Mielikki Neith feels her fatigue lift. In the sudden firing of a rage she barely knew existed within her, she finds her feet absurdly light, her muscles fluid and responsive. Physical laws no longer seem to matter. She knows this for what it is: the famished predator’s last gasp, the final effort gifted by hunter biology to stave off a death of depletion. She has very little time—but that does not matter. Nothing does, except that she is flying now, and laughing, as she steps after Lönnrot along the companionway, gaining ground, then on to the platform and through—"Stop incoming," she snaps to the machine, and trusts it is possible—and down into the track itself, from the heaving riverbank into the dry stream of high voltage and thundering mass. Lönnrot runs into the tunnel, into whatever train might be coming that cannot slow in time, and into the dark beyond. She follows, still light, but in her chest is a kind of acid ice she knows portends the end of her endurance: not the wall, but the thing that comes after it, the slow, cold halting that cannot be beaten.