The victory parades in the upper plazas of Aethelgard were still roaring with brass bands, fireworks, and celebratory bonfires when Arthur Vance and his squad slipped quietly through the private underground service tunnels back into the cool, damp embrace of Sub-Level 4.
They had deliberately avoided the banquet invitations, the noble receptions, and the swarming journalists. Arthur had no taste for champagne toasts or political flattery. The true work of a field medic was not celebrated under crystal chandeliers. It was lived in the quiet safe hall of the clinic where tired beasts could rest without fear of whips or needles.
They walked down the dimly lit drainage channels beneath the city. Then, the night-shift upkeep workers of the lower levels—pipe-fitters, boiler stokers, and soot-sweepers—stepped aside with respectful silence. Many of them tapped their heavy pipe wrenches against the iron channels in a rhythmic, metal underground salute: CLINK... CLINK... CLINK. Arthur acknowledged each of them with a nod. They handed out foil-wrapped ration bars from his pockets to an old, crippled trench veteran who sat warming his prosthetic knee beside a steam exhaust valve.
Workshop Bay 12 was fully unchanged.
The low-voltage buzzing white tubes hummed with their familiar sixty-cycle drone. The heavy-duty radiator pipes clanked with steady, comfortable warmth, and everyone could feel the honest scents of clean machine oil, motor grease, and dried alfalfa.
