The breach in the collapsed wall of Barracks B exhaled a cold, stale draft that smelled of heavy-duty harsh cleaning acid, ozone, and the sour rot of underground standing water.
Arthur Vance knelt at the jagged threshold of the concrete channel, his flashlight beam cutting through the swirling rock dust that still hung thick in the air. Beside him, Grimm stood with his neck outstretched, his black nostrils flaring as he analyzed the chemical scents drifting from the darkness. On Arthur’s shoulder, Pip remained fully motionless, his golden eyes narrowed into sharp slits. His talons gripped the leather shoulder plate.
And at Arthur’s right knee, Titus sat like an unmoving anchor. The forty-five-two-pound melted rock waste-tortoise had just held up twenty tons of collapsing mountain for seven minutes. Yet, his breathing was slow, rhythmic, and perfectly calm.
“Concrete channel,” Arthur said, his gloved fingers tracing the smooth, machine-bored curve of the archway. “Heavy with cold-rolled steel iron rods and lined with waterproof asphalt. This wasn’t dug by commoner ditch-diggers with picks and shovels. This was built with heavy-duty boring machines brought in from the capital.”
Sergeant Corvo stepped up to the edge of the breach, with Instructor Valerie Koslov. The eighty commoner soldiers who had escaped the collapse had been evacuated to the upper stone retaining walls. There, Toby Mallow was already distributing hot chicory tea, boiled sulfur potatoes, and dry woolen blankets.
