“You’re going to feel me kicking your helmet,” she said to Thorne. “That’s not anger. That’s steering.”

Thorne was conscious. He looked up at the stars, then at Lena. His lips moved.

Manual 40, clause 9: No cage is universal. The rescuer becomes the hammer.

The rescue was over. Manual 40 had done its job. But Lena knew she’d be rewriting it tomorrow—because next time, the chimney would be deeper, the rock sharper, and the one-inch margin for error even smaller.

Thorne was fading. His legs had been crushed for nine hours. When Lena cut away his pants, she saw the problem: his femoral artery was partially severed but tamponaded by the rock itself. The moment they moved the slab, he would bleed out in twelve seconds.

Lena deployed Manual 40 immediately. Step one: Do not unweight the key block. The moment she lifted the slab off his hips, the entire chimney would telescope downward, burying them both under twenty tons of debris.

He was pinned at the waist. A ceiling plate the size of a car hood had slipped and wedged itself against the wall, trapping his lower body but leaving his torso free. Above him, a mosaic of cracked stone hung by nothing but friction and bad luck.