The emergency dropped upon the undercroft with the cold, choking weight of an iron drop-gate dropping shut.
In the kitchen hall, the rhythmic splashing of water that had sustained three hundred refugees for twelve years had vanished. The main iron delivery pipes running along the ceiling groaned with dry, hollow deep ring as the last leftover gallons drained into the wash vats. At the hearth, two women were desperately hauling buckets of wet ashes to bank the coal fires, scared that the dry copper boiler tubes would warp and burst if the heat continued without water breath flow.
“We have forty gallons left in the emergency pool,” Doma said, her chest heaving as she led Len and Ivara down the narrow spiral stairs cut into the foundation bedrock. “Thirty minutes of drinking water for the fever ward. After that, the taps suck air.”
Len followed her down the slick limestone steps. His right hand gripped his modified sounding pole, his boots finding secure purchase on the wet rock through his Surefoot baseline. With every step dropping into the earth, the heat plummeted, the comforting smell of chicory and pea soup replaced by the heavy, stale stench of trapped river water, sour machine animal fat, and decomposing shale.
