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★★The geas Billington’s running. It’s the occult equivalent of a stateful firewall. It keeps out intruders, unless they run through the approach states in a permitted sequence. The sequence is determined by the laws of similarity and contagion, drawing on a particularly powerful source archetype. When you run through them, that’s called ‘walking the eigenplot,’ and you’re doing it real well so far. Only a few people can do it at all—you can but I can’t, for example—and there’s an added catch: You can’t do it if you know what the requirements are beforehand, it doesn’t permit recursive attacks. That’s why you’re just going to have to be brave and ... ★★ she trails off ★★ ... shit. Forget I said that bit. I mean forget it. You’ll just have to see for yourself.★★ She centers herself under the pitch-black rectangle of the tunnel mouth. ★★C’mon.★★

★★But you said—★★

★★If we’re outside the tunnel we’re not shielded. You want to learn how to breathe with a harpoon through you?★★

★★No way.★★ I swim closer to her, until we’re both right under the mouth. ★★I nearly drowned last time we went through here.★★

★★The effect’s attenuated only a couple of meters in. Closer. Hug me. Not like that, like this.★★ She wraps her arms and legs around me. ★★Think you can swim? Straight up, until you don’t feel like you’re drowning?★★

★★Like I’m going to say no?★★ I look into her eyes from so close that we’re almost touching noses. ★★Okay. Just this once. For you.★★

Then I kick off straight up, into the black heart of the drowning zone.

BANDS OF STEEL AROUND MY CHEST. A POUNDING in my ears. Then the clean air of a spring meadow, Ramona’s arms cradling me, her legs entwined around me, her lips locked against mine like a lovesick mermaid trying to kiss the drowned sailor back to life—or infuse his blood with oxygen through force of proximity alone.

Oh. We’re in the tunnel. Totally black, walls either side of me, five meters of water between my head and the heavy iron grating, nothing but delirium’s arms holding my sanity together. Distracting me. I am distracted. It’s incongruous. There are divers out there hunting the waters for us, and here I’m getting an erection. Ramona’s tongue, tentacular, searches my lips. She’s aroused, I can feel it like an itch at the back of my mind.

★★This is a really bad idea,★★ I overhear her thinking. ★★We’re feeding off each other.★★ I’m drowning. I’m horny. I’m drowning. I’m—feedback. Too far apart and I start to choke, too close together and I start noticing her body, and whichever I’m paying attention to bleeds through into her head. ★★Got to stop.★★

★★Tell me about it.★★ An uneasy thought. ★★How much of this before the Other notices?★★

★★It’s not ready yet—I think.★★ She pulls back a few centimeters while I concentrate on not thinking about drowning. ★★How long do you think we’ve been down here?★★

★★I’ve lost track,★★ I admit. ★★Half an hour?★★ I lean back against the rough wall of the tunnel that shouldn’t exist. ★★Longer?★★

★★Damn.★★ I can feel the clockwork of her thoughts, tasting of rusty iron. It’s like there’s a weird tube of pressure squeezing us together down here; the tunnel is a flaw in the countermeasure wards, but outside it there’s an almost unimaginable amount of power chained down and directed towards the exclusion of occult manifestations—like our own entanglement. Threatening to crush us to a bloody paste between walls of concrete. ★★Can we leave yet?★★

★★Your breathlessness—have you ever been claustrophobic before?★★

Is that what it is? ★★Great time to find out.★★ I shudder and my heart tries to flutter away.

★★We’re in as much danger if we stay down here as if we surface,★★ she announces. ★★Come on. Slowly.★★

Still locked together, we finger-and-toe our way up the narrow chimney in the rock, feeling ahead for rough bumps and the joints between concrete castings. As we rise, the nightmare awareness of my own death begins to fade. All too soon we reach the grating at the top, a cold wall of rusty iron. I tense