Burning.
She tumbled out into the void, up and down and left and right, abstracts with no real meaning. Instinct bidding her reach for a handhold, something, anything to slow her fall. Because Kaori knew she was falling, some tiny reptilian part of her brain screaming above the blur of chi fumes and vertigo and nausea and fear.
She hit the surface in a spray of bloody red, plunging down into treacle-thick darkness, kicking and thrashing with everything left inside her. Breaking into the vapor soup that passed for air, spewing and heaving, clinging to slick walls with trembling arms, struggling to regain what she could of her breath. Blinking in the near dark. Trying to understand where she was.
And gods, she’d made it …
An enormous tank, cylindrical, at least a hundred yards across. The interior was lit by a circle of tiny red globes, burning sun-bright after the pipeline’s constant darkness. She saw rivet-studded walls, an outflow spewing intermittent blood-red jets into the sea of fuel all around her. The ceiling hung thirty feet above—only gods knew how deep the chi below her ran. A service ladder scaled the wall, up to the circle of lights she finally recognized as an access hatch.
A figure in black plummeted from the outflow mouth, tumbling down into the chi with a splash. Kaori swam over, dragging him to the ladder. She recognized Maro, his long braids soaked through with fuel.
“Izanagi’s balls,” he gasped, coughing thick inside his breather. “Next time, we take the bloody front door…”
Another body tumbled through the outflow and down into the darkness. This time it was a girl, Megumi, her breather flooded to the eyeholes with bloody-red, floating facedown in the fuel. More bodies followed, some breathing, most not, crushed flat or torn to pieces. The empty ones slowly spinning in the outflow’s vortex, sinking down into the dark—people who had dreamed and laughed and died for something worth fighting for.
Did she still really believe that?
At the last, they counted each other by the light of that morbid red, discovering only five of them left. Kaori. Maro. Botan. Fat Yuu. Little Eiko.
Five of two dozen.
They climbed the ladder onto a suspended walkway leading to the access hatch. Waterproofed satchels were peeled open, explosives lifted out onto iron mesh. Maro looked them over with a critical eye, Kaori’s head cocked as she listened to the dull sounds outside the tank. Motors and propellers, the latter growing louder by the moment.
The reservoir walls began trembling, what sounded like a sky-ship passing overhead. Maro glanced up sharply as several thuds sounded on the ceiling above. Kaori motioned for silence, drew her wakizashi. The other Kagé followed suit, blades drawn softly, smeared with lamp black to hide their sheen.
She could hear voices, hushed and metallic. A claxon in the distance. The red globes circling the access hatch winked off, one by one, and the six-studded lock contracted, the circular handle turning slowly, almost soundless in the oily air.
“Go!” Kaori hissed. “Go!”
Fat Yuu and Eiko had resealed their explosives, descending the ladder and slipping back into the chi below. Maro affixed climbing claws to his boots and palms, swung below the gantry and hung inverted, like some black, dripping spider, Botan behind him. Kaori followed suit; rolling over the gantry, she swung beneath, hung beside Maro with sword in hand.
The access hatch opened slowly, hinges buttered black with grease. A blinding spear of light flooded the tank. She made out a silhouette, burning eyes peering down into the dark. And as soundless as anyone wrapped head-to-foot in brass could move, three figures swung through the access hatch and climbed down to the gantry.
Guildsmen.
Two Artificers and a False-Lifer, gleaming chrome arms unfolding from her back. The sight of the arachnoid limbs put Kaori in mind of Ayane, of the spider drone in the village, deceit and betrayal curdling on her tongue. She glanced at the Shadows hidden below, Maro and Botan beside her, well aware that if it came to blows, any luxury they’d had in stealth would be gone.
The False-Lifer spoke, bubbling and sibilant.
“Be swift, brother.”
One of the Artificers pulled a large package from a satchel: a fat blob of sticky, black resin, sealed in wax paper. He clomped to the wall, pressing the substance against a seam. The resin held in place, malleable as warm dough. The False-Lifer’s hiss echoed in the dark.
“Set the timers for fifteen minutes, just in case radio control fails.”
“In case we’re captured, you mean?” asked one Artificer.
Kaori could see Maro’s frown through his breather’s viewports. Just as baffled as she.
“We cannot be captured, brother. We know too much. Defiance or death.”
“Defiance or death,” the second Artificer nodded, made a fist.