"We should complain to management," Ness agrees from the floor, winded. Before she takes Stephen's hand she takes stock of all her limbs, makes sure everything's where it's supposed to be and she's not feeling any worse pain than she expects—the easiest way to take an injury from "bad but treatable" to "oh fuck you're doomed" is to move before your doctor says you're allowed to; she learned that from Stephen's tract in the infirmary.

Satisfied that she's not any worse off than winded and bruised, she takes Stephen's hand and lets him pull her up. The light he provides would have been more than enough for her to see by once, and for a moment Ness squints into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. After a moment, she huffs a humorless, self-deprecating laugh, and flicks her wrist to call up four small violet orbs of light, which coalesce into one orb floating above her head. The sound of the battle still rages above them, but it seems that, against all odds, nothing fell through the floor with them when it collapsed.

"Well," she says, looking to Stephen with a barely contained smile. "We didn't get separated from them on purpose. No one can get mad at us."