Ten seconds sounded generous until somebody was firing through them.
The mechanic locked the workshop door behind us. Rifle rounds struck its outer shutters before the final bolt entered place.
"Keep moving," he said.
"What about you?" Kitty asked.
He pointed toward a ladder leading to the apartments above.
"I have lived here for thirty-one years. I know more than one way out of my own building."
Another burst struck the wall.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
"Seven seconds," he said. "You are wasting my excellent gift."
We ran through the rear door.
The rail district had been built without expecting people to flee through it.
Alleys ended at locked service yards. Drainage channels cut across footpaths. Electrical cables sagged between apartment roofs low enough to catch umbrellas and laundry lines.
The acid mist made every surface shine.
We turned twice without knowing whether either turn brought us closer to safety. Utopia's northern tower remained visible beyond the roofs, but every direct road toward it carried the sound of rifles.
Our borrowed radio produced only static.
"KM got them through," I said.
"You saw the second truck enter?" June asked.
"I saw it pass the gate."
"That isn't the same thing."
"It is what we have."
Kitty looked over her shoulder.
"They opened the workshop."
Men entered the alley behind us.
The first group still wore civilian clothes. Their national flags had disappeared. Short wooden poles and knives remained in their hands.
The red-band riflemen stayed farther back where they could shoot without appearing in the close camera footage.
"Left!" NS shouted.
We entered a laundry yard and found the opposite gate chained shut.
The first attacker reached us before we could turn around.
He swung a pole toward June's head.
NS raised his injured arm by instinct.
The pole struck directly across his sutures.
Blood spread through the dressing.
His face went white, but he remained standing long enough for me to push the attacker into a row of hanging sheets.
Two more came through the gate.
One carried a knife with no attempt to hide it now.
"Give us the girls," he said. "VT only asked for them."
Kitty backed against June.
"That is supposed to make us trust you?"
"It makes this easy."
He stepped forward.
I took the metal laundry rack between us and shoved it sideways. The wheels caught in a crack, but the frame blocked his first lunge. He stabbed through a hanging shirt and missed my side by less than a hand.
NS kicked the chained gate until the lower hinge pulled away from rotten wood.
"Small opening," he said.
"You first," I told Kitty.
"No."
"This is not a relationship debate."
"Good, because you would lose. June goes first."
June dropped to one knee and pushed through the broken section. Her bruised wrist folded beneath her when she landed outside.
She cried out and rolled onto her shoulder.
Kitty followed before the attackers could reach the gap. NS went next, dragging his injured arm behind him.
The knife struck the wooden frame beside my neck as I crawled through last.
I kicked the loose gate backward.
It gave us six meters.
Not victory.
Only distance.
We reached the railway at 7:03.
The crossing alarm was already ringing.
Red lights flashed above a road filled with abandoned motorbikes. The barrier had lowered across both lanes. Beyond it, a freight train approached through the rain, its horn swallowing every other sound.
A railway worker stood beside the signal box waving people away from the tracks.
Then he saw the men running behind us.
He saw the knives.
Farther back, gray-green uniforms and red arm bands entered the street.
The worker lifted the pedestrian chain.
"If you cross, you do it now!"
The train was still down the line, but it was moving faster than distance made it appear.
June held her wrist against her chest.
NS could not use his left arm.
Kitty looked at me.
None of us wanted to make the decision for the others.
A rifle round struck the crossing sign above us.
The decision was made.
We climbed over the lowered barrier.
The wet gravel shifted beneath our shoes. June crossed the first rail, slipped, and caught herself against NS's shoulder without using her damaged hand. I pulled Kitty over the second rail as the horn became a physical pressure inside my chest.
The railway worker screamed at us to move.
We reached the final track.
Kitty jumped from the raised rail bed toward the drainage edge.
Her right foot landed between two pieces of broken ballast.
Her ankle turned beneath her.
She fell forward and pulled me down with her.
Pain struck my ribs. For an instant, I could not breathe.
NS came back across the final rail.
"Get up!"
"Her ankle," I said.
The light at the front of the train filled the crossing.
June hooked her good arm beneath Kitty's shoulder. NS grabbed the back of my jacket. Together, we dragged ourselves off the rail bed and rolled behind the concrete signal base.
The train passed.
Wind and rain exploded around us.
Metal wheels struck the rail with a rhythm too fast to separate. Freight cars became one continuous wall between us and the plainclothes soldiers.
Through the gaps between cars, I saw them stop on the opposite side.
One pointed toward the road underpass three blocks north.
The train had not saved us.
It had changed which clock we were running against.
Kitty tried to stand.
Her injured foot touched the ground and immediately left it again.
"I can walk," she said.
"That was a very short demonstration," NS replied.
"Your arm is bleeding through two shirts."
"My demonstration is longer."
June leaned against the signal base. Her wrist had swollen above the old wrapping. The fingers still moved, but even that made her jaw tighten.
"We need somewhere out of sight," she said.
The railway worker climbed down from his signal box carrying a yellow raincoat.
"Red bands use the underpass," he told us. "The civilian units will circle through the platform. You have five minutes if the train is long. Less if they radio ahead."
He gave Kitty the raincoat to hide her Utopia sweatshirt.
"There is a salon beside the old ticket street. Blue sign. The owner opens early for factory workers. Tell her Ko Lin sent you."
"Why are you helping us?" Kitty asked.
The worker looked across the moving freight cars at the soldiers waiting to kill four unarmed students.
"Because that question should embarrass all of us."
He returned to the signal box before the train ended.
I put Kitty's arm over my shoulder.
The pressure against my ribs made black spots move across my vision.
She felt me stumble.
"Put me down."
"Then stop stepping on the wrong rocks."
"Excellent medical advice."
"I may still be expelled. It limits liability."
For one breath, she almost laughed.
NS supported June with his good arm. She protested once, then stopped when the first gap appeared between the final freight cars.
The four of us entered ticket street together.
Behind us, the crossing opened.
A public information screen above a closed pharmacy flickered to life as we reached the first intersection.
MALT's emergency seal filled it.
Then our university photographs appeared beneath the words PERSONS OF SECURITY INTEREST.
My picture came from an old student identification card. NS's had been taken outside his mansion. Kitty's showed her leaving the hospital. June's was a still frame from the northern gate less than an hour earlier.
They had assembled four separate lives into one wanted notice before we had crossed a single street.
"They're asking citizens to report us," June said.
An old man standing beneath the screen looked from the photographs to our faces.
He reached for the public emergency telephone fixed to the wall.
Kitty tightened against my shoulder.
The old man lifted the receiver, struck the screen with it twice, and broke the display into darkness.
"Blue sign," he said without looking at us. "Second block. Do not take the open sidewalk."
We moved through the covered market instead.
Shop shutters stayed down, but people watched through narrow gaps. A hand pointed left. Another opened a rear storeroom and let us pass between sacks of flour. A teenage delivery rider rolled his bicycle behind us to hide Kitty's limp from the end of the lane.
Nobody asked for our names.
The wanted notice had already supplied them.
Some residents crossed their arms and stepped away. Fear had its own honesty. Others gave us ten seconds, one doorway, or a direction whispered through metal.
The city did not become brave all at once.
It became useful in small pieces.
The Blue Orchid Salon had one cracked mirror in its front window and a faded photograph of a hairstyle nobody had requested in twenty years.
Its owner was lifting the shutter when she saw us.
She looked at Kitty's ankle, June's wrist, NS's bloody sleeve, and the knife cut across my shirt.
"Ko Lin sent us," I said.
She raised the shutter higher.
"Then Ko Lin has become too generous with my floor space. Get inside."
The salon smelled of shampoo, old towels, and hair dye. Four chairs faced mirrors beneath lights that flickered whenever thunder crossed the district.
The owner locked the front entrance.
"Phones?"
"None connected," NS said.
"Shoes off. Wet footprints confess faster than people."
We removed them. She pushed the shoes beneath a wash basin and wiped the floor with a towel already stained from hair color.
She looked at NS's soaked bandage.
"Hold your arm above your heart."
"A little difficult while hiding," he said.
"Then discover flexibility."
She wrapped a black salon cape around his sleeve to catch the blood. Another went over Kitty's shoulders, covering the university crest on her sweatshirt. She placed our wet outer clothing inside a laundry bag and sprayed the doorway with enough citrus cleaner to replace the smell of rain and sweat.
Her hands never stopped moving.
They were not calm.
They were practiced.
"Back room," she said.
Kitty could no longer hide her limp. I supported her through a narrow doorway while June followed with NS.
The storage room was barely wide enough for shelves of shampoo boxes, folded capes, and cleaning supplies. There was no window. A sliding towel cabinet covered most of its entrance when the owner pulled it across.
"Do not cough," she said. "Do not whisper. Do not try to be brave if they find you. They have rifles. You have student identification. Only one of those things matters to them."
"They may hurt you," June said.
The owner looked at her swollen wrist.
"They searched my father's print shop when I was nine. They made my mother kneel while they asked where he hid newspapers. I learned something useful that day."
"What?"
"Men with guns believe women like me are too frightened to lie."
She closed the cabinet.
Darkness pressed the four of us together.
The first red-band vehicle stopped outside less than a minute later.
Doors opened.
Boots entered the salon.
"Four students came through this street," a man said.
"Students come through every morning," the owner answered.
"Not this morning."
Something struck the front counter.
Kitty flinched beside me.
Her whole body had begun trembling, not only from the pain in her ankle. June's breathing shortened each time a rifle sling scraped against a shelf outside.
NS shifted his good hand through the darkness until his fingers found mine.
For a second, I thought he had mistaken me for June.
Then June took his other hand.
Kitty's fingers closed around my wrist.
The four of us formed a broken chain on the stockroom floor.
Nobody called it forgiveness.
We only refused to let fear separate us again.
A pair of scissors lay on the bottom shelf beside NS's knee.
His fingers moved toward them when the first soldier entered the rear room.
June held his hand tighter.
He stopped.
I imagined pushing the cabinet outward, taking the rifle before the soldier could raise it, and giving Kitty and June time to reach the door.
The fantasy lasted until I counted the footsteps.
At least five inside.
More on the pavement.
One burst through the cabinet would pass through all four of us before anybody reached the front chair.
For most of my life, courage had meant standing up before fear could make the decision for me. In that storage room, courage meant remaining on the floor while an armed man threatened the woman hiding us.
It felt too much like cowardice to be comfortable.
Kitty's thumb pressed once against my wrist.
Stay.
I stayed.
Outside, a soldier read from a device.
"XH. NS. Kitty. June. Utopia University. All four were seen crossing the southern railway."
The screen had given them our names before they entered.
"I saw four people cross," the owner said. "They ran toward the market."
"You expect us to believe you?"
"No. Men carrying rifles into a hair salon rarely arrive prepared to believe anyone."
A mirror shattered.
The girls' hands tightened.
Heavy steps moved toward the back room.
NS's blood had soaked through his sleeve. One drop fell between us and struck the tile.
The footsteps stopped.
The towel cabinet moved several millimeters.
A rifle barrel pushed through the folded white cloth.