Location:Below the keystone layer; Seven Peaks — Deep Chamber
Date/Time:TC1856.12.11
Going through was easier than it had any right to be, and that frightened her first of all.
They went east along the flank of the second rank at a jog she could not have held for long, and the sweepers did not intercept. They turned toward her — all of them, together, the way a field of grain turns — and they came, and they came at the pace they always came at, which was the pace of a thing pushing a broom.
Nothing in that place hurried. She got past the second rank with four dead behind her and none of them hard, and looked back once, and the survivors had already put their forelimbs down and were dealing with the black.
"They're cleaning up after me," she said.
"Yes."
"I killed four of them thirty seconds ago, and they're cleaning up after me."
