The inside of Foundry 4 was a huge, cavernous vault of rusted iron, crumbling brickwork, and choking gloom. Decades of dead-letter had turned the former heavy-duty titan into a cathedral of decay. But the silence inside was not the peaceful stillness of an empty tomb. It was the tense, shaking silence of a hungry lair.
A dense, pale green mist clung to the lower tier of the casting floor. It rose in waving waves from the melted rock waste pits. High above, through gaps in the corrugated roof where glass skylights had long since shattered, narrow shafts of cold gray morning light cut through the haze like pale spears. Lit up in those dusty beams hung hundreds of gray, stringy pupae, suspended from overhead crane rails and rusted narrow high walkways by thick, hardened silk cables.
“Calder, mist the outer edge,” Arthur commanded in a low, gravelly whisper as the squad crossed the threshold of the shattered loading bay.
Dr. Morrigan Calder right away squeezed the brass grip of her high-pressure atomizer. A fine, shimmering cloud of Marrow-Chelate Buffer hissed into the stale air around them. The aerosolized solution reacted instantly with the airborne petro-spores, producing tiny, crackling snaps as the chemical chelates stopped the hardening micro-crystals before they could reach human breathing tracts. Toby coughed once into his sleeve, blinking away the stinging chemical vapor. Meanwhile, Valerie raised her air-powered shock-lance, sweeping the dark overhead frame above with hungry focus.
