In Sister Merrow’s washroom, the green display on Pella’s message slate erupted into wild, flashing crimson. Imran’s voice came through the audio horn, screaming with urgent, desperate clarity.
‘PELLA! GET YOUR CREWS OFF THE LOWER CATWALKS! SORELL JUST CRANKED THE INTAKE TO EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT!’
Through the stone floor beneath their boots came a deep, sickening shaking. A violent, rhythmic shaking that made the copper kettles hop on the hearth and rattled the tea mugs on the shelves. It wasn’t the gentle tremor of river runoff. It was the sixteen-point-four hertz deep ring of the limestone bedrock. It was driven to four times its natural wave height by the surging Crown.
Pella snatched her stop whistle, kicked the washroom door open, and ran toward the riverbank. Outside in the dark, the rain was falling in pouring sheets. But above the sound of the storm came a sound that chilled her blood. The deep, screaming roar of forty thousand tons of water hitting an unvented bottleneck three hundred feet above the city.
‘Eren! Korr!’ Pella screamed into the gale. ‘Sound the bells! Sorell has opened the gates! The surge is in the pipe!’
Inside Lowbank Washroom Sound, the air carried the sharp, clear odor of wet Portland cement, river silt, and crushed iron melted rock waste, showed by icy spray thrown upward from the underwater intake aprons. With heavy brass gimbal lamps steadying the glare against the wet stone, Pella Rook scored a crisp datum line across the limestone block with the…
