They left the alleyway, sporting Montague and Lazar's high vis vests, and began threading their way along the streets towards the post office, attempting to take the most inconspicuous roads with the least chance of encountering more trouble. Dec was in too much pain to notice much more than the passing of brick beneath his feet, and when he tried to concentrate on the street signs, his mind kept travelling back to the alley and snagging on Mark's dead body. He turned to Teegan, seeking comfort. But Teegan refused to meet his gaze and her silence made their footsteps echo unbearably loud.

The streets changed in the space of a block. One minute everything was in its place – the palm pod repair shop to their left, the infamous SolStore light shop down Pickards Lane to his right where it had always been since Dec could remember. Next minute, complete and utter disarray so that he could hardly recognise the old town at all, let alone keep track of where they were going. Street signs lay in post mortem flatness, their names pointing skyward like white flags in surrender. Shop windows had been smashed to smithereens so that not one store name had managed to keep a coherent order of lettering. Tar graffiti tags covered the walls and paths. Parked cars, bins, stobey poles, bus stop benches, anything that could be upturned had been thrown onto its back. The city looked as though an earthquake had chewed a path through the streets at the same time a tornado had regurgitated the earthquake's leftovers.

Emptiness gave way to the presence of stern men in high vis vests, stationed on every street corner, the grim expression on their faces betraying unforgiving orders. Eerie industrial silence was broken by the sound of steel wrecking balls meeting the brick and sandstone bones of the buildings. And somewhere up ahead, screams – soft at first so that Dec thought he must've imagined them, then growing louder with the undeniable pitch of real human terror. The screams made him think of his sister and the panic in her voice as she'd begged the police officer to find him should their mum not survive the night. He thought of Adele's terror the last time he'd seen her under the bridge – the redness of her eyes and the distance in her gaze as she fell behind another desert-induced stupor.

He looked at the sky, which was still pitch, minus the mist-covered glow of the moon. A sardonic smile made a flat line of his lips, curling them under with the knowledge that his plight to save his people and make it back to his mum before sunrise was practically impossible. Even if he succeeded in destroying the packages, there was no saying Adele would survive until morning. The clock of fate was counting down the hours she had left.

At least it had stopped raining.

With his good arm, he swiped an oily clump of hair off his forehead. The wrecking balls, the crush of buildings, the screams were getting louder. When a particularly loud crash sounded, followed by a scream that ripped a gash through the slow-building noise, Dec stumbled to a halt and sensed Teegan do the same next to him. They didn't need to speak to know they were both thinking the same thing. The demolition mission was working its way outwards from the nucleus of the city. Soon, it would reach the post office. And if it reached the post office before they had a chance to get inside and destroy the desert dust, there would be only one place for the delicately packaged boxes of deadly spores to go should they be torn open and released into the atmosphere. And who knew what effect such a concentrated, unmonitored release of spores could have on the people if it took only a light peppering of the dust to raise welts on Rain's skin?

He forced himself to keep walking, even when the movement drew the attention of a uniformed rebel at the end of the street. He lowered his gaze, aware of their state of dishevelment – him with his makeshift sling and Teegan with the remnants of Mark's blood down her arms.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

The man's footsteps made there way down the street towards them. Dec forced himself to keep a constant pace so as not to appear like the guilty fugitive he was. Teegan shifted her duffel bag to her left shoulder, closest to the sandstone wall of the old town hall. But it did little to hide it from view. Should they be stopped and searched, well, it didn't take a genius to figure out the consequences.

The man's footsteps came to a halt within striking distance, then continued on their part, passing so close he practically shaved the tops off Dec and Teegan's elongated shadows.

Dec glanced at Teegan, whose face was contorted with relief. While he was used to being overlooked, he'd forgotten that Teegan was a Shadow walker too. Together, they may as well have been about as interesting as an overturned bus bench. He recalled her words – he's just like me... always underrated, always overlooked—and realised she was right. They were the same. Both of them were products of pasts lived in the shadows. Both of them were bound by uncertain futures and the consequences of their actions now. She was the only one who really understood what he was going through, and he was the only one who could get close to understanding her.

He experienced a sudden surge of warmth for the blonde-haired scientist and remembered the fondness he'd developed for her on bad journey back from Smackdown. It seemed like such a long time ago now. Teegan's voice had filled the awkward silences, and her wry sense of humour had taken his mind off his problems. He'd felt like a normal 20-year-old, whose lips had just come away from a kiss almost adolescently clumsy, so uninhibited by danger when everywhere else around seemed wrought with it. He wished he could go back to that moment.

But he couldn't. And now they were here. And the rebel was yelling, "You can't stop there! The demolition will be coming down this street!"

When he chanced a look to see who the man was talking to, there, stopped on the corner, was the convoy of Dune Bugs, their canopies making a formidable blockade. Dec remembered what Mark had said. That the Atundan army and military forces had divided loyalties. And since there was no telling which side this particular convoy was on, they needed to get out of there as quickly as possible before before they saw those loyalties drawn in blood.

Picking up their pace, they began a slow jog down a side street and onto an adjoining road, familiar beneath the sprawl of litter from an overturned industrial rubbish bin. If Dec looked West, he would've been able to see the red and yellow concentric circles of the Atundan flag above Parliament Square if it wasn't so inundated in fog. And up ahead, due East ...

There it was. The brickwork of the train station, and the perfect circular outline of the railway station clock. And just beyond it, the double blackwood doors of the post office. The last time he'd seen that clock was during the protest. The time displayed on the face had been the same then—with the minute hand shock upright and the stubby hour hand pointing directly to the right. 3 AM. An hour that was slowly becoming Dec's least favourite time of the day.

"Quick. Before someone sees us," Teegan said, leaving the safety of the wall and crossing the open street.

Dec followed, half expecting the press of a rifle against his back, or the voice of another rebel telling him to stop.

But nothing.

They passed under the clock, gleaming pearlescent white like a moon and through the centre brick archway of the plaza. The air turned frigid, cavern-clammy. In the distance, the crunch and crash of the demolition edged closer.

Teegan climbed the polished marble steps to the blackwood door of the post office and rested her hand on the chunky brass handle. She gave the handle a tug, following this up with a push, using all the weight of her body against the wood until she was shaking from the effort. The door gave nothing. Not a creak of encouragement, or even a complimentary splinter. She may as well have been pushing on a dead elephant's backside.

"This place is a forte," Dec said, surveying the building for another entrance, a glass window, a second story access platform that might offer alternative passage into the building. But all around there was nothing but solid stone arches, metal grated windows and precarious stone bossages, impossible to scale.

"Or a very large mouse trap," Teegan said.

Dec agreed. Once inside, there would be no easy way out. They would have to make sure to put a safe time buffer on the explosive. He hoped Teegan was thinking the same thing.

"So, what now?" Defeat slowed his words. Leaning against the door, feeling the sturdiness of the woodgrain, he closed his eyes, too tired to think.

Teegan, unperturbed, studied the door as though it was a complex puzzle, eyebrows bent so low, they looked like they would fall from her face. "Wait here," she said, dropping the duffel bag at his feet.

"What?" Dec said.

But Teegan was already gone, moving in the direction of the maintenance stairs on the opposite side of the plaza, where a whooshing noise sounded from a support scaffold behind a nib wall.

"Teegan?" Dec hissed into the darkness, reluctant to leave his place at the door. "What are you doing?"

No answer.

"Teegan!" Still no answer, only a sound like a rusty hinge screeching open, followed by a buzzing noise, and a very loud clunk. Just as he was about to push off the door to investigate, the wood shuddered and swung open, almost causing him to fall pancake-style into the dark room beyond. Somehow he managed to keep his feet while his hands groped in the darkness for something to hold.