Down in the dark, vaulted alley beneath the abandoned brewery, Imran Bell was kneeling in four inches of steaming muck. He held his brass bimetallic heat gauge close to the cry-holes of the eastern retaining wall. In his left hand he held his shuttered brass bull’s-eye lantern, its beam lighting up a four-inch swarm of lantern beetles that were scurrying upward along the mortar joints in a dense, glowing emerald column.
“Look at them go, Tavi,” Imran said, adjusting the focus on his jeweler’s magnifying glass. “They aren’t just moving. They’re marching like soldiers during a fire drill. The heat in this under-road drain just hit eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. In November, that’s practically a hot tub.”
“Is it Morvan’s brick kiln line?” Tavi asked, holding the wooden tally board ready for notes.
“No, Morvan’s line was dry heat,” Imran replied, his tone sharpening with skilled focus. “This is live, high-pressure drain water. Sorell has opened his backup witness valve to keep his platform cool. The boiling water is backing up into the eastern under-road drain. This entire stonework wall is being undermined from behind by heat swelling.”
Imran pulled his roll of heavy yellow barrier tape from his shoulder, tying a tight loop around the stone arch of the under-road drain. He wrote in bold black grease pencil on the waxed linen ribbon. THERMAL COLLAPSE VECTOR · 82°F · DO NOT ENTER. “Tavi, run this slate up to Inspector Korr right now,” Imran ordered. “Tell him the eastern approach is…
