From his stretcher in the backup service station, propped against the rolled canvas pack and horse blankets, Len Vey watched the amber glow pulsing through the floor grating.
His chest was held rigid in Edda’s tight linen webbing, the four turns of raw, unwhitened tape restricting his breathing to shallow, measured sips that kept his broken sixth and seventh ribs from grinding against the lung lining. His left arm lay immobile in its ash-wood splints, resting across his stomach. His ruined right wrist lay cold upon the rough wool blanket, its flesh discolored to an ugly, mottled plum-black, its wrist bones out-of-joint and silent. The pain was no longer an acute shock. It had settled into a steady, crushing weight that anchored him to the granite flags, stripping away every extra thought until only the clockwork reality of the mountain remained.
Beside him, the room was thick with the harsh heavy-duty smells of their struggle. The greasy steam rising from the cooling lines, the acrid bite of scorched liniment on his bandages, and the sharp, metal tang of ozone leaking from the high-voltage collector bus above. Across the chamber, Edda leaned against the dark rock doorpost, her lead rigger’s mallet resting against her thigh, her soot-stained knuckles white with tension. She kept one eye on Len and the other on the north hall where the paired seals cabinet stood under the amber glow of two hooded lanterns.
