The pipe deck was an iron ceiling suspended two arm-lengths beneath the main armored deck, crossed only by rats and steam.
Yan Zhiqiu hauled herself through the narrow check scuttle onto the service narrow high walkway. The steel mesh beneath her bare feet was blistering hot, heated by the bare boiler uptakes that rose from the machinery spaces below. The air was a toxic stew of carbon monoxide, boiled away machine grease, and the sharp, acidic sting of packed sulfuric acid. Along the overhead frames, thousands of iron rivets cried brown rust into the humid haze, their metal heads expanding and contracting under the uneven heat of the furnaces.
Every breath scorched the wet inner skin of her nostrils, tasting of burnt copper and brimstone.
She didn’t tie a cloth over her mouth. A wet cloth in a compartment filled with white-hot acid vapors would merely condense the acid-burning droplets against the lips and teeth, blistering the tongue before three steps could be taken. Instead, she used the water-mapping lung-lock technique of the deep-sea pearl divers, contracting her glottis and drawing shallow, cold air across the roof of her mouth in short, measured sips. Her pulse slowed, matching the low air-pressure register of the bilge.
