The drainage channel of Sector Four was four feet wide, tube-shaped, and slick with cold water drops that smelled of rotten-egg moss and stale oil.
Ren crawled on his hands and knees through six inches of standing runoff water. His boots were waterlogged, dragging like lead weights behind him. At the same time, his leather satchel knocked against his hip with every forward thrust of his shoulders. His throat burned with that dry, persistent fire that was the permanent hallmark of his scroll-keeper’s silence. Every breath sounded like an empty bellows scraping across dry turf.
Behind him came the heavy, clockwork clanking of Unit Ren, whose iron shoulders scraped the curved stonework of the pipe with nonstop, grinding screeches. The machine-man’s bulk filled the channel fully, blocking what little surrounding light filtered from the rear grates.
“Ten paces to the junction box,” Unit Ren rasped through the dark. His amber rangefinder lens cast a narrow beam of amber light across the oily water. “Sub-chimney pipe channel twelve connects directly to the safehouse cellar. Surrounding heat is dropping. We’re entering the cold zone.”
Ren tried to nod, but his neck muscles seized.
The burst hit him without warning. A sudden, violent contraction that snapped his chin down against his collarbone, pinning his jaw to his chest with the force of an iron clamp.
