Silas Venn did not descend into the utility vault like a defeated man.
He walked down the iron spiral staircase with a measured, rhythmic cadence, his boots polished to a mirror shine despite the soot that clung to the ceiling beams. He wore an unblemished slate-gray wool officer’s coat over a high-collared tunic, his silver hair brushed neatly back from his high, aristocratic forehead. At his side hung an empty leather holster; behind him, three armed compound enforcers in black tactical gear descended with short-barreled carbines held at the low ready.
In his left hand, Venn carried a thick, calfskin-bound volume with brass-reinforced corners—Haven’s master actuarial register.
He stopped on the concrete mezzanine twenty feet above the Registrar’s switching ring, his hand resting lightly on the rusted iron handrail. Below him, in the center of the flooded floor, Tessa Rowan stood with her fifty-pound socket wrench resting across her shoulder, her boots planted firmly in the mud beside the freshly bolted bronze rocker splice.
Mara stood ten paces in front of the ring, her field ledger open in her hands. Beside her, Gideon Pike stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his Remington balanced across his forearms, the muzzle angled toward the iron staircase.
