Mara rose behind the panel and struck the nearest one across the wrist with the shock bar. Blue light snapped. The weapon clattered away. She kicked it deeper into the chamber, then fell back behind cover before the second shot hit.

"Go!" she shouted.

Elias climbed onto the carriage. The rail beneath his boots vibrated with sick, eager force. Through the machine frame and drifting smoke he could still see her in pieces: shoulder, jawline, one hand gripping the panel edge. She looked back once.

There was too much to say and no time built for any of it.

Elias reached for her as she turned. "Mara—"

"Bring it home," she said. Then, after the smallest break, rough and quiet and real: "And don't waste what she did to get you here."

Lina. Fire behind a fallen rack. A child who had followed him into the dark because being left alone had been worse.

The field ring hit viability. Green flashed across the rail.

Elias slammed the lever.

Light tore the room into strips. Sound folded in on itself. For a blink that lasted forever he saw Mara braced in white smoke while red relay indicators on the wall behind her began to burst alive one by one, carrying doctrine, names, orders, proof into the buried city like sparks under a door.

Then the chamber vanished, and he was hurled into the return window with the evidence, the weight of the living, and the hard fact that he had left behind someone who mattered.