. Grounders tugged scarves tighter. A Companion gagged, swallowed it, and clung to her owner's wrist because that was how she was made.
"Three kilometers," Joren said. "Then culverts. Ten meters down. Clay roof twenty. It should hold."
"And if it is gone?" Danika asked.
"Then we dig," he said. "Or we stop worrying."
We trudged. A surveillance disc sliced a rusted pole in half. A block of Skyterra's market ring hit the horizon and became a dirty sun. The shock wave rolled over us and knocked half the group to their knees. The basalt ridge split and spat dust.
We reached the culvert mouths: concrete ovals half clogged with silt. Tyven and Rell tore at the crust until a gap opened. We shoved people inside. Children first. The worst hurt. When anyone froze, Sister Mave slapped sense into them. She had no time for fear.
We packed in tight. Breath loud. Hearts louder. The second wave hit while the last bodies still crawled. The ground thrummed. Clay rained from the ceiling. Someone shrieked as a lump struck their back. Sister Mave told them to count to four on each breath. They did.
Naeva found my hand. Her fingers were cold now, fear chilling the blood. She wiped my brow with her filthy cloth, grimaced, wiped again anyway.
"We will make it," she whispered. "I am not letting you die here."
"I am not letting you die anywhere."
The third wave rolled in like a god's hammer. Fire roared outside. Metal screamed. Somewhere above, Skyterra stopped being a city and became rain. The culvert flexed. Pipes howled. People pressed closer because there was nothing else to hold.
Silence did not come. It only changed shape. The roar moved farther off. The ground still shook in little jolts. Debris still hit somewhere outside with dull booms. The advisory pinged again.
T-00:38:12
Secondary strikes inbound. Smaller. Closer. The fall ellipse had shifted south-east. Our basin sat on the edge. Luck and clay would decide.
"We cannot stay," Danika said. "If the mouth collapses, we are sealed."
"Spillway two hundred meters east," Joren said. "Drops into an old aquifer trench. Cooler. Deeper. Clay all the way. We can hide there while the worst passes."
"Move," Sister Mave said. "Quiet. One line. No panic."
We crawled again. Knees slid in wet clay. Shoulders scraped concrete. Children whimpered. Naeva whispered to calm them, voice soft as water. A seam split above. Mud splashed our faces. We kept going.
We dropped into the spillway. The air was cooler. Damp. Heavy. People sagged with relief they could not afford. We had minutes, not hours.
Grounders and sky-born shared a ration bar, a strip of cloth, a name. A teenage boy asked Naeva why sky sweat smelled like copper. She smiled, gentle even under grime, and said, "Because we keep bleeding and the air remembers."
Tyven patched a crack in the sled plate with his bare hands. Danika tuned the emitter again, fingers shaking. Rell popped his shoulder back into place with a hiss. Lyss stared at the roof like she could see through clay to the fire.
Outside, the broken heaven kept falling. Inside, in the damp dark, we bought time with clay, sweat, and breath. The next crisis was already on its way. We would deal with it when it hit.
For now, we breathed. And lived. That was enough.