Ahead, through waves of smoke, Elias saw a heavier wall and the half-buried curve of an archive perimeter bulkhead. Mara veered toward a maintenance breach beside it where metal mesh hung loose.

“Through there!” she yelled.

Emergency shutters had started to descend over the main archive door, but one had jammed halfway, shrieking against debris. Firelight strobed over old warning paint. Elias clutched the satchel to his chest and reached back blindly until his hand found Lina’s wrist.

For a few strides they stayed linked. Small hand, hot with fear, stubbornly real.

Then the conduit breathed again.

A blast of superheated air rushed down from the burning canopy and hit them sideways. Elias lost his footing on wet grating. Lina’s hand tore from his. A burning limb or support arm—he could not tell which—came crashing down between them in a storm of sparks. Mara seized his jacket collar and hauled with brutal force.

Mara yanked hard on Elias’s collar. “Move!”

Elias lunged toward the fallen rack and shouted, “Lina!”

Smoke hit low and thick, turning the world into orange strips and black gaps. He saw her for one instant on the far side of the fallen rack, her face ghost-pale behind drifting sparks, one arm raised against the heat. Alive. Looking at him.

He lunged back. Pain ripped through his ribs so hard his legs folded. Mara wrapped both arms around him from behind and dragged him toward the maintenance breach as the half-dropped shutter slammed lower with a metal boom.

“She’s there,” he choked. “Mara—”

“I see her.” Mara’s voice broke rough with effort. “If you go now, you die here and help no one.”