The drainage network beneath Sector 3 was an endless maze of suspended iron narrow high walkways, massive cast-iron sewer channels, and flooded drain pits carved directly into the dark rock floor of the atoll. The water below the grated walkways was sluggish and thick. It glowed with the foul, oily iridescence of heavy-duty waste and leaked mutagenic growth broth. Heavy drops of water drops fell from the vaulted ceiling forty feet above. It splashed into the stale sludge with hollow, rhythmic plinks.
Arthur Vance walked at the head of the column, his boots making no sound upon the punched holes in steel. Behind him, Grimm walked with slow, deliberate steps. His broad chest was held low in a hunting prowl. Every few paces, the hound’s black nose would lift to sample the humid air, sorting through the cocktail of sulfur, machine grease, and decaying flesh that hung in the underground vaults.
“We’re directly beneath Sector 3,” Arthur said quietly, consulting the light-projected floor plan projected from his wrist end-post. “The main cloning vats are three levels above us. The waste lines from those vats empty into these drain pits. Thousands of failed genetic iterations have been flushed through these pipes over the last forty years.”
