When the blue light faded, Pella didn’t sit down. She paced the length of the washroom, her boots tracking red clay across the floorboards. On the master slate, Korr Var had drawn a timeline of the proposed vault check. The numbers were stark, unbending, and impossible.
‘It takes fourteen minutes just to go down the fifty spiral steps and cross the narrow high walkway above the boiling water chute,’ Korr Var explained. He pointed with his wooden rule. ‘That leaves ten minutes of working time in the central chamber before Ada or Jo would be forced to pull their red tabs and vanish back to Harrowby.’
‘Ten minutes is useless,’ Eren Tal said bluntly from the doorway, cleaning the muck from his pinch bar with a greasy rag. ‘You can’t drive two forged iron wedges out of a bronze rack in ten minutes. If the return timer hits thirty seconds. Meanwhile, Jo is halfway through a high-pressure lift, the load drops, the rack shatters. She is pulled across the threshold leaving the gate to smash down on whoever is standing underneath.’
‘Eren is right,’ Pella agreed, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the washroom table. ‘The Courtesy Bridge was designed for ordinary upkeep. Clearing a clogged drain, inspecting a cracked valve, checking a dial gauge during lunch. It was never intended for an emergency salvage operation on an eight-ton water gate during a three-river flood.’
