Down in the black water of the lower sump, Len heard the latch fire sixty feet above him. A high-pitched metal snap that cut through the roar of the water chute half a second before the cables shrieked.
He didn’t wait to see the shadow go down.
With every ounce of explosive power left in his legs, his Level 5 Surefoot digging into the slick limestone pebbles of the sump floor, Len threw himself sideways into a two-foot-wide drainage check nook carved into the western bedrock. He hit the rough stone face shoulder-first. He tucked his braced left arm tight against his belly. His right cheek was pressed flat against the weeping rock. Water splashed across his back as his boots cleared the channel by less than twelve inches. The stone of the nook was wet, coated in a fine skin of gray clay that smelled of iron oxide and hundreds of years of mountain slow leak. He wedged his good shoulder into the crevice. He felt the rough chisel marks left by long-dead quarrymen, his right hand shielding the crown of his skull as he prepared for the dynamic blast.
The cold limestone bit through the canvas of his trousers, freezing his shins. His chest heaved with shallow, burning breaths as he wedged himself deeper into the fissure. He could feel the cedar splints groaning under the pressure of his ribs, the linen straps tightening across his fractured radius. The throb in his forearm was a hot, rhythmic pulse…
