The six-foot rupture blew open on the belly of the lead-copper cooling line. Then, Edda was standing on the lower overhead frame thirty paces from the intake basin, calibrating the tension on the mid-air ropes of the main glass hoist.
The noise of the burst was not a whistle or a hiss. It was an explosive slam, like an underground powder magazine exploding behind a false wall. A blast wave of cold air and crushed limestone powder water hit her chest. It knocked her back against the spruce handrail. The impact sent a sharp, sickening jolt through her braced left hand. There, her broken fingers were lashed between rigid ash laths. For a heartbeat her vision blurred with white pain. But the roar of rushing water dragged her back to reality with brutal immediacy.
Before she could catch her footing, a torrent of freezing mountain runoff smashed into the floor of Level Five.
The water struck the crushed quartzite floor with the weight of an avalanche. In less than forty seconds, the ankle-deep puddles of routine drainage surged into an eighteen-inch churning brown river. It carried gravel, wood chips, discarded nails, and grease-soaked rags toward the central sump. The air turned instantly into a freezing spray that blinded the oil lanterns. Their yellow flames flickered behind wet mica shades.
